The Merciful

In the Garden of Eden, humanity, grasping at the place that belongs to God, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and was bound in the chains of death. God the Son had mercy on those sinners; he took on flesh himself and bore the cross, and so delivered them from death.

The priest and the Levite saw the man who had fallen among robbers and passed him by, but the Samaritan took pity on him, bound up his wounds with oil and wine, set him on his own animal and cared for him. If Jerusalem is the church and Jericho the world, then staying within the church and resting secure there is no different from withholding the gospel for want of a merciful heart.

Worship that is mere formality, and a faith that cherishes only its own salvation, cannot come to know the will of God. When believers set out toward Jericho with mercy for souls not yet saved, God sees that small love and fills it with an overflowing love.