GOD’S WAY OF PARDONING ABOVE MEN’S
Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, &c.
Suppose your sovereign taking a personal interest in you. But you have become a rebel. She has every justification in casting you off. Instead of this she makes an arrangement at great cost by which she is able to offer a free pardon. And this purely because of the benevolent interest she takes in you.
Think of the Divine greatness (2 Chronicles 6:18) and holiness. Contrast these with our littleness and sinfulness. Yet He offers pardon. He will have mercy. It is because His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. You cannot measure the distance between heaven and earth. You only think of it as immeasurable vastness. This is true in relation to every thought and every action about subjects on which we think or act. Especially so as regards forgiveness. God’s magnanimity is asserted here. It is illustrated—
I. IN THE DISPOSITION TO FORGIVE.
How different from man! When injured he seeks revenge. Usually difficult to turn aside from this. God’s nature is to forgive (Exodus 34:5-7). This is one phase of His love.
II. IN THE TERMS OF FORGIVENESS.
The statement of this part of the case involves the fact that He not merely stands in the attitude of readiness to forgive, but also that He overcame the formidable difficulties in the way of forgiveness. And this at great cost and sacrifice. We hear much at present of the demands of man’s moral nature. One demand of our moral nature is that the supreme ruler be just, as a primary condition of our confidence and respect. Here, then, was the problem that demanded solution. And God’s thoughts were equal to it. When in His love He desired to exercise mercy, He in His wisdom discovered a way by which mercy could be exercised while justice should be satisfied. By the sacrifice of His dear Son. A Divine victim for human sin. God vindicates His justice in the forgiveness of sin on the ground of the satisfaction He has made (Romans 3:25-26). Hence the terms, so far as we are concerned, are perfectly free (Isaiah 55:1). Salvation is not of works, but grace. You have simply to trust.
III. IN THE COMPLETENESS OF FORGIVENESS.
Remember the number and aggravation of your sins. Remember God’s hatred of sin. Yet He forgives fully. Casts them into the depths of the sea. Blots them out as a cloud. Will not remember them. Men remember offences against them, and make a difference. God forgets them.
IV. IN THE RANGE OF FORGIVENESS. The promises and invitations and overtures of the Gospel are made to all sinners everywhere. “Whosoever will let him come.” There is sufficient in God’s love, sufficient in Christ’s blood for all. If all mankind would come they would find the ample provision and the loving heart. Nor shall His mercy be provided in vain (Isaiah 55:10-11, &c.)
So magnanimous is God. So much higher than ours are His thoughts and ways. They are the thoughts that are unfolded in the proclamation of mercy to sinners in the Gospel. It is gracious; necessary; all-sufficient.—J. Rawlinson,
THE MYSTERY AND GLORY OF GOD’S WAYS IN REDEMPTION
The whole Bible is but the expansion of one sentence, one utterance of the Eternal, “I am the Lord.” Hence the revelation must be incomplete, for a god that could fully reveal himself to his creatures would be no god; and it must also be astonishing and amazing, for a professed record of any part of God’s thoughts and ways that did not land in mystery, and tend to wonder would be self-condemned, and proved to be neither true nor divine. It is not only here and there that God’s thoughts and ways are superhuman, but throughout; just as a circle is everywhere a circle, and nowhere a square or capable at any point of being reduced to the other figure. How man can at all lay hold of God, or frame any conception of Him with his finite and infinitely inferior mental faculties, this is the wonder and has sometimes been the stumbling-block of philosophy; and it is only removed out of the way by devoutly and thankfully accepting the fact that we do know Him (though darkly), and are so far made in His image that there may be and ought to be reverential contact and communion with Him. We must be constantly reminded that though brought near we are not brought up to Him, though companions we are not equals, and that while our line touches His, it cannot run parallel with it as it sweeps in its own awful circle from eternity to eternity. The lesson is one of humility but also of consolation; for the depths of God’s mind are depths of truth, of wisdom, and of love; and therefore we may be not only cast down, but lifted up as we study together in this lofty chapter the great words: “For my thoughts,” &c. In order to give unity to the subject I shall say nothing of the ways of God in creation and natural providence, but limit myself to redemption, showing how in various departments the ways of God are superhumanly mysterious and yet divinely glorious. God’s ways are not our ways, nor our thoughts His thoughts—
I. In regard to the occasion of redemption.—Take the entrance of sin into our world, and its continuance in it, which occasioned the need of redemption—can anything be less like what man would have anticipated and conceived. [1704]
