{"id":800,"date":"2016-06-26T21:39:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-27T01:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/?p=800"},"modified":"2016-06-26T21:39:39","modified_gmt":"2016-06-27T01:39:39","slug":"gods-mercy-should-prompt-our-mercy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/?p=800","title":{"rendered":"God’s Mercy Should Prompt Our Mercy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"an<\/a>
Were it not for God’s grace, this would be an adequate portrait of my spiritual condition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…\u00c2\u00a0But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— (Ephesians 2:1,4-5 ESV)<\/p>\n

In conversation with a friend, this text came to my mind; and\u00c2\u00a0once again, it struck me with the depth of God’s work in our salvation through the gospel.<\/p>\n

We were\u00c2\u00a0dead<\/em>. I was spiritually\u00c2\u00a0dead,<\/em> as dead as one could be. Look at the meaning of the word: total void of life; total absence of life. A dead body, a corpse, is absolutely unable of any movement, of any function of its own, save for the natural death processes which include decay and cell lisis. Trying to make a corpse do something is a fool’s errand.<\/p>\n

The Word of God says precisely that. We were\u00c2\u00a0dead in our trespasses and sins.<\/em> We were\u00c2\u00a0absolutely unable of\u00c2\u00a0anything<\/em>, event the slightest action on our behalf. That’s how we were… but that’s not the whole story. When we were effectively dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive in Jesus Christ<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Just think of it. God\u00c2\u00a0gave life to the dead<\/em>, out of His mercy and\u00c2\u00a0the great love with which He loved us<\/em>. We attained eternal life not because of us, not because of our help or our disposition, but out of God’s sheer mercy and love, and\u00c2\u00a0despite<\/em> ourselves.<\/p>\n

We owe God eternal gratitude for His gift to us, and one way of showing this gratitude is to mirror His attitude. If God gave us life out of\u00c2\u00a0mercy\u00c2\u00a0<\/em>and\u00c2\u00a0love.<\/em> So, we should also show mercy and love to others in two respects.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, we should ensure that everyone is exposed to the Gospel claims of God, so they could learn of this love and mercy, and act accordingly.<\/p>\n

But\u00c2\u00a0it is also important to remember how we were in our\u00c2\u00a0past lives. Seeing how God pulled us from certain death and gave us hope should be sobering. And also, it should\u00c2\u00a0move us to display mercy and love to others. Knowing that God showed us mercy and love, should prompt us to be loving and compassionate when confronted with oter people’s miseries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…\u00c2\u00a0But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. — (Ephesians 2:1,4-5 ESV) In conversation with a friend, this text came…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":804,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shadow.sombragris.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}