Jesus’ death on the Cross provides the ultimate demonstration of God’s mercy.

If the Israelites had dared to remove the veil and gaze at the glory of Moses’ face they would perhaps have seen some trace there of the wonderful mercy of God. However, when the Holy Spirit removes the veil from our minds we behold not a fading glory on a human face, but “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6), a glory which, far from fading, transforms us as we behold it “into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (2 Cor. 3:18).

Ultimately, the prayer, “show me your glory,” brings us to the Lord Jesus. “… We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14), a glory much greater but completely consistent with the picture of God in Ex. 34:6. For in Jesus we see the very same qualities that God proclaimed to Moses in dynamic human form. We see Him weep at the tomb of Lazarus (Jn. 11:35) and over the city of Jerusalem (Lk. 19:41). We read that He was “filled with compassion” in His encounter with a leper (Mk. 1:41), and many times we read of His compassion for the crowds who thronged around Him (cf. Mk. 6:34; Mt. 9:36). Here is the compassionate mercy of God in all its wonder, expressed in one who is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Heb. 4:15, KJV). One to whose “throne of grace” we may come confidently to “receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

In Jesus we also see wonderfully fulfilled the sovereign mercy of God, grace to the totally undeserving. Can we imagine any event that more vividly portrays the complete and sovereign mercy of God than the one described in Lk. 23:34? The King of the Universe is mocked, beaten, spat upon, and nailed to a cross, and His response is, “Father, forgive them….” Could Moses ever have guessed in all the glory of that moment on the mountain that when God said He was gracious He meant it quite like this?

Here too is the covenant mercy of God, that loving loyalty that never gives up on us. It is the mercy that stuck with Peter even though he called down curses and swore that he had never known Jesus (Mk. 14:66–72). “But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Lk. 22:32). This is the kindness and constancy of God’s mercy that causes Him to stick with us to the end and enables us to say with the apostle, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our I Lord” (Ro. 8:38–39).

THE COST OF GOD’S MERCY

Not only does the Lord Jesus Christ perfectly fulfill and reveal the mercy of God in His character and life, but He perfectly vindicates it in His death. When the Lord declared Himself to Moses He stressed not only His mercy, but also His justice: “… Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished …” (Ex. 34:7). How can God be both just and merciful? Can a judge be just and decide to let people off after they have committed such serious crimes as David had? How can such a pardon be fair to those He does decide to punish?

This dilemma is at the heart of our understanding of Jesus’ death on the Cross, for that is where the justice and mercy of God meet. As Paul expresses it in Ro. 3:25–26, Jesus’ death is to be understood as a “sacrifice of atonement,” like the sacrifices of the Old Testament in which the sacrificial animal died in place or on behalf of the sinner, bearing the death penalty in his place and thus atoning for his sin by shedding its blood. So Jesus’ sacrifice of atonement vindicates both God’s justice and His mercy. There is simply no other imaginable way by which God could display more clearly that He is just in punishing sin and merciful in forgiving the sinner. Jesus’ death shows that God’s mercy to David, Moses, and others in the Old Testament and His mercy to us today is not in opposition to His justice, but is in harmony with it through Jesus’ death. God gave Him as “a sacrifice of atonement … to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies the man who has faith in Jesus” (Ro. 3:25–26). God’s mercy, then, is totally in harmony with His justice, but at staggering cost, the cost of Jesus’ death on the Cross.

Since God’s mercy is so costly, let us value it, let us believe and embrace it, and let us base our lives on the certain conviction that God is “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”

--Paul Westervelt, P. Discipleship Journal, Issue 36.