His Glory My Joy, a blog of Author Luana Ehrlich

It’s easy to fall into the trap of focusing on our failures or weaknesses, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. If you read the Bible on a regular basis, hear sermons, or sing Christian songs, you’ll constantly be confronted with your inability to live up to the person God created you to be. We all “fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23.

While it’s true every individual born since Adam (except for the God-man, Jesus) comes into the world filled to the brim and running over with a sin nature, it’s also true God has provided a way for a new filling. He’s promised to infuse us with His nature, His Holy nature. This is what the Bible calls our new nature.

This new nature is promised to everyone who believes. “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” Ephesians 1:13.

As a follower of Christ, filled with His Holy Spirit, you are a repository of God’s grace and mercy. He’s filled you with His attributes. You’ve become a “vessel of mercy.” Romans 9:23.

Being filled with God’s grace and mercy, enables us to be merciful. John Piper of Desiring God Ministries writes in his sermon on Romans 9:

Mercy produces mercy and receives mercy again. We become merciful by being shown mercy. And we show mercy to obtain more mercy again. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Freely you received mercy, freely give – and you will receive more and more, “pressed down, shaken together, running over” (Luke 6:38). Mercy upon mercy.

While it’s important to continually examine ourselves for sin in our lives and confess that sin to God (1 John 1:9), it’s also important to realize we are full of God’s mercy and His mercy is an overflowing mercy.