Thursday

Related Verses
Heb. 2:17
17 Hence He should have been made like His brothers in all things that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Heb. 4:15-16
15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all respects like us, yet without sin.
16 Let us therefore come forward with boldness to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace for timely help.

Mark 10:46-52 (48)
46 And they came to Jericho. And as He was going out from Jericho, as well as His disciples and a large crowd, the son of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, sat by the road.
47 And when he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!
48 And many rebuked him so that he would be silent, but he cried out much more, Son of David, have mercy on me!
49 And Jesus, standing still, said, Call him here. And they called the blind man, saying to him, Take courage. Rise. He is calling you.
50 And throwing his garment aside, he leaped up and came to Jesus.
51 And Jesus answered him and said, What do you want Me to do for you? And the blind man said to Him, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight!
52 And Jesus said to him, Go; your faith has healed you. And immediately he received his sight and followed Him on the road.

Related Reading
Christ became a man and lived on earth as a man, passing through all the human sufferings [Heb. 2:17]…He knows how to be merciful to man, for He is a man with the experience of human life, the experience of human suffering. 

In order to be qualified to be the High Priest, Christ was incarnated to be like us. We may even say that He is more than like us because He suffered in His human life certain things that we have not suffered. He became like us, sympathizing with all our weaknesses. 

Even now, although we are saved, we are still, in some ways, in a condition that needs the Lord’s mercy to reach us. This is the reason Hebrews 4:16 says that first we need to receive mercy, and then we can find grace for timely help. Christ’s mercy is always available to us. However, we need to receive it by exercising our spirit to contact our High Priest who sympathizes with us in all our weaknesses. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 665-666) 

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Thank the Lord that in the love of God, there is not only grace, but another great item as well, God’s mercy. The Bible puts much emphasis on mercy also. 

The outlet of love is either grace or mercy…Mercy is related to the present condition, and grace is related to the future condition. Mercy speaks of the poverty of your present condition, and grace speaks of the bright condition that you will be saved into in the future. The feeling that God has toward us when we are sinners is mercy. The work that God does upon us to make us the children of God is grace. Mercy arises from our existing condition; grace arises from the work that we will receive. 

God was merciful in the time of the Old Testament, because His work was not yet completed. Therefore, the Old Testament was full of mercy. God showed mercy for four thousand years. But today, in the New Testament age, we have grace because the Lord Jesus has accomplished His work. He has come to bear our sins. Hence, what we have received today is not mercy, but grace. 

Mercy comes from love and issues in grace. If mercy has not come from love, it will not issue in grace. Since it originates in love, it arrives at grace. In the Gospels there is the account of a blind man receiving his sight (Mark 10:46-52). When he met the Lord, he did not say, “Lord, love me!” or “Lord, be gracious to me!” Rather, he said, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” (v. 48). He asked for mercy because of his present condition, his present difficulty, and his present pain. He knew that if the Lord Jesus were to sympathize with him, He would not stop at showing mercy to him; He would surely do something. 

In the New Testament there are also a few places where mercy is mentioned…Why…is there the need for mercy? It is because man is destitute. We have no courage to go to God and ask for His love. We are of the flesh and do not know God well enough. Although God has revealed Himself to us in the light, we still do not dare come close to Him. We feel that it is impossible for us to go to God and ask for love. At the same time, we do not have the adequate faith to go to Him and ask for grace, telling Him that we need such and such a blessing. We have no way to ask for God’s love, and we do not have enough faith to ask for God’s grace. (CWWN, vol. 28, “The Gospel of God (1),” pp. 32-34) 

Further Reading: CWWN, vol. 28, “The Gospel of God (1),” pp. 32-36; Life-study of Hebrews, msg. 13; The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 370