Mercy begetting mercy.
The practical lessons of the gospel were not exhausted in the preceding chapter, nor the motives which urge believers to godliness. The call to holiness in the last chapter was based upon the holy character of God's saving grace and the purpose of Christ's redeeming love. In these verses the grace and love of God are still the basis of the exhortation, but it takes its peculiar coloring from the thought of what we were ourselves. Tenderness, indulgence, and meekness toward our fellow-men are the duties to which these verses call us; and it is supposed that those fellow-men may be rough and evil-minded toward us, and provoking in their ways, and perhaps obstinate in evil-doing. The natural heart might be ready to speak evil of them, to contend fiercely with them, utterly to reject them as reprobates, to thrust them beyond the pale of hope and kindness. But stay! What were you yourselves when the kindness and love of God first appeared unto you? Were you walking in righteousness? Were your works the things which attracted God's love toward you? Nay! you were living in that folly which you now condemn in others; you were children of disobedience then as truly as they are now; you were deceived by sin then as they are now; you were the slaves of your own lusts then even as they are now; you lived in malice and envy then, both hateful and hating one another. But God's mercy found you out; God's love threw a veil over your sins; he provided a fountain to wash away your guilt; he sent his Holy Spirit to create in you a clean heart, and to renew a right spirit within you; he justified you by his grace; he made you his heirs, and gave you the hope of eternal life. And will not you have mercy upon your fellow-men? Will not you, for whom the Divine gentleness and patience has done so much, be gentle and patient too? Will not you, humble in the remembrance of your own sins, and abashed at the thought of your own unworthiness, deal meekly and kindly even with unruly and sinful men, and cherish the hope that God's boundless grace may at last reach them, even as it reached you? Thus the doctrine of God's mercy toward men begets mercy from man to man, and the doctrine of grace is the strongest conceivable motive to charity.