The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Emily M. during the 2007-2008 League.

Bible Study: God's Mercy

"Because of your tender mercy
The morning light from heaven
Is about to shine
Because of your tender mercy
Though we have walked in darkness
You will end our night."

This is part of a song our small church choir sang for Christmas this year. The song's words are inspired by the scripture found in Luke 1:78. What does mercy have to do with our walking in darkness or the light of heaven and what makes it tender? For that matter, what is mercy, particularly, God's mercy? We hear the word "mercy" so much that it almost looses its meaning. Though that may seem like an oxymoron, it isn't, so many people use the one word so broadly and so frequently that it loses the weight that it is meant to have. That's why it's important to explore the true meaning and depth of mercy so that we won't forget how important it truly is.

So, what is mercy? The dictionary defines it as "Kind or compassionate treatment of an offender, adversary, etc., in one's power; compassion where severity is expected or deserved." We are recipients of the greatest mercy ever known on earth. Everyone on earth is deserving of God's severity and wrath. The world is a prisoner to sin (Galatians 3:22 NIV) and since all wrongdoing is sin (1 John 5:17 NIV) that makes every person a sinner. Sin must be punished, and the penalty for sin is death; but God made a way for humanity to be saved. In one of the most famous verses of the bible, John 3:16, says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever should believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

What the Lord has done meets the dictionary's definition of mercy perfectly. We humans are certainly in God's power, we have done wrong and had every reason to expect His wrath because we deserved it, but instead He showed great compassion and kindness. There are many verses that confirm this point, Daniel 9:9 (NIV) says, "The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him," and then in Ephesians 2: 4-5, "Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions." This is the weight that the phrase "God's mercy" has, it reminds us that we have been made alive and have been spared the punishment of eternal death.

There is one requirement for all those who receive God's great mercy: we must show mercy to others. No other passage in the bible demonstrates this more clearly than the parable of the unmerciful servant found in Matthew 18: 21-35. In the parable, a servant is brought before the king because he owes the king a large sum of money, but when he begs for forgiveness the king takes pity and cancels the debt. Then the same servant went out and met a man who owed him a small sum of money, even thought the other man pleaded for forgiveness, the servant had him thrown in prison. When the king heard what the servant had done, he was angry and called the servant in again and said to him, "You wicked servant.I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" (Matthew 18:32-34 NIV). Jesus also rebuked the Pharisees for this very thing in Matthew 23: 23 (NIV), "Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices -mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law -justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former." As Christians, we want to become more like Jesus; if we do not show mercy to others, how can we claim to be his followers?

God has shown us mercy beyond what we can even imagine, and because we call him Lord, we must show mercy to others. When we do that we become a little more like Jesus, which is what we seek to do while we are on the pilgrimage of life. We are His representatives, his ambassadors on earth. Jesus told us in the beatitudes, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matthew 5:7 NIV).