[1704] Had man been able to make a creature like himself, he would either have made him without any inward liability to fall, or any possible risk from without, and if be could not or would not exclude both, he would have made no creation at all. This is the way in which an earthly philanthropist would act in such a supposed case, and therefore in his hands sin could never enter at all, and hence the extreme difficulty, we may say impossibility, of accounting for the origin of evil on any theory framed in the present state by the human mind. I have read over many such theories and considered them; but to my mind this one verse is far more true and far more philosophical than all of them put together: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” We are sure on the one hand that there is a God, we are equally sure also that there is evil in His universe. Hence there must be something yet to be cleared up, something that without alienating from God His moral attributes, making Him either the author of sin, or the accomplice in it, for any fancied exaltation of His character would, if known, vindicate His ways and show them to be not only mysterious but right, as far above ours as the heavens are above the earth. Absolute faith might here come in and wait the disclosure of the mystery, why evil entered and wrought its ravages, and why it remains and works them still. But there are in the Gospel some further glimpses, not in the way of full explanation, but of indirect reference to this awful subject, whereby simple and naked faith in God may be assisted. These do not warrant us to say that evil entered in order that God might glorify Himself in overcoming it, or that the fall was a necessary stepping-stone to redemption; for language like this aspires to rise to a giddy height where the finite mind cannot support itself and where it mistakes its own reasonings or fancies for the thoughts of God. But the lessons of Scripture, while leaving the entrance of evil in its awful mystery, assist our faith by showing first that nothing derogatory to God could be implied in its introduction, and then that God dealing with it as a fact has overruled it for His own glory. The shadow which the entrance of evil casts on God’s redemption rolls away. It was not for want of power in God that sin entered, for in Christ He defeats it. It was not for want of righteousness, for redemption is one continued death-blow to its dominion. It was not for want of wisdom, for the wisdom that cures is higher than the wisdom that was required to prevent. It was not for want of love, for the love that provided the second Adam to humanity could not have been wanting in the trial of the first. There is thus a reply on Calvary to the vexing thoughts that cluster around Eden, and while the mystery remains it loses its terror. And further, the undoubted outburst of the glory of God on the darkened theatre of sin, though we dare not say that the theatre was darkened for the purpose, assists our faith in God. It has been conclusively shown that evil can be overruled for good, that attributes of God are brought out that might otherwise have slumbered, and emotions called forth in His creatures which without danger and deliverance would have been impossible. Where sin abounded grace has much more abounded. God has become more glorious in His dealings with sin for its expulsion; saved sinners more blessed, angels more instructed and confirmed. The thoughts of God all through have been unlike the thoughts of man, and yet there are gleams from a higher heaven sufficient to relieve the darkness and point to the day when it shall be dispelled; and thus is vindicated the assertion that in this matter His ways are as much above our ways as the heavens are above the earth.—Cairns.
II. In regard to the purpose of redemption. Man is not the only being who has fallen, and yet man is the only being who is redeemed. When we inquire as to the reason of this arrangement we find none. It is one of the deep things which belong to God. It is an impressive display of sovereignty, where all that is left for us is to bow and to adore. We might have supposed that the higher race would have been selected, and that God would have glorified His mercy on the still more conspicuous theatre from which they had sought to cast themselves down. And altogether independently of the example of their rejection, we might have anticipated that man’s ruin would have been final and hopeless. Man does not forgive where he has been insulted as God was in man’s rebellion. Nations do not tolerate blows aimed at their independence and their very existence, and therefore man’s revolt might have been expected to draw down swift and remediless destruction, for it was a blow aimed at God’s throne and being. That God’s thoughts should in such a crisis have been thoughts of peace is the wonder of unfallen beings and of those who are redeemed. They cannot rise in thought to that awful council wherein, though every foreseen trespass demanded vengeance, mercy yet rejoiced against judgment, without exclaiming, “This is not the manner of man, O Lord God.” “O the depth of the riches,” &c.
