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To the Pharisees, ritual and ceremony were the most important parts of religion. To them, paying tithes, offering sacrifices, praying publicly, and other such things, which were done as a ceremony, as a demonstration, were the central focus of religious experience.

It was into this environment that Christ came, and He left no doubts about where He stood on this issue. “But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.” (Mt. 12:7) What He was saying here was that these sacrifices were not, in God’s eyes, the complete fulfilling of His will. Instead, He wanted a life of service to Him. In Hebrews 10, this is explained further, as God explains that He wants a body instead of a sacrifice: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.” (Hebrews 10:5-6)

So often we hear about how missionaries have “made so many sacrifices,” and how we ought to honor them because of it. But God desires a life of service to Him, not a life of sacrifices! It’s true that some missionaries have made these sacrifices because of a true love for God, and these we ought to honor, but sacrifice is not a true gauge of someone’s devotion to God. A retired missionary from a certain denomination which was not nonresistant said that their mission experienced a growth in the number of applicants for service during a war where the draft was used—missionaries were exempt from the draft! This is making sacrifices (many of the same sacrifices that godly missionaries make), but it is making sacrifices for personal gain. Other times we may make sacrifices to ease our consciences when they are feeling guilty because of something wrong that we are doing. These sacrifices, too, are not acceptable to God.

Sometimes we end up viewing the church service in much the same way as a temple, as a house of ritual. When we go to service as many as three times a week, and then participate in church functions and activities, and in evangelism, it’s easy to believe that our religious duties are over. Then we can spend what’s left of our time doing our own things.

Ritual, of course, has, to those who prefer the easy way, a very important advantage over a life of service, and it is this: it takes up a certain amount of my time, and then I am free, within a few fairly unimposing rules, to do whatever I would like with the rest of my life. I am free to follow my own pleasure and lusts. But God’s way is for me to devote my entire life to Him, to do anything that I do with one main goal in mind—His glory.

Earlier I noted that Christ said, “But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.” (Mt. 12:7) Here He seems to be setting up mercy as a New Covenant fulfillment for the Old Covenant sacrifices. (Of course, it is not the only thing that replaced the Old Testament system. In other places Christ also mentions judgment, faith, and the love of God, and many other new things are introduced in the New Testament. But this is the one I want to focus on in this article.)

What is mercy? I read the dictionary definition, I thought about the verses that talked about it, and I came up with a definition that I believe covers the dictionary definition while also emphasizing our religious duty to show mercy. I believe that when the Bible exhorts us to have mercy, it is telling us to exalt others, by our will, at cost to ourselves.

It is telling us to exalt others. When God looked down and saw sinners in bondage on earth and decided to show mercy, that meant that He made it possible for them to become something better. It gave them the potential to be holy, to be just, to be righteous. When the Samaritan in the parable saw the wounded man and decided to show mercy to him, that meant that he made life better for the wounded man. He took him to a better place. One way that this is exemplified is in forgiveness. When we hold grudges, we are not wishing the well-being of the person that we hold the grudge against. We are not exalting him. In one of the parables Christ told, he related a king forgiving a servant an incredible sum. Then the servant found another servant who owed him money. While some may believe that this amount was a trifle, it may have actually been in the area of $6000 or even $10,000, not exactly pocket change, and it probably seemed like an awful debt to the one who had lent it. But he was expected to forgive, to show mercy, because of the great forgiveness he had been shown.

Secondly, mercy is by our will. Sometimes others may be exalted, at cost to us, but we are unhappy about it. We wish that we had been exalted instead, or at least that the person who was exalted had not been. This is not mercy, because mercy, unlike some rituals, requires a voluntary act. It requires that my will be involved. It requires that I go along with what is happening.

The third aspect of the definition, and perhaps the hardest for us to perform, is at our cost. When God pitied us, He sent Christ to earth to die, and Christ suffered and died for us—what a cost! When the Samaritan pitied the man along the roadside, he took oil and wine and poured them in the man’s wounds. Then he set him on his own animal—and walked like a slave himself. Then he paid for the man’s stay at an inn. The Scripture doesn’t say that the priest and the Levite didn’t feel sorry for the man, but they weren’t willing to pay the cost to have mercy on him. If we desire to have someone else blessed because we know it will benefit us here on earth, we are not showing mercy. When we show mercy, we are willing to suffer ourselves to help others.

This is what God desires us to have, not just occasionally, but throughout our entire life. He has called us to mercy, and one day when we meet Him at the judgment, and He commends or punishes us, we will know the importance of mercy. “And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Mt. 25:40)