When we think about God we try to come up with what is His overarching or predominant quality that trumps them all. As I kid, we used to sing, "Love Him (or crown Him or praise Him or serve Him), love Him all you little children, God is love, God is love" so early on we were taught that love is primary. Then in John, truth seems to hit the forefront because Satan is the father of lies and God is truth. Pilate famously cries, "What is truth?" when Truth is sitting right in front of him. Then we think maybe it's justice as we read Revelation as Satan finally receives his due. The author is going to make a case that God's quality that supersedes all of them is His mercy.
He starts in Chapter 1 with the gospels where in 89 chapters there is only one passage that describes Jesus' heart;
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matt. 11:28-30
The heart, in biblical terms, means the center of who we are. It defines us, directs us, and makes us the unique person that each of us is. Jesus tells us that He is accessible, not to everyone as seen a few verses prior, but to the penitent. What is their qualification for coming - their burden. The author compares His yoke being easy to the weight of a lifesaving ring being thrown to a drowning person. They might say, "I'm not going to add that extra weight, I can't stay up with my own weight", yet His "burden" is meant to buoy them and save them.
In Chapter 2 he asks does what He says about His heart match His actions and the answer is yes. By His enemies' own words, He was a friend of sinners. We see Him weeping twice for the sorrow of others. Compassion in the Greek is "splanchna" which refers to the bowels. Time and time again He is said to heal, feed, teach, and wipe away tears out of his innermost core. The Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it yet truly desire it. When Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about Him, His deepest impulse, His most natural instinct, is to move toward that sin and suffering, not run away from it.
The Old Testament laws of clean and unclean point more to the need for moral purity as evidenced by the remedy for coming in contact with something unclean was not washing but a sin sacrifice. (Lev.5:3,6) When Jesus came in contact with unclean, like lepers, He moved toward them and touched them. He didn't become unclean but rather the unclean became clean. He reversed the Jewish system. His miracles were also a reversal of the curse on the Earth. He was restoring a fallen creation to health. If compassion had a body and walked this earth, what would it look like? We don't have to wonder.
Chapter 3 focuses on the fact that our coming to Him for forgiveness gives Him joy. Hebrews 12:2 says, "...for the joy set before Him he endured the cross..." What joy? The joy of us coming to Him. We tend to think that when we come to Christ for mercy and love and help in our anguish and sinfulness that we somehow drain Him or diminish Him, yet this is what gives Him joy. The author uses the example of a rich doctor who has the cure for a dying tribe that wants to continue with their medicine man and incantations. When a few tribe members come to him for medicine and are cured, he is overjoyed because they have fulfilled the very reason he came.
Chapters 4 & 5 deal with the verses
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Heb 4:15,16
We have a high priest in Jesus that hasn't sinned yet experienced all our temptations. C.S.Lewis said that when walking against the gale force winds of temptation, we eventually tire and lay down. Jesus never laid down so He experienced as much as us and then some. He is therefore not only able to climb down in the pit of sin with us to comfort us, but also to pull us out of it. What elicits tenderness from Jesus is not the severity of the sin but whether the sinner comes to Him. Whatever our offense He deals gently with us but only if we come to Him.
The author compares it to a crying baby. What kind of mother would push the child away? No, the mother draws the baby to her breast to comfort it. That's how it is with our irritations. God gently draws us to Him rather than "stiff-arming" us keeping us at a distance. He is drawn to us to receive gentle comfort.
Chapter 6 reflects on John Bunyan reflecting on;
"All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." John 6:37
The author emphasizes that no matter our hesitancies or doubts to coming to Christ for acceptance or forgiveness after we've blown it so badly, He says, "I will in no wise (or not not) cast you out." Once again, the prerequisite is coming to Him. This is the foundational core of eternal security. We speak of "perseverance of the saints" but this is perseverance of the heart of Jesus. Every human friend has a limit but with Christ, our sins and weaknesses are the very resume items that qualify us to approach Him.
Chapter 7 tackles the problem that if Christ is perfectly Holy, must He not necessarily draw away from sin? He explains that the more holy you are, the more you are repulsed by sin and the more you want to eradicate it. Like a child with a disease the more the father's love is drawn to the ill child, so Christ is drawn to us wanting to remove the sin from our life. Here he quotes Hosea 11:7-9 which illustrates this point;
My people are determined to turn from me.
Even though they call me God Most High,
I will by no means exalt them.
8 “How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboyim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities.
Faced with His people's sins, His heart of compassion goes out to them. The sins of those who belong to God open the floodgates of His heart of compassion for us. It is not our loveliness that wins His love. It is our unloveliness.
Chapters 8 & 9 deal with Christ our intercessor or advocate. The atonement accomplished our salvation; intercession is the moment-by-moment application of the atoning work. Intercession is the constant hitting "refresh" of our justification in the court of Heaven. The text used is Hebrews 7:25;
"Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them."
Christ turns the Father's gaze from our sins to the Son's own righteousness and He lives for this.
"My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world." 1John 2:1
Intercession has the idea of mediating between two parties while advocacy has the idea of aligning yourself with one of those parties. Christ actually takes our side though we are sinners. The Pharisees recognized this and called Him a "friend of sinners" in Matthew 11 and Luke 15. What does that mean? At the very least it means that He enjoys spending time with them, welcoming them/us and enjoying our company. Jesus is a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence. Jesus said in John 15, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn't know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends." He longs to share His deepest thoughts with us and longs for us to share everything with Him.
