“For this is what the high and exalted One says— he who lives forever, whose name is holy: ‘I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’” (Isa. 57:15)
In his commentary on Isaiah, John W. Oswalt says of this verse that “it is one of the finest one-sentence summations of biblical theology in the Bible” (NICOT: The Book of Isaiah: 40-66, Oswalt, p. 487). Just what is it about this verse that goes to the heart of what the Bible is about?
There are two terms that must be held together in tension whenever we try to understand God and His relationship to His creation: Transcendence and Immanence.
Transcendence is “the attribute of God that refers to being wholly and distinctly separate from creation…that God is ‘above’ the world and comes to creation from ‘beyond’ (Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, Grenz, Guretzki & Fee-Nordling, p. 115).
Certainly, the first half of our verse describes a God who stands above all of His creation. He “lives forever,” that is, He is the “I AM” who is always there. Another way of putting it is that, whereas creation has a beginning and may have an end, God has no beginning or end. By definition, He is the only uncreated thing. I like to say that He is the only One for whom “existence” is an essential attribute. Therefore, he stands wholly above and beyond everything else that exists.
Immanence is the idea that God is close to and intimately involved in His creation. (Imminencemeans that His return is about to happen-temporally; whereas Immanencemeans His Presence is “at hand”—spatially.) Unlike the God of Deism, who started the creation ball rolling and has left it to run out on its own, the biblical God is always actively at hand. This must also be distinguished from Pantheism which says that God is part of creation, like the soul is to the human body. Or even Panentheism which says that God is different but present in creation to such an extent that he powerlessly waits to see what will happen.
Once again, our verse ends with the idea that God is present and concerned for those who are humble, contrite, lowly, perhaps even crushed and discouraged. God’s heart is moved with compassion for the plight of his creatures who have forsaken Him. He draws close to those who are weak.
And that is the God who is revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. As it says so well in Philippians 2:
6 [Christ Jesus}, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And we can add the words of the writer of Hebrews in chapter 4:
14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
We worship the Almighty God, who has come to us in our weakness to redeem us in the person of Jesus Christ so that we can ascend with Him to live in His eternal Kingdom. What a wonderful God we serve!
