Grace, Mercy and Help
(week 13/05)
Olubi Johnson
What is the difference between grace, mercy and help?
Grace is unmerited favour based on the sacrifice of Christ that causes God to give us divine life through our spirits.
Mercy is the compassion of God the Father that causes Him to give us divine life through the air or atmosphere to act on our souls, bodies and circumstances to preserve us from destruction and cause us to be faithful to the end in times of weakness but not unwillingness (Matt. 26.41).
Help is the assistance of God the Holy Spirit by which He supplies to us the grace of the Lord Jesus and mercy of God the Father as defined above.
To enjoy the grace, mercy and help of God in its fulness, you must know and regularly acknowledge (Pr. 3.6) all the three Persons of the Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Gen. 1.1, 26; 1 Jn. 5.7).
Now, since God is a spirit and so is invisible to our sight and imperceptible to our physical senses, we can only know God properly by revelation (Eph. 1.17-18; Jn. 17.3) through His written Word, which when we act on in obedience and faith, produces physical manifestations of the presence, wisdom and power of God.
So to increase the grace, mercy and help we get from God we need to know God better by, as a habit:
1. Daily putting on the attitude of and practicing divine love: undeserved good will toward men.
2. Daily pray frequently in tongues: this is the supernatural physical evidence of the presence of the invisible God.
3. Daily read, study, confess and meditate the written Word.
The help of the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome our weaknesses especially when we want to start spiritual activity like prayer: there is usually a reluctance or spiritual inertia to pray because of the weakness of the flesh. The Holy Spirit helps to overcome this.
Romans 8:26-27 NIV: In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
The grace of the Lord Jesus causes us to labour diligently in the spirit.
1 Corinthians 15:9-10 NKJV: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
The mercy of the Father preserves us from destruction, which would otherwise have happened because of our sins and errors and also enables us to be faithful to the end:
Lamentation 3:22 NKJV: Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed,
Psalms 103:10-14 NKJV: He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. 13 As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him. 14 For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
1 Corinthians 7:25 KJV: …one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.
