Exploring God’s Will of Mercy

Exploring God’s Will of Mercy.

“The root of all of God’s activity in this world, beginning even with the world’s creation, is Mercy. “Mercy is the cause and reason of all that God does. God does nothing, absolutely nothing, except as an expression of His Mercy.” (Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon, from his book, Christ in the Psalms).

“I will (“thelema”) mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:13 and 12:7). In other words, hear the word of the Lord… I delight in mercy; I vastly prefer mercy; My desire is that you show mercy; My heart takes pleasure when I see mercy in this world; My will is that mercy is demonstrated before religious duties; My will is mercy.

“Oh, the joys of those who are kind to the poor! The Lord rescues them when they are in trouble. The Lord protects them and keeps them alive. He gives them prosperity in the land and rescues them from their enemies. The Lord nurses them when they are sick and restores them to health.” (Psalms 41:1-3).

MYSTERY: (Greek, Musterion); a sacred secret hidden in the heart of God until the appointed time of revelation; a truth that can only be known by divine disclosure; spiritual insights into God’s way of thinking and planning; hidden truths revealed by God that are beyond human intellect and reason; divine knowledge that can only be understood through the Holy Spirit; God’s thoughts and plans revealed to believers and hidden to doubters and unbelievers. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may obey the words of His teachings.” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

God’s Will, Beyond our Understanding. “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His decisions! And how mysterious are His ways, His methods, and His paths! For who has known the mind of the Lord, who has understood His thoughts, or who has ever been His counselor? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and end in Him. To Him be glory forever! Amen. That’s the truth.” (Romans 11:33-36).

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7). In other words: Congratulations! You are so fortunate! God loves it when you graciously show the undeserved favor and acceptance, when you allow God’s grace to then move you with compassion to reach out and be willing to bear another’s burden even if it means personal suffering, and then finally to put that love into action by relieving the misery of someone in need. You are to be envied! You will experience great happiness, because showing God’s lovingkindness towards others puts His love into action for you!

MERCY: God’s will to satisfy all mankind with His goodness; to strongly desire what is best for someone, especially for those in need; to graciously treat someone in distress with compassion, especially when one could ignore that needy person if he wanted; to have a readiness to show practical love to someone in any type of trouble or need; to have an eagerness to put  love into action; to personally relieve the suffering of someone; to demonstrate an act of good will towards someone who needs it; to show a lovingkindness that is way beyond the call of duty; to demonstrate to a complete stranger the same type of compassion one would reveal to a friend or family member. Mercy is the most active aspect of Love, which also includes Grace and Compassion.  These three aspects of Love are distinctive, but each is a part of the other. Grace is full of compassion and mercy; compassion is full of grace and mercy; mercy is full of grace and compassion.

Grace: God’s welcoming face of God’s favor and acceptance to the undeserving;

Compassion: the willingness to reach out and suffer with another and bear that person’s burdens;

Mercy: the actual doing of the love that grace and compassion has started; Love-in-Action.

1. Greek word for Mercy in New Testament is “eleos,” which is usually translated mercy, pity or compassion. Eleos is derived from the word for olive oil, and so is understood in the context of something healing, soothing, comforting. Eleos is a noun, but it is often used as a verb with the word eleeson, with phrases like “Have mercy on me!” The actual translation with that phrase is “Mercy Me, Lord!”
2. “Chanan”= Hebrew word for mercy in terms of gracious, generous, joyfully compassionate, quick to forgive and quick to show favor, especially to someone who is in need. Verses with “chanan” in it are Exodus 34:6, Ps. 86:15, Ps. 103;8, and 2 Chronicles 30:9.
3. “Rachem”= Hebrew word for mercy rooted in the “womb,” a tender compassion that is warm and affectionate, a strong desire to relieve suffering and cherish the sufferer. It has been said that this word for God’s mercy implies a tender, protected place where life springs forth, and that living in God’s mercy is to live in the womb of God’s love. Passages with “rachem” include Isaiah 14:1, 30:18, 49:15 and 60:10; Jeremiah 12:15 and 3:20; and Lamentations 3:32; Ps. 106:46.
4. “Hesed”= Hebrew word for mercy that is often translated as lovingkindness, indicating a steadfast love, a compassionate faithfulness and loyalty to covenant love. It is used 26 times in the classic Psalm 136 in order to focus on God’s continued and unwavering forbearance and patience because of His faithful lovingkindness, His remaining true to his promises out of sheer love. “Hesed” is used over 120 times in the book of Psalms alone, but here are a few passages:  107:1 and 43; Ps. 108:4; Ps. 98:3.

