Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Matthew 5:7

The word for Merciful in the Greek is ἐλεήμονες (eleémón). This means merciful or compassionate. To show forgiveness and compassion to those in need. Jesus told the Pharisees that they should go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice for I have not come to call righteous, but sinners. In these days it is easy to pounce on people for behavior that we deem to be wrong. The Pharisees were good at this. They were upset about silly things that “violated” the law while wholeheartedly ignoring the heart of the law. A good example is when they were complaining to Jesus that His disciples were “working” on the Sabbath by picking heads of grain and eating them. The purpose of the Sabbath was to provide rest for God’s people from the burden of working. The Pharisees had turned the Sabbath “rest” into more of a burden than the actual workdays. They were completely ignoring the spirit of the law and following the letter of the law.

Mankind tends to get all wrapped around the axle about things that are completely irrelevant. We are quick to judge our brothers for every offense we see without any idea about where they have been or even where they are currently. I heard someone speaking recently at a “zoom” meeting. She said something very profound. She said that the Lord had showed her that every person is a unique manifestation of God. That each person reflected an attribute or set of attributes that uniquely represented an element of God’s character and thus showing the incredible vastness of God. God expresses Himself through each person and collectively we are manifesting what God wants to create in this world. This is a process and takes time to hone and refine. We need to look at people not for where they are currently, but where God is taking them. We need to be able to see the good things and not the bad and pray for and encourage the goodness so that by our prayers and mercy we can help each person to realize the glorious future that God desires for them. Collectively we are the body of Christ and we need each other.

Jesus was trying to tell us that He desires mercy and not sacrifice. This is a quote from Hosea 6:6. In Hosea, the Jews were so concerned with making animal sacrifices to atone for their behavior and ignoring the poor and the needy. They were concerned with all the sacrifices that they were making but were not interested in actually manifesting the spirit of what God was trying to get them to do. God wants us to encourage each other and not tear each other down. I heard it said once that Christians were the only ones that kill their wounded. This is a sobering reality. It is not the Us vs Them we always seem to be focused on. It is easy to say, “Thank God I am not as bad as that person,” Or point out all the bad things that someone is doing, but it is not as easy to decide instead to pray for them and love them. William Barkley said it well when he said that the concept behind this beatitude is even deeper than that. It refers to a conscious effort to see events through the eyes of another individual—to feel what he or she is feeling. Mercy is not just about forgiving people but identifying with them and trying to understand their experience. We need to show mercy because God has shown mercy to us.

We are all growing together in this life and we need to be about the business of loving God and loving each other. Like it says in 1 John:

“We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” 1 John 4:19-21