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And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. —Exodus 34:6 (KJV)

As we noted earlier, God’s appearance to Moses at Sinai when He gave him the Ten Commandments serves as a great introduction to the study of His attributes. There the Lord, in response to Moses’ plea, "Show me your glory," said He would pass by Moses and "proclaim His name" or declare His nature or attributes to him. And the first three things mentioned are the ones we want to deal with in this study—His mercy, grace, and longsuffering. The three being linked together there makes it natural to do the same in our study.

That the revelation of God’s attributes to Moses at Sinai is fundamental to the Biblical and Hebrew view of God is evident from the fact that this "proclamation" made as He passed before Moses is referred to in some form so often in Scripture (no less than eight times):

And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying, The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression.... (Numbers 14:17-18, KJV)

But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. (Psalm 103:8, KJV)

The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. (Psalm 145:8, KJV)

Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Nehemiah 9:17, KJV)

Turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Joel 2:13, KJV)

Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. (Jonah 4:2, KJV)

The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power....(Nahum 1:3, KJV)

As with God’s goodness, His mercy, grace, and longsuffering are simply aspects of His love. It is by these that we come to understand better what love is, and it is especially due to these three attributes that we owe our salvation. Although God is a just and holy God who is angry with and punishes sin, His mercy, grace, and longsuffering predispose Him to put off or forebear this punishment, hold His anger in check, and desire, instead of the death of the sinner, his forgiveness upon repentance. This is so often declared and exhibited in the Bible that it is axiomatic:

For the Lord our God is a merciful God. (Deuteronomy 4:31, NIV)

For if ye turn again unto the Lord, your brethren and your children shall find compassion before them that lead them captive, so that they shall come again into this land: for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if ye return unto him. (2 Chronicles 30:9, KJV)

Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. (Psalms 25:6, NIV)

We see the mercy of God exhibited so wonderfully throughout the history of the Jewish nation. It is true that He judged and punished them severely from time to time as they forsook Him for other gods, but His mercy and longsuffering as well as His faithfulness to His covenant promises kept Him from abandoning them altogether. Time and again He showed them mercy and forgave them their sins:

But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God. (Nehemiah 9:31, NIV)

..."‘Return, faithless Israel,Â’ declares the Lord, ‘I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful,Â’ declares the Lord. ‘I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt—you have rebelled against the Lord your God, you have scattered your favors to foreign gods under every spreading tree, and have not obeyed me,Â’" declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 3:12,13, NIV)

Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. (Micah 7:18,19, NIV)

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (or TNIDNTT) to which we have referred often in our studies, says in its article on "Mercy":

This article brings together three different Gk. words, eleos, oiktirmos and splanchna. In their original use eleos refers to the feeling of pity, oiktirmos, and especially its root oiktos, to the exclamation of pity at the sight of another’s ill-fortune, and splanchna to the seat of the emotions, the inward parts or what today would be called the heart....[In the classical Greek period] eleos....is "the emotion roused by contact with an affliction which comes undeservedly on someone else" (R. Bultmann, TDNT II 477)....[E]leos and its derivatives are found nearly 400 times in the LXX....[and] 78 times in the NT, mainly in the Pauline writings (26 times) and Luke-Acts (20 times...). It is found 15 times in Matthew....The verb marks that breaking in of the divine mercy into the reality of human misery which took place in the person of Jesus of Nazareth with his work of freeing and healing which demonstrated his authority. Jesus answered the cry of help "Have mercy on me" (Mk.10:47,48; Matt.9:27; 15:22; 17:15; Lk.17:13) from the sick or the relatives of the demon-possessed (Matt.15:22; 17:15) by healing....(TNIDNTT, Colin Brown, ed.; Zondervan:Grand Rapids,MI; 1976, Vol.2,pp.593-595)

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (or ISBE), to which, again, we have often referred as well, says:

The Hebrew raham (cf. rehem, "bowels") referred to the seat of compassion....It was used for the deep, tender feeling of compassion that was awakened by the trouble, weakness, suffering, or vulnerability of another in need of help. It was particularly applicable in cases where a familial tie would arouse compassion for one in a pitiable condition....The OT affirms that mercy was a basic characteristic of God....Thus the OT is rich in words that express the concept of mercy....The mercy of God is integrally related to His steadfast love (hesed), the loving demonstration of God’s covenant faithfulness to His chosen people. The Psalms frequently link God’s mercy and steadfast love....Because of God’s mercy toward the helpless and His forbearance of human frailty, sinners were able to appeal to Him in hope. Daniel appealed to God on the ground of His great mercy, not on the ground of his own righteousness (Dan.9:8)....God’s mercy is the foundation of mankind’s salvation. (ISBE, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, gen. ed.; Eerdmans: Grand Rapids,MI; Vol.3, pp.322,323)

God’s love for mankind is expressed as mercy and grace. Without them there would be no salvation. It is true that God has provided salvation by sending His Son to die on the cross; but what motivated Him to do this?