“Rend your hearts rather than your garments, and turn back to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and renouncing punishment.” (Joel 2:13)

Thoughts on Mercy:

1. “Without the word ‘mercy,’ the Bible is a dead book in which there is no revelation of God at all.” (Rex Andrews, What the Bible Teaches about Mercy);
2. “The root of all of God’s activity in this world, beginning even with the world’s creation, is Mercy.” (Rev. P. H. Reardon, Christ in the Psalms);
3. “Mercy is the cause and reason of all that God does. God does nothing, absolutely nothing, except as an expression of His Mercy.” (Rev. Reardon);
4. “His Mercy stretches out to both extremes of infinity. All we will ever discover of God will be the deepening levels of His great, abundant, overflowing, rich, endless Mercy.” (Rev. Reardon);
5. “When we deal with God, everything is Mercy. Everything else that can be said of God is but an aspect of His Mercy.” (Rev. Reardon);
6. “‘For His Mercy endures forever’ lies under each line of Holy Scripture, and is the eternal song of the saints.” (Rev. Reardon);
7. “It is better to limit belief in God’s power than to dampen faith in God’s mercy. Between mercy and power, mercy takes precedence – and to the mercy of Heaven there is no limit.” (Rabbi A. J. Heschel, Heavenly Torah);
8. “Mercy is the defining explanation of everything that God has revealed of Himself. Mercy is the explanation of every single thought that God has with respect to us.” (Rev. Reardon);
9. “Mercy rather than justice is regarded as the outstanding attribute of God.” (Rabbi Heschel, A Passion for Truth);
10. “Beyond all mystery is the mercy of God. It is a love, a mercy that transcends the world, its value and merit. To live by such a love, to reflect it, however humbly, is the test of religious existence.” (Rabbi Heschel, God in Search of Man);
11. “The encounter with God’s Mercy, a celebration of God’s sustained and abundant Mercy, is the root of all Christian worship.” (Rev. Reardon)

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great Mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” (1 Peter 1:3-4)

God’s Will of Mercy in the Hebrew Bible. The First Testament (the poorly-named Old Testament) is full of references to God’s preference for mercy and His motivation to identify with mercy above all his other attributes. Here are some:

Mercy is the Centerpiece of God’s Self-Identity. When at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses asked God if he could see God’s glory. (Exodus 33:19). The Lord Yahweh responded by saying that He would pass before Moses, but he would not be allowed to see His “face,” only His backside. The Glory is too overwhelming for humans who are not equipped to experience a consuming fire quite yet. Yahweh told Moses that He will cause all His “goodness” to pass before Moses, and that in Moses’ presence He will pronounce His holy Name. Goodness is usually a synonym for mercy, because God’s goodness is revealed through His mercy. So Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to meet God at the top, and Yahweh descended in a cloud and stood there with Moses. Only God can accurately name Himself, and here we see the Lord pronouncing His sacred Name… “God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “I AM Yahweh! I AM Yahweh! A God who is compassionate (rachem) and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in mercy (hesed) and truth, preserving mercy (hesed) for thousands of generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty or allowing sin to go unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7). What a singular moment! The Almighty God, the Great I AM, describes His Name, His identity. He is revealing to Moses how He sees Himself in His Essence. What a turning point in history! The Lord of the universe chooses to reveal Himself in utter transparency to a human being! ‘You want to know what I am made of, Moses, the Lord is saying, then this is how I describe my character, these are my core attributes. Yes, I am the great LORD, and this is Me in a nutshell… rich in mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness. That is truly who I am, Moses!’ At the very end of this historical self-description, God reminds Moses (and all of us) that He is Lord of a moral universe, that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and He has established an ultimate system of justice. God’s statement about justice and moral accountability, interestingly enough, seems to have been made in the context of mercy and forgiveness, of compassion and grace. So it appears that if God’s will springs out of God’s core character, His will must be mercy.

