1. "I wonder if your relationships operate more based on mercy or merit."

2. "There's nothing wrong with a performance focus in the workplace, but as a Christian, I don't want my relationships defined that way. Too much merit, not enough mercy."

3. "Love becomes implicitly conditional, at least in part. Scorekeeping becomes the norm. Conflict escalates rather than emerging into understanding. Intimacy is earned rather than given. We swing between pride and shame and pride and shame."

4. "We so often think of the benefit of a relationship in terms of what it does for us, but Jesus is redefining in terms of what it shows. What it shows about God, how it reflects God."

5. "The fact is that love that's easy and effortless doesn't show you much about the love of God in your heart."

6. "It is so easy for kindness to be implicitly contingent on reciprocation, because we all know that mercy begets mercy. That's the reciprocity trap. And on the surface, for a time, that kind of a marriage looks like a merciful, gracious marriage."

7. "When I realize that kindness is mercy, and more to the point, a response to God's mercy, then deserving really is beside the point."

8. "Self-righteousness and mercy both begin in the same place: I have, you do not. And yet their posture could not be more different. Self-righteousness says, I have, you do not, so go. Mercy says, I have, you do not, so come."

9. "In marriage you must not only show mercy to your spouse, you must learn to depend on their mercy. To rest in their mercy. To trust in their mercy. And for some of us, that's the hardest pill to swallow."

10. "The next time those words echo in your head, be it in a marriage or elsewhere, 'it's not fair,' I hope the response of your heart comes back: that's right, it's not fair — it's mercy."

Observation Questions

1. In Luke 6:27-28, what four specific actions does Jesus command toward those who are hostile to us (enemies, those who hate, curse, and abuse)?

2. According to Luke 6:32-34, what rhetorical question does Jesus repeat three times, and what group does He say behaves the same way as those who only love, do good to, or lend to people who reciprocate?

3. In Luke 6:35-36, what two characteristics of God does Jesus point to as the basis for how His followers should treat others, and who specifically does Jesus say God is kind to?

4. In Romans 12:9-13, what specific qualities and actions does Paul list as marks of genuine love among believers?

5. According to Romans 12:17-19, what does Paul tell believers never to do, and what reason does he give for leaving vengeance aside?

6. How does Romans 12:21 summarize the believer's posture toward evil, and how does this connect back to Jesus' teaching in Luke 6:27-28 about responding to enemies?

Interpretation Questions

1. Jesus says that loving only those who love you back offers no distinctive "benefit" (Luke 6:32-34). How does the sermon explain Jesus' redefinition of the word "benefit"—shifting it from what a relationship does for us to what it shows about God? Why is that distinction important for understanding Christian love?

2. The sermon describes a "reciprocity trap" in marriage, where mercy is extended primarily because it is expected to be returned. How does Jesus' teaching in Luke 6:35-36 challenge this approach, and what does it reveal about the true source and motive of merciful love?

3. Romans 12:1 appeals to believers "by the mercies of God" as the foundation for all that follows. How does this opening ground the practical commands of Romans 12:9-21, and why does it matter that the motivation for mercy is described as extrinsic (coming from God) rather than intrinsic (coming from our own willpower)?

4. The sermon distinguishes between forgiveness and forbearance as two forms of reactive mercy. Using the teaching of Romans 12:17-21 and Proverbs 19:11, how are these two responses different, and why is wisdom needed to know which one a situation calls for?

5. Romans 12:16 warns against being "haughty" and Romans 12:19 warns against avenging ourselves. How does the sermon connect both of these to self-righteousness, and why does it argue that self-righteousness and mercy begin at the same starting point ("I have, you do not") yet move in opposite directions?

Application Questions

1. The sermon challenges listeners to think of one act of mercy from the past week done with an expectation of reciprocation and one done without that expectation. Take a moment to reflect: in your closest relationship (spouse, roommate, family member, close friend), where do you most naturally slip into a merit-based, scorekeeping posture—and what would it look like to replace that pattern with mercy this week?

2. Romans 12:10 says to "outdo one another in showing honor." Identify one specific, practical way you could proactively show honor or kindness to someone close to you this week—not because they have earned it, but as a reflection of God's mercy toward you.

3. The sermon describes forbearance as unilateral, unspoken forgiveness of small, repeated offenses—absorbing the cost rather than bringing it up. Is there a recurring small offense from someone you live or work with that you need to genuinely forbear rather than stew over? Conversely, is there something you have been silently tolerating that actually requires a loving, honest conversation?

4. The sermon names three gospel motivators for mercy: reward (heavenly reward), reflection (showing we are God's children), and response (having received mercy ourselves). Which of these three motivators is most compelling to you right now, and how could you remind yourself of it during a moment of conflict or frustration this week?

