Mercy is greater than THIS!

As according to his great mercy, his abundant mercy. Dispensed from a plenteous storehouse of mercy. God's mercy upon sinners in causing them to be born again is magnified. It is great in light of a our misery and be our merit.

A our misery from the time of your first and natural birth, the core of your being, dear friend, is permeated with sin. 1689, Second London Baptist Confession of Faith says that as descendants of Adam, the guilt of their sin was accounted in their corrupt nature, passed on to all their offspring who descended from them by ordinary procreation.

Their descendants are now conceived in sin and are by nature, children of wrath, the servants of sin and partakers of death and all other miseries, spiritual, temporal and eternal, that by sin you are thoroughly biased against and disabled and antagonistic towards all that is good and completely inclined towards all that is evil.

Paul says in Romans 3 that your misery because of sin renders you without understanding that you do not seek for God as those who have turned aside, those who have become worthless, who do no good, that you do not know the way of peace.

And then your path is ruin and misery. Brethren, it is our former misery that magnifies the greatness of God's mercy toward you. His mercy is great in light of our misery. And I have prayed before that God would wipe clean my memory of my former sins, the misery that I once knew, because the memory of my misery was a kind of affliction to me.

But he won't.

Do you know why?

Because the memory of my misery magnifies the greatness of his mercy and causes me to bless his name and to know that for my salvation, to God be the glory alone. It moves me to doxology. His mercy is great in light of our misery.

Be his mercy is great in light of our merit. Such is the ruinous effect of sin that no effort toward salvation on our part is worth anything before God. We agree with the scriptures that we have become like one who is unclean and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

We all fade like a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. In your sinful condition, you have no merit before God. You are dead in sin. Able to contribute nothing to your salvation, as Edward said, but the sin that made it necessary.

No amount of praying will save you, no amount of Bible reading will save you, no amount of any effort on your part will save you. But Jesus saves you because by his righteous life, he has stored up favor with God, the very favor that you forfeited because you loved your sin.

Jesus has stored up favor with God on behalf of his people because he has the merit before God that you lack. And because God in his mercy causes miserable, meritless sinners to be born again. His mercy is greater than merit.

You're a Christian whose heart is slow to bless God. Does this not bring a fresh filling of doxological weight to your empty words? You find that there's no heart behind your words when you pray, when you sing, when you teach, when you converse.

There's no doxology on your lips. Praise his personality as the merciful God who applies to your miserable soul the very merits that you lack through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And flame your heart with the knowledge of who God is so that there is a weightiness to your words when you speak about your blessed God, so that you are the kind of man that means what he says.

Dear Christian, whose heart is slow to bless God, be quickened by reminders of his great mercy towards you so that you are not unprepared for suffering. If you do not teach your heart to bless God when things are well, how will you remain doxological when it gets hard?

Making sure that your doctrine is doxological, that you not only know him as merciful, but you are quick to bless him on account of his mercy, will prepare you for suffering.