Psalm 119:156 – Great Mercy

Your mercy is great, LORD!
Grant me life according to your judgments.

“Mercy is great” could be translated “mercies are many.” I think it comes down to much the same thing.

Notice the parallel here between God’s mercy and God’s judgments. The Hebrew word order places the words “mercies” and “judgments” at the start of their respective lines.

How do these two elements interact?

That is much of what this whole Psalm is about. The Psalmist is clearly thankful for God’s law. He’s not just thankful that it’s out there somewhere, telling him what God is like, or that it’s putting a standard before us that we can’t meet. He’s thankful for it in action, in our day to day lives, and in our relationship to God.

Now I believe that God’s law presents to us a standard that we cannot meet. But God’s law also presents to us a God who can and will take us to that standard. The goal is not simply the accomplishment of some list of duties, or the avoidance of some list of sins. Rather, the goal is to be the person, “a little lower than God” (Psalm 8:6).

God, being merciful, saves us from ourselves, and grants us life according to his judgments, namely something beyond what we can imagine. Sin is destructive. Mercy is not an emotional condoning of sin, but rather, a rescue from it, and a path to a better way.

All of this comes up as an act of God.

Now let me wander from the text. In Psalm 119 we have both the individual working and God working and giving. I want to again depart from my usual pattern and quote from John Wesley on this:

XLVIII. If, then, you say, ” We ascribe to God alone , the whole glory of our salvation, ” I answer, So do we too. If you add, ” Nay, but we affirm, that God alone does the whole work, without man’s working at all; ” in one sense, we allow this also. We allow it is the work of God alone, to justify, to sanctify, and to glorify, which three comprehend the whole of salvation. Yet we cannot allow, that man can only resist, and not in any wise work together with God: or, that God is so the whole worker of our salvation, as to exclude man’s working at all. This I dare not say; for I cannot prove it by Scripture: nay , it is flatly contrary thereto: for the Scripture is express, that (having received power from God) we are to “work out our own salvation:” and that (after the work of God is begun in our souls) we are “workers together with him.”

The Works of John Wesley, vol. 14, p. 347, “Predestination Calmly Considered”

To go back a bit and cover one point here, we might ask if we are coworkers with God do we not get some of the glory. Wesley commented on this a bit before this quote:

If so, your assertion is, “If man do at all work together with God, in working out his own salvation, then God does not do the whole work, without man’s working together with him.” Most true; most sure: but cannot you see how God nevertheless may have all the glory? Why the very power to “work together with him,” was from God. Therefore, to him is all the glory.

Ibid, 346-347

Mercy is often, if not always shown by bringing the rebel into line with God’s will, God’s judgment. And thus, in many ways, mercy can be judgment and judgment mercy.

In what ways will you experience God’s mercy today?