I Desire Mercy
This year we're collaborating with writers across the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals, to bring you a series of short devotional articles during this season of Lent, the 40-day period prior to Easter. Find this series also published by UChicago's CANA Journal and UC Berkeley's TAUG.
by tyler shinn
"But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Matthew 9:13 NKJV
As we meditate on this verse today, I would like to walk through each part of the passage, sharing my thoughts as we go along:
“I desire mercy and not sacrifice”
In this verse, Jesus is addressing the Pharisees, who conceive of the Lord as a God who is utmostly concerned with what we do. On the surface, this seems correct. God tells us to keep His Law. God tells us to “love your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39). God tells us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37). But how many of us, when we look at those commands, live either in despair or in pride: believing that our actions prove us too far gone, or that our actions prove us too far noble? And how many of us, when we look at those commands, live exactly as the Pharisees lived: trying to appear noble on the outside to disguise the selfishness within? As John Henry Newman says:
“The aim of most men esteemed conscientious and religious, or who are what is called honourable, upright men, is, to all appearance, not how to please God, but how to please themselves without displeasing Him.”
We have forgotten that our God does not desire external action, sacrifice. He desires mercy, something intrinsic to us. He desires us. He cares about who we are.
“For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance”
Unfortunately, righteousness is not inherently who we are. Since the Fall in Genesis 3 we have become, in the words of Pascal, “dispossessed kings” who are “wretched in knowing that we are wretched” (Pascal, Pensees). Fortunately, our God was not content to leave us in our fallen and wretched state. He “knows our frame” (Psalm 103:14), and so He sent His Son down to earth to redeem us. And the way in which he calls us to redemption is through our repentance.
“I will have mercy”
But how are we to repent? From the Fall, we are hopelessly wretched, mired in Original Sin. Additionally, repentance seems to be an external action, a sacrifice. How are we to change who we are if our nature is inherently predisposed to sin and our only way out is through action? If we are at all to be redeemed, it will be only through an act of God. Therefore God has said, “I will have mercy.”
Hear now the words of Ezekiel; this is how the Lord has shown us mercy:
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV
This promise was fulfilled through the coming of Christ. Through His death and resurrection, we have been freed from the chokehold of sin to receive the Holy Spirit. And through receiving the Holy Spirit, God has fundamentally changed who we are. Through the process of sanctification, wherein we cooperate with the Spirit to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13), we are able to continuously repent and thus be transformed into who we ought to be. So our God has done the impossible: He has changed repentance from an external action to an internal transformation; He has turned our vain efforts of obedience, which were previously motivated by fear or pride or selfishness, into an efficacious penitence driven by His mercy alone. How great is our God!
Prayer
As I reflect on these truths, I cannot help but stand in awe at the greatness of God's mercy. So to end our time together, let us sing the words of that modern melody, Mercy:
Mercy, Mercy
As endless as the sea
I'll sing your hallelujah
For all eternity.
Tyler Shinn is a freshman at the University of Chicago. He serves as an editor for Cana, an Augustine Collective member journal. Tyler is a double major in physics and philosophy and also plays baseball for the university.