One of the most precious attributes of God is that of His mercy. The Hebrew and Greek words that are translated into English as “mercy” have the basic idea of kindness. In fact, one of those words is usually translated as His lovingkindness or His covenant faithfulness. We find that to be true of God’s forgiveness as He does not give us what we deserve. More than that, it’s because of His mercy that He gives us the opposite of what we deserve. He gives us His love, and shows it to us in so many ways, as we read in the opening verses of Psalm 103. The Bible has much to say about mercy.
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:16)
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved (Ephesians 2:4-5)
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you (Psalm 85:6)
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3)
He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5)
And of course, we could add many more passages in which God calls us to show mercy, as in the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus told a powerful parable about mercy in the story of the Pharisee and the publican. It is well known as a model of the contrast between proud self-righteousness and humble penitence. The Pharisee stood where everyone could see and hear him as he boasted (not really prayed!) that God should be so glad to have someone as earnest in his religious practice as he. But the spiritually broken publican, the despised tax collector, stood to the side, not even raising his eyes to heaven, knowing that he deserved nothing but divine judgment, but cried to God for mercy. His prayer was a true prayer, and a model for our praying. “God be merciful to me, the sinner.” It’s the model for what is typically called “the sinner’s prayer.”
It is a prayer that every believer knows well, as it should be on our lips and in our heart every day. God’s mercy is not something we need just at the moment of our conversion, at the beginning of our lives as redeemed children of God. Every single day, as the Holy Spirit lovingly convicts us of sin, we ought to call on the Lord for the mercy that forgives us more than seventy times seven, even for the same sins. And as we struggle with so many ailments within our bodies, so many challenges in our duties, and so much opposition from an unbelieving world, we are constantly in need of God’s mercy to guide, to deliver, and to sustain us. How wonderful that His mercies are infinite. He even knows our needs before we call on Him. And He is faithful to bring His promised covenant mercy into our lives time after time.
That parable of the Pharisee and the publican is the basis for the hymn “Lord, Like the Publican I Stand,” written in 1832 by Thomas Raffles (1788-1863). He was born in London. In 1803 he became a clerk in Doctors’ Commons, but shortly after retired, and through the influence of Dr. Collyer, of whose church at Peckham he was for some time a member, he entered Homerton College in 1805. His stated ministry began at Hammersmith, where he was ordained as a Congregational minister on June 22, 1809. In 1812 he moved to Liverpool, where he succeeded the Rev. T. Spencer, and remained for 49 years the honored pastor of the Great George Street Congregational Church. He died at Liverpool on August 18, 1863. For upwards of fifty years Dr. Raffles was one of the most prominent ministers of the Congregational body.
His labors outside of his own congregation were very great, his aid as a preacher on behalf of missions and other religious works, being eagerly sought after. The Lancashire Independent College owes its existence mainly to him; and to many religious works in Liverpool he gave great personal attention. His degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the University of Aberdeen in 1820, and that of D.D. by Union College, Connecticut in 1880. He was the author and editor of a number of works based on sermons. In addition to those, as early as March 8, 1813, he wrote in a letter to his friend, Mr. Brown, “I am about to put to press a collection of hymns for the use of my chapel.”
But this intention was not carried out until 1853, when he published his “Supplement to Dr. Watts’s Psalms & Hymns.”His son wrote that he would never have published it at all, but, in common with other Independent Ministers, would have used the 1836 and 1842 Congregational hymnal, had that book contained a fair share of his own hymns. In its original form, however, it did not contain even a single one of his hymns. When the improved edition was contemplated in 1859, under the editorship of the Rev. Dr. Gr. Smith, Dr. Raffles contributed some of his hymns to its pages.
That parable in Luke 18 was the inspiration for one of the prayers included in “The Valley of Vision,” that much-loved collection of Puritan prayers. The prayer on pages 170 and 171 begins with these words.
God of the Publican,
The Valley of Vision, The Banner of Truth Trust, © 1975, Edinburgh
Be merciful to me a sinner;
this I am by nature and pratice,
this Thy Word proclaims me to be,
this I hope to feel myself to be;
Yet Thou hast not left me to despair,
for there is no ‘peradventure’ in Thy grace;
I have all the assurance I need
that with Thee is plenteous redemption.
