Matthew 5 · Passage · Mercy
Blessed Are the Merciful
The fifth beatitude stands between the blessing on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and the blessing on the pure in heart.
Of the eight blessings that open the Sermon on the Mount, this is the only one whose promise repeats the word for the people it blesses.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
- The passage
- Matthew 5:7, Matthew 18:21 to 35, Luke 6:36, James 2:13
- Books
- Matthew, Luke, James
- Hold in memory
- Matthew 5:7, Luke 6:36
Summary
Jesus taught the rule of this blessing again as a command in Luke and as a story in the parable of the unforgiving servant, and James repeated it as a warning about the judgment. Read together, these texts put God's mercy first and ask the person who has received it to show it to others. They warn that "judgment without mercy" waits for the one who has shown none, and James ends his warning with the promise "Mercy triumphs over judgment."
- Luke's form of the command reads "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful", and its Greek word for merciful is oiktirmon, where Matthew has eleemon.
- Jesus twice quoted Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice", and the Hebrew word for mercy in Hosea is chesed.
- Teachers of the church have read the promise in two ways, as God's reward for mercy shown and as the mark of a person God has already forgiven.
The Fifth Beatitude
Each of the eight blessings in Matthew 5:3 to 10 names the people Jesus calls blessed and gives the reason in a clause that begins with for.
Mercy is compassion that acts for a person in need, and this blessing is Jesus' word on the people who show it. Strong's dictionary glosses the Greek noun eleos as compassion, human or divine, especially active. Every reader needs mercy from God and meets people who need mercy from him, so the blessing speaks to both sides of his life.
The question is who receives mercy, and why the merciful person receives it. The answer comes from the blessing read beside the three texts that teach its rule in Luke, in Matthew 18 and in James, each with its Greek word for mercy. Teachers from the third century to the twentieth explained these texts, and they gave two answers to the question whether mercy shown earns mercy received.
The third blessing, on the meek, has its own study, and the eight are studied together on The Beatitudes.
Matthew's Greek reads makarioi hoi eleemones, hoti autoi eleethesontai. The adjective eleemones, merciful, and the future passive verb eleethesontai, they will receive mercy, are both formed on eleos.
Six Verses on Mercy Shown and Received
The blessing, the command in Luke, the parable's two turns, the warning in James and the high priest of Hebrews each carry a Greek word for mercy.
Four of the six verses use eleos or a word formed on it, and the verses in Luke and Matthew 18:27 use two other words for the same pity.
A ladder of six rungs, one for each verse, giving its words in the Berean text, the Greek words for mercy with their Strong's numbers, and who shows the mercy.
Mercy Received and Mercy Refused in Matthew 18
Jesus told the parable in answer to Peter's question about how many times to forgive a brother.
In the parable a king cancels a servant's debt of ten thousand talents, and the same servant then has a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii thrown into prison.
His master had compassion on him, forgave his debt, and released him.The master's compassion comes before the servant has shown mercy to anyone, and it cancels the whole debt.
Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had on you?’The question ties the mercy the servant owed his fellow servant to the mercy he had received from his master.
That is how My heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”Jesus applies the master's verdict to each of His hearers and asks for forgiveness that comes from the heart.
Jesus had already joined God's forgiveness to the forgiveness His disciples give, in the prayer He taught them and in the two verses after it.
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.The disciple asks God to forgive his debts and names the debts he has already forgiven others.
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.Jesus states the condition in both directions, forgiveness for those who forgive and none for those who do not.
Origen of Alexandria read the master's question as a lesson for the hearer, in words Thomas Aquinas gathered into his Catena Aurea. "He seeks to instruct us, that we should be ready to show clemency to those who have done us harm, especially if they offer amends, and plead to have forgiveness."
Thomas Aquinas, in his Commentary on Matthew, put the question of verse 33 in other words: "As if to say: you received great things, and you are unwilling to bestow small ones?"
John Chrysostom, in his sixty-first homily on Matthew, read verse 35 as a warning against a grudge kept: "Let us not then thrust the sword into ourselves by being revengeful."
Matthew 18:35, Matthew 6:12, Matthew 6:14 to 15
Be Merciful, Just as Your Father Is Merciful
Luke places the command at the end of Jesus' teaching on love for enemies, which begins at Luke 6:27.
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.Jesus promises that those who love their enemies will be sons of the Most High, and He gives the Father's kindness to the ungrateful and wicked as the reason.
In the next verse one Greek word, oiktirmon, describes the children and the Father. James 5:11, where "The Lord is full of compassion and mercy", is the only other verse of the New Testament where the word stands. Matthew's sermon closes the same teaching on enemies with "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).
“Compassion also does He teach: ‘Be ye merciful,’ says He, ‘as your Father also that had mercy upon you.’ This injunction will be of a piece with, ‘Deal thy bread to the hungry; and if he be houseless, bring him into thine house; and if thou seest the naked, cover him; ‘ also with, ‘Judge the fatherless, plead with the widow.’ I recognise here that ancient doctrine of Him who ‘prefers mercy to sacrifice.’”
