Just as a father loves his children, so the Lord loves those who fear and worship Him with awe-filled respect and deepest reverence.
— Psalms 103:13
The psalmist wrote, “Like a human father loves and is compassionate to his children, so the Lord has complete and extreme compassion for the people who revere and respect Him.”
Notice the verb used by the psalmist in both parts of the simile. Yet, the intensity of compassion/love is different. The psalmist also said how much compassion God has for His people.
Whereas a mortal father can only love and be compassionate up to the amount of what a mortal is capable of, Almighty and perfect God can give the ultimate amount of compassion and love. God is limitless just as is His attributes. God is so grand that He’s undefinable in human words.
The amount of compassion God has for His people is beyond human comprehension, so the psalmist included in the original Hebrew writing the Pi’el form of compassion. Pi’el expresses intensive action. The father has compassion for his children, but that compassion is limited. God has compassion towards His people that is limitless. People cannot comprehend it. The psalmist’s best way to describe God’s compassion was by saying it was intensive; God’s compassion towards His people is complete, is perfect—nothing is lacking in it.
Can any of us say our compassion/love for others, our family, and our children is complete—perfect, lacks nothing? We can only give what our limited, fallible hearts can give. God’s heart toward His people is limitless; it’s bound only by His infinite, undefinable being.
Notice also, God’s compassion is aimed toward specific people in this simile. The father’s compassion is aimed at his children. God’s compassion is felt and given to “His people.” The verse actually says He aims His compassion toward “those who fear/revere Him.” Who are the people who revere God? To know that, we need to understand what “fear/revere” means with regard to God.
Revere means to be in such great awe and respect of someone that you worship that person. Each of us has at one time in our lives looked up to people. For some, that person was a family member, for others it was someone famous—an actor, musician, scientist, explorer, doctor, preacher, politician, etc. The list could go on. Who did you admire so much that you wanted to be like him/her? Did you go so far in your awe and admiration of that person that you idolized him/her? That is worship of a person. Take that understanding farther and apply those feelings of awe and respect to God. Intensify those feelings you felt for another person so that they transition from admiration of a fallible and limited human to reverence of infallible and limitless God. That intensification involves more than just your head, heart, and body. It includes your spirit. Revering God requires your whole being. It’s the willing and intentional giving of your whole being back to the One you recognize as the Almighty—the One who creates, lives, sustains, saves, protects, leads, is, has always been, and will always be existent. Revering God is more than mental assent of His existence. It’s more than emotional acknowledgment of His stirring your being. Revering God is more than bending on knees before Him or placing an offering in the offering plate. Revering is all these and spiritually confessing God is the one and only Lord, Master, and Savior of your life by giving yourself wholly to Him as the ultimate offering and sacrifice you can give to the Ultimate One. What more can we give than our whole being? Oswald Chambers calls this giving our “utmost for His highest.”
God gives His complete/perfect and intensive compassion to the people who revere Him. He has complete/perfect and intensive compassion for and toward those people who willingly and wholly give themselves—hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits—to Him out of love and awe and reverence as the ultimate offering that they can give .
The psalmist’s simile could make you smile now that you realize the two sides of it are unequal. God’s love and compassion does not match that of a father’s compassion for His child. God’s love and compassion are incomparable to anything earthly. The psalmist had nothing with which to compare it than to the greatest compassion a human can feel, that of the care and love of one’s own child. In this, he became similar to God. The father co-created his child with God. God created all people. The father can understand the intensity of feeling for his child like that of God’s for His creation—people.
That intensity of heart, mind, and body to do anything necessary to care for his child is similar to God’s care for people. God loves us so intensely that He did and does everything to care for us. He gives of all He is and of what He has at His disposal that is necessary to care for the hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits of people. Notice the difference. A human father cannot affect the spirit of his child. Only God can call to, convict, save, and renew a child’s spirit. When that child, no matter the age, whether 2-102, confesses absolute faith in Jesus, God’s Son, and confesses his/her sins, that child becomes part of the group of people “who fear Him,” as the psalmist said in Psalm 103:13. That person becomes a child of God. Along with being forgiven and having eternal life with God, that person will be made complete gradually over time so that the father or mother of a child will gradually show the level of compassion God aims towards His people.
This simile has unequal sides, but it’s purpose helps us understand the intensity and completeness of God’s compassion. It should lead us to ask ourselves questions. Foremost of these questions is, do you revere God and are you counted as one on whom God aims His intensive and complete compassion? In other words, are you a child of God, one of His people? Secondly, how’s your compassion for your child? God’s compassion was compared to that of a father’s by the psalmist. Really, though, our compassion should be compared to God’s. God’s compassion is the standard and goal. Our intensity of compassion should increase as our offering of our heart, mind, body, and spirit increases. Is your offering to God increasing? Or, did you only give a sacrifice and offering at the point you were saved?
This simile will always be unequal. Yet, as we give more of our being to God each day and as we receive more from Him each day, our compassion will become more complete. God will perfect us more each day we seek Him and grow closer to Him. What of yourself have you offered to God today?
