Mercy and grace are not something new with God!

The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the Lord will drive you. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or eat or smell. But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, then in later days you will return to the Lord your God and obey him. (Deuteronomy 4:27-30, NIV)

Christian believers often are confused about the grace that saves them. They often view grace as something new. They talk as if grace was recently found, languishing on a dusty shelf in a room filled with God’s gifts. Then after this gift of grace was found, God remarkably decides to gives it to us in a special way and unique way.

Grace is not something that God simply does as an action but rather one of the many acts that flow out from the attributes of God from His omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent essence and being. Our true understanding of His mercy and grace will always be blurred by our limited capacities, as God created beings even though we can be at the same time daunted by the scope of God’s love in granting us mercy and grace.

God’s unfathomable mercy by which He is able to lovingly see us as sinners and by His grace, to bestow on us His redeeming favor … is not new! God is who He always was, and who He will forever be (Malachi 3:6) and His mercies are new (Lamentations 3:22-23) only in sense that they flow endlessly by His grace into every new day.

God’s forgiveness was formally tied to a system of sacrifice to bring about the release from sin until Christ fulfilled all requirements for sacrifice and by His death brought redemption to all people, once and for all time, for all sin (1 Peter 3:18).  Still God always turned in mercy to those who sought Him in the Old Testament and gave grace to those who repented with a contrite heart. He welcomed back into His loving arms even those who had wandered so far that they worshiped false and useless gods which were made of wood and stone

The chosen people of the “First Covenant” and the followers of the “New Covenant” in Jesus Christ come to the same God and place their only redeeming hope in the same Living and Almighty God. God’s long-suffering and great mercy to see those who turn away from sin, selfishness, foolishness and falseness was and is always the same. His granting of favor through grace has always been the same because it flows from who God is and will forever be the same. Mercy and grace are not something new with God for they come from the God who is and will forever … be love.

He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. (1 John 4:8, KJ21)

Suggested Reading … Deuteronomy 4