Grace and Mercy

A friend and I were driving back from Christmas shopping the other day. He was quiet. I was quiet. The drive was nice. So I had some time to think. I was thinking on ‘grace’. I will probably have a few blogs about grace as it has been the topic of my thoughts lately, as well as some conversation.

Anyhow… I asked him, “Do you think we often confuse grace with mercy?” I asked it as it came into my brain. A question that broke the silence and started a conversation that I won’t soon forget. The following are some things we talked about:

I do think we confuse grace and mercy very often. Which I believe has given grace a bad name.

Grace by definition is ”the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.” (dictionary.com) Like mercy, it is not something that you earn, but it is also not the pardon for sin… It is the “moral strength” to keep us from sin.

Mercy is given in place of wrath. It is our pardon. Mercy is not something you can earn or deserve but it is only given by the love and grace of God. Grace, the favor of God, is the segue to a judgement of mercy.

For instance. Say someone who I have great favor toward does something just awful to offend me. They come to me and ask me to forgive them, even though I should forever be angry with them. Because I love that person, I can look at them with favor and judge them with mercy. That person is in ‘my good graces’.

This is where I think we get it all wrong and why I believe it is dangerous to confuse the two. We rarely to never ask for mercy. We assume grace. We offend God, and because we know we have favor, we have grace, we think we can skip the need for mercy. We need both! We need the favor and strength of God. But we also need the forgiveness and kindness of God. Both of these are vital and when we pray, we must ask for more of both. When we live, we must walk in both.

“Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses.” This is grace and mercy at work together. Grace= the gift of sustenance (daily bread). Mercy= forgiveness.

What I love about both grace and mercy is that they are unmerited and it is only the love of God that affords us these precious gifts. They are just that… gifts. We must take very good care of them. We must not use mercy as a licence for sin and we must not use grace as an excuse for laziness. Neither of these can replace righteousness or holiness, but they all must work in tandem.

My next blog will be on grace verses holiness or grace married with holiness. I will expound on the foundation laid in this blog… in the meantime, I’d love to hear from you all. What are your thoughts, perceptions, helpful scripture references on this topic of mercy and grace?