It is from the filling with the righteousness of Christ that we are able to understand the next beatitude:
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." - Matthew 5:7(NIV)
I don't know about you, but when I was child, I hated and loved the nature shows. I loved them because I loved animals! I loved learning about them, seeing them going about their lives in the wild, interacting with nature and one another. But it was in that very interaction of animals that I found what I hated about nature shows: watching animals brutalize and kill each other. I remember watching a show where a stallion killed a foal in his herd because it was dying and the mare wouldn't leave it, slowing down the whole herd. I remember vividly watching a show about orcas and witnessing a pack of orcas terrorize a grey whale and her calf for six hours, before the calf was so exhausted that the orcas were finally able to cut it off from its mother and drown it. The worst part was after killing this calf, they only ate the jaw meat and left the rest of the body to float in the middle of the ocean.
As an adult, to a certain extent, I can look at and understand these things. It's the "circle of life." This side of the Garden of Eden, animals survive by killing other animals. By feeding themselves, they feed their own offspring and ensure the continuation of their species. By killing other animals, they participate in an unintentional "population control," as well as eliminate from the gene pool all but the very best of what a species has to offer, ensuring that the next generation of a species will be stronger than the one that proceeded it.
Yet... animals represent, in this way, the bare minimum of existence. Kill or be killed. Look out for number one because number one is all you have. Stick to your own. Kill your enemy before they kill you. Yet, Isaiah 11:6-9(NIV) prophesies that life after Jesus' coming will look much different:
"The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,
and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea."
Just because it works, doesn't mean it is the highest good God has to offer us. And it is in that thought that I understand the beatitude of Mark 5:7. Colossians 1:21-22(NLT) reads:
"This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault."
In other words, Jesus acted AGAINST the law of nature by SAVING human beings, who in their very nature were opposed to all the goodness of God and had no desire to know Him. He showed us mercy, not killing us (as He easily could have), but showing us love, to the point of His own death.
Because of that mercy He showed us... we are able to show mercy to others. We, as human beings, are empowered by Christ's actions to act against the laws of nature, which tell us to only be nice to people who are nice to us, which tell us to only do things we want or like to do, which tell us to leave behind anyone who gets in our way or slows us down. Instead, we understand life like this:
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another."
-1 John 4:10-11(NIV)
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