Shouldn’t God Have Mercy on Everyone?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. As you know, we’ve continued our series through the book of Romans. And this last week, we covered the topics of God’s sovereignty and our responsibility — how we see both of those in scripture, and ultimately how we need both of them in order to function in our lives.

If we drop one or the other of them, we might have a tendency to fall into some kind of despair. But the question comes in this week related to God’s mercy and on whom he chooses to have mercy. The question is, shouldn’t God have mercy on everyone? God, of course, being God, he can choose to do whatever he wants.

If he really wanted to save everyone, we assume that he could do that. And so the question is sort of why doesn’t he do that? But even more deeply, shouldn’t he do that? If he’s a gracious God, shouldn’t he just save everyone, kind of regardless of whether they want it or not? Can’t God just do that? That’s a natural question. That’s one that many people ask, and I understand why we would ask it.

But if we’re asking the question, shouldn’t God have mercy on everyone? Or isn’t it unjust for God to have mercy on some, but not others? Isn’t that unjust? If he gives it to some, doesn’t everybody kind of deserve it then? If we keep digging into that question, we find a problem. Like the last phrase there that I just said — doesn’t everyone deserve mercy? The whole point of mercy is that we wouldn’t deserve it.

And so if God shows mercy on anyone, that’s something that he doesn’t have to do. No one actually deserves mercy. And so God wouldn’t have to show mercy to anyone in order to be just. The just thing would be no one gets mercy. So God isn’t unjust by showing some mercy.

And similarly, the people who aren’t shown mercy, they get exactly what they want. All of us have freely chosen to run away from God. All of us have freely chosen darkness over light. And so for people who God doesn’t show mercy, he just lets them go their own way. He lets them receive what they’ve pursued. That is just — to let people reap what they have sown. That is just.

So God isn’t unjust by not showing mercy to everyone. God hasn’t withheld what someone deserves. And he’s not required to show mercy really to anyone. And so the fact that he does for some is an amazing blessing. As we’ve said in some of these other videos, the surprising thing isn’t that God lets some people go their own way, run away from him. The surprising thing is that God saves some people who have chosen to run away from him. And we are grateful that he does. And we pray that he continues to.

So we hope that’s helpful. We’ll see you next time.