"I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God."
- Romans 12:1
There is something well calculated to keep us humble in the perpetual reference made in the Scriptures to mercy. We read of nothing granted us on the ground of merit, of nothing that comes from the hand of God as the reward of our good deeds or obtained by us as matter of desert. But the MERCY of God meets us at every point: the food we eat, the air we breathe, the garments we wear, the domestic comforts we enjoy, our civil advantages, and our religious privileges are all represented as matters of mercy -- undeserved mercy.
This I say is humbling; yet it is just. Mercy must be the plea of the sinner. Mercy must spare from day to day the man who deserves to be cast into hell. Mercy must supply the daily bread of the man whose very life is forfeited to the justice of his offended creator. And as we are spared and our needs supplied, and ten thousand sources of comfort are opened to us -- and not to us only but to all the sinners of our race -- we may well say that "the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord," and that "goodness and mercy have followed us all the days of our life."
And, my brethren, it would be well for us to habituate ourselves to look at all our comforts in this light. They are continued to us in mercy, since by sinning against God we have forfeited every one of them. This would silence many a murmur and produce delightful feelings of gratitude under circumstances which excite us now to anything rather than contentment and praise. Our language would often be like that of Jeremiah: "Why should a living man complain; a man for the punishment of his sin?"
But though a most powerful argument in support of a duty like that of the text might be drawn from the consideration of the innumerable temporal mercies bestowed upon us by our gracious God, yet these are not the things to which St. Paul here alludes. He is drawing this epistle to a close, which, while it is highly practical, is also most highly doctrinal. In its commencement he exhibits, in all its awful nature, the depraved condition of the Gentile world. He then urges home upon the Jews the question whether they were at all better than the Gentiles. And having shown that they were not, he draws the melancholy conclusion that "there was no difference, for that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
Having thus established the universal sin and consequent condemnation of the whole human race, he proceeds to meet the grand inquiry, "How may man be just with God?" Had he remained spotless, innocent, and pure in the state wherein he was created, the answer would have been easy: he will be justified by his works, by his own acts and deeds, his constant never-failing obedience to the divine law. But when that law had been violated again and again by every child of Adam, no conclusion could possibly be clearer than that by the deeds of the law could no flesh living be justified in his sight. Justification could not, therefore, depend on the law or on merit.
The apostle then goes on to shew that though man cannot justify himself, and is consequently in a state of condemnation, he is not on that account to be shut up under despair. But he proceeds to prove that there is a righteousness imputed without works, even that righteousness which Christ has brought in, and which he has provided by his own perfect fulfilment of the law, and by his obedience unto death in our place. This is by grace; all of unmerited favor, free goodness, mere mercy. "We are justified freely by his grace." In this righteousness we obtain a part through faith. Faith receives the record which God has given concerning his Son. Faith stretches out the hand to "receive the things that are freely given to us of God." Faith relies on the promise, and applies in assured expectation of receiving that which it asks, and which it knows God is ready to give. So important is the grace of faith that we are said to be justified by it, and by it alone. Yet faith has in itself no merit. It is no work which will compensate for failures in other things. It only receives with firm reliance those promises and those gifts which God bestows on the sinner -- of mere mercy and free grace.
