“BLESSED are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” This fifth Beatitude follows the fourth in a logical succession. As we have seen each Beatitude leads into the next, and each new Beatitude depends on all the rest. Jesus was not simply making statements at random, but in these Beatitudes gave us the progression of real Christian experience.

The first thing that we need to do is to answer the question - what is meant by mercy. At first we feel there is no problem here for mercy is a word we use quite naturally. But when we think about what the word means it is not so easy to define it. For me I find that I think of mercy as grace in action. God’s grace is his unmerited favour to sinners. God’s mercy is the action of forgiveness which follows from an attitude of grace towards a sinner. God reveals his grace towards me a sinner by being merciful to me, and for Christ’s sake forgiving me all my sins.

Then, as we seek to understand this Beatitude, we seem to have a problem. As we read this Beatitude it seems to be saying that God’s mercy to us depends on us being merciful to others. In other words God’s forgiveness and salvation seems to said to be earned by our action of forgiveness and mercy to others. Immediately we say this, the Christian soul revolts from the idea, and quite rightly so. To take this as the meaning expressed here would be to overthrow the Gospel of God’s grace to sinners, which is his free and unmerited mercy and forgiveness bestowed upon us. The Gospel throughout the Bible is that we are totally unable to live the righteous life God demands of us, and we are totally unable to atone for past sins, and further we are totally unable to change the corruption within us, and so we are totally unable to merit by our own action God’s love and forgiveness. So what is expressed in this Beatitude?

We have to say that the same problem presents itself in the Lord’s Prayer, where we pray “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” The meaning of the fifth Beatitude will also be the true understanding of this sentence in the Lord’s Prayer. The true understanding of this Beatitude is expressed in the Parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21-35. The story is familiar. A king wants to settle his accounts with his servants. One servant is brought before him who owes him millions of pounds. He is totally unable to pay this debt even though in seeking mercy from the king he says he will pay it all if he is given time. In mercy the king forgives him all the debt. This servant then goes out and finding another servant who owes him a paltry amount like £100, when this servant asks for mercy and time to pay, this servant who has been forgiven so much by the king, has no mercy on his fellow servant but shuts him into prison until he pays the debt. The matter is brought to the attention of the king, who immediately summons this unmerciful servant before him, and tells him that as he has shown no mercy to his fellow servant, when he has received such abundant mercy from the king, he has his cancelling of his debt removed and he is turned over to the jailer and the tormentors until he pays the debt in full. Jesus applies the story by saying “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

Let us notice that the king showed mercy first to the servant who was unforgiving. He had received mercy. Then he showed by his unforgiving spirit towards his fellow servant that he had not appreciation of the blessing he had received. This indicated that he had not appreciation of the seriousness of the debt he had been forgiven, and no sorrow or repentance for incurring the debt. All this unmerciful servant was concerned with was escaping his just deserts, but had no intention of improving his life, and no appreciation of his sin in running up this huge debt.

The conclusion we come to from this parable is that the unmerciful servant had no appreciation of his sin or any sorrow over it, and had no intention of changing his life. His heart was hard and unrepentant.

Now if a soul has been through the experience of the first four Beatitudes, then such hardness of heart is impossible. A true evaluation of sin and God’s displeasure over sin, produces in the heart a deep sorrow for sin, and godlike hatred of sin. Seeing sin as God sees it, the soul knows the terror of the Lord and acknowledges the justice of God in condemnation and punishment. The experience of mercy in being given a place in God’s kingdom, of being comforted, or being blessed with God’s love, and bestowed with righteousness which turns away God’s wrath, will produce in the soul a spirit of mercy, rising out of deep thankfulness to God for his mercy. Such a soul feels that he or she can’t possibly be unforgiving to others whatever they may have done, because they know how much they have been forgiven, and how much they have not deserved such forgiveness.

In short, those who have been through the experience of the first four Beatitudes truly, can’t be unmerciful to others, and thus they dwell continually in the mercy of God. They are shown mercy or obtain mercy from God.

In a real sense every true Christian knows himself or herself to be debtors to mercy alone, and debtors all the time, because we continue to sin, and so mercy is always required. In this knowledge mercy is what they feel is all they can give to others, for they feel they have no right to judge or condemn. This does not mean they will not see wrong in others, and seek to show that wrong to another, but they will only express this in a merciful manner in order to help them to live in God’s mercy. They will not judge or reject or cast out.

The whole point of the parable of the unmerciful servant is that he had received mercy first, and had received mercy gratuitously. Such gratuitous mercy should produce a grateful heart, and a love for the giver of such mercy. It should also produce a desire to be like this character of mercy by showing mercy. If a person is not merciful, then this cast serious doubts about the nature of their profession of salvation. It shows that a person is not a true disciple of Jesus nor is a lover of Jesus, for having obtained mercy through Jesus, a merciful spirit will be the fruit of such an experience. So it is true to say that being merciful is a true test of whether we have obtained mercy, and so will continue to receive mercy.