The Mercy of the Cross

Ephesians 2:4-10

Brothers and sisters: God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved —, raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.

For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

BACKGROUNDER

The mercy of God restores us from the inside out: our innocence, our ideals, and our will. After the fall in the Garden of the Eden, death enters the world. Not only physical death, but spiritual death: we are under the curse (Galatians 3, Genesis 3). Though sinners like us cannot go back in time, Jesus can heal us, restoring us to the kingdom stolen from us by the wiles of the devil.

Jesus restores our innocence, our ideals, and our will. Innocence restored means that God awaits us with open arms, no matter what. Our conception of what we can become is limited by human imagination, and our fallen nature is apt to seek limited ideals, but Christ on the cross shows us the supreme example of what we can become. And when we are too weak in will, the grace of Christ strengthens us for good works.

The mercy of God is sheer grace, not only unearned, but unearnable. We can never be perfect. We have broken not just his law, but his heart. God’s mercy comes from a broken heart. In order to understand His mercy, we need to focus on how Jesus actually died for us: on the cross.

Mercy is God’s initiative, not ours. Faith is our act of trust, our “yes” to God’s offer. Faith is a response which lets God’s mercy in. And his mercy doesn’t leave us unchanged. Receiving mercy is a gift; we are filled with gratitude. We have nothing to boast of, because it’s not our efforts, nothing we have done or could do, that earns the gift of mercy.

Mercy prepares us for good works. The order here is important: first, God’s mercy, then, our faith, then the overflowing of good works. Just as we have been blessed, so we bless others. And all of this is enfolded in the mystery that just as God, “brought us to life with Christ”, so he has “raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus”.

And we can only marvel at, “the immeasurable riches of God’s grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”