I’VE HEARD IT said repeatedly in church contexts: the Old Testament is all about law, but the New Testament is about grace. I can understand and appreciate why people say it. But the claim can be highly misleading, and may even leave some wondering why they should bother reading the Old Testament at all.

Without going into the problem at length, the biblical truth is that God has always been gracious and merciful. Think, for example, of the time just after the debacle of the Golden Calf when Moses asked to see God’s glory. As Moses stood atop Mount Sinai, God descended in a cloud and declared:

The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. (Exod 34:6-7, NIV)

A holy, just, and righteous God punishes sin. But God also declares himself to be compassionate and gracious, longsuffering and loving. We probably shouldn’t think of these as distinct attributes, like being right-handed and having brown eyes. Rather they are overlapping expressions of God’s character in relationship to humanity. Each of the underlying Hebrew words, remember, can be translated in different ways and used in different contexts. When used together, they can express complementary nuances of a single complex thought rather than a string of separate thoughts.

God is both gracious and merciful. But people have asked, “What’s the difference between grace and mercy?” In response, it’s sometimes said that grace is getting a gift you don’t deserve, while mercy is not getting the punishment you do deserve. Or, as it’s been said with characteristic pithiness in a quote attributed to Max Lucado: “Mercy gave the Prodigal Son a second chance; grace threw him a party.” It’s an inspiring and memorable quote — provided that we don’t push the distinction too far, for both are expressions of the same fatherly love. In the story as Jesus told it, you can’t have one without the other.

Psalm 107, as we’ve seen, celebrates the hesed of God — a word alternately translated as love, steadfast love, lovingkindness, or mercy. The psalmist gives us four parallel examples of people in distress who cry out to God and are rescued. The same refrain is repeated at the end of each story: “Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love (hesed) and his wonderful deeds for mankind” (vss. 8, 15, 21, 31).

We’ve seen the fourth example already, in which seagoing merchants cry out to God from the midst of a deadly storm and are saved, and we’ll circle back to the first of the four stories next time. The second and third stories — the two in the middle — are instructive in their own way. One tells of people crying out to God from the darkness of their prison cells; the other is about people wasting away from what we might call a terminal illness. What distinguishes these stories from the others, however, is that the ones who are calling out to be saved from their distress are portrayed by the psalmist as deserving their suffering. Listen, for example, to verses 10 through 16:

Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God’s commands and despised the plans of the Most High. So he subjected them to bitter labor; they stumbled, and there was no one to help. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron.

The picture is graphic. These people sit behind bars in complete darkness — the psalmist says it twice — bound with iron chains. They are subjected to hard labor, and when they stumble and fall, no one helps them up. But these are not victims of injustice. They have acted contemptuously toward God, and are therefore under divine punishment.

But then, the reversal: under the weight of their well-earned suffering, they cry out to the God they had previously spurned. And God, in love and mercy, saves them: he brings them out of the pitch-black darkness; he severs their chains; he shatters the prison gates. And why? Did these prisoners wholeheartedly repent? Did they promise to serve God forever if only he would rescue them? Maybe — but the psalmist doesn’t say. All we are told is that they cried out; the rest is all God’s doing.

Immediately after that story, we get this one:

Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy. (vss. 17-22)

These people, too, are portrayed as bringing trouble upon themselves. This time, the psalmist doesn’t suggest that God is punishing them directly. But it’s common in the psalms to assume that illness — especially severe illness — is the result of divine discipline. Again, the description is vivid: the sufferer needs food but is disgusted by it and is therefore wasting away and near death.

These sufferers too reach out to God in desperation. The psalmist uses the same words in both stories: “they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress” (vss. 13 & 19). Similar declarations are made in the other two stories as well; there, the psalmist uses different verbs to describe God’s actions, drawing upon a rich vocabulary of synonyms for salvation.

And again, the psalmist says nothing about repentance, nothing about vows of loyalty. Why? Because the psalm is not about what these people did to earn their salvation, but what God in mercy did to save them. It’s not about their character, but God’s.

So if anyone tries to tell you that grace and mercy aren’t part of the Old Testament, point them to Psalm 107. God is gracious and merciful, kind and compassionate. He is just but also patient and forgiving. He always has been, and he always will be. Therefore, as the psalmist says, let us give thanks to God and sing with joy for his unfailing love and wonderful deeds.