Reading Psalm 103 reminds me a lot of Exodus 34, when the Lord passed before Moses and declared His name,
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”
When I read passages like this in scripture I’m often taken aback by the holiness of God. We bear His image and yet He is still so radically set apart from the way we are even as His people. At times in prayer I’ve been overcome by the reminder that His response to me is different, so much more full of grace and compassion, than I anticipate it will be. Maybe that’s because I often think God is going to respond to my iniquity the same way I want to respond to others while driving in Dallas traffic, full of wrath and a desire for vengeance. Voltaire is said to have quipped, “In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since.”
Eugene Peterson penned this regarding prayer, “Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to that part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything that He speaks to us…”
It’s essential that we know God as He is, and not as we desire Him to be, not as we impress ourselves onto Him.
He works righteousness and justice for the oppressed.
He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He doesn’t deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
David continues, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”
That is the love of Jesus. That is the blood sacrifice of the perfect life of Jesus in our place. It’s the reality that we’re called to embrace and walk in. Let us embrace the God who is who He is!
“The Lord has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all […] Bless the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul!”
-- Chris Weiland