The Divine Inversion: God's High Ways of Pardon Text: Isaiah 55:6-9
Introduction: An Offensive Grace
We live in an age that has tried to domesticate God. We want a manageable deity, a celestial therapist, a divine butler who exists to affirm our choices and validate our feelings. We want a God whose thoughts are, when you get right down to it, pretty much like our thoughts, only a bit nicer. We want a God whose ways are like our ways, just with better funding. We have created a god in our own image, and then we have the audacity to find him boring.
But the God of Scripture is not safe, and He is certainly not boring. He is the uncreated, untamable, sovereign Lord of all things, and His thoughts and ways are not just quantitatively different from ours; they are qualitatively, staggeringly, and infinitely different. And nowhere is this difference more gloriously and offensively on display than in the matter of His forgiveness. The grace of God is not a mild suggestion; it is a cosmic disruption. It is an invasion. It turns our entire merit-based, score-keeping, self-justifying world completely upside down.
The prophet Isaiah, in this magnificent fifty-fifth chapter, extends a free invitation to all who are thirsty to come and drink, to all who are penniless to come and buy. This is the free offer of the gospel. But this offer is not made in a vacuum. It comes with terms, and these terms are an affront to our pride. It requires us to abandon our own thinking and our own paths and to embrace a way of thinking and a way of living that is utterly alien to our fallen nature. It requires us to deal with the God who is actually there, not the one we have tidied up for public consumption. This passage is a summons to encounter the living God, whose pardon is as high above our understanding of pardon as the heavens are above the earth.
The Text
Seek Yahweh while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts; And let him return to Yahweh, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.
(Isaiah 55:6-9 LSB)
An Urgent and Conditional Summons (v. 6-7a)
The invitation is free, but it is not without urgency or conditions. Look at verse 6:
"Seek Yahweh while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near." (Isaiah 55:6)
There is a window of opportunity. The Bible does not teach that God is passively available at our beck and call, whenever we get around to it. There is a time for seeking, a season of grace when God has drawn near. This implies that there is also a time when He may not be found, a time when He is no longer near. This is not because God moves, but because the heart of man hardens. The day of salvation is now. To presume upon tomorrow is the height of folly. The command is to seek, to call. This is active. This is not a lazy suggestion. It is a command to exert yourself, to pursue Him as a hungry man pursues food.
And what does this seeking look like? Verse 7 tells us plainly. It is not a vague spiritual quest. It is repentance.
"Let the wicked forsake his way And the unrighteous man his thoughts;" (Isaiah 55:7a)
Modern evangelism has often truncated the gospel into a simple mental assent, a decision without consequences. But the biblical call is a call to turn. Repentance is not simply feeling bad about your sin. It is a radical break. The wicked must forsake his "way," his pattern of behavior, his sinful actions. The unrighteous man must forsake his "thoughts," the very worldview, justifications, and internal arguments that fuel his wicked way. This is a call for a complete renovation project, from the foundation up. You cannot keep your old way of thinking and simply ask Jesus to tack on a fire insurance policy. You must abandon the entire condemned structure. You must turn from your way, your thoughts, and return to Yahweh.
An Astonishing Pardon (v. 7b)
And what happens when this turning occurs? What is the reception for the wicked man who forsakes his path and the unrighteous man who abandons his rationalizations? Here is the heart of the matter.
"And let him return to Yahweh, And He will have compassion on him, And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon." (Isaiah 55:7b)
This is where the offense begins. Our natural, fallen instinct is for karma, for justice, for getting what you deserve. If a man has been truly wicked, we want him to pay. But God’s response to true repentance is not probation; it is compassion. And it is not a grudging, minimal forgiveness. The text says He will "abundantly pardon." The Hebrew here means He will multiply pardon. He lavishes it. He doesn't just wipe the slate clean; He throws the slate into the depths of the sea.
This is not the way we operate. Our forgiveness is stingy. We forgive, but we remember. We forgive, but we put them on double-secret probation. We forgive, but we keep a file. God's pardon is not like that. It is a torrential downpour of grace. And this is precisely why the next two verses are necessary. Our minds immediately short-circuit. We think, "That can't be right. It's too easy. It's not fair to the victims. It's not... reasonable." And God anticipates our objection.
The Alien Logic of God (v. 8-9)
God immediately explains why His offer of abundant pardon seems so scandalous to us. It is because His entire operating system is different from ours.
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:8-9)
This is one of the most misused passages in all of Scripture. People often rip this out of its context to shut down a difficult conversation, as though it means God is just arbitrary and unknowable. But in its context, it means the precise opposite. God is telling us exactly how His thoughts and ways are different from ours. In what specific way are His ways higher? The context is the preceding verse. His ways are higher than our ways in the arena of abundant pardon.
Our way is the way of quid pro quo. Our way is the way of merit. Our way is the way of "you get what you deserve." If someone sins against us for the twelfth time and comes to apologize again, does the sight of them bring us joy? Our thoughts are thoughts of suspicion. Our ways are ways of self-protection and score-keeping. We are the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, standing outside the party with our arms crossed, stewing because the Father is throwing a feast for that reprobate brother of ours.
God's "higher way" is to have compassion on the wicked who returns. God's "higher thought" is to abundantly pardon the unrighteous man who forsakes his thoughts. This is the divine inversion. We think it would be a higher, more noble thing to make the sinner grovel and pay. God says the truly high and noble thing, the thing that is as far above our thinking as the stars are from the dust, is to pardon freely and fully. God is not self-righteous the way we are. He is truly righteous, which is why He can be merciful. He doesn't need to prove a point. His joy is not in condemnation, but in the repentance of a sinner. As Jesus said, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels when one sinner repents. Who is doing the rejoicing? God Himself is.
The Cross: Where High Ways Meet the Earth
So how can God do this? How can a just God pardon the wicked without becoming unjust Himself? This is the central question of the universe, and the answer is the cross of Jesus Christ. God's higher ways and thoughts are not a dismissal of justice; they are the fulfillment of it in a way we never could have conceived.
Our way would be to either punish the sinner or to sweep the sin under the rug. God's way, His high way, was to do both and neither. He would not ignore the sin, and He would not destroy the sinner who repents. His way was to become the sinner, to take the sin upon Himself in the person of His Son, and to suffer the full, unmitigated wrath that our wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts deserved. On the cross, God's perfect justice and His abundant pardon met and kissed. God condemned sin in the flesh of His own Son so that He could be both "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26).
The reason God can call you to forsake your ways and thoughts is because Jesus Christ, whose thoughts and ways were perfectly aligned with the Father's, was forsaken for you. The reason God can offer you an abundant, multiplied pardon is because an infinite price was paid. Your sin is not trivialized; it is crucified.
Therefore, to seek the Lord is to seek the crucified and risen Christ. To call upon Him is to call upon the name of Jesus. To forsake your way is to turn and follow Him. To forsake your thoughts is to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And to return to God is to be welcomed home, not because you have cleaned yourself up enough, but because you are clothed in the righteousness of the Son. This is the high way of God. It is not our way. It is infinitely, gloriously, and eternally better.