III. In regard to the plan of redemption. How utterly unlike to any means of man’s devising are those which God has chosen for the recovery of His lost creation to His favour and image! That God’s Son should become incarnate, and die on the cross for the world’s redemption, and that God’s Spirit should descend into the guilty and polluted hearts of sinners, and work out there a blessed transformation, and that all this should be effected by the free and sovereign grace of God himself, and laid open to the very chief of sinners as the unconditional gift of God’s love, this, as universal experience attests, is something so far from having entered into the heart of man, that it needs incessant effort to keep it before him even when it has been revealed. [1707]
[1707] The world had four thousand years to learn the lesson. God had made the outline of it known to His Church from the beginning. He had raised up a special people to be the depository of the revelation; and He had taught them by priests and prophets, by types and signs without number, and yet when redemption came how few received it, how few understood it, so that when the Saviour was actually hanging on the cross and finishing the work given Him to do, it is questionable if so much as one, even of His disciples, comprehended the design or saw the glory of His sacrifice. Man sees so little of the evil of sin, that he cannot understand why an infinite satisfaction is needed. His own heart is so narrow that he cannot embrace the love of God in the gift of an infinite sacrifice. His own benevolence is so contracted that he distrusts the offer of an unlimited pardon, and his moral perceptions are so blunted that he is afronted rather than consoled by the promise of an Almighty Spirit to work out his deliverance from the bondage of evil. Hence when man is left to work his will upon the plan of redemption, he strikes out all its characteristic features, away goes the incarnation, and Christ is no more the co-equal Son of His Father, but the son of Joseph and Mary. Away goes the Atonement; and the cross is no longer the means of reconciling God and sinners, but the testimony to a God from the first reconciled. Away goes the offer of pardon through a Saviour’s blood; and back comes the voice of the law “Do and live,” and as there is now no call for a Divine Spirit to renew and sanctify, the last pillar of redemption falls amidst its other broken columns, and man’s own effort and struggle return as the source of his repentance and reformation. What is Socinianism, what is Mohammedanism, what is Judaism, sinking from the level of Isaiah to the Talmud, but so many testimonies that God’s ways in redemption are too high for man’s fallen reason, and that it is easier to bring down heaven to earth than to lift up earth to heaven? All the opposition to evangelical religion wherewith we are surrounded, and that incessantly repeats “Give us a Christianity that is rational, give us a Christianity that meets the advancement of the age,” what does it amount to but this: “Give us a Christianity without God; give us a Christianity without that element of grandeur, of mystery, of overwhelming superiority to man’s thoughts and ways which compels awe and humbles pride”? We accept the demand, come from what quarter it may, as an involuntary homage to the super-human glory of the faith we stand by, as a tribute to the Christianity which still moves in her own orbit, and, though surrounded by cloud and darkness, refuses to leave her native heaven. Nor do we lose anything, but gain everything, by retaining the Gospel as its original elevation. Pointing to Him who is the Son of the Highest, we can say to the wandering children of men, “Here is God Himself come to seek and to save you!” Appealing to the matchless virtue of His sacrifice we can turn, not to the whole who need no physician, but to the sick and sore-wounded, and testify, “He is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him.” Taking our stand upon the completeness of His work and the freeness of His salvation, we can ply the most distrustful and desponding with the overtures of His love; “Let the wicked forsake his way,” &c. And when the pardoned sinner feels his utter weakness, blindness, worthlessness, and helplessness, then can we, standing by the fountain of spiritual influence which Christ has opened, invite all to be washed and sanctified as well as justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.—Cairns.
The grandeur of these provisions comes home with a consoling and peace-giving as well as purifying power to the sin-burdened conscience and heart. They reveal the majesty and strength as well as the love of the Godhead, and are thus the support and stay of dying men. Never can we surrender this Godlike greatness of the Gospel, or suffer this high stronghold to be dismantled and destroyed. It were to surrender our own soul’s refuge, and that of all the guilty, and with a heaven above that stooped not to our rescue, and an earth at our foot that crumbled to our tread, to sink unpitied in the waste of sin and ruin.
IV. In regard to the progress of redemption. Redemption has a history, and this is, of all others, the most difficult to scan, not only as it lies in the Bible, but in uninspired records. It has been said, “Interpret the Bible as any other book;” but this ultimately means, “Interpret God as you interpret man,” and you cannot even interpret Church history as you do other history. It is, in a sense which belongs to no other history, the story of a battle not yet fought out, or of a campaign not yet ended; and there are combatants at work beyond the range of human observation, and a supreme celestial Leader whose point of survey none can share. It was to be expected, therefore, that the progress of redemption, as surveyed by human eyes, would present many anomalies and many difficulties, while at the same time, true to the analogy of the substance of redemption, there would be a lofty, all-pervading grandeur that spoke to the devout observer the presence and the hand of God. I will illustrate this union of mysteriousness and Divine greatness in regard to three features in the progress of redemption.
1. The rate of the progress of redemption. How much is there here, unlike the thoughts of man! But no one can deny that there is a Divine hand in the onward movements, and that it is all the more glorious for its incessant recovery from retardation and retrogression. When the whole is known it will be pre-eminently Godlike, and it will be seen that God’s law of progress, both as to time and space, was as far above man’s law as the heavens above the earth.