“Enter His gates with thanksgiving; go into His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and call upon His Name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting; His faithfulness endures from age to age.” (Psalm 100:3-4)

Mercy is the Sign of God’s Presence. It is telling that God instructed Moses to make the gold lid on the Ark of the Covenant to be called the Mercy Seat, the “Kaporet,” situated between two cherubim in the Holy of Holies (Numbers 7:89). Yahweh demanded that the cloud and fire of His Presence be identified with His mercy. The weight of God’s glory rested on the Mercy Seat, where it always rests. The kaporet was the lid over the Ark of the Covenant, God’s Testimony. The Mercy Seat was in the center of the Holiest Place, which was in the center of their camp, and so the Mercy Seat was literally the center of everything in the wilderness journey. The Mercy Seat was the center of everyone’s attention, and mercy was the very point of the center. When God revealed His mercy, whether through manna, quail, permanent clothing, or during Yom-Kippur, it is like the king in all His glory. “Once a year on Yom-Kippur, in the Tabernacle’s most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, the high priest would enter and drench the Mercy Seat with the blood of the animal sacrificed to make atonement for the people. This is the physical place where Yahweh met the high priest and where He forgave the sins of the people of Israel. The Mercy Seat prefigures the eternal mercy, grace and hope that alone came through Jesus the Messiah, through His shed blood, making atonement once and for all, placing the weight of humanity’s sins on Him.” (notes from the Complete Jewish Bible, Dr. David Stern). Directly above the Mercy Seat, God chose to present Himself, letting His voice be heard by Moses or the high priest. He identified Himself with mercy by His choice of resting place, sitting on His royal throne of Mercy. The kaporet was not an impressive royal throne of power. Yahweh’s power was exercised in His mercy. God’s mercy was what His power looked like, and His glory is reflected in His will of mercy. In so many ways, the Mercy Seat was a foreshadowing of the Cross, drenched in the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus to cover over, to conceal, to atone for the sins of the people. On His Cross, we see Jesus on our Day of Atonement. The Mercy Seat and the Cross revealed a judgment of mercy. St. Paul brought this together in his letter to the Romans, “God put Yeshua (Jesus) forward as the kapparah for sin through His faithfulness in respect to His bloody sacrificial death…” (Romans 3:25-26).

Mercy is Closer to the Heart of God than Empty Religion. God’s preferences are made very clear in Isaiah 58:4-7. Yahweh is much more pleased with the self-denial it takes to show mercy, than whatever self-discipline is revealed in insincere obedience to religious obligations. “Your kind of fasting is pointless! On a day like today, fasting like yours will not make your voice heard on high. What kind of fast do I choose? Is a true fast simply some religious exercise for making a person feel miserable and woeful? Is it about how you bow your head, like a bent reed, or how you dress in sackcloth, or where you sit in a bed of ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day the Lord finds good and proper? No, what I want in a fast is this: to liberate those tied down and held back by injustice; to lighten the load of those heavily burdened; to free the oppressed and shatter every type of oppression. A fast for me involves sharing your food with people who have none; giving to those who are homeless a space in your house; giving clothes to those who need them; fulfilling your duty to your own family and not neglecting their needs.”

