It’s hard to watch a team get slaughtered by another team. What’s even more challenging is to see a game end due to the amount the other team is losing. In baseball, this is called the “mercy rule.” At different levels, the run differential changes, but what stays the same is that the game is called early due to the drastic amount that one team is beating the other. At a certain point, it becomes cruel to keep the game going, and both sides should stop the competition and move onward.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a mercy rule for life. No written rule tells others to have compassion and walk away when the other person is disadvantaged. More so, in our society, it’s more common to see people desire to destroy their opponents instead of showing mercy to them. Christ recognizes this sinful desire in us and speaks against it in Matthew 5.

It’s a straightforward statement: if you show mercy, then mercy will be returned to you. We must be careful to know who might be offering this mercy back to us. In this world, we might expect that if we show mercy to someone, they will return it. They might or might not; that’s not what the verse says. It says that if we show mercy to others, then God will show mercy back to us.

Are you ever baffled at some of the actions committed by heroes in Scripture? We often see their sin and wonder how God was still on their side. Looking closer at their lives, they all have one thing in common. Those that God shows mercy toward are those who show mercy to their fellow brothers and sisters.