What is mercy?
"So have mercy, just as your Father has mercy" (Luke 6:36).
"He saved us. It wasn’t because of the good things we had done. It was because of his mercy. He saved us by washing away our sins. We were born again. The Holy Spirit gave us new life" (Titus 3:5).
"Give praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us a new birth and a hope that is alive. It is alive because Jesus Christ rose from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3).
To have mercy on others means to be kind to them or forgive them, even if they don’t deserve it.God’s Word (the Bible) teaches us to show kindness and forgiveness not only our friends, but our enemies too. Here’s what Jesus said about it in Matthew 5:44: "Love your enemies, and pray for those who hurt you." Wow! That seems hard to do. When people hurt us, we sometimes want to hurt them back. But Jesus teaches not to do that. He teaches us to be kind and loving, even to someone who is unkind to you. He teaches us to have mercy on others.
Let’s pretend that somebody as school said some mean things about you. You almost feel like crying, because they hurt your feelings with their words. But instead of getting mad and saying bad words back to them, Jesus says we should forgive them and still be their friend, even if they don’t deserve it. In other words, Jesus teaches us that we should have mercy on them. It’s often not an easy thing to do—but if you pray and ask Jesus to help you, He will.
Why should we have mercy on people who hurt us? The reason is because God shows us mercy. You see, we hurt God when we do things we know we shouldn’t do. When we tell a fib, talk mean about people, or disobey our parents, it hurts God very much. But He still loves us even when we sin, kind of like how your parents still love you when you get into trouble. Romans 6:23 tells us that when we sin, our punishment should be death. That’s pretty scary, but it also tells us that God sent His Son Jesus to die in our place. All we have to do to receive God’s mercy is to believe in Jesus and what He did for us. You can read more about believing in Jesus here.
Isn’t that amazing? Even though we break God’s heart, He still loves and cares enough for us to sacrifice His only Son. God has a lot of mercy for us. God’s mercy on us is a good lesson: Just as He forgives us, we should also forgive other people, even our enemies. Share this truth with others. It will make you happy too!
