Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
We often look for reasons to be merciful. If you keep looking for a reason to give mercy, you will find that you’ll never be merciful. Mercy does not need a reason to be given, otherwise it would no longer be mercy. Mercy does not rely on conditional reasoning in order to exist. As we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), so we are merciful because He was first merciful toward us. When man first rebelled, God could have left us alone and spiral into chaos and into our inevitable doom, or He could have destroyed us entirely. Instead, He promised redemption through the woman’s seed without reason (Genesis 3:15)—He was extremely merciful. As a true disciple of Christ shows mercy, he receives mercy in return. Luther said the following on this beatitude, “This is now one side of mercifulness, that one takes pleasure in forgiving sinners and those at fault. The other is to be beneficent also towards those who are externally in need or require help, which we call works of mercy, from Matt. 25:35” (55).
Bibliography
Luther, Martin. Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, translated by Charles A. Hay. Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1892.
Source used from Logos 7 Software.
The Lutheran Column 