Used by permission
Raffles’ hymn provides the church today with a much-needed resource to include attention to contrition and repentance in our worship services. This is too often omitted or ignored, and a spirit of celebration dominates. Such a spirit is certainly appropriate for Christian worship. But that celebration becomes far more exalted if it is preceded by a prayer for mercy. Just as a diamond shines more brilliantly against the backdrop of black velvet, even so does God’s glory shine more brilliantly against the backdrop of the blackness of our sins. When we include a prayer of repentance and biblical assurance of pardon (which have always historically been seen as essential dimensions of a well-crafted liturgy of worship), then the praise that we offer to Him is lifted to an even higher plane.
God’s “mercy” should rightly be seen as the central theme of Raffles’ hymn. Each stanza is a prayer to the Lord, ending in the same plea: “be merciful to me.” It should be sung gently, thoughtfully, prayerfully. Musicians will accompany it with appropriately gentle sounds.
In Stanza 1, we place ourselves in that parable and identify ourselves to be like that tax collector. His past sins were egregious in that first century culture, having become a traitor to his own people, having become an agent of the enemy (Rome), and having strong-armed people into submitting to his theft of much of their minimal wealth. His greed and callousness were inexcusable, except before a merciful God like ours who delights in pardoning the repentant.
Lord, like the publican I stand, and lift my heart to Thee;
Thy pard’ning grace, O God, command, be merciful to me.
In Stanza 2, we join that publican, pounding our chest in embarrassed sadness, emotionally broken, not because of the consequences of our sin that we are suffering, but because we have so insensitively offended the God who has loved us so much. Our fallen sinful nature is a terrible thing that oppresses us. But, praise God, greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world, and that includes in our hearts still affected by indwelling sin which the Lord is forgiving and increasingly subduing (1 John 4:4).
I smite upon my anxious breast, o’erwhelmed with agony;
O save my soul by sin oppressed, be merciful to me.
In Stanza 3, we express a very specific prayer request of the Lord by confessing “my guilt, my shame.” Confession of sin, acknowledging that we have sinned, is at the heart of seeking forgiveness, and should be an element of daily prayer for each of us. But we also confess, in the sense of professing what we believe, that we “have no hope nor plea but Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Our hope for mercy rests in the promise of God that He will justify us on this basis.
My guilt, my shame, I all confess: I have no hope nor plea
but Jesus’ blood and righteousness: be merciful to me.
In Stanza 4, we make our prayer even more specific by pointing directly to the cross of Christ. Raffles’ words suggest that we are actually standing at the foot of that cross, refusing to leave the shelter it provides, waiting for Jesus to show to us the mercy for which we pray.
Here at Thy cross I still would wait, nor from its shelter flee,
till Thou, O God, in mercy great, art merciful to me.
Here is a link to this musical penitential prayer.
The tune to which we sing Raffles’ text is AVONDALE. It was composed by Charles Hutchinson Gabriel (1856-1932). Born in Wilton, Iowa, for the first seventeen years of his life, he lived there on a farm, where friends and neighbors often gathered to sing. Gabriel accompanied them on the family reed organ he had taught himself to play. At the age of sixteen he began teaching singing in schools, following in his father’s footsteps, and soon was acclaimed as a fine teacher and composer. He moved to California in 1887 and served as Sunday school music director at the Grace Methodist Church in San Francisco. After moving to Chicago in 1892, Gabriel edited numerous collections of anthems, cantatas, and a large number of songbooks for the Homer Rodeheaver, Hope, and E. O. Excell publishing companies. He composed a huge number of tunes and texts, at times using pseudonyms such as Charlotte G. Homer. Those include the music we sing with the hymns “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” and “He Lifted Me.” The total number of his compositions is estimated at about seven thousand! Gabriel’s gospel songs became widely circulated through the Billy Sunday-Homer Rodeheaver urban crusades. He died in Los Angeles.