When we talk about intercession we have to be careful not to misrepresent God the Father. We know that the work of Jesus satisfied the Father's righteous anger against the horror of human rebellion against Him. His wrath was propitiated - turned away, assuaged. This makes us think that God's disposition toward His people is different than the Son's - He is angrier or less inclined to love. This is false. The key is to understand that legal acquittal of sin for sinners to be brought back into His presence had to happen, but He was as eager as the Son for this atonement to take place. Paul describes Him as the "Father of mercies" as he opens up 2Corinthians and James refers to him as full of compassion and mercy. Jesus told Philip in John 14 that if you had seen Him, you'd seen the Father. Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the embodiment of who God is. He is the visible manifestation of an invisible God. Don't think of the love of the Father less for you than Christ's love. Jesus said in John 16:27, "The Father Himself loves you."
Chapters 15-18 continue with developing the point that just like Christ, the Father's heart, too, is compassion and mercy. He uses the Old Testament in these passages because somehow, people get the impression that God changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It's like He got an image consultant that said, "You've got to lighten up a little." No, God has always been the same. Let's look at some verses;
Lam.3:33 - The poetic prose structure of Lamentations puts the middle verse of the book to say,"For He does not afflict from His heart or grieve the children of men." In other words He brings affliction into our lives with a certain divine reluctance. God is indeed punishing Israel with the Babylonians, but His deepest heart is their merciful restoration as seen in...
Jer.32:41 I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.
Isa.28:21 "The Lord will rise up as he did at Mount Perazim, he will rouse himself as in the Valley of Gibeon—to do his work, his strange work, and perform his task, his alien task." What is this "strange work? In context it is the judgement God is sending on the Northern Kingdom (Ephraim), His chosen people, for their wickedness. It's strange or alien to God because it is contrary to His Heart which is to bring good things to us. In Hosea, we see His dilemma over punishing Ephraim;
Hosea 11:8,9 “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.
9 I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities."
All of God's qualities are non-negotiable but when it comes to matters of God's heart, there are some things that pour out of God more naturally than others. What is He on the edge of His seat eager to do - bless us, love us, shower compassion and mercy on us.
Exodus 33:18,19, 34:6,7 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.” In this passage God reveals Himself to Moses and how does He describe Himself? First of all, His glory is His goodness and mercy not His greatness, size, power, fearsomeness, etc., but rather His goodness and mercy. Secondly, when describing Himself, the first two words to come out of His mouth are compassionate and gracious followed by slow to anger, loving, and forgiving.
The Old Testament refers to God being "provoked" to anger multiple times. We never read that He was provoked to mercy, love or forgiveness. These are pent up inside ready and eager to flow out. We humans are just the opposite. It says in Hebrews 10:24 that we are to provoke one another to love. Anger is ready to gush out in us. Third, when we look at the quantities in this passage, maintaining love outnumbers punishment thousands to 3.5. That puts His default mode of His heart in perspective. This is echoed in Isaiah where He says;
Isa.54:7,8 “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,”
Lastly, in the book of Jeremiah, the first 29 chapters all deal with the judgement of God on sin. Then he gets to chapters 30-33 where He shows His mercy as best seen here;
Jer.31:20 & Mic.7:18 Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him, declares the Lord."
Chapter 19 focuses on Ephesians 2:4. Verses 1-3 tell us why we need saving and verses 5&6 tell us the solution but verse 4 tells why God saved us;
Eph.2:4 "But because of his great love with which He loved us, God, being rich in mercy..." Nowhere else in the Bible is God described as being rich in anything. The only thing He is called rich in is His mercy. Notice the double up on "love". It's like saying "God loved loved us." Notice also it doesn't say "becoming" but "being" rich in mercy. He is the spring of all mercy, it's natural to Him, it's His nature and disposition because when He shows mercy He does it with His whole heart. Mercy is who God is. When He shows mercy, He is acting in a way that is true to Himself.
Titus 2:11 "For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people." When Paul speaks of the incarnation he says "grace appeared". The grace and mercy of God is so bound up with and manifested in Jesus Himself that to speak of Christ appearing is to speak of grace and mercy appearing. And since mercy flows out from God's inner being, there is no limit to it. When we squander it, He just pours out more.
Chapter 20 looks into Galatians and starts with an awesome quote, "There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ." He emphasizes our works mentality strips us of our comprehending God's mercy just as not understanding the depths of our sinfulness does.
Chapter 21 delves into Romans 5. We are tempted to think, "Yeah, God had mercy on me as a sinner who didn't know better, but now I do know better and I still sin. Certainly His mercy is less now." The logic of Romans 5 is that through His Son He draw near to us when we hated Him, how much more will he draw near when we are trying to please Him. He loved us when we were orphans, how much more now that we are adopted as sons.
Ortlund ends the book with a passage on Heaven;
Eph.2:7 "in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us " What's Heaven going to be like? It's filled with the eternal understanding of His kindness. Was this the purpose for creation that throughout eternity God could reveal His heart, His grace and kindness to His bride? And was our fallenness the only way we could truly understand it or comprehend it thru His incarnation and death on the cross? This book says yes.
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