Jesus challenged misconceptions about the nature of God and the kind of devotion he desires. He said, “Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'” This statement, echoing the prophet Hosea, was directed at those who were entrenched in a religion of rituals and sacrifices, but they were disconnected from the heart of God. Jesus reminded the people that God’s desire is not for empty displays of suffering and piety but for sincere acts of mercy.
It is still common for human religion to teach that that God is pleased by our suffering, at least when we do it with a pleasant attitude, as if enduring pain makes us more acceptable to him. This perspective is not only dangerous but blasphemous, because it distorts the character of God. He is a God of compassion who delights in showing mercy and bringing healing. The faithless perspective of human orthodoxy has allowed multitudes to die in their sickness and suffering when they could have been rescued by God.
Jesus, the perfect expression of God, came to reveal the true nature of the Father, a God who heals the sick, lifts up the broken, and removes suffering. Jesus came as a prophet of mercy, not as a preacher of stupid and useless sacrifice. God’s desire is not for us to put on a show of endurance or to glorify our pain. Rather, he wants us to come to him with our desires, so that he can extend his mercy, alleviate our suffering, and make us whole. This is who God is. He desires to show mercy, and he calls us to do the same, to extend compassion and destroy suffering wherever we find it. The worst thing we can do is to lecture people who are suffering with imbecilic and condescending religious platitudes. But most Christian preachers and writers do this.
In another place, Jesus emphasized this point again: “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” Here Jesus rebuked the Pharisees who had criticized his disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath. They had twisted God’s law into a weapon of condemnation, ignoring its true meaning and purpose. They rejected the way of mercy. Instead, they invented a doctrine of sacrifice that God never demanded. In their zeal to uphold their human tradition concerning God’s word, they contradicted God’s word. God’s desire was never for suffering but for wholeness. Discomfort is not devotion. Pain is not piety.
We see this illustrated in the account that immediately followed, where Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. The religious people were incensed by this, not because they were zealous for God’s honor, but because they had built an entire system of sacrifice, ritual, and tradition that had no room for the miraculous power of God. They condemned healing on the Sabbath, a day meant to represent rest and restoration, but they never healed people on any other day. The Sabbath was an excuse, a cover for their own powerlessness and lack of compassion. It is uncanny how Christians have followed this deadly pattern.
Jesus said if they had acknowledged that God wanted mercy and not sacrifice, they would not have condemned the innocent. This remarkable insight is seemingly never discussed. The religious people condemned the innocent, and it was their faithless tradition of sacrifice and suffering that drove them to condemn the innocent. They would rather honor their historic heritage than endorse a healing miracle.
People that elevate traditions, sacraments, and holy days are prone to condemn the innocent. They are outraged, while God is not offended at all. In reality, they are offended because they hold a different religion altogether, and their false god has been offended. Now why would I care, if by following the teachings of Jesus, I happen to offend a Buddhist or a Mormon? Of course they would be offended, since our deepest commitments contradict one another. So why would I suddenly care if people of other religions, worshiping other gods, happen to call themselves Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals, or something else?
If you define religion in terms of heritage and tradition, sacrifice and suffering, you will condemn the innocent. You will be cruel and unjust, while thinking that you are among the most orthodox and righteous. You will become an enemy of God. You will preach a false gospel, while condemning the true gospel as a counterfeit. You will become anti-Christ. When you witness God’s mercy in manifestation through sound doctrines and healing miracles, it will kindle in you a self-righteous indignation instead of a sense of wonder and gratitude, because you have never believed in the grace of God. You will attack it as something false and unworthy.
This is the situation in the Christian world today, and it has remained this way for thousands of years, ever since Cain killed his brother. When sinners become religious without true conversion and regeneration, they become insane and grotesque. They become murderers. This is the deadly legacy of human historic orthodoxy. It is the damnable result of doctrines like cessationism, and of teachings that oppose healing, prophecy, tongues, prosperity, and success. People who hold to such a religion condemn the innocent.
They have no faith in God, and their religion makes them perverts, not converts. For this reason, they prioritize doctrines that produce no effect, and they are obsessed with things that even sinners can pretend to engage in, such as communion, baptism, and the Sabbath. But Jesus is the Lord of communion, baptism, and the Sabbath. He taught that these things ought to serve his program of mercy, to relieve suffering and to receive miracles.
What does it mean that God desires mercy, not sacrifice? It means that God takes no pleasure in our suffering. Our foolish and unnecessary suffering does not serve him or honor him. It means that suffering is not a gift from God. It means that suffering has no spiritual value. It means that faithless preachers and theologians have been lying to you! God is not glorified when we endure sickness, believing that by doing so we are submitting to God’s will, that our pain somehow makes us more spiritual. God is glorified when we receive his mercy, when we are healed by his miracles, and when we become vessels of his mercy to others. The false piety that holds up suffering as a virtue is not from God, but satanic propaganda intended to keep people bound in affliction.
The Faithless embrace a religion of sacrifice and suffering. This is a false religion that offers to God what he never commanded, just as when God said he never asked his people to sacrifice their children by burning their sons and daughters in the fire, as the religion of Molech required. However, this Molech kind of religion is what historic human orthodoxy teaches. It denounces the gospel of Jesus Christ as something false, carnal, and deceptive, mocking it as a gospel of health and wealth. It condemns the innocent. The followers of this form of paganism think that true religion consists of sacrifice instead of mercy, suffering instead of blessing, cessation of miracles instead of expansion of miracles. This historic, orthodox, mainstream Christianity is pagan worship, and it is the enemy of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The idea that pain is piety, or that something like cancer can be a gift from God, is nothing other than paganism. Those who teach this kind of religion are not pious leaders or spiritual heroes. No! They are the double agents of Satan, hiding in plain sight among us. They teach this distorted view of God to make Christians weak and defeated. They want Christians to continue in their suffering. Behind that pastor’s pulpit or scholar’s desk is not Christ, but Molech.
Faithless religious people consider themselves spiritual because they endure sickness and suffering with patience, as though God is more pleased with them for it. Molech is very pleased. But Jesus is the one who showed that, when you have faith, you get healed. When you have faith, your prayers are answered, and all the things that the pagans seek, even all the things that mammon represents, are added to you. When you have faith, you rise from obscurity and hopelessness to become effective and successful. Jesus insisted that God desires mercy, not sacrifice. And Jesus showed mercy by healing the sick, by forgiving sinners, and by raising the dead. He did not ask people to continue in their suffering to glorify God. Instead, he removed their suffering as an act of divine mercy, and that glorified God.