By mercy and goodness we mean the transitive love of God in its two-fold relation to the disobedient and to the obedient portions of his creatures.
Titus 3:4—“his love toward man”; Rom. 2:4—“goodness of God”; Mat. 5:44, 45—“love your enemies ... that ye may be sons of your Father”; John 3:16—“God so loved the world”; 2 Pet. 1:3—“granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness”; Rom. 8:32—“freely give us all things”; John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
(a) Mercy is that eternal principle of God's nature which leads him to seek the temporal good and eternal salvation of those who have opposed themselves to his will, even at the cost of infinite self-sacrifice.
Martensen: “Viewed in relation to sin, eternal love is compassionate grace.” God's continued importation of natural life is a foreshadowing, in a lower sphere, of what he desires to do for his creatures in the higher sphere—the communication of spiritual and eternal life through Jesus Christ. When he bids us love our enemies, he only bids us follow his own example. Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 2:2—“Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them, then, in being merciful.” Twelfth Night, 3:4—“In nature there's no blemish but the mind; None can be called deformed but the unkind. Virtue is beauty.”
(b) Goodness is the eternal principle of God's nature which leads him to communicate of his own life and blessedness to those who are like him in moral character. Goodness, therefore, is nearly identical with the love of complacency; mercy, with the love of benevolence.
Notice, however, that transitive love is but an outward manifestation of immanent love. The eternal and perfect object of God's love is in his own nature. Men become subordinate objects of that love only as they become connected and identified with its principal object, the image of God's perfections in Christ. Only in the Son do men become sons of God. To this is requisite an acceptance of Christ on the part of man. Thus it can be said that God imparts himself to men just so far as men are willing to receive him. And as God gives himself to men, in all his moral attributes, to answer for them and to renew them in character, there is truth in the statement of Nordell (Examiner, Jan. 17, 1884) that “the maintenance of holiness is the function of divine justice; the diffusion of holiness is the function of divine love.” We may grant this as substantially true, while yet we deny that love is a mere form or manifestation of holiness. Self-impartation is different from self-affirmation. The attribute which moves God to pour out is not identical with the attribute which moves him to maintain. The two ideas of holiness and of love are as distinct as the idea of integrity on the one hand and of generosity on the other. Park: “God loves Satan, in a certain sense, and we ought to.” Shedd: “This same love of compassion God feels toward the non-elect; but the expression of that compassion is forbidden for reasons which are sufficient for God, but are entirely unknown to the creature.” The goodness of God is the basis of reward, under God's government. Faithfulness leads God to keep his promises; goodness leads him to make them.
Edwards, Nature of Virtue, in Works, 2:263—Love of benevolence does not presuppose beauty in its object. Love of complacence does presuppose beauty. Virtue is not love to an object for its beauty. The beauty of intelligent beings does not consist in love for beauty, or virtue in love for virtue. Virtue is love for being in general, exercised in a general good will. This is the doctrine of Edwards. We prefer to say that virtue is love, not for being in general, but for good being, and so for God, the holy One. The love of compassion is perfectly compatible with hatred of evil and with indignation against one who commits it. Love does not necessarily imply approval, but it does imply desire that all creatures should fulfil the purpose of their existence by being morally conformed to the holy One; see Godet, in The Atonement, 339.
Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”We ought to love our enemies, and Satan is our worst enemy. We ought to will the good of Satan, or cherish toward him the love of benevolence, though not the love of complacence. This does not involve a condoning of his sin, or an ignoring of his moral depravity, as seems implied in the verses of Wm. C. Gannett: “The poem hangs on the berry-bush When comes the poet's eye; The street begins to masquerade When Shakespeare passes by. The Christ sees white in Judas' heart And loves his traitor well; The God, to angel his new heaven, Explores his deepest hell.”