Have you ever noticed something about yourself that you’d rather not admit? I have…
When someone hurts me, I find myself hoping justice will catch up with them. If someone lies, cheats, abuses their position, or damages people I care about, something inside me cries, “That isn’t right!” I want things put right. I want justice.
But when I’m the one who gets it wrong, when I’ve spoken impatiently to my wife, hurt a friend with a careless remark, or made a poor leadership decision, I quietly hope for something else. I hope people will understand. I hope they’ll see I didn’t mean it that way. I hope they’ll give me another chance.
In other words, I want justice for other people and mercy for myself. It took me a long time to realise that.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised I’m probably not alone. We all seem to live with this strange tension. We want a world where evil is taken seriously. We want corruption exposed, abuse stopped, and broken things made right. At the same time, we desperately hope our own failures won’t be the last word about us.
Could it be that this longing for both justice and mercy points to something much bigger?
In 2022, during my studies, I came across a Hebrew word that has fascinated me ever since: Hesed.
Bible teacher and worship leader Michael Card calls hesed one of the greatest theological words in the Hebrew Scriptures because no single English word captures its meaning (Card 2018). It speaks of faithful love, covenant loyalty, mercy, compassion, generosity, and kindness all wrapped together. It is love that acts. Love that keeps showing up. Love that refuses to walk away.
Hesed is love that restores.
Like many Christians, I used to picture God as if two parts of His character were constantly pulling in opposite directions. His justice demanded that sin be punished, while His mercy tried to soften the sentence. Without realising it, I imagined God almost having an internal debate with Himself. Then I noticed something I’d somehow overlooked for years:
When Moses asked to see God’s glory, God answered by revealing His character.
“The Lord! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty…” (Exod. 34:6–7, NLT)
I don’t know why I had never noticed the order before. God could have begun by saying that He is holy. Or all-powerful. Or perfectly just. Instead, He introduced Himself as compassionate and merciful. Only afterwards did He speak about judgement.
That observation stayed with me for weeks. I found myself reading other passages with fresh eyes, and I started seeing the same pattern again and again.
David describes God in much the same way:
“The Lord gives righteousness and justice to all who are treated unfairly… The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.” (Ps. 103:6–8, NLT)
Justice is clearly part of God’s character. The Bible never minimises evil or pretends that sin doesn’t matter. But I began to realise that God’s justice doesn’t stand apart from His hesed. It flows from it. He judges because He loves. He confronts evil because evil destroys the people He created and loves. His desire is not destruction for its own sake, but restoration. “God is always just as necessary, but merciful where possible.” (Hamilton, 2022).
That changed the way I began to understand the gospel as well.
For years I unconsciously imagined Jesus persuading an angry Father to forgive humanity. Yet the more I read Scripture, the more I realised that the Father Himself is the One who sent the Son.
“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son…” (John 3:16, NLT).
Jesus did not come to convince God to love us. He came because God already did. The cross is not the moment when God suddenly became merciful. It is where His (ancient and eternal) hesed became visible for the whole world to see.
Now then, if God’s heart is so full of hesed, why does He still judge? And if His justice flows from His love, what does that actually look like in a world as broken as ours?
Charles Finney argued that justice and mercy are not contradictory attributes in God but flow together from His perfect character (Finney n.d.).
For years, whenever I heard the word justice, I immediately thought of punishment. If someone did wrong, justice meant they should pay for it. That certainly forms part of biblical justice. God never ignores evil. He hears the cries of people who are oppressed. He sees corruption, violence, abuse, exploitation, and every hidden act of injustice. None of it escapes His attention.
But I started realising that God’s idea of justice is much bigger than ours. The Old Testament regularly places hesed alongside another Hebrew word, mishpat, usually translated as justice. The two belong together. Justice is not simply about punishing wrongdoing. It is about putting broken things back together. It is about restoring people, relationships, and communities so that they can flourish again as God intended.
That changes the way we read verses like Micah 6:8.
“No, O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right [justice], to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Mic. 6:8, NLT)
Justice without mercy easily becomes harsh. Mercy without justice becomes sentimental. Humility keeps both rooted in God rather than in our own opinions. If hesed is God’s faithful love in action, then it doesn’t allow us to look away when others are suffering.
