By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
Are you one of those who can spot other people’s “challenges”? You’re quick to discern their failures and weaknesses? You can spot a solid man quickly and a weak one just as quick or quicker? The fake from the real?
Are you like me and can see (and judge) the poor planning in someone’s presentation or the way a business functions? My first career was in major department store retailing.
I could walk into any of my departments and immediately see if it was badly run…dust on the shelves, categories mixed, new merchandise not featured, items not priced. I didn’t even have to try. My eye was trained to spot poor merchandising.
That skill made me a very successful merchandiser. But, guess what it did when I became a pastor? Yep, it made me a
hypocrite. I could easily see where someone was a messy sinner. I could see the way they spoke, the way they treated their family, their values.
I could quickly pick out a fake or very immature believer regardless of the image they wanted to portray. I could judge them. And being very good at seeing the “speck” in other’s eyes made it easy for me to miss the “beam” in mine.
I had to receive mercy before I could learn to love others. I had to learn to recognize my sins and weaknesses and discover God’s mercy. I had to learn to accept people where they were rather than where I thought they should be. I had to get off my pedestal and discover that I, too, was a rotten sinner who could only be saved by God’s grace. It was in that journey of discovery that I began to accept others, even love them, in all their imperfections.
It wasn’t that I no longer saw the sins and weaknesses, it was that I saw them in a new light. Rather than as judge but as a fellow sinner deeply in need of His mercy. And don’t misunderstand me, I still judge others when I know it is wrong.
I still see and get irritated by others who are less than I think they should be. I still fail almost daily to extend God’s grace to others. It is an area that I have a long way to grow into before I can truly be thought of as a merciful person.
But it’s that transformation of viewpoint from judging to loving where God enters to cheer us along. To Bless us. To reward us. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matt 5:7).
Think how I might have treated the woman at the well with 5 past husbands and living “in sin” with another man if I had not experienced God’s mercy?
Think where I would have been in the crowd about to stone the woman caught in adultery? Think what I would have been grumbling and murmuring when Jesus ate dinner with a bunch of sinners and, even worse, tax collectors? I, like Paul, thought I was righteous until I met the One who is Righteousness.
It was only after seeing my own desperate need for forgiveness, mercy and grace, that I could begin to demonstrate his forgiveness, mercy, and grace to others.
When Jesus had dinner with Simon, a Pharisee, and Jesus forgave a woman’s sins he shared a parable with his host about a debtor who was forgiven a great debt (Luke 7:41-43) “Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—500 pieces of silver to one and 50 pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts.
Who do you suppose loved him more after that?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”“That’s right,” Jesus said.”
Jesus went on to say in verse 47 “ I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love” The more we recognize the horror of our sin, the greater we are able to grow in giving mercy.
Isn’t that amazing? The people we know who are the quickest to forgive and show mercy are the ones who were probably the worst sinners among us or the ones who were first to see the holiness of God and their own unrighteousness. They show mercy because they know what it is to be shown mercy.
I keep a quote on my desk from Oswald Chambers devotional, My Utmost For His Highest. It reads:”I have never met a person I could despair or, or lose all hope for, after discerning what lies in me apart from the grace of God.”
Like all the Beatitudes, we are not there. We are being cheered on, blessed, as we make this journey through life. God is looking on, blessing us as we sometimes manage to get it right.
He’s pleased when we show that we are not able to function without him, when we mourn over the things of the world he dislikes, when we withstand the pressures to prove how strong we are at the expense of the Gospel, when we choose to show mercy rather than judgment, etc.. Each time we are victorious, we are blessed by Him.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.