Live in God’s mercy and grace
Almighty and eternal God,
you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray,
and give us more than either we desire or deserve;
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our consciences are afraid,
and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask,
other than through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ,
your Son, our Lord.
Amen.
This collect refers us to both the grace and mercy of God — two rich theological seams from which to quarry.
God’s mercy is his not giving us as sinners what we deserve. We ask for him to “pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy”. In order to appreciate the wonder of this we need to apprehend, in particular, that his mercy does not in any way undermine the existence and awful reality of his judgment. A withdrawal from judgment would undermine the role of mercy; Mike Ovey puts it this way in his book Pierced for our Transgressions (page 137): “it would be misleading to say something like ‘At the cross God’s mercy triumphed over his justice.’” Rather — and these are my words — it is at the cross that justice and mercy meet head on — and at the cross that his judgment is fully met by his mercy.
This mercy is solely his work and provision. We don’t deserve his mercy, we don’t earn his mercy, we can’t buy his mercy. And yet, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2:4-5, “God, being rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ.” This is an under-appreciated wonder.
At a practical and pastoral level we need to teach that we were not ‘let off’ God’s judgment at the cross — rather that wonder of the gospel is that his judgment was satisfied by his mercy. This does not sit well with western cultural understanding but it is foundational and unique to the Christian message and good news for all. We need to sing of this and draw it out in our liturgical worship. We need to thank God in our prayers for the way in which he showed mercy on us ‘miserable sinners’ (as the Book of Common Prayer puts it).
God’s grace is his giving us what we do not deserve. We pray for him to give us “those good things for which we are not worthy to ask”. Paul tells us in Romans 3:24 that grace is a “free gift”, and John Stott amplifies this when he describes grace as God’s “utterly underserved favour” (The Cross of Christ, chapter 7). When God justifies us he is not saying that bad people are good — nor saying ’there is no case to answer’ in the heavenly court. What he is doing is pronouncing us legally righteous and free from any liability under his law. And all of this — as many of us were taught in Sunday School — is because of G.R.A.C.E. (Gods Riches At Christ’s Expense).
At a practical and pastoral level I wonder whether we need to hear more of the shed blood of Christ in our worship songs, our sermons and our prayers. After all, it was Jesus’s death that paid the ransom and constituted the sacrifice that enabled grace to be effective. And perhaps in our evangelism we need to remember that lost people come to living faith in Christ not by their own “confession” (though that is crucial since God does not force himself upon us) but through the operation of God’s grace. Tom Wright’s epigram is helpful: “no sin, no need for justification: no grace, no possibility of it” (“Justification: The Biblical Basis and Its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism”, page 16).
So pray this with me:
Almighty and eternal God,
you are always more ready to hear than we are to pray,
and give us more than either we desire or deserve;
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our consciences are afraid,
and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask,
other than through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ,
your Son, our Lord.
Amen.