By Brother Michel Lankford
Yes. He wants to have pity and show mercy. His default position is to have mercy and to show compassion. Those are two of His chief attributes.
YHWH Almighty is Gracious and Compassionate
As it is written: Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.” (Exodus 34:5–8, NKJV)
As it is written: The Lord is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.” (Psalm 103:8, NKJV)
As it is written: The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy.” (Psalm 145:8, NKJV)
As it is written: Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”” (Lamentations 3:22–24, NKJV)
God’s Desire is for EVERY Person to be SAVED and NOT be Condemned
As it is written: The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV)
As it is written: For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2:3–4, NKJV)
His Mercy is WHY He so Often Warns Us to Rpent, so that He Can Rightly Show Us Mercy, Instead of Being REQUIRED to PUNISH Us in RIghteousness, as Our Sins Deserve to be Punished.
As it is written: “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Repent, turn away from your idols, and turn your faces away from all your abominations.” (Ezekiel 14:6, NKJV)
As it is written: Seek the Lord while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to the Lord, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:6–7, NASB95)
As it is written: and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14, NASB95)
As it is written: From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”” (Matthew 4:17, NASB95)
As it is written: “I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. “Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? “I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”” (Luke 13:3–5, NASB95)
As it is written: Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.” (Revelation 2:5, NASB95)
As it is written: ‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” (Revelation 3:19, NASB95)
If you have any spiritual eyesight at all, you can see throughout the Scriptures that God is literally BEGGING people to repent, so that He can legitimately show us mercy and forgiveness, instead of being required by His Righteousness to judge us, to punish us, and to condemn us, the way that our sins deserve. He calls us to repentance so that He CAN rightly be merciful. That is the whole point.
For another key example look at the Prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32).
Now, we love that Kingdom parable because it so keenly demonstrates how the Heavenly Father operates and functions. The prodigal son changed his mind, he changed his intentions, and then he physically changed his actions and he RETURNED to his father. That’s what repenting means. When the prodigal son did that, the father forgave and restored the prodigal son. That is a basic Heavenly Kingdom function. God longs to restore us too, but to have that restoration, we must likewise do what the prodigal son did. We must change our mind away from our sins. We must change our intentions and purposes away from our sins. We must change our physical actions away from our sin, and then we must actively RETURN to the Heavenly Father and to walk in God’s Ways. That’s what repenting truly means. When we repent, God restores His Blessings upon us.
What is interesting is something that Bible teachers rarely if ever talk about, but we should. What happens to the prodigal son IF he DOESN’T repent? What happens if the prodigal son DOESN’T change his thinking and frame of mind? What happens if the prodigal son DOESN’T change his intentions and purposes away from his sin? What happens if the prodigal son DOESN’T change his physical actions and if he DOESN’T take the physical steps to RETURN home to his father? It’s blatant and straightforward. IF the prodigal son DOESN’T fulfill the actions of repentance, the results of his own sin would have DESTROYED him. He would have starved and died in a foreign pigsty IF he DIDN’T REPENT. Keep in mind, that is NOT what the father DESIRED for that young man, but that is what the results would have been unless the prodigal son repented. The SAME Kingdom reality is true with us. That is WHY He said that IF we DON’T REPENT, we WILL PERISH. That is how God’s Kingdom FUNCTIONS.
We ALL LOVE to hear about the Father’s Forgivenes, Grace, and Compassion, and YES, those are true, wonderful, and CRUCIAL. What we often conveniently forget in the parable is that while all of those good attributes of the father are true; NONE of the father’s excellent attributes are of any useful benefit to the young man UNLESS and UNTIL he REPENTS and RETURNS to his father. We must never forget that the ONLY way that the father’s good attributes could be of any benefit to the young man whatsoever, is if and when the young man repents. If he does not repent and return home, then he dies in the pigsty, regardless of how good the father is. Please never lose sight of this.”
As it is written: Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil.” (Proverbs 3:7, NASB95)
I do hope that helps you.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Shalom.
Brother Michel Lankford