Whiter Than Snow: Mercy

Christ came to cleanse us from sin, so that we could experience the loving embrace of God as adopted sons and daughters. The end game of cleansing is not purity, but purity for the sake of embrace. He doesn’t demand purity before he embraces us, he provides purity so that we can be embraced.

The message of grace is that God makes room for us within himself. He makes personal sacrifices motivated by compassion (mercy) so that we can be included in his family and experience the love of the Triune God. This is what Jesus draws attention to when he says, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13)

The Pharisees had closed themselves off from tax collectors and sinners. There was no room within themselves for those who didn’t conform to their view of “self.” They saw people, sinners, as the contagion and they were wiling to sacrifice those people to maintain a “pure” self.

Modern Christians are often more like the Pharisees than Jesus because our strong sense of individualism shapes our concept of “self.” Instead of developing our identity within community, we see ourselves as self-defined individuals. We create boundaries of self that limit who we let into our world. Anyone we deem “unclean” (whether for behavior, ideology, background, race, etc.) is kept at a distance lest our sense of self is contaminated. We do this with specific groups of people or individually on a case by case basis (you might just exclude people you don’t like).

Sunday, we’ll consider how mercy is the sacrifice Jesus is calling you to make