Mercy Wins
The defining mark of God's people
On the night of April 3, 1968 — the last night of his life — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before a crowd in Memphis and retold the story of the Good Samaritan. He described the priest and the Levite who walked past the wounded man on the road, and then he said something that has stayed with me ever since. He said their first question must have been, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But the Samaritan, King said, reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"
That reversal is the difference between a religion about mercy and a life of mercy.
And Jesus didn't leave us any room to choose the former.
More Than a Suggestion
Jesus didn't just show mercy — he made it a defining mark of his people. In Matthew 5, he said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." He wasn't describing a personality type. He was describing a people — his people — shaped from the inside out by the mercy they had already received.
In Matthew 25, he went further. He described the judgment of nations based on a single question: how did you treat the vulnerable? The hungry. The stranger. The sick. The imprisoned. And then, in case anyone missed the point, he said that whatever you did — or didn't do — for them, you did or didn't do for him.
In Luke 10, a religious expert tried to find the limits of this mercy thing. He asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" — which is really just a sophisticated way of asking, "Who can I leave out?" Jesus answered with a story about a man who crossed every social, ethnic, and religious boundary to help a stranger lying in a ditch. A man with every reason to pass by who chose to stop instead. And then Jesus looked at the expert and said simply, "Go and do likewise."
This isn't a suggestion. It's a calling.
Oh, and one more: James 2:13 says that "mercy triumphs over judgment." Not the other way around.
In God's economy, mercy wins.
The World We Live In
The problem is, we don't live in God's economy by default. We live in one that runs on a very different currency.
We live in a world that is really good at pointing fingers, drawing lines, and deciding who deserves help and who doesn't — who is worthy and who isn't. We sort people by what they've done, what they believe, where they come from, and whether we think they've earned our kindness. We build walls around our compassion and call it wisdom.
But Jesus keeps pulling us back to the same question. Not "Do they deserve it?" but "Are you willing to give it?"
The theologian Miroslav Volf, writing out of his own experience of war and ethnic violence in Croatia, put it plainly:
"Since the God Christians worship is the God of unconditional and indiscriminate love, the will to embrace the other is the most fundamental obligation of Christians. The claim is radical, and precisely in its radicality, socially significant. The will to give ourselves to others and to welcome them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity."
In other words, mercy doesn't wait for a verdict. Mercy moves first.
What Mercy Actually Costs
We tend to think of mercy as a feeling — a warm surge of compassion that comes over us in the right moment. But Jesus never described it that way. Mercy, in his telling, always costs something.
It costs the Samaritan his time, his resources, and his comfort. It costs him the opinion of anyone watching. It costs him a detour he didn't plan for.
Mercy is costly. It crosses the street. It gets its hands dirty. It shows up for people who can't pay you back.
Mother Teresa, who spent her life proving this in the streets of Calcutta, said it simply: "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." You can spend your energy deciding who deserves mercy, or you can spend it showing mercy. But you can't really do both.
Micah 6:8 doesn't ask us to feel mercy — it asks us to love it. "What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." Loving mercy means wanting to give it, even when it's inconvenient. Even when the person in the ditch doesn't look like you, believe like you, or vote like you.
"Mercy Wins" is a collaborative effort between me, ChatGPT, and Suno AI.
An Act of Worship
Here's what changes everything: every act of mercy you extend to another person is an act of worship.
When you show up for someone who can't pay you back, you are reflecting the heart of the One who showed up for all of us when we least deserved it. When you cross the street instead of walking past, you are embodying the God who crossed the ultimate divide to reach us. When you choose mercy over judgment, you are participating in the very nature of God.
John Wesley understood this deeply. He believed that love of God and love of neighbor could never be separated — that genuine faith always flows outward into compassionate action. It's not mercy or devotion. Mercy is devotion.
We live in a moment that is desperately short on mercy. The gaps between us — political, racial, economic, ideological — seem to grow wider every year. The voices that call for harder lines and colder hearts are loud and confident.
But Jesus is still telling his story. Still pointing down the road. Still asking the same question he asked that religious expert two thousand years ago.
Will you go and do likewise?
Remember mercy.
Love mercy.
Practice mercy.
In God's economy, it's the only currency that matters — and it never runs out.
Reflection: Think of someone in your life — or even someone you've never met — whom you have been walking past rather than stopping for. What is the real reason you haven't crossed the street? And what would it cost you to reverse the question
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Steven E Fairbanks
Steven E Fairbanks
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