Nothing but mercy. Therefore, we owe our salvation to God’s mercy:

But 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—it is by grace you have been saved. (Ephesians 2:4,5, NIV)

He saved us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5, NIV)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3, NIV)

It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. (Romans 9:16, NIV)

God had pity on us in our sins. Although we deserved death and destruction, He was moved by mercy to bring us salvation instead. The prayer of the tax collector should be the prayer of every sinner today, and the testimony of every saint should be, not the boast of the Pharisee, but that God heard that prayer:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." (Luke 18:9-14, NIV)

Often the question arises when discussing mercy and grace, "What is the difference between the two?" It is obvious from our texts above that they are quite similar, even synonymous in meaning, interchangeable; yet in some respects distinct. Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary says mercy is "the aspect of God’s love that causes Him to help the miserable, just as grace is the aspect of His love that moves Him to forgive the guilty." Mercy carries with it more of the idea of pity on someone in misery; grace, undeserved favor. However, it is apparent from our texts above that mercy also includes the idea of underserved help—"not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy," etc. (Titus 3:5); "in mercy made us alive...by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:4,5).

Too often God’s mercy is either presumed upon or taken for granted. In that case, we would do well to be reminded that God is also a holy God who hates and punishes sin. He is a God of wrath as well as a God of love.

Mercy is an attribute of God which we are called upon to emulate. In the light of our union with God in Christ, it is an attribute communicated to us for us to express in our lives:

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5:7, NIV)

Because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:13, NIV)

Jesus’ parable of the unforgiving servant is an excellent illustration of James 2:13 and is no doubt what James had in mind when he wrote what he did:

"Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,Â’ he said, ‘I canceled 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?Â’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." (Matthew 18:32-35, NIV)

1 Peter 5:10 calls God "the God of all grace:"

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. (NIV)

The ISBE has an excellent article on "grace," from which we will quote at length, selecting some of the highlights:

The Greek term is charis, a common word in secular Greek....We have...three uses of charis in classical Greek: (1) a charming quality that wins favor, (2) a quality of benevolence that gives favor to inferiors, and (3) a response of thankfulness for the favor given....It may be added that in later Greek charis also had the sense of force or power. It could be a spell, or demonic force, affecting human life with supernatural influences. In Euripides, it was a power from the underworld that could convey the virtues of a dead hero to his living family or followers. This sense, too, though set in a new context, was used in the NT: grace became the power of God to enable Christians to live the new life in Christ...(ISBE, op.cit., p.548).

I appreciate the author’s point here. Today too often discussions of grace leave the unmistakable impression that grace means God will continue to show us favor even while we continue in sin. But grace also supplies us the power to live a holy life.

The LXX used charis to translate Heb. hen....[But] the translation of hen by charis manifests little sense of the central NT meaning of "grace." The verb form hanan comes closer to the NT notion of charis. Hanan usually denotes a superior’s responding generously to inferiors....The verb refers to a benevolent attitude that is expressed in concrete action...."Grace" is often paired with "mercy" (hesed) [Ex.33:19; 34:6; Josh.2:13; 2 Chron.30:9; Neh.9:17; Ps.11:4; 86:15; 103:8; Jonah 4:2]....

The word "grace" was adopted by Paul to declare the ways of God with sinful people. He used it to point to the unique and unmerited acts of God to save sinners through Jesus Christ. Paul was not the only NT writer to use "grace" to indicate that salvation was wholly God’s work. And Paul sometimes used the word in its older, weaker sense. But it is nonetheless true that in Paul’s letters, as nowhere else, "grace" points to the several dimensions of God’s loving act to bring salvation freely to those who cannot merit it. The sheer number of times Paul uses the word suggests that it is integral to his theology of salvation. He uses it twice as often as all other NT writers. Only Luke, among the Synoptists, uses it at all. 1 John and 3 John do not use it, Jude and Revelation hardly ever. It occurs 51 times in books other than the Pauline letters, 27 of which are in Acts and 1 Peter. We find it 101 times in Paul....In all that he writes about the foundation and creation of the Christian life, he stresses one thing above all: that what comes to needy man comes as a gift from God. That it comes freely, as a result of God’s decision and God’s actions, is what is meant when Paul says it is of grace....

