In this step, you will be helping students see how they can receive mercy—and also give it to others. Hand out writing supplies.

Studying God’s response to evil does not give us easy answers. His holiness demands justice, but His mercy provides escape. Sometimes we receive mercy from God, but we don’t offer it to others. It’s a difficult thing to balance compassion with justice and only God can do it perfectly, but let’s figure out how we can be a mercy RECEIVER and also a mercy GIVER.

Allow your students to find a spot in your classroom where they can concentrate. Have your students make two columns on their sheet of paper—one titled MERCY GIVER and the other titled MERCY RECEIVER.

During this activity, you might be a MERCY GIVER and other times you might be a MERCY RECEIVER. Let’s first think about being a MERCY GIVER. Try to think of a situation when you might have had the opportunity to give someone a second chance. Have you ever shown mercy to someone before?

Also, think about a time when you were a MERCY RECEIVER—someone showed compassion to you—or gave you a second chance, even if you didn’t deserve it. This can be from your childhood or as recent as yesterday.

Have your students jot down the incidents in the appropriate column—whether they were on the giving end or receiving end of mercy. As time allows, have them add more incidents; give any volunteers opportunity to share without using names.

When you finish, discuss these questions together.

• How are human acts of mercy limited at best? How is God’s mercy different from ours? (Accept all reasonable answers. Students might talk about how easy it is for us to say we forgive, but then react toward that person as though we haven’t. Or, we might want something in exchange for the mercy shown—“you owe me one.” God’s mercy is real and freely given.)

• Does showing compassion mean we should eliminate punishments altogether? Why not? (God’s Word tells us that the Lord disciplines the ones He loves. There are consequences that come as a result of disobedience that mercifully keep us from making that mistake again.)

• Why is it so hard to show compassion to other people—especially when their punishments feel so deserved? (Sometimes we are so concerned about how we were wronged and how our “rights” were abused that we want vindication; we want to see the person who harmed us suffer. It becomes very self-focused.) 

• Have you ever secretly been pleased to see someone suffer because of their bad behavior? How is that a different response from God’s? (Answers will vary.)

Before you close your lesson, encourage your students to complete their MERCY GIVER/MERCY RECEIVER list this week by recording as many ways as they can think of where they have received mercy from God. Ask them to write out a prayer on the back of the sheet thanking God for the many ways He has shown them mercy when they did not deserve it. Challenge them to commit to applying being a mercy giver to their daily life in the upcoming week.

When you are finished, pray together, thanking Jesus for the significance of His death on the cross and the extraordinary mercy He has shown to every sinner.