Tag Jesus

The Difference Between Grace and Mercy

Todd R 1 Comment

The words “grace” and “mercy” are often used interchangeably, as if they mean the exact same thing.  But what if they’re both used in the same sentence?  For example, the apostle Paul almost always opens his letters to the churches with some version of the phrase “grace and peace,” but in 1 Timothy 1:2 he added “mercy”, writing:

“To Timothy, my true child in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”

If grace and mercy were the same thing, it would be redundant for Paul to use both words, so they must have different meanings.  Paul uses these two words again later in the chapter, in 1 Timothy 1:13b-14, verses that give a clue to the different meanings:

“But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

Paul had been writing about how before Christ found him, he was a zealous persecutor of Christians, dragging them to prison and also supervising the stoning of Stephen, one of the church’s first deacons, then “But I received mercy…”.  Paul deserved to be punished for his hate of and actions against Christ’s people, but instead received mercy.

Then he writes that “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”  Here, Paul is receiving something from God – faith and love.  Did Paul deserve these things?  No, but he got them anyway.

Perhaps mercy is when you don’t get a bad thing that you do deserve, and grace is when you do get a good thing that you don’t deserve.  In Christ, we get both grace and mercy.  Paul’s words in 1 Timothy match this description.  By mercy, Paul didn’t get the punishment he deserved for his sins, and by grace Paul did get the faith and love he didn’t deserve.

Therefore, Paul, along with all of us, have 3 things to be thankful for: God’s mercy, and the faith and love that we get by God’s grace.  None of us deserve the “faith and love” God gives us (or it would not be grace), but when we are saved, we all receive these same gifts.  And we get them in place of what we actually deserve.

So, consider what we have received by grace.  Even our faith is a gracious gift – “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).  This faith we receive is enough to save us and reconnect us to God but is not yet a perfect faith that enables us to fully trust God with all of our life decisions.  We receive a love that is part of God’s character and is what we are to give to all people, but not enough for us to love perfectly.  However, when we are reborn in the new heaven and new earth, we will have perfect faith and love.  What a world that will be!

Knowing the difference between grace and mercy gives us more to be thankful to God for, so thank God for both His grace and mercy, and the faith and love that come with them!

Jesus’ Missing 30 Years

Todd R 1 Comment

The four Gospels are not biographies of Jesus, written to tell us all about His life, but they are summaries of His life designed to make the case that Jesus was truly the Son of God who died for our sins and rose again.  Unlike a biography, the Gospels skip over most of Jesus’ life, most notably the 30 years or so between Matthew 2:23 and 3:13.  In one verse He’s a toddler and in the next He’s an adult beginning His public ministry.

What happened in the meantime?  We don’t know much because the Bible doesn’t say much.  Jesus most likely worked as a carpenter[1] in Nazareth most of that time.  But, while we don’t know what He did, we get a sense of how He did it.

At the end of Matthew 3, Jesus goes to John the Baptist to be baptized, and when He comes up from the water, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’”[2]  In this revelation of the Trinity, the Father says He is “well pleased” with the Son, Jesus, and the Spirit confirms.

Note that the Father said He was “well pleased” before Jesus had done anything in His public ministry.  Since God knows the future, He may have been saying He was “well pleased” with Jesus’ whole life, but those there would take it to mean His life to that point.  The period of Jesus’ life that we know so little about.  What Jesus did in those 30 or so years was pleasing to God the Father.

Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash

What does this mean for us?  Most of us don’t have a full-time ministry, but spend most of our time doing other, sometimes mundane, things.  Most, or all, of our lives are more like the 30 years missing from the Gospels than they are like Jesus’ 3 or so years of ministry.  But since the Father was pleased with the first 30 years of Jesus’ life, we also can fully please God without dedicating ourselves to a full-time ministry.  Lay people aren’t second-class citizens in the kingdom of heaven.

But also, if Jesus pleased God at all times, including His work as a carpenter, to be like Jesus we need to please the Father in not just our acts of ministry, but in all of life.  In how we do our jobs, in how we treat our family and neighbors, in how we do everything.

If we want our Lord to say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant,”[3] we must follow Colossians 3:23 – “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”  All of our activities can please the Father, even the most mundane things.

[1] Mark 6:3
[2] Matthew 3:16b-17
[3] Matthew 25:21

The Apostle Peter, Son of Gomer?

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Peter is one of the most fascinating characters in the New Testament.  His struggles and flaws are written for all to see, but so is the patience and love Jesus had for him.  In Peter’s two letters, we get to see examples of his growth and maturity.  One of Peter’s struggles was how Jews who had become Christian should treat Gentiles.  In Galatians 2:11-21 is a story of Paul rebuking Peter for his hypocrisy toward Gentiles, and in Acts 10 and 11 is a story of Peter receiving a vision from heaven telling him not to treat Gentiles as unclean, because God can make anyone clean.

