What matters to our God is not only what we do, but why we do it. In His Sermon on the Plain, from which today’s Gospel is taken, our Lord instructs His disciples of every age, including you and me, not just to do good to others, but to do so out of mercy. But only he can show mercy who has been shown mercy; thus the words of our Lord: “Therefore be merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” And how is our Father in heaven merciful? By treating us not as we deserve for our sins, but out of sheer grace alone.

God provided His Old Testament people with a shadow of this in Joseph, the son of Jacob. By means of two dreams, He revealed to this young man that He would put him in authority over his brothers to save not only their bodies from a seven-year famine, but also—and even more importantly—their souls from the evil influences of the Canaanites in whose land they were living. But despised by his jealous brothers, he was sold into slavery and forced to serve the pagan Egyptians, until he, by the mighty hand of God, was exalted to be ruler over those Egyptians, second only to Pharaoh himself. And being in authority, he invited his father and brothers to live in Egypt so that he could provide for them and their children. But as you heard earlier, when Jacob died, his brothers, still filled with guilt over what they had done, feared he would seek revenge. So they begged Joseph for forgiveness. And in mercy, he did forgive them—fully and unconditionally.

Do you not see in this an image of the even greater mercy our Heavenly Father showed us in His beloved Son Jesus Christ? He sent Him into the world to save both our body and our soul from an eternal death in hell. And as was Joseph, so Jesus too was despised by His brothers—the Jews—who handed Him over to the pagan Romans to die the death of a slave: death by crucifixion. But on the third day He rose from the dead and was exalted, as was Joseph—only in His case, to the right hand of the Father. There He intercedes for us and pleads with His Father to forgive us fully and unconditionally, just as Joseph forgave his brothers, because He, unlike Joseph, gave His life as the Sacrifice that satisfied the punishment God imposed upon us for our sins.

Whoever believes this has, to borrow our Lord’s metaphor, the plank removed from his eye. So our Heavenly Father in mercy poured out His Holy Spirit into our hearts through the preaching and our hearing of His Word to bring us to faith in Jesus as our Savior. Then He in mercy led us to the Font, where He, in the blood-tinged waters of Holy Baptism, washed away the filth of our sins. And we who were born of sinful flesh were born from above as forgiven children of God and heirs of everlasting life.

Dear Christian, there is no greater mercy we could ever be shown than that! God saw that we are stuck in death, and He had mercy on us and gave us life. God saw how much we covet the things of this world that will all someday pass away, and He had mercy on us and led us to a church that offers us not the temporal things of this life, but treasures that will never perish, spoil, or fade away. God saw that we are children of hell, and He had mercy on us and opened up heaven to us. And because we brought nothing into this world, God in His mercy also provides us daily with all that we need to support our body in this life—and so much more.

“Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.” Our Lord doesn’t say, “Be merciful, and then your Father will also be merciful.” We do not merit God’s mercy by showing mercy. Rather, we show mercy because we’ve been shown mercy. And in His Sermon on the Plain, Jesus instructs us on how we, as children of our Heavenly Father, are to show mercy: Judge not. Condemn not. Forgive. And give freely.

However, fallen flesh—which is also our flesh—rails against each and all of these commands. After all, they require that we put ourselves aside, and sinners, who are by nature selfish, are not always willing to do that. They may forgive, but only if there’s something in it for them—some benefit they receive from it, such as the praise of men. But to show mercy by forgiving those who’ve wronged them fully and unconditionally—that they’re not always so inclined to do.

Consider, then, these words of St. John: “Whoever says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” And to make sure every sinner is convicted by his words, he continues, “And this command we have from Him: that he who loves God must also love his brother.” The word “must” clearly implies that this is neither a choice nor an option for us, but a command God demands us to obey.

That’s quite the quandary for us sinners, is it not? The Law says we must not judge, or we will be judged. We must not condemn, or we will be condemned. Instead, we must forgive, or we will not be forgiven, and must freely give, or it won’t be given to us. Yet the selfish nature of our sinful flesh tells us to judge and condemn our brother for the speck in his eye rather than forgive and show him mercy.

But thanks be to God, that the mercy He’s shown us, He continues to show to us—even when we, due to the sin that dwells within us, refuse to show mercy to our brother. When we, convicted by the judgment and condemnation of the Law, confess our sins to Him, He, through the voice of His minister, forgives us for His name’s sake.

When we listen to the Word by which His Spirit brought us to faith in Christ, as it is preached from this pulpit, He strengthens our faith in His mercy so that we hold firmly to the hope that we remain His forgiven child in Christ despite our sinful behavior.

And as if those two gifts weren’t enough, our Lord in His mercy has given us His Holy Supper. In this, the greatest of all feasts, He serves us His Body to eat and His Blood to drink for the forgiveness of our sins—thus assuring us, who eagerly await the redemption of our body from the bondage of sin’s corruption, that He in His mercy will bring us through death into everlasting life.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.