I was listening to a song on the way to church. I cry almost every time I hear it and my voice cracks when I try to sing along. You may be familiar with it. The chorus goes:

            “Praise the Lord, His mercy is more.

            Stronger than darkness, new every morn,

            Our sins they are many, His mercy is more.”

I’m astounded by God’s mercy, His compassion to me in Christ. I’m continually amazed that He would love me to the point of allowing His Son to die in my place, because I know how sinful I have been and can be. I know how easily I take His mercy for granted, how often I abuse His grace. My heart is full of unbelief and pride and I’m plagued by my failures to live up to what I know to be true and best.

The guilt that comes with my sin can be crushing and debilitating. My only hope is to run to Him for mercy, to fall before Him in repentance and faith and once again discover that His mercy truly is more; more that the weight of my sin, more than the guilt and the shame, more than the accusations and condemnations. In Jesus, through faith in the work He has done, my sins are forgiven, the record of the debt I owed has been nailed to the cross (Col. 2:13-14).

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that God’s mercy is that great. We’re tempted to believe some sins are too great to be forgiven. At other times, after confessing something for what feels like the millionth time, we’re prone to ask, “How could He possibly forgive me again?” The problem with that line of thinking is that it implies that our sin is more powerful than the Lord and His work and His word. Imagine telling Jesus that what He suffered, all that He endured, wasn’t enough, that He came up short and it then fell to us to make up the difference. It’s more than silly, it’s an insult.

The mercy of the Lord is vast beyond our imagination. In Ps. 103:12 the psalmist writes, “…as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.” I’d encourage you to find a globe or just a ball that you could picture being a globe. Now, put your finger on the equator and go north. At some point you’ll notice that you can only go so far before you start going south. Now put your finger on the equator and go east. Notice that as long as you’re going east you’ll never go west. There’s no end to east or west, they will never meet. Now you can see the reason why the Lord didn’t say He’d remove our sins as far as the north from the south, they have limits. His mercy is without limit, just like east and west. Under the sacrifice of Christ, our sin can never touch us again. 

Thus, when our hope is in the Lord and the work that He has done, we learn to confess with Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rm. 7:24-25) “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rm. 8:39-39) Praise the Lord! His mercy is more!

IHMS,