5. Depending on mercy from others requires vulnerability—admitting fault without excuses. Is there a relationship where you have been defensive or have hidden your failures rather than humbly receiving the other person's mercy? What concrete step could you take to move toward honest vulnerability, and how might doing so deepen that relationship?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Ephesians 5:25-33 — This passage describes the one-flesh union of marriage and Christ's sacrificial, merciful love for the church as the model for how husbands and wives relate to each other.

2. Colossians 3:12-17 — Paul calls believers to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and above all love, with forgiveness modeled on the Lord's forgiveness—reinforcing the same mercy ethic applied to daily relationships.

3. Matthew 18:21-35 — Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant powerfully illustrates how receiving God's immeasurable mercy obligates and empowers us to extend mercy to others, and the danger of refusing to do so.

4. 1 Peter 3:1-9 — Peter addresses both wives and husbands in marriage, calling them to gentleness, honor, and blessing rather than repaying evil for evil, directly paralleling the sermon's theme that marriage is inherently unfair and must be sustained by mercy.

5. Titus 3:1-7 — Paul reminds believers of their former condition and declares that God saved them not by works but according to His own mercy, grounding the call to gentle, merciful living in the transforming experience of having received mercy ourselves.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Marriage Built on Merit vs. Mercy: A Personal Awakening

II. What Is Merciful Love? (Luke 6:27-36)

III. How Does Merciful Love Work? (Romans 12:9-21)

IV. Why Love Mercifully? (Luke 6:35-36)

V. What Gets in the Way? Self-Righteousness as Mercy's Enemy (Romans 12:16-21)

VI. Have You Known Mercy?

Detailed Sermon Outline

I wonder if your relationships operate more based on mercy or merit.

My first year of marriage was wonderful in so many ways. I don't think either John or I would wish to repeat it. And if I were to give that man of 25 years ago some advice among the many things I would tell him would be you in marriage operate too much based on merit. Not mercy. So if my wife sinned against me, I might bring it up later, at least in my own mind, as I told myself a self-pitying story.

Or I convinced myself I was going to overlook her faults but then make sure she felt my annoyance. I litigate the details of a conflict during a conflict. No, what you said was whatever. I could see my merit orientation in my own defensiveness to criticism and in the defensiveness I created in her. When she disappointed me, there was a cost, not an explosive cost by God's grace, but a cost nonetheless, a subtle withdrawing, a distance.

So a real turning point for me was a conversation I had right over there in the back of the main hall. At a Sunday service afterwards, and it had nothing to do with marriage. One of you all approached me with a grin on your face, said you had something unusual for me. This person had been at a wedding the previous day, and one of the guests at his table happened to work for me. That was while I was still working in business before becoming a pastor.

Of course, I asked, well, who was it? And he smiled, I'm not gonna tell you.

How often he said, do you get to hear what people who work for you really think about what it's like to work for you? And so he had promised this person complete anonymity in exchange for the unvarnished truth about what it was like to work for Jamie Dunlop, and he said he was gonna tell me. Well, what'd they say?

That you're a wonderful boss, encouraging, clear with expectations, good with communication, you are a wonderful boss for the high performers on the team. And that you have very little time or patience with the rest.

Well, that was a wake-up call for me. There's nothing wrong with a performance focus in the workplace, but as a Christian, I don't want my relationships defined that way. Too much merit, not enough mercy. And that realization changed not just my relationships at work, it changed and is changing my relationships at home. Merit or mercy.

That has some very real implications for marriage, for its flavor, it's feel. And of course, for more than just marriage, the sad truth is that too many marriages are merit-oriented. And you don't have to be a type A person like me in order to stumble into that. Love becomes implicitly conditional, at least in part. Scorekeeping becomes the norm.

Conflict escalates rather than emerging into understanding. Intimacy is earned rather than given. We swing between pride and shame and pride and shame. The relationship is no longer reliably secure. Resentment grows.

It's not fair becomes a daily battle cry. Ultimately, marriage becomes less God focused, more human-centered, it's built on merit, not mercy.

You know, one thing that struck me in preparing these sermons on marriage, this morning sermon is number four in this series of five topical sermons on marriage. One thing that struck me is how utterly transformative in Scripture is the concept of marriage as one flesh. As I mentioned last week, a married couple are more than allies, they're more of an alloy, not two together but one, and that should fundamentally reshape our attitude toward marriage. So as Paul says in Ephesians 5:29, you don't judge or belittle your own body for its needs and weaknesses, but you nourish and cherish it, mercy, not merit. So in marriage, a spouse's struggle becomes our struggle, not his or hers.

