Let's take mercy first. According to the saying above, "Mercy is when you don't get what you deserve." To use a real world example, and playing by the rules of that saying, if I robbed a bank, mercy would be the judge letting me go because he chose to exercise mercy. At what cost, though, did his mercy come? You see, the instant his mercy was shown to me, his justice was invalidated. Judges can be just, and judges can be merciful, but it is impossible for a judge to be just and merciful at the same time.
What about grace? Again, grace has been defined as, "When you do get what you don't deserve." Let's say that I walked out to the mailbox today, and I found a letter addressed to me inside. When I opened the letter, a check fluttered out for $100,000 with a note attached to it. The note read, "Just wanted to pass this gift along to you. Use it well." First off, #MayItBeso. Second off, surely that is grace! A free gift, completely undeserved! At what cost, though, did this mysterious benefactor's grace come? The instant his grace was shown to me by giving me the check (and once I cashed it), his grace stopped being free. As they say, there are no free lunches.
When sharing the Gospel with Muslims, you often run into the issue of the tension between God's mercy and justice. They believe that God's mercy overwhelms his justice, and that God can, in a manner of speaking, "stop" being just for a moment and let sinners into heaven. Moreover, they believe that God can actually "stop" being just for a moment and send a righteous person to hell. Christians, on the other hand, believe in the unity of our God. In other words, God is not a person who sometimes acts just, sometimes mercifully, sometimes in wrath, etc., etc. Nor do we believe that God is a pile of attributes, each trying to grab the steering wheel from one another. All that our God does, all of his attributes do. Where does that leave us when it comes to mercy and grace, however?
Let's return one more time to my example of the unjustly merciful judge. How can that example be made right? Simple. If I'm on my knees before the judge pleading for mercy, and he tells me this: You may go. This innocent man has agreed to take your place. He will serve your sentence, in it's entirety on your behalf." That is true mercy, and everything else is just a mushy counterfeit of the real deal. With that in mind, let's amend the definition of mercy to the following: Mercy is when you don't get what you do deserve because someone else took it for you.
What about grace? Obviously, the instant I cash that check, that grace is no longer free. What is free to me cost my benefactor $100,000. Free grace is an illusion. Or, to put it another way...
"Then Aslan stopped, and the children looked into the stream. And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass. His long white beard swayed in it like water-weed. And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. And Jill noticed that Eustace looked neither like a child crying, nor like a boy crying and wanting to hide it, but like a grown-up crying. At least, that is the nearest she could get to it; but really, as she said, people don't seem to have any particular ages on that mountain.
"Son of Adam," said Aslan, "go into that thicket and pluck the thorn that you will find there, and bring it to me."
Eustace obeyed. The thorn was a foot long and sharp as a rapier.
"Drive it into my paw, son of Adam," said Aslan, holding up his right fore-paw and spreading out the great pad towards Eustace.
"Must I?" said Eustace.
"Yes," said Aslan.
Then Eustace set his teeth and drove the thorn into the Lion's pad. And there came out a great drop of blood, redder than all redness that you have ever seen or imagined. And it splashed into the stream over the dead body of the King. At the same moment the doleful music stopped. And the dead King began to be changed. His white beard turned to grey, and from grey to yellow, and got shorter and vanished altogether; and his sunken cheeks grew round and fresh, and the wrinkles were smoothed, and his eyes opened, and his eyes and lips both laughed, and suddenly he leaped up and stood before them."-C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
The gift of life that King Caspian received was not free at all. The cost was the blood of the lion. It cost him dearly. How much more did the grace we received cost our Heavenly Father? Peter put it this way, "18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect," 1 Peter 1:18-19. With that in mind, might we amend the meaning of grace to this: Grace is when you get what you don't deserve...because someone else paid for it.
Grace and mercy are marvelous gifts to us, but these gifts did not come at no cost. The next time you hear someone talking about mercy and grace, take a moment and give thanks to the one who provided those precious gifts at the greatest expense.
