Short Summaries of

Sermons on Ephesians

by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith

Mercy, Love, and Grace

(Eph. 2:4-5)

In the first three verses of Ephesians 2 Paul has described the sins of Gentiles and Jews. From verse four he begins to elaborate the wonder of our salvation in Christ. Before we begin to consider the specific teaching of this passage, however, it is important that we give some attention to three important words that appear in verses 4 and 5--mercy, love, and grace. These words are especially important for Christians to understand because they are at the heart of the difference between Christianity and the false religions and philosophies of this world.

Buddhist Ideas of Mercy, Love, and Grace

Properly speaking none of these ideas is really part of Buddhism. Theravada, the only remaining school of Hinayana, seems to be historically and philosophically the nearest to the original teaching of the Buddha. Since this teaching included no idea of a personal God or a savior, there was no place for mercy, love, or grace. Not only did the original Buddhism deny the existence of God, it also denied the existence of the self. No person exists either to give or to receive mercy! Man's problem was thought to be suffering, which was said to be caused by ignorance. Salvation came through right knowledge, enlightenment. The quest for wisdom appears to have been a purely individual affair in early Buddhism.

According to Edward Conze, about 100 B.C. a new form of Buddhism, commonly known as Mahayana, began to develop in North-Western and Southern India, the two areas most exposed to foreign influence. Among the factors that led to the development of this new kind of Buddhism, the laymen's demand for equality with the priests is said to be important. It is with the development of Mahayana that compassion first became a prominent doctrine of Buddhism. It is interesting to note that Mahayana began to regard the Buddha as a god and that this school of Buddhism invented a doctrine of revelation. Again, according to Conze, Mahayana was not systematized until about A.D. 150, long after the mission of St. Thomas to India. At any rate, the influence of Bible, perhaps both from pre-Christian Judaism as well as Christianity, is evident.

Even so, compassion is not associated with a doctrine of sin or a doctrine of redemption. The Bodhisattva is compassionate toward all suffering of all beings. His compassion is not any more toward men than animals because men may reincarnate into animal form. There is no fundamental difference between the two of them. Compassion toward living beings does not really mean love or grace. Even the "salvation-by-another" doctrine of Buddhism, salvation by saying the name of Amida (Namu Amida Butsu), was borrowed from Christianity and does not really reach the idea of love or grace, since there is no conception of monergistic salvation.

Islamic Ideas of Mercy, Love, and Grace

Islam has a higher doctrine of mercy than Buddhism does since it does have a doctrine of creation. It also has a doctrine of sin, though it is superficial at best. According to Islam, all men are born into the world with the same ability to chose between good and evil that Adam and Eve had at the time of the creation. We become sinners only when we commit sin. Even then, sin is more a problem of outward behavior than it is a matter of heart. Islam lays no great demands on its believers.

The Koran repeats at the beginning of each chapter "In the name of the merciful and compassionate God." God's mercy in Islam is that He saves some men from everlasting judgment, but He does this simply by deciding not to condemn them. There is no doctrine of redemption or substitutionary atonement in Islam. Neither is their any emphasis on God's love for man. The word love is hardly used at all. God's determination of man's destiny is emphasized to such a degree that "fatalism" would appear to be an appropriate designation for the Islamic doctrine.

Biblical Mercy, Love, and Grace

Islam and even Buddhism have borrowed from and distorted the teaching of the Bible to obtain what little they have to communicate about mercy, love, and grace. But they have both missed an essential truth. The Biblical doctrines of mercy and grace are grounded in the doctrine of love. All three words, furthermore, refer first of all to the nature of God. God is a God of love and therefore He shows us mercy and saves us by His grace.

Buddhism denies the personality of God altogether and thus has no real doctrine of love. Islam's doctrine of God contradicts whatever slight doctrine of love might be constructed from the Koran's few references. It is the Christian doctrine of the Trinity--something that other religions make no attempt to imitate--that is the ultimate basis for the Christian idea of love. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are a perfect society of infinite, everlasting love. Love is essential to God's nature because God is Triune.

Many Christians pervert the doctrine of God's love into the idea of "God's infinite niceness to man"--not a Biblical doctrine. God is love because He is a society of perfect divine Persons. His love for man is an expression of His holy perfection, not His public evaluation of man's worthiness.

In the Bible love gives birth to mercy and grace because the main creaturely object of God's love, man, has become a sinner and rebel against God. Thus, it is only after setting forth the sinfulness of Gentile and Jew that Paul speaks of God's mercy, love and grace. God is rich in mercy, willing to forgive any sinner who repents and believes in Him. God is gracious to sinful man, having set His love on us before the foundation of the world and determined to save His chosen from sin and make them His children. Grace is love in action, saving man from sin.

Social Implications

Historical assertions always involve complex issues that make them contestable, especially by people with different assumptions. Nevertheless, it seems sufficiently clear that there are social consequences to religious doctrines that can be seen in history, even though not with the clarity that we would like (at least not yet!). Christianity has produced social institutions and cultures that have given far greater expression to mercy, love and grace than the cultures produced by other world religions.

The consequences of Islam's lack of a doctrine of love or redemption are seen in its vision of the home. The Islamic doctrine of polygamy is based upon a specific revelation from Allah and cannot be brushed aside as unimportant. Christianity teaches the husband's exclusive devotion to his wife because of Christ's redemptive love. As Christ loved the Church and died for her, so too, the Christian husband must love his wife and die for her blessing.

In original Buddhism, women were clearly inferior to men. They were not allowed to become monks, which was then thought to be the way of salvation. Even after the development of Mahayana, women have been treated with incredible cruelty in Buddhist cultures, whether they were wives or daughters. The custom of selling a daughter to become a prostitute, once common in all Buddhist cultures and continuing in Japan until the late 1940's, has never been tolerated by Christian people. Indeed, wherever Christianity has spread, the place of women in society has been exalted because of the Biblical doctrine of Christ's love for the Church, His bride.

It is essential that Christians not merely talk about love, but also practice it. This begins by building godly Christian homes in which the love of Christ for His Church is manifest and by building local Churches which have true loving fellowship in Christ.