That attitude, the apostle Paul says, is a key way in which marriage is how we learn to see and show the love of Christ because that's how he treats us. So the word I want ringing in your ears this morning is the word mercy. Marriage is not fair; it's merciful. So how can mercy be the aroma of your marriage? Though this sermon is about marriage, it's going to be applicable to all kinds of relationships with your kids, your roommates, extended family at work, or even in a different way with God.

But we're going to use marriage as our primary lens, as we've been doing all through this series. How does mercy become a marriage's dominating theme? This morning, we're going to answer that question by asking four others, which will form our outline. First, what is merciful love? Second, how does it work?

Why love mercifully? And what gets in the way? So what is merciful love? How does it work? Why love mercifully?

And what gets in the way? We're gonna be focused on Jesus' teaching in Luke 6:27-36 and then Paul's reflections, at least in part, based on that teaching. In Romans 12:9 to 21. And first question, what is merciful love?

Well, if you know the Gospel of Luke, you'll recognize Luke 6 as home to some of Jesus' most startling teaching, not just love your neighbor, but as he says, love your enemy. Go ahead and turn there now, page 877 in the black Bibles around you. And you might be thinking, Love your enemies? I thought this was a sermon on marriage. But the reason we're starting here is that in Luke 6, maybe more clearly than anywhere else, Jesus articulates what's unique and different about Christian love and where it comes from.

He's not telling us to love our enemies and give a cold shoulder to your spouse, but he's defining a whole ethic of love by marking out its endpoint all the way to your enemies and, of course, everyone in between.

But hold that thought for a moment because sadly, there are some marriages where the spouse is your enemy. What's worse, the very verses we're about to read have sometimes seemed like they box you in or have been used against you. When you plead for accountability, your spouse complains that you're not turning the other cheek. Or it seems the Bible's posture toward mistreatment is just to look the other way. Remember the same Bible that tells you to turn the other cheek also tells you to expose the deeds of darkness.

That's Ephesians 5:11. So if you are in a difficult marriage, Jesus' teaching we're about to get to is not a call to passivity or privacy. It does not make your spouse's sins seem untouchable. It is a call to a radical life of mercy, which is needed in difficult marriages, just as much as in healthy marriages. It should fundamentally change why and how you bring the light of truth into a difficult marriage.

If you're in a controlling, belittling, or violent marriage, don't keep that to yourself. You need the help of others. You trust to understand what a life of radical mercy looks like in your particular situation.

So we all need to listen to Jesus' call to merciful love. He describes the life of blessing and the beatitudes beginning in verse 20, woe on the self-satisfied beginning in verse 24, but he says in verse 27, I say to you who hear, Love your enemies.

Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. And from one who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.

Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods, do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you. What benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.

And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to get back the same amount.

But love your enemies and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

In verse 27, Jesus contrasts those who hear, with the self-satisfied of the previous verses, and the life he calls his hearers to is a life of love, even for enemies, which he states in three different ways. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. His illustrations make the point.

When someone strikes you on the cheek, you don't hit back. Instead, you do the opposite. Offer the other also. Same with that cloak illustration. Same in verse 30.

What Jesus describes is not fair, which is the whole point. It's mercy. Which brings us to the golden rule of verse 31: As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. It's striking that in one of two places in Scripture where Jesus gives us the golden rule, in this case, it's about treating our enemies as we would wish to be treated.

And then the whole thing turns on verse 32. If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you?

What a strange question. Well, Jesus, I can think of all kinds of benefits from those relationships, right? Those are the people who are most beneficial to love.

If you're new to Jesus, I'll just warn you: watch out when he asks a question. It almost always means he has something up his sleeve. And this time, what he's got waiting for us is that next sentence: Even sinners love those who love them. Which is true, isn't it? How often do we read of somebody in the news who did something truly terrible, but then a family member is interviewed who says, I had no idea he was a perfectly wonderful person to me.

Right, what Jesus is doing here is to radically redefine that word benefit.

Because we so often think of the benefit of a relationship in terms of what it does for us, but Jesus is redefining in terms of what it shows. What it shows about God, how it reflects God, because as the reference to reward in verse 35 demonstrates, he is interested not in a benefit which is temporal in this life, but eternal. So he says, if your love is no different from the love of the world around you, no matter how satisfying it might be, What benefit is that to you?

Not what a relationship does for you, but what it shows. And if you've been listening to this entire series on marriage, you'll be familiar with that concept. I mentioned our first sermon that we so often value marriage purely for the things it produces, like companionship and kids and sex and ministry. For those as ends in themselves when in fact God is graciously given the things marriage produces in order through them to point us to himself. Right?

Not production alone but production as a means to reflection. Exactly what Jesus is doing here. Right? The fact is that love that's easy and effortless doesn't show you much about the love of God in your heart. That's why verse 35, we should love our enemies.