Sometimes Christians think mercy simply means forgiving people. It certainly includes forgiveness, but it doesn’t stop there. God’s people are repeatedly called to stand alongside those who are vulnerable, overlooked, or treated unfairly. Isaiah writes,
“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.” (Isa. 1:17, NLT)
The writer of Proverbs says something similar:
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Ensure justice for those being crushed.” (Prov. 31:8–9, NLT)
That means hesed is never passive. Sometimes it calls me to forgive someone who has hurt me. At other times it calls me to step into someone else’s pain and help restore justice where they cannot do it alone.
That could mean speaking up for a child who is being bullied. Standing with a neighbour who has been treated unfairly. Refusing to stay silent when corruption harms a community. Offering practical help to someone who has no voice. God’s faithful love always moves towards brokenness. Not to condemn first, but to restore.
I find that both beautiful and uncomfortable.
If I’m honest, I often want justice when someone hurts me. Deep inside I hope God will “sort them out.” Yet when I fail, I quietly hope He’ll remember my good intentions and overlook my mistakes. That is when hesed begins exposing my own heart.
It reminds me that I stand before God only because of His mercy. Every new beginning I’ve received, every relationship that has been restored, every time I’ve been forgiven instead of rejected, has come because God’s faithful love refused to let me go.
The story of Jonah illustrates this tension remarkably. Most of us remember Jonah because of the fish. Yet the real drama begins after Nineveh repents. Jonah is angry. Not because God judged the city but because He did not.
Eventually Jonah admits why he tried to run away in the first place.
“I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.” (Jonah 4:2, NLT)
I’ve always found Jonah uncomfortably relatable. He wanted justice while God wanted restoration. That’s the big difference hesed makes.
God never treats evil lightly. But neither is punishment His first instinct. Again and again, His desire is to restore people before judgement becomes necessary. Peter expresses it beautifully when he writes that the Lord “does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent” (2 Pet. 3:9, NLT).
That word repentance is another one I’ve come to appreciate differently over the years. For a long time I thought repentance meant saying sorry to God and asking him to forgive me.
Now I think it means much more. First of all, I’ve come to realise that repentance is much more than asking for forgiveness. If we believe in the saving grace by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are already forgiven, once and for all. (Hebr. 10:10, Col. 2:13-14, Rom. 8:1, Ps 103:12, 1 John 2:12).
When the Hebrew prophets speak about repentance they speak about returning. The New Testament uses the Greek word metanoia, describing a change of mind that leads to a different way of living. Repentance is not simply feeling guilty. Judas felt guilty. Repentance is turning around and walking back towards the God whose love has never stopped pursuing us.
Hosea captures God’s heart in one remarkable sentence:
“I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.” (Hos. 6:6, NLT)
The word love in this text is translated from the original word hesed. God is saying, “Don’t impress Me with religious activity if your heart is far from Mine.”
Over time I’ve come to see three parts of genuine repentance.
First it begins with an honest confession. No excuses. No blame shifting. We simply acknowledge that we were wrong and take responsibility for it.
Then comes restitution, where possible. Zacchaeus understood this. After meeting Jesus, he didn’t merely apologise for cheating people. He repaid what he had stolen and even restored more than the law required (Luke 19:1–10). Real repentance asks, How can I help repair the damage I’ve caused?
Finally comes transformation. We don’t merely turn away from sin. We turn towards God. Then something remarkable happens. We are (ongoingly) being transformed into His image (2 Cor 3:18), reflecting His hesed.
Paul writes that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Not fear. Not shame. Kindness. That may be one of the greatest surprises in the whole Bible. God’s hesed doesn’t wait at the finish line until we’ve managed to change ourselves. It meets us on the road home. And once you’ve experienced that kind of love, it becomes very difficult to treat other people the way you used to.
The more I reflect on it, the more convinced I become that this is exactly what our families, our churches, our businesses, our schools – our town – are longing for.
As I studied hesed it slowly began exposing things in my own heart. I started noticing patterns I hadn’t paid much attention to before. There were moments when I was quicker to point out someone else’s faults than admit my own. Situations, where I struggled to sincerely say “I’m sorry” after I had hurt my wife. Times when I wanted understanding for myself but found it difficult to extend the same grace to others. And there were relationships where I realised saying, “I’m sorry,” wasn’t enough. If trust had been damaged, it needed to be rebuilt.
