It is comforting to us that God is described by the warm fuzzy words of gracious and compassionate. This daily devotional looks at how grace is the foundation for compassion.
Nuggets
- All of the warm fuzzy words are attributes of God.
- The Plan of Salvation was given because of God’s grace.
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Devotions in the Finding Our Center series
I am running into problems right off the bat with this devotion. When I looked up the attributes, it said gracious and compassionate. The verses associated with it says gracious and merciful.
Merciful was on tap for the next devotion. I think we will be okay, though, because we are looking at different verses.
So, we are going to jump in and say mercy and compassion are synonymous for this discussion.
The front is still going through my head — not migraine strength anymore, but still there. I have a feeling we will be doing a lot of quotes today because my words aren’t wanting to come out my fingers.
Let's Put It into Context #1
Here is a running list of what we’ve discussed previously.
Let's Put It into Context #2
We haven’t defined compassion in our devotions. It doesn’t really look like it is going to happen now, does it?
Grace is a free and unmerited gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ that enables salvation and spiritual healing to believers by the work of the Holy Spirit.
God’s mercy is an act of sovereign will that produces an unexpected response from God as He responds in love to our needs.
All the Warm Fuzzy Word
“The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord — the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth” (Ex. 34: 6 CSB)
All of the warm fuzzy words are attributes of God.
When we think of a proclamation, we think of a formal, cut and dry presentation. This wasn’t that.
Yes, God was talking about His moral nature. The discussion was effused with His love and mercy. Remember, in the last devotion, we said that love was the foundation.
I like how Bevan described the first quality with all the warm fuzzy words. He wrote, “By the first quality we understand pitifulness, a tenderness towards the weak and helpless, with an added sense of gentleness and forgiveness towards those that are not only weak but wicked, sinful as well as sad.”
Resource
The pity jumped out at me first. When we have tenderness/compassion, we need the sympathetic aspect.
Sympathetic, however, was the adjective to the word sorrow. Pitiful, weak, helpless, wicked, sinful, and sad all fuel the feelings of sorrow.
I thought Bevan did a good job pulling out the gamut. Wicked and sinful are synonymous, but weak and sad are great diverse concepts to illustrate compassion.
Resource
They all run smack dab into God’s mercy. Spencer had an interesting definition of mercy. He wrote, “Mercy is the intervention of gratuitous goodness.”
Resource
I like the goodness at the end. That means God is merciful because of His inherent nature.
I think we could substitute compassion there. God’s nature is love, which He shows through His compassion. The compassion pulls in the pity again.
God wants us to show compassion. In some instances, compassion can be a precursor to love.
If goodness is the feeling, mercy is the act. Or maybe it is the springboard.
See, this is why I think mercy and compassion are two different things. Spencer wrote, “God has trusted His world to demonstrate His other attributes, but not to demonstrate His mercy.”
Resource
Listen to what Cross said. He wrote, “Grace is the twin-sister of mercy — gratuitous favour, unmerited bounty, benefit bestowed where there is no claim, blessing communicated without worthiness in the recipient.” More warm fuzzes.
Resource
“… compassionate and gracious … faithful love and truth” (Ex. 34: 6 CSB). “… pitifulness, a tenderness … gentleness and forgiveness …” Those are some real warm fuzzy words.
Let’s look at it this way. Gracious, faithful, love, truth, and forgiveness are attributes of God. So is compassion if we are saying it is synonymous with mercy. Gentleness is a fruit of the spirit.
God tells us about Himself by telling us about Himself. It is all so interconnected together.
Grace Initiated the Plan of Salvation
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3: 23-24 CSB)
The Plan of Salvation was given because of God’s grace.
Before the creation of the world, God knew we were going to disobey Him. He didn’t want that to be the circumstances for eternity.
To rectify that, God devised the Plan of Salvation. God, the Creator of the universe, is our Father Who wants to have a relationship with His people. God Sent His Son Jesus to be the Redeemer of mankind.
Adam and Eve committed the original sin because they disobeyed God. That let sin into the world.
Glossary
That necessitated the Plan of Salvation. Jesus was born of a virgin, making Him 100% God and 100% man. He gave His life on the cross for us so that His blood could pay the price for our sins. Because of God’s great might and power, He rose from the grave, conquering death and paying the price for our sins.
Through His actions, Jesus justified us. There was nothing we could do for ourselves.
It is only by God’s grace that we gain salvation.
• Salvation is the gift of life through the deliverance from evil and the consequences of sins to replace them with good and eternal life.
• The consequences of sin are spiritual death and physical separation from God.
• Spiritual death is the spiritual separation from God that occurred as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s original sin. The spiritually alive are those who have ABCDed, so they are no longer separated from God.
• Eternal life is the promise of living eternally – even if we have died in this life – because we have admitted our sins, believed Jesus as Savior and Redeemer, and confessed God as Sovereign Lord.
Glossary
We have been justified by grace. Justification is the act through the merits of Christ that makes us free from sin because we are following God’s moral laws. Jesus justifies us when we put our lives in His hand.
Okay. None of the sermons I’ve seen for this verse talk about graciousness as an attribute.
Making the Connections
If grace is part of God, mercy is how He shows it. It just flows out of Him.
It is logical for these two attributes to be tied.
How Do We Apply This?
I think we need to use the grace as a foundation just like the love is. It is overarching all God does.
I think we don’t do anything — except ABCD. There is nothing we can do to earn salvation, so there isn’t anything we can do to sustain God’s grace.
It is the other part — the compassion and mercy. After we get to the love God part under the grace, we need to focus on the love others part.
Father God. Your grace is sufficient for us. We cannot add anything to it. We cannot subtract from it because it is Your holy character. Help this is the thankfulness we have for this gift of grace by increasing our compassion for others, especially their knowledge of you as Lord and Savior. Amen.
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
What do you think?
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