Psalm 103:8-14
B.
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to
our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is
his steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as fare as the east is from the
west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his
children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers
that we are just dust.”
The existence of man is the
manifestation of weakness and futility, and in our weakness is sin, and so
everything we do is an expression of reaching toward something greater, better,
stronger than ourselves.
Conversely, the existence of God is the image of all potency, substance,
and sufficiency. In His
all-powerful and all-sufficient person, He must condescend if He is to dwell
with us who are so fragile, and so, everything God does is an expression of
conscious and protective restraint.
He is the answer to our reaching and the hand that we are reaching
for. Yet, if He is to answer us
with His infinite substance, He must apply Himself with great gentleness lest
at any time we become crushed beneath the full weight of His glory. This is what is being communicated when
David describes our God as being merciful
and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Every interaction we have with God, and
thus, the entire scope of our intimacy with Him is an expression of moderated
strength, or abounding compassion.
The
Hebrew root word for ‘merciful’ used here in verse 8 means ‘to fondle’. To understand what it means to say the
Lord is merciful and gracious, we must consider the picture of a child in the
hands of a mighty warrior. Though
he possess great strength and skill of hand to cast off oppressors and war
against evil forces—to fight and to kill—when he holds in his hand the
innocence of what he uses his power to protect, all that is strong in him that
is employed in resisting evil is now employed in withholding himself—not only
so he may not injure what is so delicate, but so that the controlled manner of
his strength might communicate comfort to the one who his strength
protects. The zeal that causes God
to be a terror to our enemies is the very same zeal that causes us to trust Him
so completely. For the strength He
uses to restrain evil on our account is the very same strength He uses to
restrain Himself so that what is used to inflict terror on the forces of evil,
might with the same quality, prove His love to us in the expression of His
tender mercies. This is mercy, and
we can believe that however God chooses to express Himself to us and whatever
we see Him do for us is an expression of this restraint so that the same hand
that puts down evil according to His goodness, might build that goodness in us
according to His compassion—as a father
shows compassion to his children.
It
is important, however, to realize that His wrath and His mercy are of the same
quality, so that when we experience His mercy, we might not mistake it for an
allowance for sin. For, just as a
father or a teacher would increase the sting of the rod to reprove a child from
destructive behavior, so will the Father bring His hand down upon us to keep us
from sin, and if we do not allow ourselves to be reproved, then the strength of
that hand will increase. However,
no matter what methods our loving Father would employ to reprove us, no matter
what trials we may endure for the perfecting of our faith, even this is an
expression of His mercy since it will always work for our good and never for
our complete end. His reproof is
for our instruction, and knowing that we
are just dust, it will never be more than we bear, or more than that which
would, otherwise, impede on the command to persevere. And when we do persevere through trial and temptation, and
we find that the work of the Lord has proved for our well-being, we will see
His anger subside and His tender mercies increase all the more to comfort us
with the same strong hand that would sting us. For, He will not
always chide, and the strength of the hand that disciplines is also that
which protects, and as high as the
heavens are above the earth, so is the inexhaustible nature of His
patience, mercy, and love.
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