That is one of the reasons I no longer think of repentance as a single moment. It is a way of life. One, that I am still learning. One verse that has become increasingly precious to me is 2 Corinthians 3:18:
“So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord, who is the Spirit, makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.” (2 Cor. 3:18, NLT)
I love the simplicity of that picture. When we spend time with God, something begins to happen almost unnoticed. We start becoming like the One we are looking at. It’s a bit like spending time in the sun. You don’t notice your face reflecting the light, but the people around you do. In much the same way, spending time in God’s presence reshapes our character. We become a little more patient than we were. A little quicker to forgive. A little slower to judge. A little more willing to listen before speaking. That, I think, is one of the quiet miracles of hesed. A process that is ongoing, for the rest of our lives. We don’t manufacture it. We receive it. And then, over time, it begins to show itself in the way we live.
I often find myself wondering what Worcester would look like if more of us lived this way. Imagine husbands and wives who chose forgiveness over counting mistakes. Imagine parents who corrected their children firmly, yet never left them wondering whether they were loved. Imagine businesses where honesty mattered more than profit. Imagine schools where children learnt that strength is shown not by dominating others but by serving them. Imagine churches known not only for what they believe, but for the way they welcome people who are struggling.
And imagine a town where people refused to walk past injustice happening to others. That, too, is hesed. Sometimes God’s faithful love calls us to forgive. Sometimes it calls us to speak. To stand beside someone who has been treated unfairly, to defend a child, to visit a lonely neighbour, to challenge corruption, to support a family in crisis, or to become part of putting something broken back together.
The prophet Micah reminds us that God asks us “to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic. 6:8, NLT). Those three belong together. When we separate them, we lose something of God’s heart. Justice without mercy easily becomes harsh. Mercy without justice becomes weak. Humility keeps reminding us that we, too, live only because of God’s grace.
When Jesus said,
“Just as I have loved you, you should love each other” (John 13:34, NLT),
he wasn’t giving us another impossible rule to keep, but an invitation to pass on what we had already received.
The more I study Scripture, the more convinced I become that this is God’s dream for every community. Not simply that people become more religious, but that they begin reflecting His character. Families become places of faithfulness. Friendships become places of forgiveness. Businesses become places of integrity. Churches become places of welcome. Neighbourhoods become places where people carry one another’s burdens.
That’s what reformation looks like. Changing hearts. Because when hearts change, families begin to change. Families shape neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods influence towns. And over time, towns can begin to look different.
So, as you go into this week, maybe you can carry these questions with you:
Where in my own life am I asking for mercy while quietly demanding justice from someone else?
Is there a relationship where God is inviting me to take the first step towards restoration?
And is there someone around me who needs me to become an instrument of God’s hesed by helping restore justice where they cannot do it alone?
My prayer is not simply that you would understand the word hesed, but that you would come to know the God behind the word. And that, as you spend time with Him, His faithful love would quietly become part of who you are, until the people around you begin to experience His hesed through your life. After all, the quiet miracle of hesed is this: God’s faithful love quietly changes people, and changed people quietly begin changing the communities around them.
Author’s Note
This article is adapted and expanded from the author’s integration paper, Lessons Learned Through the Study of Hesed (Loyiso 2022), submitted as part of the Executive Master’s in Global Pioneering Leadership at the University of the Nations.
References
Card, Michael. 2018. Inexpressible: Hesed and the Mystery of God’s Lovingkindness. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books.
Finney, Charles. Mercy & Justice: An Extract from Charles Finey’ s Systematic Theology.http://godrules.net/library/systematic/systematic14.htm and http://godrules.net/library/systematic/systematic14b.htm. Accessed 25 June 2026.
Hamilton, David. Hesed Study. ExecMAL Intensive Module 3, Day 2, Session 3. 22 February 2022, YWAM Worcester.
Loyiso, Bruno. 2022. Lessons Learned Through the Study of Hesed. Integration Paper. Executive Master’s in Global Pioneering Leadership, University of the Nations.
The Holy Bible. New Living Translation. 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015. Tyndale House Foundation. https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-Living-Translation-NLT-Bible/. Accessed 25 June 2026.