Mercy Must Transform Us

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“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

- Matthew 18:35

Over the last several days we’ve been looking at the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant from Matthew 18. The parable closes with this phrase.

Jesus gives us a new heart. Forgiveness needs to come from that new heart. It isn’t from our own strength or will or power or resources that extravagant forgiveness flows. Forgiveness flows from transformed hearts.

The bigger context of the parable is a conversation that Jesus is having with his friends. They’re asking him how often they should forgive someone. Jesus gives an extravagantly large number and his friends are flabbergasted. “How can I forgive that often?” they asked themselves.

This parable paints a picture of mercy that doesn’t transform—the unmerciful servant demands payment even after his own debt has been forgiven. But, friends, mercy must transform us.

What do you do if you don’t feel like mercy has transformed your heart, if you don’t feel in touch with the mercy you’ve received?

Here are three actions you can take to engage with or re-engage with the mercy you’ve been shown in Christ:

1) Admit and Ask – Tell God that you’re struggling here. Don’t hide it. It’s not that unusual for this to happen. He’s capable of helping. Tell him that you don’t feel like you’ve been forgiven of that much or that you don’t feel like you’ve been forgiven at all. Ask him to put you in touch with his mercy.

2) Engage with Confession – Lift the rocks and see the squiggly things underneath. Where have you struggled with sin? Where are you currently struggling? God has and can forgive all of that. This is where his mercy is poured out to you. Don’t wallow in your sin. Embrace his mercy and pay it forward.

3) An Exercise from Sunday – This past Sunday, Alex talked to us about exchanging our old names for ourselves for the new names that are given to us in Christ. Want help with this? Try reading Romans 8 and looking for the names that God calls you.

1 Comment

Thank you for sticking with and drilling down into a topic all week. I tend (and I have a feeling I am not alone in this) to hurry along in life and read something, pause for a second or two, and then move onto the next thing. On a good day when it hits my heart, I might mumble a quick prayer of "Yeah, God, please work on me in this area" but I get hit with the next wave of life and I forget I ever prayed that prayer. Staying on topic for days in a row makes me say "Oh yeah, Lord...as I was saying yesterday, please do this in me." Repetition keeps it closer to the "expecting change" area in my brain, as opposed to the "'that's cute' but moving on" part. This better allows me to join with the the Holy Spirit in the work He's doing in me, I think. :)

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