The Lord's mercy can provoke repentance

The mixture of grace and holiness, the mixture of justice and mercy, the combination in one personality with clarity and integrity is a very difficult mixture to sustain. We are generally going to lean in one direction or another.

That is why there are ministries today that are characterized or by a rigidity and a destructive and harmful legalism, where everything is commandment and holiness, and obligations or ministries where we see the opposite, where everything is grace, patience, God loves you, don't worry, He is with you, He is to bless you, to help you, and the part of the Christian's responsibility to live a life of holiness and integrity before a holy God is not mentioned much.

So we have that duality and that artificial dichotomy of being people of excessive grace and then we fall into debauchery, or we are people of holiness, let's say unbalanced, and then we are people who border on Phariseeism, legalism, spiritual sterility.

While I see that in Scripture over and over again, God calls us to a position of perfect balance with the help of the Holy Spirit, knowing that we will always be establishing a balance on one side or the other every day and that there will be situations that will sometimes require a little more clarity and integrity, and holiness from us when communicating with someone who is in sin or that will sometimes require patience, goodness, mercy and simply hope that over time the person will become sanctified and purifying itself.

And we see that continually in the Ministry of Jesus Christ. We have already spoken on other occasions about how God treated the adulterous woman, with such delicacy and mercy and how he treated these men with severity who wanted to stone her, and who were so focused on her sin that they did not look at their own faults, but that he also treated her with tremendous truthfulness, integrity, and clarity about her sin. We also saw the case of David how through his sin God tried and punished him but also had great mercy on him.

Another character in Scripture that helps us to see this mixture of these two qualities in Jesus' character is the person of Zacchaeus, that memorable character in Scripture, where we see that Zacchaeus, a long-time sinner of great sin to sin against God and against His people; He abused his governmental position, his rights as an officer in the Roman army to collect taxes on behalf of Rome, and he was well aware of his sin, but he did not feel qualified to enter the Presence of God.

And that is why when Jesus passes through the city, the only thing he aspires to is to look at him from above and see something from the tree where he climbed, to see some of that glory and that goodness of this very special man. But we see that the Lord Jesus Christ knew the heart of Zacchaeus and knew that in him these two natures were fighting, a sinful and greedy and exploitative nature, but on the other hand also a heart that was aware of its sin and wanted redemption, but did not know how to begin the arduous process of perfection and sanctification of your life.

So the Lord understanding this, as He understands in passing our own struggle between those two natures, he turns to Zacchaeus when he passes in front of him and we know the famous Word of Jesus: "Zacchaeus hurry up, come down because today it is necessary that I pose in your house." The Lord sees in this soul a great potential and then he concentrates on that, invites Zacchaeus to descend from the tree and He invites himself to his house that same day to eat with him and have intimacy, and friendship with him.

How wonderful isn't it? that goodness of the Lord. Notice that the Lord does not say to Zacchaeus first: Zacchaeus you have to repent, you have to straighten your paths and you have to return the money you have stolen, but first he sees that repentance of him and he invites himself to his house. And what does the Bible say?

When they were sitting in Zacchaeus' house and Zacchaeus invites his other friends, and we see here something about the importance of in Evangelism, using that nice and pleasant, happy, and positive posture of the Gospel to attract people to the Gospel. , and then, then, we can give them the call to the other, more serious and demanding things of the Christian life.

But it says that: Zacchaeus invited his friends and there was Jesus with His disciples but there was a group of uraña and demanding people, the Pharisees who looked with displeasure at this gesture of Jesus Christ and who said: "This man has come to pose with a man sinner. Everyone murmured about Him. "

But at one point Zacchaeus, touched by the mercy of Jesus Christ, stands up, and we know the story, he recognizes his sin and says: I am going to take half of my goods and I am going to give it to the poor, and not only that but if I have stolen from someone and have defrauded them in some way, I want to give them back four times what I stole from them.

Then the same mercy of the Lord and His sympathy causes repentance and rectification of behavior in Zacchaeus' life and we have to use that same type of approach with people who offend us, with people who sin; whether they are our children, they are people of our Congregation, they are brothers of the Church, we always have to let mercy triumph over judgment because in the long run that is what convinces people and makes them reach the ways of the Lord.

If we are first showing you the serious, severe, demanding side of the Word we will never have effective churches in Evangelism. Otherwise if we show people a sympathetic face and a positive posture while also maintaining holiness as an exemplary and necessary value in the Christian life, we will be people who can attract many to the knowledge of Jesus and produce people around us who are healthy and happy, because they know they have a merciful God. God bless you.