Tertullian · Against Marcion Book IV · on Luke 6:36Patristic
Hosea's Line on Mercy and Sacrifice
Matthew records Jesus quoting Hosea 6:6 at a meal with tax collectors and in a grainfield on the Sabbath.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”Jesus answers Pharisees who asked why He ate with tax collectors and sinners, and He sends them to learn what Hosea's line means.
If only you had known the meaning of ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.Jesus defends His hungry disciples, who had picked grain on the Sabbath, and says the line would have kept the Pharisees from condemning them.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.God speaks through the prophet and sets mercy and the knowledge of Himself above sacrifice and burnt offerings.
In Matthew's Greek the word for mercy in Hosea's line is eleos. The Greek translation of the Old Testament also uses eleos for chesed, and the word study on chesed and chrestotes sets out in a table the verses where it does so.
Mercy Triumphs over Judgment
James closes a warning against favoritism with a sentence on the judgment that meets the merciless.
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom.James tells believers to speak and act as people who will be judged, and the next verse gives the rule of that judgment.
The adjective aneleos, without mercy, stands only here in the New Testament. The Berean text renders the verb katakauchatai as triumphs over, and its lexicon gloss is to exult against.
Augustine, in his Letter 102, read the first half of the verse as a measure returned: "He who judges without mercy will be judged without mercy."
Bede, in his Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, applied the warning to the one "who, though able to show mercy, did not do so before being judged."
Oecumenius, in his Commentary on James, gave the second half as "mercy exalts itself above judgment."
What the Merciful Give
The voices here run from the fourth century to the twentieth.
died 407 · John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom, in his fifteenth homily on Matthew, called the way of showing mercy "manifold" and the commandment "broad". He added, "For whereas they themselves show mercy as men, they obtain mercy from the God of all".
died 420 · Jerome
Jerome's Commentary on Matthew counts as mercy the "bearing each other's burdens in every sin". Jerome pointed to Paul's charge in Galatians 6:2, "Carry one another’s burdens".
died 1107 · Theophylact of Ohrid
Theophylact of Ohrid's Commentary on Matthew tells the reader who has nothing at all to give to show mercy with tears of compassion.
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
In Sermon 22, the second discourse upon our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, John Wesley wrote that "The word used by our Lord more immediately implies the compassionate, the tender-hearted". He took the merciful to be those who "love their neighbours as themselves".
1906 to 1945 · Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship was first published in German in 1937. Of the merciful it says, "As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others."
Theophylact of Ohrid, John Wesley, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Does Showing Mercy Earn Mercy?
The two readings rest on two texts, the future tense of the blessing and the order of the parable in Matthew 18.
God gives His mercy to the merciful as His promise to the deedHilary of Poitiers; Augustine of Hippo
Hilary of Poitiers, as the Catena Aurea gives his words, wrote, "So greatly is God pleased with our feelings of benevolence towards all men, that He will bestow His own mercy only on the merciful."
Augustine, in his Sermon 53, told his hearers, "Do this, and it will be done to you. Do it in regard to another that it might be done in regard to you."
The objection: in Matthew 18:27 the master forgives the whole debt before the servant is tested.
Mercy received comes first, and mercy shown answers itThomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew
Thomas Aquinas, in his Commentary on Matthew, traced the remission of verse 27 to "the mercy of" the lord who forgives, and he set aside the penitent's sorrow as its cause. Paul says in Titus 3:5 that God saved us "not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy".
The objection: the blessing promises mercy in the future tense to those who show it, and Matthew 18:35 warns each hearer who does not forgive from the heart.
The Merciful High Priest
For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make atonement for the sins of the people.This is the one other verse of the New Testament where the adjective of the blessing, eleemon, stands, and here it describes Jesus.
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), read the two words of the title as "Merciful toward sinners; faithful toward God."
Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.Hebrews sends every reader to Christ as the source of what the blessing promises.
The one who blessed the merciful is the high priest Hebrews calls merciful, and the Gospels record the compassion He showed to the crowds and to the sick.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The tagged Greek text of the New Testament, with Strong's numbers, morphology and glosses (STEP Bible, Tyndale House, Cambridge, CC BY 4.0)
- James Strong, A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament (1890), entries G1656, G1655, G1653, G3629, G4697, G448 and G2620.
- Hilary of Poitiers, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Matthew.
- Origen of Alexandria, on Matthew 18:33, in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Matthew.
- Tertullian, Against Marcion, book 4.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, homily 15.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, homily 61, on Matthew 18:35.
- Jerome, Commentary on Matthew.
- Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 53, section 5.
- Augustine of Hippo, Letter 102, section 4, on James 2:13.
- Oecumenius, Commentary on James, on James 2:13.
- Bede, Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, on James 2:13.
- Theophylact of Ohrid, Commentary on Matthew.
- Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 18:33.
- Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Matthew, on Matthew 18:27.
- John Wesley, Sermon 22, Upon our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Discourse 2, part III.1, in the 1872 edition of his Works.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Hebrews 2:17.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (German, 1937)
Keep Studying
Studies5