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.”
– Isaiah 55:8-9
Have you ever felt out of your league? Have you been around someone who was so much smarter, so much wealthier, or so much more powerful than you were that you felt intimidated and uncomfortable? Doesn’t it seem that this is how this passage portrays God? It doesn’t matter how wise we are, or think we are – God is wiser beyond comprehension. It doesn’t matter how powerful we are – God is more powerful still. Everywhere we look, and in all things, God is greater than us.
Do you feel intimidated by God? Do you feel like He is watching you at all times, just waiting for you to make a mistake? Do you feel like He just simply refuses to be pleased with how you live your life, no matter how hard you try to please Him? Perhaps God, to you, is like an overly strict father from whose gaze you cannot wait to hide yourself because you know that He is just waiting to see something wrong and punish you to the fullest extent of His power. If that is the case, then perhaps you have read these verses, or ones like them, without reading the verses surrounding them.
Verses 6-7 say this: “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. 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.”
Notice the things that God is trying to emphasize to His people in this passage. Nearness. Reconciliation. Compassion. Pardon. This is not a passage describing God as a distant God – one so remote that He cannot relate to us. Rather, we see God describing Himself as a God who, despite His awesomeness, and yes, distance from a sinful human race, desires very much to be near to men and women who He sees in sin.
So how are we to read and understand verses 8-9, and all of that talk about God’s thoughts and ways being so much higher and better than ours? We are to interpret them in terms of God’s capacity to love, forgive, and show grace to us. One of the main reasons many people view God like a strict, even abusive, parent is that they anticipate that His reaction to their mistakes will be the same as a typical human-being. Lawsuits, vengeance, justice, grudges, and hatred are just a few of many typical ways in which people quickly respond to one another after being wronged. Rarely does a person severely injured in a car accident or in surgery stop to think that an honest mistake might have been the cause. Almost never does the typical person actually completely forgive one who intentionally wronged them, and let them get away “scot-free.” It is not natural to us to instantaneously think in terms of forgiveness and mercy; rather, we more often tend to think in terms of making sure no wrong against us goes unpunished.
But God’s ways are higher than our ways, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He looked at the race of people He created, and saw our disgusting sins, inexcusable atrocities, and all-out assault on goodness and desired to “abundantly pardon” every miserable one of us. In exchange for that pardon He might have asked more than we could give – He certainly had the right to. If the just penalty for mistreating men is sometimes 25+ years of a person’s life, or at times even the person’s life itself, how much greater is our debt to God after wronging Him so badly? And yet, after offending Him so much, He requires so relatively little. He simply says, “Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord.” God only asks that we change ourselves completely from how we were living in sin, and seek and serve Him. It requires our total dedication, but that is so much less than He could have asked us to pay! We can celebrate with the psalmist David when he said, “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10).
Just because God is so willing to pardon us does not mean that we can take His offer lightly and just assume that He will pardon us without us having to make an effort to change our lives. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek the Lord while He may be found.” There comes a point after which one may wish to seek Him, and He will not be found by that person. God’s offer will not last forever. Hebrews 9:27 says, “…it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.” (See also Luke 16:19-31 and 2 Corinthians 5:10) Let us make sure we take advantage of the grace God has given to us while we still have the time.
--Joel Holt
