day no. 16,327: mercy that does not hate sin is vice, not virtue

"True mercy is no less the product of anger than of pity: that what differentiates the divine virtue of mercy from 'the vice of insensibility' which is called 'tolerance,' is just the under-lying presence of indignation. Thus — so the reasoning runs, — 'the man who cannot be angry cannot be merciful,' and it was therefore precisely the anger of Christ which proved that the unbounded compassion he manifested to sinners 'was really mercy and not mere tolerance.'" -- B.B. Warfield, The Emotional Life of Our Lord

Mercy is not the tolerance of evil. Where evil is tolerated, mercy is unnecessary. If sin is not wicked, there is nothing to overlook.  If evil is not counted against us, it is nothing to say that you do not count it against someone else. If sin is nothing to be angry about it, it is not a virtue to keep your calm about it. But if sin is wicked, then it would be wicked to overlook it. If sins count, it would be wicked to discount it. If sins are hateful, it would be wrong not to hate them. 

Mercy of the kind that merely tolerates sin, then, is a vice, not a virtue. It lacks, as Warfield says, sense. If it doesn't hate the sin it seeks to cover, it just another sin. If it doesn't despise the evil it dies for, it defies its own ends. Why should anyone have to die? But if someone must die, it becomes virtuous to substitute yourself in order to spare the one on death row.

All that to say, if you do not hate sin, you cannot be merciful. You can be tolerant. You can be empathetic. You can be all kinds of things, but merciful may not be named among them. You must hate sin if you want to be merciful. 

God is merciful because He hates sin. Jesus showed great mercy in despising the cross and its shame on His way to and through it (Heb. 12:2). Jesus does not tolerate sins, He dies for them. He does not paint over dirt, He bulldozes the building and rebuilds brand spanking new. If the old could be improved, nothing new would be needed. If sinners could be sainted by twelve step programs, the Son of God died for nothing. If time could heal all wounds, Jesus was unnecessary. But if sin is serious, someone has to die. And if someone has to die, it is merciful to be the one who does the dying in the condemned person's place.

John 15:13

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.