God Is Grace & Mercy
Exodus 34:6, Psalm 103:8 (ESV)
The LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin...
Psalm 86:15
But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Psalm 89:14 (NASB)
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before You.
Psalm 147:11 (KJV)
The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy (unfailing love).
Isaiah 30:18
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore He will rise up to show you compassion.
Micah 7:18
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives? You delight to show mercy.
Ephesians 2:4-5
Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
1 Peter 5:10
The God of all grace...called you to his eternal glory in Christ.
Martin Luther on Romans 1:17 in Here I Stand; A Life of Martin Luther
https://books.google.com/books?id=NFbHwGvbIO0C&pg=PA48&lpg
I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn…This it is to behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly heart, in which there is no anger or ungraciousness.
John Calvin’s “Sermons on 2nd Timothy” on 2 Timothy 1:9-10
Every time God’s grace is proclaimed to us, it is as if the kingdom of heaven were opened to us and God were stretching out his hand, testifying that life is near to us and that he wants us to be partakers of his heavenly inheritance.
Thomas Goodwin Works, Vol. 8, Book 1 "The mercies in God's nature the object, and support, and encouragement of faith"
Mercy is the nature of God. He is, by his own inclination, a most gracious and merciful God, disposed and ready to forgive. His mercy is included in is purpose, and in the resolutions of his will. It is the delight of his soul, the first cause of our salvation, and opens a wide door for hope and faith to enter.
God's mercy and grace come directily from his heart, and run with a straight, direct, and natural stream. The proclamation of his grace excels, and he professes a pardon to all sorts of iniquities, transgressions and sins, which he knew and foresaw that the sons of men would commit.
O the riches of his grace! There are two grand pillars of truth revealed in the Old Testament: God's promise of Christ, and the manifesto of God's gracious nature. What guilty, but broken heart, would not be encouraged to come to such a God?
William Gurnall The Christian in Complete Armour
God delights to give his mercy to those that will most resound his praise.
John Owen Temptation and Sin
We will not know the power of grace until we feel the power (and pain) of the testing.
Gervase Babington on Psalm 5:7 "I will come into thy house even upon the multitude of thy mercy..."
The multitude of God's mercies make a sweet entrance into the house of prayer.
C.H. Spurgeon
Sin is a thing of time, but mercy is from everlasting. Transgression is but of yesterday, but mercy was ever of old. Before you and I sought the Lord, the Lord sought us (1 John 4:19).
John Gill's commentary on 2 Corinthians 1:3 (ESV) "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies..."
The Jews frequently address God in their prayers under the title of "Father of mercies". The plural number is used, partly to show that God is exceeding merciful; he delights in showing mercy to poor miserable creatures, and is rich and plenteous in the exercise of it. Nothing is more common in the Talmudic writings, than to call him "the merciful"; to express the multitude of his tender mercies, of which he is the "Father", author, and giver, both in a temporal, and spiritual sense. For there are not only innumerable providential mercies which the people of God share in, and partake of, but also a multitude of spiritual mercies; redemption by Christ, pardon of sin through his blood, regeneration by his Spirit, supplies of grace out of his fullness, and the word and ordinances. (We) have abundant reason to be thankful to him, being altogether unworthy and undeserving.
Charles Hodge, Exegetical Lectures & Sermons on Hebrews, Hebrews 4:14-16
It is the great truth of the gospel that the entire ground of our acceptance with God is outside of ourselves, that salvation is entirely of grace, that neither the reason of our pardon, nor the source of our purification is in ourselves. It is the grand design of the doctrines, exhortations and promises of the gospel to induce us to come with all our guilt, and with all our pollution, boldly, with full confidence to the throne of God, that we may obtain mercy to pardon, and grace to purify.
A.B. Simpson
Grace literally means that which we do not have to earn. It has two great senses always; it comes without charge, and it comes when we are helpless. Grace does not merely help the man who helps himself - that is not the gospel. The gospel is that God helps the man who cannot help himself. In addition, God helps the man to help himself, for everything the man does comes from God. Grace is given to the man who is so weak and helpless he cannot take the first step.
A.W. Tozer
The Knowledge of the Holy
The mercy of God is infinite, and the man who has felt the grinding pain of inward guilt knows that this is more than academic. "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Romans 5:20) Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind. However sin may abound it still has its limits, for it is the product of finite minds and hearts; but God's "much more" introduces us to infinitude. Against our deep creature-sickness stands God's infinite ability to cure.
Mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt. Grace is His goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. It is by His grace that God imputes merit where none previously existed and declares no debt to be where one had been before. Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving.
Renewed Day By Day
Many evangelical teachers insist so strongly upon free, unconditional grace as to create the impression that sin is not a serious matter and that God cares very little about it! They make it seem that God is only concerned with our escaping the consequences. The gospel then, in practical application, means little more than a way to escape the fruits of our past! But the heart that has felt the weight of its own sin and has seen the dread whiteness of the Most High God will never believe that a message of forgiveness without transformation is a message of good news. To remit a man's past without transforming his present is to violate the moral sincerity of his own heart.
To offer a sinner the gift of salvation based upon the work of Christ, while at the same time allowing him to retain the idea that the gift carries with it no moral implications, is to do him untold injury where it hurts him most!
Matt Redman
"Your Grace Finds Me"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orY_OWKTyfU
"Mercy"