2. The instruments of the progress of redemption. How unlike all that man would have conceived or devised! This applies even to the Old Testament dispensation, but far more to Christianity. Its leaders were the poor; its soldiers were slaves and women; its heroes were martyrs. How unlike the agents in any other revolution, and yet God chose “the weak things to confound the mighty,” &c. By similar instrumentalities has Christianity perpetually renewed its strength. What new development of glorious possibilities, undreamt of before, has the Gospel everywhere achieved and made tributary to its progress! Nothing so unlike to human predictions, nothing so far above human thought as the march of this Gospel.
3. The hindrances to the progress of redemption. Man would have thought that hindrances would be speedily removed, or, if suffered to remain or to return, would constitute unmingled evils to the Church. But God, on the other hand, we can see, by giving the victory slowly, trains the faith and courage of successive generations; and by permitting old enemies to return or new ones to spring up, shows the unexhausted and inexhaustible power of His Gospel to face and put down every hostile power. The variety and vicissitude of attack when it is once surmounted, surrounds the Gospel with richer trophies and places on its head more crowns. As it has been so it shall be. The onsets of unbelief that now disturb us shall be the consolation of our successors, and its scarce-remembered names and war-cries shall swell their song of peace.
V. In regard to the limits of redemption. Why should redemption have limits at all? Why should not all be saved as God wishes, and come to a knowledge of the truth? Thus man fondly argues, and by arguing like this not a few are in our day plausibly deceived, in forgetfulness of the warnings of conscience and the solemn voice of God, to the effect that he that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. On this awful subject we cannot in this darkling state profess to justify the ways of God to man, for this He will do Himself in the day of the revelation of His righteous judgment. But it may be seen, even here, that whatever God appoints for the impenitent, cannot be inconsistent with His moral attributes. If the cross clears God from every aspersion in regard to the entrance of evil, not less does it do so in regard to the continuance of evil in His universe. What He has done in Christ is a sufficient proof that the fault is not His, and that man is the author of his own undoing.
Of this let us be sure, that though His ways are above us, they are so only as the heavens to supply a pathway for the sun and a fountain for the dew, and that shall break in blessings on our head.—Professor John Cairns, D.D.
GOD’S WAYS ABOVE MEN’S
There is the strongest reason to believe that these memorable declarations refer to God’s pardoning mercy. His method of forgiveness is contrasted and exhibited as vastly superior to that of men. They find it difficult to pardon at all; they are slow to forgive an injury, &c. But God is not reluctant to forgive, &c. It may refer to the number and aggravation of offences, or to the number of offenders, &c. But while the passage refers primarily to pardon, and should be interpreted as having a main reference to it, it is also true of the ways of God in general.
I SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GLORIOUS TRUTH ASSERTED.
Anything in the shape of proof might be justly deemed superfluous, if not profane, inasmuch as it is affirmed by Him who cannot lie. The purposes, plans, and actions of God are exceedingly unlike ours; they are beyond measure more noble and excellent than ours can be. Any illustrations must be vastly beneath the greatness of our theme—
1. In the fact that He produces the most important results from apparently insignificant causes.
2. As He accomplishes the most glorious designs by feeble instrumentality.
3. As He accomplishes the plan of salvation on a principle totally different from what we should have determined.
4. In the sovereignty with which He bestows mercy.
5. In the varied and mysterious dealings by which He trains up His people for glory.
II. THE PRINCIPLE ON WHICH THIS ARRANGEMENT IS FOUNDED AND JUSTIFIED.
1. The Divine knowledge is infinitely more extensive than ours.
2. The Divine purposes are inconceivably superior to ours.
3. It is His fixed, unalterable purpose to fulfil His plans in such a way as to hide pride from man.
III. PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS WHICH THIS VIEW OF THE DIVINE CONDUCT SUGGESTS.
1. It should awaken emotions of gratitude.
2. We should seek to have our will and our ways conformed to those of God. His will is the wisest, the kindest, and the best, and must be carried into effect: hence it is the highest wisdom of the creature to submit to His will and bow to His authority.
3. Learn to confide in His wisdom and love.
4. Anticipate the clearer light of heaven.—George Smith, D.D.
I. OBVIOUS REASONS FOR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOD AND OURSELVES.
God’s ways and thoughts must be far above ours—
1. Because in situation and office He is exalted far above us. He is in heaven, we are upon earth. We occupy the footstool, He the throne. Consider the extent and duration of His kingdom. Must not the thoughts and ways of a powerful earthly monarch be far above those of one of his subjects who is employed in manufacturing pins, or cultivating a few acres of ground? Can such a subject be competent to judge of his sovereign’s designs, or even to comprehend them? How far, then, must the thoughts and ways of the eternal King of kings exceed ours; and how little able are we to judge of them, further than the revelation which He has been pleased to give enables us!
