Hebrews 2:17-18 (NLT)
Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. Since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested.
Making it real …
It makes perfect sense that Jesus had to be born and live exactly like us, who are his earthly family, so that he could present our lives before God with compassion and truth. The sacrifice that He made, shedding his own blood so that we could be made right with God, is that much more powerful because He lived on the earth just like us and can identify with everything that we live through. And his life wasn’t a walk in the park. He experienced great hardship and pain and was also tested to his very limit and this is why he is the most perfect anchor and support in times of brokenness and hardship and suffering.
In my own words ….
It’s all around us….everywhere we look. God’s mercy. If we pull ourselves back from this scripture and look at it as an ‘overall’ we can see that the themes of Mercy and Justice are perfectly woven into the story. You may remember that God gave me these two words, Mercy and Justice, on the very first day of this year, and he told me to make it my mandate to study and understand all about His mercy and justice. Well, every-time I get sidetracked and forget about this mandate, I am somehow, miraculously brought back to it. It is one of those things that just keeps coming up.
“He lived on the earth just like us and can identify with everything that we live through.” This is sentence that stands out for me the most.
Jesus lived through normal and happy and peaceful times but also lived through poverty and persecution and prison. One minute he was worshiped and adored and the next he was ridiculed and hunted down to die. He experience betrayal in the worst degree – this is worse than most of us will experience in our lifetime – and yet he still had love and compassion and mercy for us. He still went through with it all … for us. He died on that cross for us, bled out for us, so that we could be more than friends with God – so that we could become children of God. And now we can live our lives under His banner of mercy. Nothing we do can shock him or disgust him. He has seen it all.
And all it takes is for us to turn (even if just for an instant) and start walking toward him and he will run towards us with open arms. He will meet us exactly where we are at and he will walk with us through whatever we are going through, for however long it takes, until we find our freedom and peace.
So, what is Mercy??
Firstly, to truly grasp the concept of mercy, we need to acknowledge that it is integral to our understanding of God, and His relationship and interaction with man. Mercy can be described as compassion, love, forgiveness, kindness, sympathy, understanding, leniency and grace. All the qualities of God. The Hebrew term for Mercy is ‘Gods covenant loving kindness’. And that about wraps it up! Mercy is a most intrinsic part of God’s nature. In fact the word ‘Merciful’ was a sufficient description of God.
Gods mercy is our saving grace. People come into relationship with God only because He shows mercy to us.
And Gods mercy is inexhaustible, which means that we can confidently cry out to God for mercy in our any and every time of need.
Jesus Christ, is Gods most perfect expression of his Mercy. Sending his very own son to be born human, to live among us and eventually die for us so that we can be free to have a personal with Him – that is Mercy personified.