Only the biblical religions celebrate a God who is both all-powerful and to be held in awe, but also a God who is gentle, tender and like a loving parent. We do not find both qualities together in other world religions, be it Islam or Hinduism. The early Greek and Roman religions had personal gods, but not omnipotent and infinite ones. The gods of the east are infinite but not personal.
Another way we can put this is to discuss God’s immanence and transcendence. The biblical God is both transcendent (well above and beyond any of us) but also immanent (able to closely dwell and interact with us). Sometimes one biblical passage will contain both realities, such as Isaiah 57:15:
For this is what the high and lofty One says – he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
But in my reading in the book of Isaiah I again came upon texts like this. In Is. 40 there are two such passages, both dealing with a powerful and almighty God who is also tender and near us. In verses 10-11 we read this:
Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
And in verses 25-31 we find these words:
To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might and because he is strong in power, not one is missing. Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah (NIV Application Commentary, The) by Oswalt, John N. published by Zondervan Hardcoverby aa (Author)
All believers should take great comfort from such words. John Oswalt does a good job of tying these two truths about God together. Looking at the transcendence and immanence of God, he says we must beware of the “danger of forcing the biblical data into our logical boxes”. He explains:
As with sovereignty and human freedom, both the absolute otherness of God and his ability to be present with his creation are taught by the Bible, and if we diminish either in an attempt to make them conform to our logical limitations, we have done damage to the full revelation. For instance, if God is not transcendent, then he lacks the power to change our circumstances. But more importantly, we also have lost any reason to change those circumstances because they are simply part of the ineluctable consequences of being caught on the wheel of existence that has neither beginning nor end. But if God is only transcendent, then he neither knows nor cares what is happening in our lives. He is simply other than we, bringing us into existence and providing the energy that powers the cosmos, but he remains untouched by the changing, fluctuating movements of the world.
The Bible insists that both propositions are equally true. On one account, God “sits above the circle of the earth” (40:22). He is not the sun, moon, or stars, nor is he to be identified with any process of earth, whether physical, political, or psychological. He is above and beyond all of that. But at the same time, he is love. Immediately, we must say that this is not to reduce God to all that we call love. It seems to me that this is one of the dangers of process theology. Paganism identifies the gods with the natural systems of time and space, while process theology identifies God with the psychological and historical systems of time and space. Furthermore, it was a good deal easier to say that the historical process was leading us toward the goal of love in 1901 than it is in 2001. No, to say that God is love is to move the connection in the opposite direction. It is to say that everything we know and think of as love is partial and derivative of the totality that love is in God. What this means is that God is intimately involved with the life of his creation but is not at the same time just an expression of that life.
This truth is summed up in Isaiah 40: God is outside of the systems of time and space, which means he is not conditioned by any of those systems. He can intervene in them at will and change any of them to suit his grand design. Furthermore, it means he can have a grand design. He can have a plan that is not merely an expression of what is but something to which the “is” can be made to conform. Yet even though he is outside of time and space, he is not limited by them. He is aware of our distress and our captivity, our joy and our accomplishments, and he is able to come to us, sharing the joy and delivering us from our distress. He is great enough to be able to help, and he is near enough to want to help.
All of this is summed up in Jesus Christ….
In a briefer comment, Derek Thomas puts it this way:
The same passage which stresses the infiniteness of God’s power also portrays his gentleness. And what better way of illustrating gentleness than by a shepherd carrying his lambs close to his heart? Gentleness is one of the marks of Jesus (Matthew 11:28-29). It is also something that we should pray for in our own lives (Galatians 5:22-23; Colossians 3:12). When did you last pray that God would make you gentle?
Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferersby Ortlund, Dane (Author)
Those wanting more on the gentleness of Jesus should consult Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund (Crossway, 2020). See my earlier article on this key book: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/08/15/the-tender-heart-of-god/
We can all be so very grateful for a transcendent yet immanent God – for a powerful yet gentle God.
