Spiritual Gifts 9 Mercy

[HKHaugan]

“…if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully (Rom.12:8).”

Just what is the gift of mercy? We are all called to show mercy but what is the spiritual gift of mercy? One thing we have not mentioned up to this point in our discussion of gifts is the fact that Jesus possesses all the gifts. Spiritual gifts are His personal grace qualities. Through the Holy Spirit these pieces of His personality are given to each believer. When you receive Jesus as Savior and Lord He is planted in your heart by the Holy Spirit who then takes those grace qualities and parcels them out according to His will (1Cor.12:11). His desire is to share them personally and for us to share them interpersonally.

Just as the gifts are in perfect balance in Jesus so He shares them with each believer in order that, working together, believers in the Body experience the gifts interdependently. What Jesus desires is that all who have been called to be part of His new earthly Body (that is us) finds its unity through its interdependence just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are in perfect unity. He loves to share Himself and the gifts are His way of accomplishing that.

Let’s look at this from the idea of a spiritual unit designed by the Father to function through the Holy Spirit’s distribution of Jesus’ personal spiritual qualities according to the measure of faith given each believer. That is exactly what the Body of Christ is meant to be.

The gifts are given to restore spiritual intimacy between the believer and God, between believers together and God and between believers. It is the exercise of gifts that grounds our faith, grows our faith, builds our spiritual nature, prepares us for the Kingdom and glorifies God who is faithful by nature.

Now back to mercy. It has to be noted up front that mercy is not just a gift it is an attitude that is so central to the Gospel that without it we are simply ‘clanging cymbals and full of empty sounds.’ Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan who sees the beaten man on the roadside and ministers to him and follows through to see him taken care of. It is a story of mercy that comes from the heart of the Merciful One. His own final act of mercy was on the Cross for all people everywhere. He had mercy on us all when we had no idea what our problem was.

It is in Jesus we see compassion as He beholds the woman caught in adultery, the healing of an official’s son and the exorcism of a demoniac at the lakeside. In all three it was not just mercy in His presence, but mercy for those distant from His presence and mercy on the human condition of a broken humanity possessed by a legion of spirits and demons.

What is a core quality of God’s heart is also a specific gift given to individuals in the Body that goes beyond being an attitude of the many to a practice by the few for the sake of the many. This gift finds the gifted one empathetic beyond sympathetic to the point that when distress is sensed there is an immediate response of action to meet the need. A person with the gift of mercy becomes absorbed in the plight of people in need. They do really ‘feel your pain.’ When that gift is practiced it builds the attitude of mercy throughout the Body.

Liberty Mutual Insurance has a truly great add on TV. It starts with a small act of kindness viewed by another person who in turn sees someone else struggling and goes to their aid. This launches a series of like events. Simple and yet so clearly a picture of what the Body can do when gifts are practiced.

The gift of mercy can be studied by starting with the example of Jesus then moving through the Psalms and into the prophets’ call for hearts of mercy. In this mix of Scripture not only the gift of mercy but the other gifts will begin to realize their home in the hearts of those willing to respond to the call and conviction by the Spirit as you read.