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November 3, 2013 |
| Mercy and Law | ||
Mercy is a critically important concept for Christians to understand, but we often understand it only in the sense of God's mercy toward us or in the sense of us showing mercy toward others. In both of these cases mercy is given to someone who is in a difficult or impossible situation and needs help getting out. For us, as recipients of God's mercy, we were doomed by our sins and had no way out of the punishment that was due us. God's show of mercy toward us is to be the model for us in showing mercy toward others.
But there is another place where mercy is to be applied that we often forget about – in the application of the law. That is what we will study in this lesson.
God provided Israel and us with a symbolic description of how mercy and the law should work together to achieve justice. That came in the form of the Ark of the Covenant.
Inside the Ark are the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments, God's law for us. Over that is the cover that we call the Mercy Seat. But 'Mercy Seat' is just one translation of the Hebrew word that is used in the Bible. It can also mean 'atonement cover', or 'thing of wiping out'. The message in the Ark of the Covenant then is this. God. in his grace and mercy, has provided a way for our sins (law-breaking) to be paid for and wiped out and for us to be restored to him.
The intent behind this message from the Ark is that we should also be merciful and this is explicitly said in Luke 6:36 where Jesus says
36 "Be therefore merciful, just as also your Father is merciful."
In Matthew 5:7 Jesus says it a little differently. In the verse above he says we should be like God the Father and because mercy is the pattern that God the Father has shown us we should also be merciful. In the following verse he says that we should also be merciful so that mercy will be shown to us.
7 Blessed are they who show mercy, for mercies will be upon them.
James 2:13 shows us the other side of that coin. Where the verse above says "Show mercy so mercy will be shown to you" James says
13 The judgment is without mercy against him who does not practice mercy, but with mercy, you have dominion over judgment
James is referring to God's final judgment of mankind. He says that that judgment will show no mercy to those who have shown no mercy to others.
So we are given 3 reasons why we should show mercy:
But the Jewish elite of Jesus time did not understand this. We often see them showing a lack of mercy and Jesus correcting them. We see a case of this in Matthew 9:13
13 "Go learn what this says, 'I require mercy and not a sacrifice' …"
Here Jesus is quoting from Hosea 6:6. The Scribes and Pharisees would have known that verse and others like it from the Old Testament that talk about mercy.
We see Jesus teaching them on mercy and other things again in Matthew 23:23
23 Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, for you tithe mint and dill and cummin and you forsake the weighty things of the law: justice, mercy and faith! It is necessary for you to do these things and you should not forsake them.
One of the best cases of Jesus having to teach mercy to the Scribes and Pharisees comes from John 8:3, the story of a woman caught in adultery.
3 But the Scribes and the Pharisees brought a women who had been seized in adultery, and when they stood her in the midst, 4 they were saying to him, "Teacher, this woman was taken openly in the act of adultery." 5 "But in The Written Law of Moses, he commanded that we shall stone such as these."
6 "What therefore do you say?" This they said, as they were tempting him, so that they might have something for which to accuse him. 7 But as they persisted asking him, he stood up and he said to them, "He among you who is without sin, let him first cast a stone upon her." 8 And stooping down again, he wrote on the ground.
9 But when these heard, they were exiting, one by one, beginning from the Elders, and the woman who had been in the midst was left alone. 10 [And] when he stood up, [Jesus] said to the woman, "Where are they? Has no man condemned you?"
11 But she said, "Not even one, LORD GOD"; and [Jesus] said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, sin no more."
The Scribes and Pharisees say that the law they were given by Moses from God says that this woman must be killed for what she has done, and they are correct. What then is Jesus' message to them? And what is his message to us?
Some say that his message is a new law – that only sinless people can stand in judgment of others. But nothing in the Old Testament says that and so the Scribes and Pharisees would not have accepted that.
Some say that Jesus, being God, was allowed to override the Law of Moses. That would contradict what Galatians 4:4 says "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law" which means that Jesus was required to obey the law.
No, Jesus was teaching the Scribes and Pharisees what they already knew to be true. Jesus' response to them is a reminder that they too have sinned and wanted mercy. Therefore they should be merciful. But this will take some time for them to think about, and Jesus gives them the time. The Scribes and Pharisees had hoped that Jesus would choose a response that would either override the Law of Moses, which they could condemn him for, or a response that would condemn this woman to death. Jesus made the correct choice – mercy – and so taught the Pharisees the true understanding of justice.