2. Because He is infinitely superior to us in knowledge and wisdom. He must, therefore, be able to devise a thousand plans and expedients, and to bring good out of evil in numberless ways, of which we could never have conceived, and of which we are by no means competent to judge, even after they are revealed to us.
3. Because He is perfectly benevolent and holy. We love sin, and care for nothing but our own private interest, while His concern is for the interests of the universe. Hence His thoughts, affections, maxims, and pursuits must be entirely different from ours. Do not even the thoughts and ways of good men differ from those of the wicked? How infinitely, then, must a perfectly holy God differ from us!
II. SOME INSTANCES IN WHICH THIS DIFFERENCE MOST STRIKINGLY APPEARS.
1. In permitting the introduction and continuance of natural and moral evil.
2. In devising a way of salvation for sinners. [1710]
3. In God’s choice of means and instruments for propagating the religion of Christ. Not angels, but men; and those at the outset the humblest (1 Corinthians 1:27; see p. 583).
4. In His choice of the best methods of dealing with His people, and carrying on the work of grace in their souls after it is begun.
[1710] We should have thought that, if God intended to save sinners, He would bring them to repentance and save them at once; or at least after suffering them to endure, for a season, the bitter consequences of their own folly and disobedience. We never should have thought of providing for them a redeemer; still leas should we have thought of proposing that God’s only Son, the Creator and Preserver of all things, should undertake this office; and, least of all, should we have expected that He would, for this purpose, think it necessary to become man. If we had been informed that this was necessary, and if it had been left to us to fix the time and manner of His appearing, we should have concluded that He ought to come soon after the fall; to be born of illustrious parents; to make his appearance on earth in all the splendour, pomp, and glory imaginable; to overcome all opposition by a display of irresistible power; to ride through the world in triumph, conquering and to conquer. Such were the expectations of the Jews; and such, most probably, would have been ours. But never should we have thought of His being born of a virgin in abject circumstances; born in a stable; cradled in a manger, living for many years as a humble artificer; wandering, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His head; and finally arraigned, condemned, and crucified as a vile criminal, that He might thus expiate our sins, and by His death give life to the world.—Payson.
III. SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS.
If God’s ways and thoughts differ thus widely from ours, then,
(1), it is no reasonable objection against the truth of any doctrine, or the propriety of any dispensation, that it is above our comprehension and appears mysterious to us. On the contrary, we should have reason to doubt the truth of the Scriptures, and to suspect that they are not the Word of God, if they did not contain many things which appear mysterious, and which we cannot fully comprehend. In this case, they would want one great proof of having proceeded from Him whose thoughts and ways must be infinitely above ours (H. E. I., 587; see p. 581).
2. It must be abominable pride, impiety, folly, and presumption in us to censure them even in thought. For an illiterate peasant to censure the conduct of his prince, with the reasons of which he is utterly unacquainted; for a child three years old to condemn the proceedings of his parent, would be nothing to this (Proverbs 13:13). [1713]
[1713] An ancient writer teller us of a man who, having a house for sale, carried a brick to market to exhibit as a specimen. You smile at his folly in supposing that any purchaser would or could judge of a whole house, which he never saw, by so small a part of it. But are we not guilty of much greater folly in attempting to form an opinion of God’s conduct from that little part of it which we are able to discover? In order to form a correct opinion of it, we ought to have a correct view of the whole; we ought to see the whole extent and duration of God’s kingdom; to be equal with Him in wisdom, knowledge, power, and goodness; in one word, we ought to be God ourselves, for none but God is capable of judging accurately the conduct of God. Hence, whenever we attempt to judge of it, we do, in effect, set up ourselves as gods, knowing good and evil.—Payson.
3. From this subject we infer the reasonableness of the implicit faith in God which Christians exercise, believing what they cannot fully comprehend. For this they are ridiculed. But if God’s ways and thoughts are thus high above ours, ought we not implicitly to believe that all He says and does is perfectly right? Is it not reasonable for children thus to believe their parents? for a sick man to trust in a skilful physician? for a passenger unacquainted with navigation to trust to the master of the vessel? If so, then it certainly is much more reasonable for us to trust implicitly to an infinitely wise, good, and infallible Being; and when any of His words or works appear wrong, to ascribe it to our own ignorance, blindness, or prejudice, rather than to suppose that there is anything wrong in Him. Is it not more likely that we should be wrong or mistaken, than that God should be?—Edward Payson, D.D.: Sermons, pp. 37–55.