A Word in Season: The Thoughts of God (Isaiah 55:8–9)

How does God differ from man? In answering that question, you might say, where would we even begin, let alone end? How many ways would we need to explore in order to communicate something of the transcendent majesty of the Most High with regard to His sinful creatures?

That's why in Isaiah 55, the Prophet says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says 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.

Here we're simply talking about, if you like, the conceptions that God in His infinite wisdom has of certain things. What about holiness? What about His own majesty? God's understanding of Himself, His appreciation of His glory, far exceed anything that the richest mortal mind could begin to grasp.

His notion of purity, what it means to be set apart, is something to which we cannot fully attain in this life. Correspondingly, it is God, and God only, who sees sin in all its true ugliness and vileness, or who appreciates the virtue, the sufficiency, the all-encompassing excellence of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, come in the flesh to save sinners like us.

But there is something here to which God, through Isaiah, draws particular attention, something in which God shows Himself godlike in a way that men struggle to understand. What thoughts of God are not like our thoughts?

What ways of God are not like our ways? Just a few verses before, we are told to seek the Lord while He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy on him, and to our God that he will abundantly pardon.

Forgiveness, the offer of reconciliation, is the most godlike thing that there is. We are quick to anger, we are slow to mercy. Our instinct is to suspect others. Our attitude is to think that we are doing well if we forgive just one or two sins, maybe once or twice.

The Apostle Peter was wondering whether or not seven times were enough to forgive his brother a sin. And yet here is God assuring all those who look to Him, who forsake their sins and come to Him, that He will have mercy and He will abundantly pardon.

He will cover all their sins and He will go on covering all their sins. The blood of Christ goes on covering our transgressions. There is always virtue from Christ for the sinner who is trusting in Him.

And this then is where God shows Himself higher than the earth, and His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. For God to be a forgiving God ought to stun us. We are so far from God in our disposition in this matter.

Our impatience only serves to throw His long suffering into sweeter relief. Our quickness to anger should make us marvel at His slowness to anger. Our slowness to mercy and forgiveness should make us wonder that God is so ready to put away the transgressions of those who call upon Him.

And so it is good for us to draw near to God with humility, to understand that God is God and that we are not, and to marvel and to wonder particularly at the divine mercies which are held out to sinners in Christ Jesus.

Spare a thought for those who will preach the pardoning mercy of God. There is something for us that is almost unnatural. We have to reach beyond our own fallen instincts. We have to know the forgiveness of this God in order to preach the forgiveness of this God.

We have to revel in the pardoning mercies of the God of all the earth and grasp something of them so that we can make known a forgiving God to sinners. Pray then that the beauty, the glory and the majesty of the God who forgives might be made known this day, a God who abundantly pardons and who does so in a way that reflects His own infinite and eternal glory and majesty.

To Him then be the praise of salvation.