Introduction: Transition from the Internal to the External
We continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus Christ. Up to this point, we have considered the first four beatitudes, which described the internal state of a person entering God’s Kingdom.
It all began with the recognition of one’s spiritual poverty, which led to mourning over sin, gave birth to meekness before God, and caused an unquenchable hunger for righteousness.
But the fifth beatitude makes an important turn. It directs our gaze outward—to our relationships with other people. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matt. 5:7).
This commandment sounds simple, but in practice, it is perhaps the most difficult. It is easy to theoretically reason about God’s love while in the silence of a prayer room. It is much more difficult to show mercy to a person who has betrayed, deceived, or falsely accused you. Nevertheless, Jesus asserts that mercy is an inherent sign of a saved person. Moreover, He links our receiving of mercy with how we show mercy to others.
Does this mean that we “earn” God’s forgiveness with our good deeds? Of course not. Let’s look into this deep spiritual mechanism.
The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant
To explain the essence of this commandment, Jesus told the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt. 18:21–35). One servant owed the king an unimaginable sum—ten thousand talents. In modern money, this is billions of dollars, the GDP of an entire state. It was a debt that was impossible to pay off in a thousand lifetimes.
When the time came for reckoning, the servant begged for mercy. And the king, “out of pity for him,” simply wrote off this infinite debt. The servant went free absolutely clean.
But what did he do first? He met his fellow servant who owed him only a hundred denarii (the salary for a few months). Although it was a significant amount, it was nothing compared to what had just been forgiven him. The servant grabbed the debtor, began to choke him, and threw him into prison.
When the king found out about this, he became angry and returned the unmerciful servant to prison until he paid off all his unimaginable debt. The parable ends with harsh words: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Mercy as an Indicator of Salvation
This parable reveals to us the link between God’s forgiveness and ours. God’s mercy to us is not a reward for our forgiveness of others. It is always primary. But our forgiveness of others is a litmus test showing whether we have understood at all what God has done for us.
If a person claims to be forgiven by God (his “ten thousand talents” were written off), but at the same time he continues to choke his debtors for “a hundred denarii”—this means his heart has not changed. He accepted God’s mercy as something due or just as a way to avoid punishment, but it did not touch his soul.
Therefore James writes: “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” (James 2:13). A Christian cannot not forgive. His ability to show mercy is not a merit, but a testimony that he himself has been shown mercy. A forgiven heart inevitably becomes a forgiving heart.
Mercy Does Not Mean Indifference to Sin
There is a common misconception that being merciful means closing one’s eyes to evil, being “tolerant” of sin, or just trying to “forget and move on.” But biblical mercy looks different.
God is a God of great mercy, but He is also a Just Judge who “will by no means clear the guilty.” These two qualities met at Calvary. God showed infinite mercy to us, but at the same time He did not ignore sin—He punished it in the Person of His Son.
Therefore, showing mercy does not mean pretending that nothing happened. In the same 18th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says that if your brother sins against you—go and tell him his fault. We must call things by their names. Mercy actively opposes sin, because sin destroys a person.
The process of forgiveness is often painful. Remember Jesus’ conversation with Peter after the resurrection. Peter denied Him three times—Jesus asked three times: “Do you love Me?”. This was not an “easy” conversation. Jesus forced Peter to look into the depths of his betrayal to heal and restore him. Mercy seeks reconciliation and the restoration of relationships, not just a formal “apology.”
Two Aspects of Forgiveness: Internal and External
Theologian Tim Keller identifies two stages of forgiveness:
- Internal Forgiveness: This is a refusal of the desire for revenge in one’s heart. This happens between you and God, often at the moment of prayer. You decide not to “choke” the offender in your thoughts; you give judgment to God and sincerely wish the person well. This frees your soul from the poison of bitterness. This is available to us always, even if the offender does not repent or is no longer alive.
- External Forgiveness, Reconciliation: This is a process of restoring relationships. It requires the participation of both parties. This happens when sin is recognized, confessed, and forgiven. This is the goal that mercy strives for, but it is not always achievable in this fallen world.
However, the lack of external reconciliation is never an excuse for the lack of internal forgiveness.
Why Is Forgiving So Costly?
True forgiveness is never free. To forgive means to pay someone else’s debt yourself. If someone crashes your car and you forgive them, you take the repair costs upon yourself. If someone hurts your reputation, to forgive means to refuse to “hurt back,” taking the pain on yourself.
To God, our forgiveness cost the death of His Son. To us, it costs our pride and our sense of “just retribution.” This is exactly why it is so difficult for us to forgive—it is unnatural for our sinful nature.
Strength for the Impossible: The Lesson of Corrie ten Boom
One of the most striking examples of mercy in the 20th century is the story of Corrie ten Boom. Her family saved Jews during the Holocaust, for which they ended up in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Her sister Betsy died there from exhaustion and abuse.
After the war, Corrie preached about God’s forgiveness. In 1947 in Munich, a man approached her. She instantly recognized him—it was one of the cruelest guards from their camp. He was smiling, reaching out his hand to her and saying how glad he was to hear that God had washed away his sins as well.
Corrie wrote that at that moment everything came alive in her memory: the cold, the showers, the suffering of her sister. Anger and a thirst for revenge flooded her. She could not lift her hand. She prayed to herself: “Lord, I cannot forgive him! Give me Your strength!”. She made a mechanical movement with her hand, and at the moment their hands touched, she felt a flow of God’s love and compassion pass through her.
She understood: the Lord who calls us to forgive also gives us the very ability to forgive. We cannot squeeze mercy out of ourselves by our own efforts, but we can transmit the mercy that we ourselves have received from Christ.
Conclusion
Blessed are the merciful. If you are living in resentment today, if you have a “list of debtors” whom you continue to choke in your heart—remember your situation before God. Remember the ten thousand talents that were forgiven you.
Mercy is not weakness. It is the highest manifestation of God’s strength in a person. Only those who have been shown mercy by God are capable of truly showing mercy. Come to Christ, receive His forgiveness, and let Him make your heart an instrument of His mercy in this cruel world.
“When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:23–24).