So that as sons reflect their fathers, we will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind, Jesus says, to the ungrateful and the evil. And then verse 36 sums it up, Be merciful, even as your father is merciful.

And Jesus' vocabulary is notable. There's two word groups in the New Testament that in English we get translated as mercy, This is the much less common of the two, referring not so much to acts of mercy, but to the posture of tender, compassionate mercy that stands behind those acts.

Kids, this is the God we worship, this merciful, compassionate God. I think it could be so easy when you grow up in church to have God only and ever be a God of law and justice. But the God we worship is a God of mercy. Don't miss verse 35. He is kind to the ungrateful.

I wonder if you are ever ungrateful for all he gives to you. Well, Jesus says that that is no barrier to you coming to know his love. And yet how will you ever come to know his mercy if you don't see yourself as someone in need of mercy? And how will you ever see yourself as one in need of mercy if you only ever excuse or defend your sin? When we take these verses together, we see that merciful love is love that yields what's rightly mine without requiring reciprocation to reflect the mercy of our heavenly Father.

Charles Spurgeon put it well, memorably, He said, Evil for good is devil-like. Evil for evil is beast-like. Good for good is man-like and good for evil is God-like.

So here's where this hits home in marriage. Marriage is not fair, it's merciful. And yet, it is so easy for mercy, for grace, to be implicitly contingent on reciprocation, because we all know that mercy begets mercy. That's the reciprocity trap. And on the surface, for a time, that kind of a marriage looks like a merciful, gracious marriage.

Right? If I don't condemn you for your faults, you're less likely to condemn me for mine. If I'm patient with you, you'll be patient with me. I show mercy, I forgive, because I know that's how we get a sweet marriage. The ends justify the means, which is exactly where Jesus challenges us.

If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? He doesn't deny that kind of love is effective, he questions its value. If we value marriage purely for what it produces, mercy that is contingent on reciprocation is gonna work just fine. And yet, if we value marriage as a means to understand our God, to see and show the glory of who he is, if we intend to pursue God through marriage and what it produces, then mercy that's contingent on reciprocation falls short. That is the reciprocity trap.

So take some time this afternoon and just think for a moment of one act of mercy you've engaged in this last week that was honestly done expecting mercy in return and one where you didn't have that expectation.

And then consider what that teaches about yourself.

But you might say, doesn't Jesus' teaching here leave us open to abuse?

That's a good question. If Luke 6 were the only chapter in the Bible, it may well. There are qualifiers elsewhere in Scripture. Romans 12:18, for example, that we'll get to later. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Sometimes for the sake of love, we do put limits on others. Sometimes for the sake of love, we get help. But with Luke 6 in view, even the constraints on our love in those difficult situations are never because someone doesn't deserve our love. We should not let the exceptions obscure the main point. Merciful love is mercy without expectation of reciprocation.

So if you're married, what do you most want out of your marriage? Closeness, respect, loyalty, peace.

And what does it look like when you don't get that thing. So often that's what reveals that we have fallen into the reciprocity trap. I've tried to show her that I care, but she still disrespects me, so I'm done. Well, that's not what Jesus describes. And anyway, what kind of care is that?

Be merciful even as your father is merciful. But let's get more practical with our second point about merciful love. How does it work? To answer that question, we'll turn to Romans 12, page 964 in your P Bibles. Keep a finger, though, on Luke 6, we're going to be going back and forth.

Because these two passages do shed light on each other. So many failures in marriage are simply the failure to live out the one and other verses of the Bible with our spouse. And Romans 12 is one of the greatest collections of these verses. There are clear connections to Luke 6. Remember that Luke and Paul spent a lot of time together, and it seems that at least in part, in Romans 12, Paul is, you might say, double clicking on Jesus' teaching as recorded by Luke.

He begins Romans 12:1 by appealing to us by the mercies of God to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, bodies, plural, sacrifice, singular, a sacrifice of united love, as we read further, the mercies that motivate, those are the mercies we've been reading about, Romans 1 to 11. And that word translated mercy, like in Luke 6, is that much less commonly used term in the Bible. Based on that posture of tender, compassionate mercy that God has towards you, love one another. Verses 1 to 8 in chapter 12 describe how love gives to one another. Then beginning in verse 9, Let love be genuine.

Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal; be fervent in spirit; serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; Be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly.

Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Brothers, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.

If he is thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

These verses describe what mercy-powered love should be. It should be genuine without hypocrisy. It should be love with affection. Verse 10, these verses describe that love. Right?