A Foundational Truth to Consider. God’s will is based on His character, and so His will shall always reflect His essence and divine identity. His will is always going to be a revelation of His authentic Being, and it will not compromise His nature. To be in the center of God’s will then, we need to live in the center of who God is, what His character is through His Holy Spirit with Jesus. God’s character determines the substance of His will. His ultimate intentions and plans will unfailingly line up with His character. It appears from Scripture that God’s will is mercy. God’s bottom-line will is mercy. What God wants for the world to experience is His mercy and goodness, and His desire is to demonstrate the essence of His character.

“‘I beseech you, Lord,’ he prayed, ‘is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in kindness, loathe to punish.” (Jonah 4:2)

Describing God’s Will. Accepting the fact that God’s thoughts are as unreachable as the furthest star in the galaxy, and that His level of understanding is as far from us as the distance from one end of the universe to the other end, we can try to describe God’s will this way: His will is His heart’s desire for every creature to become what that creature was created to be, to reach God’s purpose and destiny for that person; God’s will is what He wants to happen; God’s will is His pure and perfect intention for everything under the sun; His will always remain what is best for all of humanity; His will includes all of mankind’s actions and attitudes that are in line with His character and purpose; His will is that which brings pleasure and joy to His heart; God’s will springs from His character and is an expression of who He is by nature. According to many biblical scholars, God has three wills: His Intentional Will, which is what He prefers according to His designs and plans for the world. The whole world is full of God’s mercy (Ps. 119:64), and God intends that his creatures reflect and live into that mercy with each other. But His intentions could be thwarted in the short-term, because of His… Permissive Will: His will honors each person’s free will, since we are all made in His image; for the short-term, His permissive will allows each of us to stray from His preference or His intention, refusing to eliminate the freedom of mankind to make their own choices in life. However, God has an Ultimate Will for the long-term, a perfect will that is irresistible, that God has had in mind since the creation of the world, and God is determined that His ultimate will shall prevail. Much of God’s ultimate will is a secret at this point, known only to Him. God in His wisdom enjoys a unified plan that we are not privy to, and life in this world is moving towards the ending He has determined. In any discussion of God’s will, of course, we shouldn’t forget that, “whatever the Lord pleases to do, He does.” (Ps. 135:6), and “Our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases.” (Ps. 115:3). There is much to be said about the seeming fact that God’s will is mercy.

“I will praise you, O LORD, among the nations; I will sing of you among the peoples. For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.” (Psalm 108:3-5)

One possible theory on God’s will in the world. Imagine that world history, with all its momentous events, national tragedies and unforeseen twists and turns that seemed random, with all its natural disasters and unpredictable conflicts, with all the glories and beauties of civilizations come and gone, all the bright lights of saints and heroes and the dark shadows of villains and devils, all the world’s great masterpieces in art, music, literature and technology, and with all the personal choices of love and hate, destined for victory or defeat… imagine that all of that is a mind-boggling, complex, multi-layered, impossible-to-understand cosmic Play by the Divine Playwright, God Himself. Our Playwright is the only One who could possibly have the Big Picture in mind, the only One who has a unified vision of the world, and He has written the ultimate ending to the Play. He is determined to have the Play be resolved at the conclusion according to His plan for the Play. The ending of the play is non-negotiable by others who might have different ideas, but the conclusion will reflect without question the deep desires of the Playwright. He will not compromise his creative genius, since He is filled with wisdom and understanding and knows exactly where everything is eventually headed and how it all fits together. His ultimate plan for the Play can be called God’s Will, as can be the fact that the Playwright has in mind the main themes in each Act of the Play. Each Act contains a theme or two that is determined by Him, but each scene in each Act is being written by the likes of us, we who are mixed bags of God’s image and fallen nature. The Playwright has given humanity a lot of freedom to write some of our own script, and He will honor our freedom by not eliminating free human will. God has actually invited us to cooperate in a draft of the Play. Each of us writes a lot of the action scenes and even some of the secondary plot development, but if the Playwright sees any of His main themes drifting away from His main purpose, He has a few ways of responding: the Playwright can simply delete the scene and ask for a re-write; He can intervene and force a few important changes in the script; He could personally do a rewrite Himself; He can redeem the unfortunate scene by taking the part of the scene that didn’t fit into His grand scheme of things, and turning it into a part that fits, taking the objectionable part in hand and arranging things so something good and beautiful can emerge. God can redeem any part of a wayward script and have good come out of the bad. One way or another, God’s ultimate Will is going to be successfully fulfilled, and the play will without any doubt be resolved according to the desires of the Playwright. Nature and humanity all have a part to play in the writing of the script, but it is God alone who will determine the main direction of the plot line, the final character development, and the glorious conclusion at the end. The Playwright is God, and of course He knows best. It’s our job to understand as much as we can about the Playwright so we can cooperate with His plot. We can only see the play from our limited view. Only the Playwright has the Big Picture in mind, from beginning to end. The Playwright has ultimate sovereignty, but at the same time permits people to make their own mistakes and lets nature take its course.

