It is important that we see all sides of God. We saw in our last blog that He is righteous. That means that He is just and fair in everything that He does, and it assures us that we will be treated fairly on the day of judgment, as well as in all His dealings with us.

God, however, is more than righteous, and we should all be thankful that He is. If God were only righteous, we would all be condemned to a devil’s hell. Why? Because that is what we deserve, seeing that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23). While I said in my last blog that we will all get what we deserve, due to the righteousness of God, I added, “according to the stipulations of the gospel.”  The gospel, a law full of mercy and grace, stipulates that those who obey it will be justified; thus, due to the mercy of God, we will get what we do not deserve (heaven), and escape what we do deserve (hell).

Pure righteousness does not include mercy; it is just the carrying out of law, good or bad. Let us say that your neighbor put up a fence on the property line that separated your houses. Upon investigation, you discovered that the fence was on your property by 4 ½ inches instead of right on the property line.  What would you do? If you operated by the cold principle of righteousness, you would have him move that fence 4 ½ inches back to the property line.  You would not consider the inconvenience that it would cause him, or the money it would cost to tear down and rebuild the fence just so you could have 4 ½ inches of land back.  You would simply be making your neighbor do what was right according to the law.

Would this make you a bad person? No. While you might, at least at times, be an undesirable neighbor, you would be a righteous one, and there is something to be commended about that. While your neighbor cannot expect clemency from you if he does something wrong, he can be assured that you will never do anything unlawful.  Let me ask you another question—would you rather have a neighbor who is righteous or a criminal who has no qualms about breaking the law? Obviously, you would rather have a righteous neighbor.  The truth is, however, what you really want is a third option—you want a neighbor who is both righteous and merciful.

This is what we have with God.  He never does anything wrong and always does right, but sometimes He goes beyond doing right and offers mercy.  The cross of Christ is the embodiment of this.  God sacrificed His Son, not only for the good and righteous person, but for His enemies.

Romans 5:7–8 (ESV)
⁷For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— ⁸but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God’s plan of salvation had nothing to do with His righteousness.  It was His wiliness to rise above righteousness and demonstrate mercy that made the giving of His Son possible.  The good news for us is that the mercy that He demonstrated by the cross is a part of His divine essence.  He is a God of mercy.

2 Corinthians 1:3 (ESV)
³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,

One of the great qualities of being merciful, and the reason it causes God to be the “God of all comfort,” is the wiliness to forgive.  Aren’t you glad we serve such a forgiving God? It is not just the original imputation of righteousness (justification) we received when we obeyed the gospel for which we should be thankful, but for the ongoing forgiveness we receive when we sin, something we all do (1 John 1:7-9).  Yes, we have to do our part when we sin by repenting and confessing to God (Acts 8:22), but we know, based on the mercy of our heavenly Father, that He will forgive us when we do.  This is the only reason we can hang on to the hope of heaven.  It is not because God is righteous (though we should certainly be glad that He is); it is because He is merciful.  Let’s not take advantage of His mercy but appreciate it every day.

As you wind down for the night, think about these things.