It honors, it's zealous, verse 11, joyful, patient, constant, verse 12. These verses explain who we should love in this way, our friends, verse 13, even our enemies, verse 14. It's exemplified by harmony despite our differences, verses 16 to 18, despite our sin, verses 19 to 21. And Paul concludes where Jesus began, exhorting us to overcome evil with good, all of which again flows from the mercies of God. You might just pick one of these short commands from Romans 12 and just decide every day this week to pray that increasingly that will be true of you.

Paul's primary audience here is a church, but in these verses, he's looking at the relational level. And so, these verses are very helpful for understanding a marriage. We can summarize the genuine love of these verses in two concepts. Kindness and generosity, that would be proactive mercy. And forgiveness and forbearance, reactive mercy.

Both are profoundly important as we consider marriage. We'll start with proactive mercy. Outdo one another in showing honor. Be zealous and fervent in love, Paul says. Rejoice, be patient, pray, Be generous and all that with the affection of verse 10.

I find it's very useful to see kindness like this as mercy because it's so easy to consider whether my spouse deserves kindness, to withhold kindness when he or she doesn't. But my friends, that is a marriage built on merit, on how well we perform. And yet when I realize that kindness is mercy, and more to the point, a response to God's mercy than deserving really is beside the point. Tim Keller helpfully coined the term truce marriage, where both spouses decide their woundedness is a more fundamental problem than their selfishness and they devolve into emotionally distant tit-for-tat bargaining. As he says, couples who settle for this may look happily married after 40 years, but when it's time for the anniversary photo op, the kiss will be forced.

That's not the proactive, zealous kindness Paul describes here. That love is reciprocation. This love is powered by reflection. Be merciful as your Father is merciful. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, This is love that gives not what a person deserves, but what they need.

That is mercy. And yet both marital struggle and marital prosperity can be the enemy of this kind of kindness. The struggling marriage is an obvious one. I stop honoring my spouse because I don't feel honored, rather than, as Paul says, seeking to outdo one another in showing honor. But even a good marriage can dampen kindness for the simple reason that it doesn't seem needed.

Like forgetting to change your oil because the engine's running so smoothly in your car. Do not be slothful in zeal, Paul says. Be fervent in spirit because, end of verse 11, you are ultimately serving the Lord.

So that's proactive mercy, zealous in kindness, generous, but as this passage continues, we also see mercy in reaction to offenses and sin.

React to mercy in a word is forgiveness. That's the word Jesus uses when he sums up the enemy love of Luke 6: forgiveness. I preached a sermon on forgiveness last fall, which you can find by going to the church website and typing in the phrase on forgiveness. More briefly, forgiveness doesn't punish, it doesn't repay evil for evil, verse 17. And you know, there are a million socially acceptable ways to punish someone in marriage.

Withholding affection, rehearsing a spouse's faults, withdrawing kindness. Forgiveness doesn't do that. But neither does forgiveness pretend that nothing happened. Remember in Luke 6, the alternative To hitting back isn't to do nothing as if an offense never occurred. It's to do something, to turn the other cheek.

So forgiveness doesn't punish, but neither does it pretend. Instead, it willingly bears the cost of an offense. Sometimes that cost is very tangible, like the debt example Jesus gives in Luke 6, where forgiving a debt is costly to the forgiver. And I think it's significant that that image is the one that Jesus normally uses when he describes forgiveness in his teaching, emphasizing the cost of forgiveness. I think sometimes we truly fail to forgive because we underestimate the cost of forgiveness.

And yet in marriage, that cost that you bear will very often be an intangible cost, right? Your spouse sins against you. You forgive, yet things remain cold and tense, which is the cost of the offense that's still present. Bearing the cost might be deciding as the forgiver that you will be the first to move toward the other in warmth and tenderness rather than waiting for your spouse to make it up to you even though it wasn't your fault.

Now, knowing what forgiveness means when the offense is significant will sometimes require great wisdom more than we have time to go into here. Forgiveness can't always secure reconciliation or erase natural consequences. Sometimes even in forgiveness we do establish limits on acceptable behavior. But forgiveness bears the cost without asking who's at fault. And as we see in verse 20, it leans forward in love.

And then there's a particular form of forgiveness we should consider further, especially as we think about marriage. And that is forbearance. Proverbs 19:11 says it is to a person's glory to overlook an offense. When an offense is small enough that you can overlook it without stewing on it later, and when confronting the offender isn't necessary to protect them or others from their sin, you can choose to forgive by overlooking it. You forbear.

That's very different than pretending it didn't happen or ignoring it, because forbearance is a type of forgiveness. It is unilateral, unspoken forgiveness that nonetheless bears the cost of the offense even if that cost is small.

And forbearance is a powerful tool in marriage. It just has to be used at the right time. Some of us forbear too little. We speak up about every little thing that bothers us, without any thought as to whether speaking up is actually the loving thing to do. But others of us err in the opposite direction.

