Is the failure keeping you awake at night a one off or maybe a persistent sin? Perhaps it is some act that you know offends God, hurts others and hurts yourself ? Perhaps it has happened and now there is nothing you can do to change that fact, if only there were time machines, with the gift of hindsight you would not have made that choice. Perhaps your tale of woe is a habitual act of sin that you have tried over and over not to repeat yet here you are again, back in that dark pit where lack of control over your own self seems to be the sum of who you are?
It’s more than just frustrating, feeling continually defeated. It is damaging and starts a spiral of discouragement, a self-fulfilling prophecy, I expect to fail again and therefore I do. My belief in the impossibility of not failing, limits my horizons to overcome. It becomes safe and comfortable not to place a higher expectation upon ourselves. Alternatively we can cling on to the failure in some warped belief that to cling to the pain of it is a just punishment for the failing, if we let it go we really aren’t that sorry.
Does this sound familiar? The good news is this is needless. That feeling of regret and sorrow is a good sign that your conscience is alive, so take heart from that, the pain is an indication your soul is in a healthy place. However we are not meant to dwell here indefinitely. What we do with that regret and remorse however is what maintains that level of health. Regret and remorse held onto as a self-serving punishment is leaving ourselves at the mercy of most probably the harshest of judges…ourselves.
What is Mercy? If I pick up my dictionary I am given the definition “Compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm” and this is a good place to start. However there is so much more to Gods mercy than just the choice not to punish though He could. This is akin to describing the sea as merely wet, yes it’s true but it doesn’t begin to truly touch on the fullness of all it is. Even when you have swam in the sea, immersed yourself in the “wet”, you are only just exploring the tiniest part of the vastness it contains. God’s mercy by comparison then makes all the worlds oceans look like, well, Wet. Our Lord, who created us, breathes divine life into each of us, provides for us, cares for us, isn’t some feudal king that benevolently allows us to avoid some punishment or other. This is a king who comes down into the middle of that failing, takes on the form of those who fail (yet doesn’t ever fail himself) He takes those failings and dies, painfully on a cross, He does more than help us avoid the punishment He takes the punishment on Himself.
He has every right to punish us, we are at best ungrateful and wilful children, yet He loves each of us with ferocity. He loves us to death, literally. So this mercy is a gift given to us from a God who gives us everything else and even when we perhaps doubt in His existence will forgive, heal and bless. It has taken some courage for me to even attempt to describe His Mercy, I have only explored a small coves worth, and stood on its shore, straining to find its end, I could only see as far as the horizon, not its limits, no, but to the limit of my personal view.
How is God Merciful?
St Paul tells us in Romans that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. As we discussed in the last chapter, we are not saved because of our monthly donations to charity, or because we visit the sick, we are saved because of Gods mercy. His benevolence. His goodness. Mercy is not getting what we deserve – judgement, it’s getting what God wishes to give us- heaven in eternity with Him. He doesn’t just withhold punishment but goes on to richly bless us.
Now for God to be righteous and just, there has to be a payment for the wrong. Sin, even unintentional sin causes pain, somewhere to someone. There is no such thing as a victimless crime. We aren’t always spared from the result of that sin, we only need to look at the suffering that goes on every day in the world, the consequences of our own or someone others choice infect the world. We are spared the punishment of the part we have played in choosing to do it. So if God is just (and He is) then who serves the sentence for all the wrongdoing? Well yes, God himself in the person of Jesus Christ comes and pays the price, though sinless He takes those failings, suffers and dies on a cross, humiliated, abandoned by most of his friends. Stripped, whipped and tortured, in His humanity to pay the price that could only be fully redeemed by his divinity.
The whole of scripture is the story leading to this pivotal moment when God pays our debt, so that we may be with him for eternity if we so choose. When Christ rasps “it is finished” from the Cross, it is because the price for righteousness has been paid. Every sin ever committed and every sin that will be, has been paid for in full. And if this ever seems a little over stated, or becomes one of those “Jesus loves you” sticker slogans that is banal and irrelevant. Stop for a moment and think of the seconds on the cross that He was there just for you. The moments that God took your personal sin, and this is personal, and died so you could be with Him. It should take your breath.
If you find yourself right now thinking, this writer doesn’t know what I’ve done, then no, you are absolutely right I don’t, Our God, however has seen every moment of it, He knows it, He sees it, and He waits for you to bring it to Him fully trusting in this ocean of Mercy. What could possibly be a bigger failure than refusing that redemption and healing, bought at such a high price? He has bought this for you whether you choose to collect it or not. Such a costly gift needs to be received by the intended recipient, the gift needs to be opened and that is our part. Grace does not come with a return label, it has been purchased and will sit in the divine deposit box until you are ready to claim it. We give Our Lord the greatest Glory when we seek His forgiveness, we trust in this his goodness and allow him to bless us.
