A Word in Season: Love, Mercy, Grace (Ephesians 2:4–5)

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We should never cease to wonder at the great favour that God has shown undeserving people, ill -deserving people, hell -deserving people.

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You see, we are not those who deserve favour. No sinner in his right mind, and that's part of the problem, ever cries out to God for justice.

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We cry out to God for mercy. We're asking for the grace that we don't deserve.

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Paul emphasises some of that in Ephesians and chapter 2, when he talks about how

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God found us and what God did with us and why God acted as he did toward us.

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He begins with mankind dead in trespasses and sins, trapped in wickedness under the power of the evil one, living as we pleased, following the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

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And if the Lord God had in his perfect justice left us in that condition, then we would have continued on that devastating course and ended up in the pit of hell being righteously punished for our transgressions.

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Verse 4 of chapter 2 of the letter to the Ephesians begins, but God, and sets a different tone and puts us on a different trajectory.

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But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

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Now notice the sequence there. It's not perhaps immediately clear, but God has shown us grace because he's rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he had loved us.

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Grace is God's unbidden favor. It's the blessing of making us alive together with Christ, who once were dead in trespasses and sins.

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It is God giving us what we do not, could not, and never would in ourselves deserve.

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We who are dead are made alive because of God's free favor in Christ Jesus.

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Now why should God deal with us in that way? Because he is rich in mercy, because he is ready to not deal with us as we deserve, because even though he could have left us dead in our trespasses and sins, under his wrath and judgment on account of our great transgressions, he did not do so.

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He looked upon us with compassion. He did not punish us as our sins deserve.

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And then you have to ask again, why would God do that? Why should God show mercy to any?

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Why should he show the riches of mercy towards sinners like us and so bestow grace upon us by making us alive together with Christ?

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And the Apostle Paul gives us the answer to that as well. Because of his great love with which he loved us.

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You trace it back and you find that the mercy of God rests in and flows from the love of God.

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And as his mercy is rich, so his love is great. And it's because of the greatness of his love that the mercy is so rich and the grace so abundant.

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God has loved us. God set his love upon us and it was a great love.

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It was a God -like love, worthy of all that he truly is in himself and revealing the infinite goodness and kindness of his divine heart.

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And then you have to ask, well, why should God love us? If the grace comes because God is rich in mercy, he doesn't deal with us as we deserve, but rather lavishes that favour upon us.

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If the mercy is because he loves us, why does he love us? Because he's

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God. Because he chose to. Because this free and sovereign act of love, this will to love the unlovely, comes unbidden from his holy heart.

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And that leaves us dumbfounded, astounded, that God, this

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God, in all his holiness, in all his majesty, in all his purity, in all the excellence of his being, should be a

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God marked by such a great love, such a sovereign act of love, that he should, having set that love upon the utterly undeserving, ill -deserving, hell -deserving, should show rich mercy toward us and sparing us the punishment we deserve, should lavish grace upon us, making us alive together with Christ.