We forbear when we really should be confronting. Remember that confronting is itself an act of mercy. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, Proverbs says. Even exposing a spouse's sin to others when he or she won't repent, as Jesus tells us to do in Matthew 18, is an act of mercy. But the fact that in marriage, forgiveness is often going to take the form of forbearance.

For that matter, that's going to be true of pretty much anybody you live with. So for example, I have a very bad habit of forgetting at home things that Joan asked me to bring to church. Maybe my kids outgrew a pair of boots and she found another family who could use them.

She waits until five minutes before I leave to ask me to bring them. She puts the boots right in front of the front door. She reminds me, you think I'm exaggerating? I'm not. And then lost in thought, I step right over them and I wander on my way to church.

So the first time I did that, my very perplexed wife would of course have brought it up to me. Same for maybe the 10 times after that. But eventually she recognizes this is a weakness in me. That doesn't excuse my thoughtlessness. I'm sure there is a moral dimension to it.

It doesn't mean I shouldn't do radical things to address it, like confessing it to a thousand people on a Sunday morning.

But just like you respond to a weak knee with tenderness rather than bitterness, to be one flesh, with someone means that very often you forbear. You work through those steps of forgiveness on your own without even saying anything and you just keep on loving. To view your marriage as one flesh is so critical if you want it to bear up under the weight of a thousand small but repeated offenses and not be crushed by bitterness.

The fact is that marriage isn't fair. In fact, a demand for a marriage to become fair is the slow death of a marriage. We looked at this last week in light of 1 Peter 3. A wife will feel that marriage is unfair because she is in a more vulnerable place than her husband, which requires special sacrifice. And a husband's gonna feel marriage is unfair because he needs to pursue his wife in ways she doesn't to make that vulnerability feel safe, which itself requires sacrifice, right?

Marriage is not fair. It's mercy.

Maybe you're hearing, you're not a Christian. I wonder what you think about all these commands in Romans 12. Can you read through this list and honestly say in God's eyes you're a good person?

Oh, but preacher, you can't honestly think that God expects us to do all of this.

Why not? Or some things in life cannot be graded on a curve. No A for effort. Right? You don't get certified in CPR because you try really hard during the class.

I hope not. No, you get certified because you've demonstrated that you can do the thing.

What Romans 12 describes is the standard for love. Nothing less will do, anything less, and that's how we get the strife that we know in this world. Right, you and I have failed because we love ourselves more than we love God. And yet there is one man who did everything these verses describe without fail, without exception. That's Jesus.

God become man. Who came not merely to show us it could be done or to show us how he came to do it for us. Right? He loved perfectly because you and I don't. And he died on a cross to bear the punishment you and I deserve for the kind of life we've lived.

Christians talk about the sweet exchange of the cross. Jesus took your sin, your failings, your shame. And then he turns and offers you his perfect record of perfect love. He rose from the dead, Romans says, for your justification, so you can be declared just by God, not because of any of your merit, but because of Jesus' perfect record given to you. That's how in God's mercy, He can forgive you without compromising his justice, and you accept that by faith.

Faith that turns from sin, that turns toward God in repentance. So that's how merciful love works. The proactive love of kindness and generosity, the reactive mercy of forgiveness and forbearance. But how do you do that? That leads to the question, why?

Why love mercifully? Back to Luke 6. We don't love to merely see our love reciprocated, verse 32. So why do we do this? And how?

Verses 35 and 36 give us three gospel motivators that drive a posture of mercy. Reward, reflection, Response. Jesus says, Reward, quite explicitly there, in verse 35, Heavenly reward, then reflection, you, will be sons of the Most High as sons reflect your Father as you will be known as God's child by your mercy, and then response, Be merciful even as your Father is merciful. As one who has yourself received mercy, how can you not be merciful? Three gospel motivators: reward, reflection, Response.

And the whole point here is that this is a mercy that comes from outside yourself, right? What Jesus is describing is not try harder, do better, be more disciplined, reward, reflection, response. They all flow from God, not from you. They are all extrinsic, not intrinsic. And that matters.

Because the math of mercy will often not add up in this life, right? Sometimes you are going to give more than you receive. And even if you don't, it's gonna seem that way.

And if I could speak, especially to those of you in struggling marriages, you know that better than anyone. It may be that you're going to have a breakthrough someday and discover an easy marriage once again, but you will be fooling yourself and you know that if you believe that was guaranteed. Sometimes the math doesn't add up. Sometimes forgiveness is so costly the relationship it will preserve frankly doesn't seem worth the price. Sometimes you discover your spouse has emotional limitations that no maturing in faith will ever fully address.

Sometimes you find that it's your own past that creates hurdles to closeness of marriage that's gonna be so painful to overcome. It doesn't seem worth trying. Sometimes the math of mercy doesn't add up.

