GRACE & MERCY: Differences and how they make God.
- Vicent Nemeyimana
- February 17, 2016
- Word of Life
Grace is when you get good things done for you when you do not deserve them while Mercy is actually not getting the bad things that you really deserve. So mercy, while it spares you and gives the chance of being better, grace makes you better by providing you with something good. Usually, most of us can practice mercy but few can practice grace. But God has these two virtues: Giving mercy (by not punishing us for the wrongs that we do) and also gives us our daily bread for our life yet we do not deserve it. But why??? The answer is simple: It is his nature.
I remember at the beginning of this year, i wrote an article explaining how our desires start and end with God and God finds his glory by fulfilling them. I am happy that Pope said the same thing while he was here just yesterday. “The greatest Glory is having God, everything else fades away”. That is the point: God is love, gracious and merciful, that is what makes his nature. Our desires of having unconditional love, grace, and mercy begin and end in himself. Man is here for God’s glory and he can achieve this by having that desire for whatever makes God who He is and when God is fulfilling our desires, that is his glory. So we do not earn God’s glory by not sinning (rightly put, by feeling that we are not sinners), we give glory to God by sinning and sinning a lot (rightly put, by discovering how sinful we are) for it is when our sins are many that the need for his love, grace and mercy increases and his provision for such a need is His Glory.
It reminds me C. S Lewis, “If you sin, make sure you sin a lot. That is the way of true living”. I see this is complicated, but Jesus explained it in Matthew chapter 5, verses 3 and 6. Jesus says that blessed are the poor in spirit (verse 3) and those who thirst for righteousness (verse 6). In other words, his nature of graciousness and merciful exist because we, sinners, exist. Do not ask me, if we had not sinned in Eden, what would God’s nature of grace and mercy be or mean??? I may not answer that for now, it is for another day. The point of today is to confirm and affirm God’s nature of mercy and grace and make a new hope in the hopeless and those of us who think are too sinful to deserve anything good. It is when we are at the end of the rope with lives entangled in sins, corruption, failures, and failed relationships that God’s grace and mercy make meaning than ever, get close to him, that is okay.
So as i close this chapter, i want you to know that i have felt the same way too so many times. There are times i have lost hope, felt i was far away from grace, far away from God. And when the people we call friends, the people we call neighbors start condemning us, it is usually not easy to go beyond such hatred and realize that someone somewhere can give us grace and mercy at the same time. But once again, God is faithful he still encourages us through some other people or stones. Get encouraged.
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