The word "grace" conveys the truth that God is free in giving salvation to sinners through Christ. To say that grace is free is [useless repetition] since grace by definition indicates freedom. It indicates God’s freedom. God is free in giving salvation because He is not obligated, nor constrained by some inner necessity or the moral merits of people who have earned salvation. Neither an inner necessity nor an external obligation accounts for what God has done for sinners. Only grace accounts for it; that is, only His free, loving will accounts for it. This is what is meant by the freedom of grace. Strictly speaking, no entity is given the label "grace"; therefore, grace is not a gift. Salvation is a gift; and Paul indicates its givenness by the word "grace."...[G]race is not an entity which God and Christ dispense. Nor is it a moral property of the divine nature. It is a word that epitomizes the freeness of God’s saving act on our behalf. (ISBE, op.cit., pp.548,549)

This last point is an important one. By entity is meant "something that has a real and separate existence either actually or in the mind; anything real in itself" (Thorndike Barnhart High School Dictionary, Fourth Edition). So, although we are treating it as such, grace, unlike mercy is not an attribute strictly speaking. Grace simply characterizes the freeness of God’s action in giving that which He gives. And here we find a major difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. In Roman Catholic thought, grace is an entity and is awarded on the basis of merit, earned by works. And, contrary to Protestant thought, grace is always plural—a grace for this and a grace for that, always awarded by God on the grounds of merit in the receiver obtained by exercises of piety. This entirely destroys the very concept of grace, which is unmerited favor. The ISBE continues:

The act of justification demonstrates the freedom of grace. For it is in justifying sinners, rather than morally meritorious saints, that God’s freedom to be gracious becomes abundantly apparent. Both Jews and Gentiles, none of whom could claim a merited favor with God as a right, are in fact justified through the free exercise of His grace (Rom.3:23,24)....The fact that it is by grace excludes the possibility of boasting or self-glory; the only proper boasting (1 Cor.1:29,31) or glorying (Gal.6:14) is in the Lord and His cross....

The proclamation that people are justified by grace aroused the religious wrath of Judaism. To declare that God justified sinners seemed to make God a party to unrighteousness. For only just people may rightly be declared just; and just people are those who fulfill the law....Faith and grace together form an antithesis to claims of merit. Faith excludes the claim of merit (Rom.3:21-31) for the same reason that grace excludes it (Rom.6:14; Gal.2:21; 5:4).... (Ibid., pp.549,550)

It is always good for us to reaffirm these blessed truths. The abuse of the concept of salvation and justification by grace through faith by the multitudes today who insist that God’s grace means we are still saved even though we may go on in sin, even gross sin, pushes some too far in the opposite direction. They align themselves with the ancient Jews and their reaction to Gospel grace. They actually come to deny justification by faith altogether by redefining righteousness (in the since of justification) as holiness of life, faith as obedience, and grace as nothing more than God’s assistance in our holiness and obedience. They wind up at the same place the Jews were in their thinking—God justifies the holy and obedient. But it is unnecessary to discard justification by faith in the battle against antinomianism. All that is necessary is to maintain what Scripture, including Paul’s teaching, does concerning grace. Grace brings a justification and salvation by faith that alters one’s behavior and gives one the power to live above sin. The article continues:

Grace is also the contradiction of sin in personal life. Some people interpreted the presence of grace as an invitation to sin; since God’s free justification of sinners was not conditioned on moral merit, sin could not be a condition for rejection or condemnation. The more one sinned, in fact, the more the grace of acceptance abounded (Rom.6:1,15). Paul’s answer is that it is grace that releases us from the dominion of sin; the law provokes people to sin and grace releases them from the necessity of sin (Rom.6:14). To live in sin and in grace at the same time is unthinkable; it is to be loyal to two conflicting kingdoms....

Grace is a renewing power as well as the free gift of pardon and acceptance. Grace present within the life of the Church is shown in the Church’s overflow of generosity toward others (2 Cor.8). In Titus 2:11-13, Paul speaks of grace disciplining life unto sobriety, righteousness, and piety. Paul seems to be speaking of the power of grace within him when he says that what he is, he is by the grace of God: he works very hard, he says, but then is quick to credit his own achievements to "the grace of God which is in me" (1 Cor.15:10). The promise that grace would be sufficient for him in his personal distress is probably also a promise of inner power through grace (2 Cor.12:9). Grace is sometimes personified. Paul speaks of grace reigning through righteousness (Rom.5:19-21). It should be noted that he speaks of sin in the same way....Grace and Spirit, then, stand for the dominant power of the new age. To live by grace, by the Spirit, and by Jesus Christ, come to one and the same thing; but when grace is mentioned, Paul probably wants to stress the surprising generosity in which the gift of power is given....

