"Mercy there was great..."

Originally posted November 22, 2013
 
Hymn: “At Calvary” – William R. Newell (1868-1956)
Tune: CALVARY

This is a longer than usual hymnline:
     Mercy there was great, and grace was free.
     Pardon there was multiplied to me.
     There my burdened soul found liberty.

The “there” in these three phrases is “At Calvary,” the title of the hymn.

I am very fond of the mercy of God. I’ve said that before, and I’ll likely say it again on these posts. I may have been an adult before I realized that the words mercy and grace are interchangeable. When you grow up in Sunday School, you learn the list of words – the Christian vocabulary – but you don’t always get the meaning of each one… at least not enough to compare them with one another. It was, however, a good day when that light bulb went off.

With maturity, I began to appreciate the notion of grace and/or mercy. When it occurred to me that one cannot be a person of grace and be judgmental at the same time, it truly revolutionized my Christian life. When you grow up with an implied “us and them” mentality, judgmentalism just comes naturally. We never stood and sang together, “Let’s take the role of judge for those who disagree with us.” (That works to the ELLACOMBE tune, by the way!) But we often sang hymns about mercy and grace… like the one cited here today. To my young – dare I say “rebellious” spirit – I felt like we were not living out the message of some of our favorite hymns and gospel songs.

Whenever I’m called upon to elaborate (or devotionalize) on mercy, I quote these three phrases from the refrain of this hymn. It tells us

1) The mercy of God is huge
2) The grace of God is a free gift.*
3) The pardon (forgiveness) of God was distributed exponentially.
4) The liberating power of God unburdens… unchains.

I’ve even quoted this hymn at weddings, encouraging couples to commit to treating one another with great grace in their union.

The next time you need a lift in your day, say (or sing) this chorus over to yourself. Unless you’re just tied down in overwhelming judgementalism, it will be a total refreshment to your soul.

Or the next time you feel a hypercritical, disapproving urge coming on, start humming these truths from the hymnal; see if you don’t find them to head you more toward Christlikeness and further away from that person you might easily become.

Hear Some of Our Heroes Sing This Beautifully

* - I sometimes think this means that at the cross-event, the grace of God was loosed… set free to act as an agent of salvation and reconciliation. That’s probably a stretch, but if the phrase were “… and grace was freed,” it would make perfectly good sense. Either way, I think that IS what happened.