Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

by Dane C. Ortlund

So God tells us in plain terms how tiny our natural views of his heart are. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. And not because we’re just a few degrees off. No, “as high as the heavens are above the earth”—a Hebrew way of expressing spatial infinitude—“so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (v. 9). In verse 8 God says his ways and ours are different; in verse 9 he gets more specific and says his thoughts are higher. It’s as if God is saying in verse 8 that he and we think very differently, whereas in verse 9 he is saying precisely how, namely, his “thoughts” (the Hebrew word doesn’t merely mean “passing mental reflection” but “plans,” “devices,” “intentions,” “purposes”) are higher, grander, enveloped in a compassion for which we fallen sinners have no natural category.