1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian Work - Cultivating The Garden | Page 3

Matthew 18 v 21 – 35
There are two powerful effects that the gospel of grace has on a person who has
been touched by it.
Firstly, the person who knows that he received mercy while an undeserving
enemy of God will have a heart of love for even (and especially!) the most
ungrateful and difficult persons.
When a Christian sees prostitutes, alcoholics, prisoners, drug addicts, unwed
mothers, the homeless, the refugees, he knows that he is looking in a mirror.
Perhaps the Christian spent all of his life as a respectable middle-class person. No
matter. He thinks: “Spiritually I was just like these people, though physically and
socially I never was where they are now. They are outcasts. I was an outcast.”
Many people today are very concerned that relief only go to the “deserving” poor.
It is true that we must be sure our aid helps a person to self-sufficiency. It is also
true that we are not obligated to care for the poor of the world to the same degree
that we are bound to help our needy Christian brother. However, we must be very
careful about using the word “deserving” when it comes to mercy. Were we ever
deserving of God’s mercy? If someone is completely deserving, is our aid, then,
really mercy?
Years ago, Jonathan Edwards wrote a tract to answer the objections of people to the
duty of Christian charity. One objection was,
“Why should I help a person who brought himself to his poverty through his own
sin?”
Edwards responded:
“If they are come [into poverty] by a vicious idleness and prodigality [laziness and
self-indulgence]; yet we are not thereby excused from all obligation to relieve them,
unless they continue in those vices… If we do otherwise, we shall act in a manner
very contrary to the rule of loving one another as Christ loved us. Now Christ hath
loved us, pitied us, and greatly laid out himself to relieve us from that want and
misery which we brought on ourselves by our own folly and wickedness. We
foolishly and perversely threw away those riches with which we were provided,
upon which we might have lived and been happy to all eternity.”
Clearly, Christians who understand grace will not be quick to give up on an
“undeserving” needy person. Christ’s mercy was not based on worthiness; it was