“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”  (Micah 7:18-19).

Will God Get What He Wants? Many have posed this question, and of course, we don’t really know the answer to this. This remains a mystery, a secret part of His will. It’s clear that God in the end wants everyone to be saved. “God is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). He does not desire that anyone would perish. “Our God and Savior, who desires all mankind to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). God is the lover of mankind, and ”takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” (Ezekiel 33:11). There is a lot in Scripture about hell and judgment, much of it proclaimed by Jesus Himself. Will God get what He wants, everyone saved, in the very, very, very end of the End? After continually rejecting the mercy of God, it may take some of the more stubborn souls a long time to finally accept Him. How much weight does God finally give our finite, imperfect free wills? Will he really allow our weak, ignorant wills to frustrate His plans and then we foolishly sentence ourselves to eternal death? How far will God take this free will idea in terms of final decisions? We just don’t know the answer to this mystery. There is an interesting little parable in Matthew 13:47-50, the Parable of the Fishing Net. The fishing net is thrown wide and deep, and it catches any number of kinds of fish. Jesus has the angels coming at the end and helping Him judge these fish, some good and some not good. In many ways this is a tragic story. Jesus seems clear and unequivocal that there will be a final judgment, a separation unto what at least seems like an eternity. The “good fish” though should not feel especially smug or self-righteous or judgmental against what they consider the “bad fish.” We are assured it won’t get all sorted out till the end. Spread the net and pray for mercy for others and for yourself in the separation process. It’s hard to miss that the angels seemed intent and eternally tough in their display of divine justice. Somehow, Lord, may your judgment throne be a mercy seat. “So let us come boldly to the throne of grace. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” (Hebrews 4:16). Let’s pray that verse for everyone, even the “bad fish.” Maybe somehow, after the angels are done sorting things out, Jesus, who has the Last Word, will say, “Father, forgive them, for they didn’t know what they were doing.” Maybe, somehow, the Lord will give the bad fish a final opportunity to flop into paradise. Maybe, after what seems an eternity, the Lord’s will of mercy wins out. I would like to think and hope that, even in His moral universe in which there is accountability, even with that in mind, God will eventually get what He wants.

“The Lord’s mercies never cease, His compassions never fail. They are renewed every morning. Great is your faithfulness! The Lord is my portion, He is all I have, therefore I have hope in Him.” (Lamentations 3:21-24).

