Reading… and Thinking

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him.
For He Himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.

— Psalm 103:11-14 (NASB)

We’ve all heard that God says “my ways are higher than your ways.” This is a condensation of Isaiah 55:8-9: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

The usual way of understanding this passage is that God is so far superior to man, that His thoughts and His ways are nearly incomprehensible to us. It’s absolutely true that He is far above us in every respect, but the usual reading of this passage is not right. It’s not saying God is incomprehensible. As usual, context is key. The previous verse reads, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

The way in which God far exceeds man is that He is forgiving. This is also the point of the psalm we’re considering this week. God’s loftiness consists in the greatness of His love and compassion for us. Think about how far you can see to the east, and how far you can see to the west. That’s the separation God has put between us and our own sins. Standing at one of those points, we can no longer see our sins. They’ve been completely dissociated from us.

Do you think of the Old Testament God as a stern disciplinarian, and the New Testament God as a loving Father? Unfortunately, many people who consider themselves Christians think of Him that way. But God never changes. He has always been a loving Father. And He has always applied discipline, as the New Testament also makes clear.

Our Father is aware of how weak we are. That’s not an excuse for sin, and He never says that sin is OK or that we can’t help ourselves from sinning because we’re weak. But He does recognize our problem, and has provided a solution. Notice that not everyone has access to the solution. Only “those who fear Him”. That is, those who hold Him in reverence, who respect Him.

The solution of course is Jesus. In the Lord Jesus, God removes our sin out of His sight. As Peter says in Acts 2, David was a prophet and foresaw the Christ. He could see the plan that the Father was going to bring to completion through David’s own promised offspring.

So we have something that some would view as a paradox. We must fear God, in order to have access to His forgiveness. But at the same time we must recognize that He is a wonderfully compassionate Father who loves us. In reality these do not conflict, and the resolution is in the word Father. A loving father doesn’t let his children do things that harm themselves. He insists on being obeyed, not to make himself feel important, but for the well-being of his children. This is exactly the case with the Heavenly Father. We can both respect and love Him, and realize that His lovingkindness and His discipline are both precious gifts.