But that's where Jesus helps us understand.

Mercy doesn't add up. If you were guaranteed a positive return on investment for mercy in your life, would it really be mercy? So if you are in a struggling marriage, you have got to train your eyes on these three things. Reward, reflection, response. Because left to yourself, you will do what is the most natural, reasonable thing to do in the short term.

You will give up on mercy. And you will compromise what Jesus says is best for you in the long term. The motivation for mercy comes from outside of us. It comes from God. And with that motivation comes ability, which is how these words give us life and hope not burden.

Our generous living flows from his generosity. Our forgiving flows from our forgiveness from him.

So if mercy toward each other flows from the mercy of God, that means the will become more adept at showing each other mercy by becoming more familiar with his mercy, by which I don't mainly mean knowledge of his mercy, I mean belief. Right, that's why in our services we so often sing about heaven to help reward feel real. We have a prayer of praise to magnify our God so that we will want to reflect the glory of who he is. We have a prayer of confession every week so we can stare with one eye at our sin and the other at the cross so that we might never take for granted what we've received so that our love will be glorious in its response to his love. And yet, moving from knowledge to belief in God's mercy, though it begins with what happens here on Sunday, it happens much more as we remind each other of it all through the week.

Right, I hope your conversations with each other are often deep and theological, not heady, but heartfelt, that we might truly know and believe God's mercy. Husbands and wives, Talk together about the things you're seeing in Scripture that have you excited, things that you are today appreciating about God. Because seeing him more clearly is how you will become more merciful.

And sometimes different motivations behind mercy will be more important for one spouse or the other. Reflection is often a particularly powerful motivator for a husband because he represents Christ in the marriage. While reward might be particularly powerful for a wife because as his helper, she often forgoes earthly reward and her sacrifice isn't seen by anybody. So talk about how the unique aspects of being husband or wife lead to unique motivations for mercy. Reward, reflection, response.

Three gospel motivators for mercy, three ways in which the motivation and power to love mercifully flows from God through you to your spouse.

If we're gonna live this out, we need to understand why, but fourth, we also need to understand what gets in the way, which brings us back to Romans 12.

What gets in the way of mercy? Self-righteousness does.

We resent having to pick up behind someone else's sin and weakness. We say in our hearts if not out loud, I deserve better than this. How could you? It's not fair.

Self-righteousness is the enemy of mercy. And that's because self-righteousness and mercy both begin in the same place.

I have, you do not. Do you see how those are the conditions for both self-righteousness and mercy? And yet their posture could not be more different. Right? Self-righteousness says, I have, you do not, so go.

Mercy says, I have, you do not, so come. There are two sides of the same hill. Which side do you go down? Too often we choose the side of self-righteousness of that hill, not the merciful side. Self-righteousness is fertile soil for harshness when I think I can get what I want.

I deserve better, you're in my way, and I'm gonna get my way. It's also fertile soil for forbiddaness when I realize I can't get what I want. I deserve better. I'm never going to have it, and now I'm bitter. It's notable that in Colossians 3:19 Paul specifically exhorts husbands against harshness, maybe because given their authority in their relationship they often can get what they want.

Here in Romans 12 we see two kinds of self-righteousness, both caustic to mercy. There's self-righteous superiority in verse 16. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly, and there's self-righteous condemning in verse 19, where in self-righteousness we play judge, jury, and jailer all in the snap of a finger. But Paul says, you,'re not judge, jury, or jailer. Never avenge yourselves, he says, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

In any relationship, especially in marriage, you are not the judge, God is. And that realization is what sucks the wind out of our self-righteous superiority because we're not equipped to judge ourselves, and it sucks the air out of our self-righteous condemning because we are not equipped to judge others. So a husband does have authority in the marriage, Ephesians 5 says, but not the coercive authority like the state. His is declarative authority like a church's. So in marriage, everything one says and does, even the hard things, even confronting sin must be motivated by love and mercy, not his judgment.

Right, like when a stranger asked me for cash. I might decide to give it to them, or I might decide I don't know their situation well enough to be sure that by giving I'm not potentially enabling destructive behavior. But my reason for declining is never because they don't deserve my help. My motive is love, not judgment, which means I'm still gonna look them in the eye, have respectful conversation with them, In the same way, when we encounter weakness and sin in a spouse, we don't face off against them judging. We walk around to their side, leaving those instincts of merit aside and embracing mercy for the sake of union, for the sake of being one flesh.

Now, does that mean that earthly justice doesn't matter? Does it mean that I let an abusive person walk all over me? Well, Paul himself seems very sensitive to that potential misunderstanding because he spends most of the whole next chapter, Romans 13, establishing the authority of earthly government to secure earthly justice, punishing wrong, approving what's right. So he is not saying that earthly justice doesn't matter. Earthly governments are in fact given authority by God to protect their citizens, including protecting them from violent suffering relationships.