No clear distinction is made between grace and love. Agape (love) stresses God’s personal disposition toward unworthy creatures, while grace stresses His freedom from obligation in saving them....(ISBE, op.cit., pp.550-551)

We should never tire of attributing our salvation or any other good that we receive or success we enjoy to the grace of God alone:

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-24, NIV)

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace.... (Romans 4:16, NIV)

Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:2, NIV)

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17, NIV)

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us....(Romans 12:6, NIV)

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.(1 Corinthians 15:10, NIV)

Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, in the holiness and sincerity that are from God. We have done so not according to worldly wisdom but according to God's grace. (2 Corinthians 1:12, NIV)

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace. (Ephesians 1:7,NIV)

But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. (Ephesians 4:7,NIV)

Hebrews 4:16 welcomes us to the throne of God, which, we are assured, is a "throne of grace" where we may obtain the mercy and grace we need:

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. (NIV)

No discussion of grace would be complete without the warning of Jude, so needful in our day, that we take care not to "change the grace of our God into a license for immorality" (verse 4). And this reminder from Charles Hayden Sturgeon:

"Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger" [Psalms 21:9, KJV]. The expression, "the time of thine anger," reminds us that as now is the time of his grace, so there will be a set time for his wrath....There is a day of vengeance of our God; let those who despise the day of grace remember this day of wrath. (The Treasury of David; Funk and Wagnalls,NY; 2nd edition, 1882; Vol.1, p.355)

The Greek word for the adjective "longsuffering" is makrothumos; the noun is makrothumia. William Barclay says,

In English we speak of a person having a short temper, or of him being short-tempered. We do not use what should be the corresponding phrase a long temper, nor do we speak about people being long-tempered. If we did these words would precisely translate makrothumos, for makros means long and thumos means temper....Trench says that it describes "a long holding out of the mind, before it gives room to action or to passion." T.K. Abbott says that makrothumia is "the self-restraint which does not hastily retaliate a wrong." Plummer says that it is "the forebearance which endures injuries and evils without being provoked to anger or revenge."...But the greatest fact about the word is that it describes the character of God himself...."Count the forebearance of the Lord as salvation" (II Peter 3:15)....The background against which II Peter is written is the background of disappointment and disillusionment at the slowness of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. And the writer’s point is that this slowness is not dilatoriness; it is patience. It is the opportunity for men to repent and to believe the gospel, to turn their sinfulness into holiness, to make their unpreparedness prepared. Behind it there is the thought that God would have been quite justified in blasting the world out of existence, that, if he had been a man, he would long since have done so, but in his patience he waits to give men the opportunity to accept salvation....Men must never presume on the kindness and the forbearance of God, for that kindness is not meant to be an opportunity to sin, but is rather an invitation to repentance (Rom.2:4)....As in the thought of the OT, that very patience of God may be used by man for his own destruction. God’s patience with Israel can be read in the light of allowing the wayward nation to go its own way until its final rejection had to happen (Rom.9:22).... (William Barclay, Flesh and Spirit; Baker Books: Grand Rapids,MI; 1976, pp.91-95)

TNIDNTT says of the these Greek words for "longsuffering:"

The...Heb. phrase ‘erek ‘appayim (slow to anger) is often rendered by makrothymia or makrothymos (e.g. Num.14:18; Ps.86:15; 103:8; Joel 2:13; Nah.1:3). These words are, therefore, inseparably linked with the idea of restrained wrath, forbearance being exercised for a limited period only. The Israelites made frequent reference to God’s forbearance (e.g. Exod.34:6) and even appealed to it when conscious of guilt. They knew that, being a God of forebearance, Yahweh was ready to bestow grace upon his people. But at the same time the godly Israelite was aware of the tension between grace and wrath: it is possible to exhaust God’s patience and cause his anger to burst forth (Ps.7:12ff.)....The meaning of makrothymia tended to degenerate into mere leniency, a tendency opposed by the rabbis in their discussions of the word. They considered that God’s purpose in exercising forebearance was to lead men to amendment and repentance. (TNIDNTT, op.cit., Vol.2, pp.768,769)

Each of these great attributes of God’s love have always been the object of abuse. His mercy is presumed upon, His grace taken for granted, and His longsuffering counted "slackness" or lenient indulgence. And yet each is a sparkling gem in the Divine crown. We owe our salvation to His mercy, for had He not pitied us in our sins and misery, He would never have stooped down to rescue us through His Son or hearkened to our cry. We owe our salvation to His grace; nothing we could do could ever merit the favor He has shown us. In fact, we merited only damnation, but He has extended to us His grace. We owe our salvation to His longsuffering, for without it, He would have destroyed this rebellious world long ago. Still today He waits, desiring not the death of sinners but their repentance so that He might show them the thing in which He delights most—mercy.

"Father of mercies"! "God of all grace"! Long-tempered; slow to anger! Praise God for His mercy, grace, and longsuffering!

Leon Stump, Pastor of Victory Christian Center

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