Living into God’s Intentional Will: Demonstrating to others the mercy God has shown us puts us into the center of His will. When we use our wills to show mercy, our will turns into God’s will. We need to become as knowledgeable as possible about God’s direction and purpose in the overall trajectory of the Play; to obey His directions; to cooperate with His plans and do what pleases Him; to trust in the skills of the Playwright when unsure of the plot; to magnify the faultless character of the Playwright; to be assured of the Playwright’s love for us as we write our action scenes; to grow in anticipating His plot lines and character development; to represent the Playwright’s standing in the world and make sure He gets all the credit and applause. The Lord God put forth His “intentional will” in Micah 6:8. That passage summarizes His preference for how we live, what He delights in, what reflects His character, what He takes great pleasure in, what He has had in mind for us since He created us. If it were solely up to God, this is what the world would look like: “He has already told you, mortals, what is good in His sight. This is what Lord Yahweh asks of you: to live with justice and fairness in mind; to embrace lovingkindness and mercy; and to walk humbly and obediently with your True God.” God is intending that we all live that way if it was up to Him alone. But, mysteriously, the Almighty God honors His “permissive will,” allowing each person’s free will to have a big influence in the way we choose to live. Of course, God has the power and wisdom to intervene whenever He wants. Much like sin itself, God doesn’t endorse injustice, cruelty, or pride, and in fact He has gone on record a million times as hating every form of wickedness. He obviously doesn’t really prefer unrighteousness or the results of sin in the world, and He never had the intention to make this a part of His creation. And He knows that evil’s days are numbered. But here we see reality in a sinful world, where God rejects much of what goes on His world. Our pure God permits impurity and brokenness and certainly doesn’t insist on their existence. It’s a mystery what this does to God’s sovereignty. But God is not a cosmic sadist, and so He doesn’t inflict pain, give people cancer, or cause fatal car crashes. He doesn’t will tragedy into innocent lives, He doesn’t inspire mass murders or spread life-ending illnesses. In His short-term permissive will, He allows effects of sin, and He redeems them. God is in the business of redeeming the bad into the good, not inflicting the bad. But God also has an “ultimate will” which reveals His final authority and sovereignty. His ultimate plans are irresistible, and final, and will not be frustrated. God has ultimate control of the universe, in which God gets what He wants. God has already determined that justice, mercy and humility will characterize human interaction when the world is redeemed in the kingdom to come. God’s will of mercy will not be compromised in the end.

“We are only on the outer fringes of Your works! How faint the whisper we hear of You! I am unworthy – How can I reply to You? I put my hand over my mouth. Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 26:14, 40:4, 42:36).

What Mercy looks like. “Our Father in heaven…. Your will be done…” (Matt. 6:10). All it takes is one reading of the Gospels, and can there be any doubt as to the mission of God’s Son on earth? Mercy. Jesus is mercy with flesh on. Mercy was clearly the marching order from the Father, inviting all of mankind into the arms of God, the Father of Mercy. “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.” (John 6:38). And the mission of the Son was to reveal the will of the Father. Literally, Jesus is God’s will.

1. Christ’s mission of mercy as described in Luke 4:16-17 and Isaiah 61:1-2, was all about mercy: To preach Good News to the poor; to proclaim liberty to the captives; to heal the brokenhearted; to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind; to set free those who are oppressed.
2. The merciful proofs of the Messiah in Matthew 11:1-6: The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.
3. The fact that, anointed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus “went about doing good, including the casting out of demons” (Acts 10:38). Jesus wrapped up His section in the Sermon on the Plain with, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36). Maybe that gets to the heart of the matter. The following “Works of Mercy” are based on Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46, and are a good place to start when thinking about how to go about “doing good.”1. Feed the hungry; 2. Give water to the thirsty; 3. Shelter the stranger; 4. Clothe the naked; 5. Comfort the sick; 6. Visit the Prisoner.
4. Of course, let’s not forget that Calvary, the sacrifice of Christ for our deliverance from sin and Satan into eternal life with Him, is undoubtedly the greatest act of mercy ever performed. The Cross is the greatest proof we can find that reveals God’s will of mercy. “Calvary is the Great Central Fact of all that has been made known of the Will-of-God, His will of Mercy, His divine passion to show mercy.” (Rex Andrews, What the Bible Teaches About Mercy). So Jesus, God’s Son, is what mercy looks like. Christ is the full expression of the mercy of the Father, and reveals God’s supreme will of mercy in the world. Jesus is God’s Will in-the-Flesh.
5. Perhaps the supreme example of Christ’s obedience was in Gethsemane. One of the most heart-breaking scenes in the Gospels reveals a full prostration… Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane fully flat on the ground in utter agony. “And He took with Him Peter, James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled; and He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.’ And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground (pipto), and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, ‘Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.‘” (Mark 14:33-36; also refer to  26:36-39). We see here that Jesus is in desperate distress, and He literally threw Himself to the ground, fully prostrating Himself in prayer to His Father. Jesus is humbly submitting to the Father as He opens His heart to Him. He is fully on the ground, in total privacy, stretching out and remaining vulnerable to whomever might come to Him there. But that is not all he is doing on the ground like that. According to many biblical scholars, Jesus is also identifying Himself with the fall of mankind, kissing the dust of the earth. Jesus “let’s Himself fall into man’s fallenness.” (Fr. Ratzinger). With a tormented soul, Jesus collapses to the ground and assumes a servile position before the Father as well as a position of solidarity with His fellow human beings in the flesh. Here is a case when the Father’s will of mercy was intended for our salvation, and thus Jesus’ will was rejected. The Father permitted His Son to suffer and die for us.