Peter ponders whether the key is for letting people in or keeping them out.

In 1 Peter 2:9-10, he shares this lesson with his readers:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (emphasis mine)

The bolded words clearly call back to the story of the Old Testament prophet Hosea, who God told to marry a prostitute named Gomer to teach a lesson about idolatry.  Hosea’s children by Gomer are named in Hosea 1:6-9 –

“She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the LORD said to him, ‘Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all.  But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.’ When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son.  And the LORD said, ‘Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.’” (emphasis mine)

As Peter grew in Christ, he learned the same lesson Hosea learned: that all of God’s people are like Gomer and her children. Both Jews and Gentiles were once estranged from God in spiritual prostitution and adultery, but are now a beloved people, betrothed to one faithful God.  Jesus, our Holy High Priest, made the necessary sacrifice for the salvation of anyone and everyone who will come to Him.  Those He saves join His “royal priesthood”, proclaiming His excellent work to all people who have not received mercy, but who His blood covers.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.” – Matthew 7:1-2

Don’t Leave Love Letters Unopened

Todd R 2 Comments
Photo by John Jennings on Unsplash

An old friend used to encourage me to read the Bible every day, and his reasoning was: “The Bible is 66 love letters from God.  If you got a love letter from any other person, would you put off reading it?”  It took many years before I really took this to heart, but I always remembered it. 

Dear fellow travelers,

I pass along that story, but I’ll also add more to it.  The best times are not when we just read these letters.  Devotions aren’t just lessons, memorization exercises, a disciplinary action, or a time to pay your dues so you can get on with your day.  They are time spent with Someone who loves you more than anything, and who wants you to love and trust Him more than anything.  Treat Him as you would treat an honored guest, because He is really there with you.

Think of it this way – How often do you get to spend time with someone who fulfills 1 Cor 13:4-7 perfectly?

Someone who is patient and kind; who does not envy or boast; is not arrogant or rude. Who does not insist on His own way; is not irritable or resentful; does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. He bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. [1]

Nobody else we see today will be nearly as good to us.

We all miss days, even weeks or longer, but He is patient and kind.  We can try again tomorrow or later today, and He will be there.

[1] This paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 was suggested in a devotional: “August 30.” James Montgomery Boice and Marion Clark. Come to the Waters: Daily Bible Devotions for Spiritual Refreshment.  (2017).  It was also the basis of a prior post, Jesus is Patient and Kind Even When I am Not

His Story Needs No Revision

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Journalism, particularly newspaper journalism, is sometimes referred to as “the first rough draft of history.”  This phrase is usually attributed to Philip Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post.  It’s a useful phrase because it is flattering to journalists to know that their work is important and meaningful, but also a reminder that their work is inherently imperfect and in need of later revision.  Particularly under deadline pressure, it is impossible to know all the relevant facts and potential angles of any story.  Unavoidable and expedient choices and compromises must be made.  The saying came to mind when I recently read Psalm 33:10-11, which says:

“The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing;
            he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
The counsel of the LORD stands forever,
            the plans of his heart to all generations.”

As I’ve written before, total objectivity is “theoretically impossible for anyone but God Himself.”  The best any news reporting can do is cover a tiny piece of what happens in the world, screening it using whatever judgment they decide to use, and applying imperfect ethical standards.  As I’ve also written, “The dots of the pointillistic narrative are never the full picture and sometimes aren’t the right color.”  Thus is the “counsel of the nations” – incomplete by necessity, biased by choice, and morally imperfect by nature.

In contrast, what God says is true is always true, unlike the 24/7 news cycle where truth is constantly under revision.  The “counsel of the LORD” contains everything we need to know about His plans, is designed by His choice to benefit those He loves, and morally perfect because His nature is holy.  If better counsel existed, He would know about it.  His counsel reliably informs us about how He wants us to view the events of the world, rather than the other way around.  His plans frustrate and overcome the “plans of the peoples”, rather than the other way around.

When Jesus said on the cross that “it is finished,”[1] His payment for our sins was complete.  He lived a perfect life in our place, so that He could be a perfect sacrifice and atone for all the sins of His people in all times and all places.  This was not a rough first draft, but the flawless consummation of God’s plan for salvation “to all generations.”  Jesus made no flawed choices for the sake of expedience, and His work can be trusted at all times.  Whatever you see in the news today, the Good News of the kingdom of heaven is more important, more trustworthy, and provides comfort for your soul.

His Story is the first draft, but it is also the only draft because none other is needed.  His Story needs no revision.

Therefore:
“Our soul waits for the LORD;
            he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him,
            because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
            even as we hope in you.” – Psalm 33:20-22

[1] John 19:30