And it is right to call on them to do that work. So, Paul is quite sensitive to being misunderstood this way, thus Romans 13. But here in Romans 12, his attention is on you in relationship, where he warns against punishing or condemning. He warns against self-superiority, again, because you're not the judge.

One danger for a difficult marriage is that a controlling spouse has been the arbiter of truth for so long, maybe through bullying or manipulation or gaslighting, that you no longer know what's right and what's not. You feel disoriented, which in so many ways is because your spouse has taken over the judge's seat. Yet there's another danger as well, when by God's grace you wake up Maybe you do that through a book or a person you talk to and you emerge from that haze. At that point, you need to be careful not to then become your own arbiter of what is true and false, right and wrong. With the help of wise counselors, as you submit yourself to God's perfect word, leave the judge's seat for God.

Pray that by his Spirit he would show you how to live out verse 21, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, I am so humbled of the examples I have seen in this church of exactly that.

Yet, before we leave behind this idea of self-righteousness as mercy's enemy, there's one last detail we need to consider, and that is our need for mercy from each other. As one author has noted, Many prophetic reconciliations are broken down because while both parties came prepared to forgive, Neither party came prepared to be forgiven.

In marriage you must not only show mercy to your spouse, you must learn to depend on their mercy. To rest in their mercy. To trust in their mercy. And for some of us, that's the hardest pill to swallow. Right?

Depending on mercy means not hiding or disguising your sin, not offering excuses, but I'll tell you what, depending on the mercy of another is a very vulnerable thing to do. Paul says, Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. If I could extend that, do not be haughty but be willing to be the lowly. Love must risk being offended, but it must be willing to meet itself on the way back as the one who offended. And is now in need of mercy.

I wonder how much relational strength and sweetness you have missed out on because you would not depend on mercy. On the other hand, how can you invite your spouse into that vulnerable place of depending on your mercy? Well, quite simply, by having a good track record of being merciful. As Portia says in Shakespeare's play, the quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.

It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

So then prideful self-righteousness is the enemy of mercy, of showing mercy, of receiving mercy. And yet the beautiful news of the gospel is that it kills our pride, right? It kills our pride through Christ's example who did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But emptied himself, humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Beyond that, the gospel kills our pride through what Jesus did on that cross, where we can be declared perfectly righteous before God because of him and not to do with ourselves, which renders any self-righteousness laughably unnecessary. And the gospel kills our pride very simply because Christ did it all, where we have nothing ourselves to boast of. So if you would kill your pride, don't merely think less of yourself, don't merely think of yourself less, seek to know your God, because as John Chrysostom wrote, if we know Him, all pride is banished. And with that, we should conclude.

Have you known mercy? I don't intend for you to vocalize your answer right now, but neither do I intend that question to be rhetorical.

Have you known mercy? Not have you known about the mercy of God. Not have you known that God is merciful to others? Have you known mercy? Titus 3:4, which we hear every time we take the Lord's Supper, is beautiful.

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy. Have you known Mercy. We serve and praise a heavenly Father who is abundant in his mercy. I love that quote by Marcus Loane. The voice that spells forgiveness will say, you, may go.

You have been let off the penalty which your sin deserves. That is amazing mercy. That God should set us free from what we deserved by the death of his beloved Son. And yet there's more. As Lone continues, not merely you may go, but the verdict which means acceptance will say, you, may come.

You are welcome to all my love and my presence. Justification, adoption, fellowship with and by the Spirit, eternal life. What mercy! The mercy with which God treats us as his enemies who confess Fathom! And as we sometimes sing, His mercy seat is open still, have you known mercy?

We're self-righteous people. We ourselves despair of mercy, and so it is so easy to slip into relationships centered on merit, not mercy, even in marriage.

If you would show mercy, if you would depend on mercy, then you must know the mercy of God. Have you known mercy? Oh, my friends, my brothers and sisters, may the marriages in this church swim in the waters of mercy. May our church swim in the waters of mercy.

So the next time those words echo in your head, be it in a marriage or elsewhere, it's not fair, I hope the response of your heart comes back, that's right, it's not fair, it's mercy. Let's pray.

Father, you would be right to call us to mercy, Just because that's how things should work. And yet you haven't done that. You have called us to mercy only after having lavished on us the floodwaters of your own mercy at the cross ever since into the future. Oh Father, we praise you for the mercy you have shown to us. We pray that as it trickles out through our hearts, it would be a testimony to who youo are and what yout have done.

We praise youe as our merciful God. In Jesus' name, amen.