Carrying guilt
Imagine being given a priceless gift something so beautiful the world should see it, and never using it, just putting it back into the box it came in. This is what we do when we refuse to accept the Mercy, or fail to trust in His Mercy. When we don’t get up and move on, having confessed our failings we are not living the gift we sought in our confession. Carrying the guilt is a hazardous situation. We have many great sinners to choose from in the bible but the greatest example of the right and wrong way to respond (in my humble opinion) has to be St Peter, and the non-canonised Judas. This in itself tells us a tale. Peter, who loves Christ deeply is still fully and fallibly human, and I for one love him for that, If God can make a hero out of Peter then he can surely make one out of us. Peter loved Jesus so deeply he was prepared to die for him or so he professed. Yet when the pressure was heating up, Peter denies, he even knows Christ, not once but three times. The first of these is to a servant girl, not a sword wielding Roman Centurion or similarly scary oppressor but a little girl of no status. Peter is notably absent from the foot of the cross whilst Christ is dying. No one knows Peters shame except Jesus. I think Peter cannot bring himself to meet Christ in the eye. So what does Peter do with his shame and regret? He gets up and carries on. He is still hanging out with the other disciples, they have returned to the familiar, back to fishing. Then he comes face to face with Jesus on the beach.
15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’
Peter falls onto the mercy Jesus is offering, and by this he is set free and importantly is able to go on and serve in a heroic and incredible way. Can you picture that intimacy between Jesus and Peter in these moments. The ache Peter would have felt for his betrayal and the ache of Christ to embrace one of his closest friends in forgiveness, collide. Peter does go on to die for his love of Christ, in a way that’s only possible when it has been lived for him. The story being played out at the same time as Peters betrayal is of course the one of Judas. Judas sells Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. He leaves the last supper early, and Jesus knowing what he was about to do does not stop him. When Judas arrives at the garden of Gethsemane he identifies Jesus to the guards by a kiss. A kiss that would of wounded far deeper than the scourging and humiliation that was soon to take place. Judas is not present at the foot of the cross either. He too felt unbearable shame and guilt for his betrayal. He gives back the silver, it now seems worthless. Unlike Peter, Judas does not seek forgiveness. Judas gives up, I am sure he felt there could not be enough mercy in Gods heart to cover this heinous act. But there was. If he had just trusted Jesus enough. Just believed in what he had been taught and seen.
Just. trusted. In. that. Mercy.
There would be a feast day for him in our calendars, a day when we could all have further celebrated the Mercy of God. We are all now in a blessed and privileged position to do that. We can know God and fall into the arms of that mercy the moment we fail.
How does failure help us to know Gods Mercy?
How better to know of it than to be constantly in need of it? To know of it and rely on it is yet another gift that comes from failure. If we never fail we would never need the mercy that pours out from the side of Christ on the cross. It would have been unnecessary but as it is, we all fail and we all have a great need of it. When we know of His mercy we know we can begin again after every fall. We are not held in a place of failure but lifted up and seated back at the banquet table. We learn definitely, and through a continued experience of life that holiness isn’t about avoiding failure. Holiness is about taking each and every failure and throwing it into that ocean of Mercy. With each failure we strengthen our pitching arm, turning quicker and more assuredly with every fail into his forgiveness. We learn of his unlimited patience. What else can we bring the King of kings except this gift of failure and our desire to be forgiven for it? Bringing him glory by availing ourselves of all he did on the cross. Another gift we receive from coming to know Gods mercy is we ourselves are taught how we in turn should show Mercy to others. When we are filled with gratitude for what we have received should that feeling of relief not then be shared to those who have offended you? It’s true it isn’t always the case that the mercy gets spread around as it should, but unforgiveness or grudge holding is as toxic as any poison you could name. We will never match Gods mercy by our own efforts but we can ask Him to grace us with His. I think on human terms it is almost impossible to forgive some of the terrible acts we subject each other to without a huge outpouring of grace. My own experience tells me that He acts swiftly when my desire is to leave the anger with Him and pick up a deep love and understanding for the offender. I then have to be mindful not to keep picking up what I have laid at His feet. Sometimes it’s too delicious to roll around in the self-righteous position that you are in fact the victim this time. It’s ugly, it is really ugly but we are drawn to that place like a spaniel to fox poo aren’t we?
Pray. Pray hard. We ask the Lord daily to forgive us as we forgive those that trespass against us. He knows we can’t do that unaided, remember His Mercy is vast. He wants so desperately to heal us from the chains of unforgiveness. All this from our failure. Imagine what He can do when we aren’t sinning or failing!….maybe not as much, who knows?