The Law of Moses was always to be administered with mercy. It was not the intent of the law that a first time offender should be sentenced to death. But that is what the Scribes and Pharisees had made the law by insisting on exact adherence to the letter of the law. The punishments in the Law of Moses were intended as a last resort. When the law courts in their mercy had tried everything else to get the offender to stop offending then the maximum penalty could be applied. Even then the law breaker might choose to be banished from his people rather than receive the maximum penalty.
Therefore the penalty specified in the law was to serve as a force to get the law-breaker to change his ways. The penalty was not intended as restitution for the crime. God's desire is not to punish people but to turn people back to him.
In this way God's treatment of Israel is also to be our model. Though Israel cheated on him many times he never threw Israel away. He sent prophets to warn them. He sent lesser punishments to get them to return to him. And eventually, after many, many attempts he kicked them out of the land that he had given them. And when Israel had returned to the land and had again sunken to a new low, rather than destroy them, God sent his son to them. And when they killed his son, God again kicked them out of the land and only now, after almost 2000 years, they are returning again.
Jesus expresses this idea of unlimited mercy in Matthew 18:21
21 Then [Peter] approached [Jesus], and he said, "My Lord, "If my brother commits an offense against me, how many times shall I forgive him? Seven times?"
22 And [Jesus] said to him, "I do not say to you until seven times, but until seventy times 7 7."
Jesus' point is that mercy and the forgiveness that comes from it are to continue indefinitely.
In our legal system, when a person has finished his punishment we often say he has "paid his debt to society" or he "got what he deserved". In saying things like this we show that we view the punishment as the atonement for the crime. That is, that the punishment in some way pays for the crime. Therefore we believe that a lesser crime deserves a lesser punishment.
But that is not how God's legal system works. No punishment in any way pays for the crime. When man sinned against God, the consequence of that was death. But the consequence does not pay for the sin. There was no penalty that man could pay that would serve as atonement and pay the debt that was owed.
In God's legal system the purpose of the penalty is not atonement but correction. It is to warn the non-offender against offending and to get the attention of the offender and get him to change his ways. That is why God's penalties sometimes seem out of line with the severity of the crime, for example the death penalty for adultery. The point of the penalty was to impress on the non-offender and offender the seriousness of the crime and the need for reform.
God knows that no punishment will cause a man to change his ways. A man can only choose to change his own ways. The most that a punishment can do is cause a man to think about the path he is on.
We don't realize it but mankind has always had a problem with law breakers. That is, what do we do with them. The desire of every society is for every member to be a positive contributor. But what do you do with those who will not or cannot abide by the society's rules. The desire of society is to get the offenders to stop offending.
If someone breaks into your house and steals some of your stuff, even if he was caught and returned everything he took and paid for any damage he caused, there would still be an unpaid debt because he took more from you than physical things. He took away your sense of safety and security. There is also the matter of how to reform the person to make him a contributor to society.
In ancient times societies would subject its offenders to public humiliation, or painful treatment to show them that their actions were not approved by society and they needed to make a change. Sometimes societies would kick offenders out of the community because there was nothing better they could do with them. But this usually resulted in dumping their problem people on someone else's doorstep and they would do the same with their problem people.
Jails weren't originally built as a form of punishment. They were built to keep people detained until their court appearance or to keep dangerous people away from the public. But after a while time in jail became a punishment, an effort by society to get the offender to return to the rules of society.
Somewhere along the line we dropped the idea that the purpose of penalties was to correct and adopted the idea that penalties were restitution, paying back the debt of their crimes. We also dropped the quicker punishments like public humiliation or whipping. All these changes have resulted in the people leaving jail not being corrected. In fact their time there has often been an education in how to be a better offender. And the time spent in jail usually results in a person who is less able to return to society.
With the failures of the penal system well known, society has adopted a new idea, Zero Tolerance. The hope is that the threat of severe penalties on the least offender will reduce the number of offenses. But this is another step away from God's legal system. It contains no mercy at all.
The result is what you would expect from a flawed system. Innocents or trivial offenders are penalized in the same way as major offenders. Flaws in the writing of the law catch people that were not the target of the law. The judge loses his ability correct the problems in the law. The system is perceived as being unjust.
Only slightly better is the legal concept of "three strikes and you're out". This system allows for a certain amount of mercy but not the kind that God intended. It is still possible for innocents to fall into the net.
When God created the legal system for Israel he created a model for generations to follow. It's a system of severe penalties for deterrence and for dealing with intransigent cases but is wrapped in mercy that allows for wisdom and justice.
But societies have generally ignored that model and gone in different directions. In this country this has resulted in large prison populations that exchange the high societal costs of their crimes for high financial costs of their incarceration.
But God teaches that justice only comes when the law is applied with mercy.