God Remembers Mercy. “God has helped His servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as He said to our fathers.” (Luke 1:54-55). No, God didn’t forget to show mercy. God doesn’t forget anything, so neither does He remember anything. God has no need for memory. Everything in the universe, past, present and future, is on the top of His mind at all times. God is always mindful of everything. There is no limit to what God’s mind can contain, what He is able to think about at the same time. The biblical concept of “remembering” implies action, preparing for action. So in this case, God remembers in the sense that He is focusing on something big, the Big Event, on the pregnancy and birth and life of His very Son. God is preparing for His eternal Son to take on flesh and enter the world and transform it and save it. In her beautiful song often called the “Magnificat,” Mary is able to weave together over 20 passages and allusions from the Hebrew Bible to form a coherent and unforgettable song of praise. At the end here, Mary is probably quoting Psalm 98:3, “The Lord has remembered His mercy and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.” She concludes her canticle with an exclamation of how God has focused on continuing His mercy to her people by bringing the Messiah into the world. Mary knows that God is always mindful of His mercies, that mercy is His instinct, His reflexive response. God “remembered” His mercy because it is always at the top of his mind and in the center of His essential character. As various translations of Luke 1:54 put, “He can never forget to show mercy.” “God remembered mercy.” “So as to remember His mercy.” “mindful of His faithful love.” “He remembered to be merciful.” “He remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.” God’s remembrance involved intervention, participation, action. He’ll never forget His mercies, ever.

God’s Will of Mercy for Us. When we live into Christ’s words in Gethsemane, “not my will but yours O Lord,” we may not get specific answers, such as this job or that job, this person or that person, this church or that church, this school or that school. There are times when all the alternatives could just as well be God’s will for that particular situation. Ask God for wisdom and discernment, and prayerfully make your decision, and go in God’s peace. No matter what one chooses, we know that God will be at your side regardless. And we also know the most important aspect of God’s will: Mercy. Whichever choice one makes, we need to remember that in His heart of mercy, God wants what is best for us. He wants us to flourish, to reach the pinnacle of health and well-being, to fulfill the potential of mankind as He invented us at creation. When the Lord says in Scripture what His will is for us, He is saying that out of His mercy He wants to transform us into the likeness of Jesus, who is in fact God’s will of mercy. We do know what His will looks like for us as we read the gospels of Jesus. As we do God’s will, we will continue to grow from glory to glory to look more like Christ. As John said in 1 John 2:17, “Those who do the will of God will abide forever.”

‘You may expend your whole life in search of the Will of God, His “perfect will,” but you will not find any other perfect will of God than that which God has revealed in Christ Jesus. And that will is mercy, a mercy which involves giving your life for others as an offering to God.” (Brother Rex Andrews, from his book, What the Bible Teaches About Mercy).

In Gratitude: I want to especially thank my daily inspiration and life partner Sheridan Larson; Brother Rex B. Andrews; Dr. David Stern; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; and Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon.