# Grace, Mercy, Peace - 2nd John 1:3



## TaylorOtwell (Dec 21, 2007)

I'm attemping to write a study guide for a Bible study over 2nd John. Can anyone lend me some help in the differences between grace and mercy in this passage? 

I'm viewing grace as God's favor and good-will poured out on us because Jesus Christ has fully atoned for the sins of His people. Therefore, because of the Lord's justifying us, He pours out his grace, mercy, peace, kindness, etc.

The terms start to run together for me, how are they different?


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## bookslover (Dec 26, 2007)

Someone (I forget who) once said that God will never have more mercy on you than He had at the Cross.

Perhaps the best thing to say is that, because God was gracious then, He can be merciful on a day-to-day basis. But God is gracious to us on that basis, as well.

I guess I'm not helping much...


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Dec 26, 2007)

Consider also 1 Tim. 1.2: "Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord."

Upon which, John Collinges (in Matthew Poole's Annotations) notes:



> Having thus designated the person to whom he writes, he expresses his ardent desires of his complete felicity; which is included in grace, mercy, and peace. By grace he means the free favour and good will of God, with all the spiritual gifts that proceed from it, either requisite for salvation, or the great work of the evangelical ministry. By mercy, his compassionate tender love, pardoning, relieving, supporting, and assisting us in our Christian course. By peace he signifies, principally, the peace of God, that divine calm of conscience, that tranquillity and rest of soul, which proceeds from the assurance that God is reconciled to us in Christ, and our freedom by the sanctifying Spirit from the tyranny of carnal lusts: this peace can never be to the wicked. And besides this principal peace, we may understand peace with man, that is, a quiet state, exempt from hatred and persecutions, that Timothy might more comfortably and successfully perform the work of his ministry. He prays for these blessings from God, who is the original Fountain of all good: and from Jesus Christ as the channel, by which all the gifts of God are conveyed to us; for without his mediation the Deity is as a sealed fountain, no grace would flow to us. He styles God our Father, because he has adopted us in his Son, and in that quality he communicates his grace, mercy, and peace to us: he styles Christ our Lord, who hath supreme power over us, as well by the right of creation as of redemption.


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## py3ak (Dec 26, 2007)

A way I have heard of distinguishing them which I like is that grace is God's favor to the guilty, whereas mercy is His favor to the miserable. Another way (and one of these is from Geoff Thomas, but I'm not sure which one) is that mercy is God's favor to the undeserving, whereas grace is His favor to the ill-deserving.

But I would be surprised if you could *consistently* bear out either of those distinctions in a Scripture-wide word-study.


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