The violence of God: Investigations in the book of Isaiah

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God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

—C.S. Lewis¹

To a nation on the path to self-destruction, to a nation that turned its back on God, eaten away by moral cancer, God spoke. Through the prophet Isaiah, He spoke words of warning and unimaginable destruction.

God did not hate His people. It’s just that He loved them too much to let them wallow in their cesspool of moral decay forever. As I have repeatedly written throughout this series on Isaiah, God’s words of destruction are intended to save and redeem. They are words to provoke a radical turnabout.

If Isaiah relentlessly announces Israel’s imminent destruction, it’s because the people refuse to listen and to see! Sustained human rebellion is the root cause of God’s judgment.

But why were the Israelites so reluctant to embrace God at the exclusion of all others? And for that matter, why stop at ancient Israel? Why are so many today reluctant to hear God’s invitation? Why are so many hostile to Jesus Christ and the true church? Isaiah 6:5 provides the clearest hint as to the real reason behind the near-constant resistance humans have shown throughout the ages to turning to the true God.

“Woe is me!”² cries the prophet. These represent the most dramatic words Isaiah or any person will ever utter. This expression denotes Isaiah’s dismay at the realization of his true condition in the presence of the holy God. The prophet entertains no illusions about himself: “I am ruined,” he adds. The New Living Translation puts it even more dramatically: “My destruction is sealed.”

Isaiah contemplates the glory of God but there is no praise coming from His mouth. Instead, he recoils in horror, not at God, but at himself. There is something frightfully wrong with him. He comes face to face with the beast within.

Isaiah’s words point to the painful reality of the human condition. There is something broken in the deepest recesses of the human soul. Regardless of the moral standards anyone may hold, the reality is that every single human being is fatally marred by that brokenness the Bible calls sin. Conversion assumes a basic recognition of a fundamental “wrongness” in every one of us.

A vulnerable process

Turning to the living God involves a most intimate and vulnerable process. It demands complete honesty about oneself and a sincere surrender to the person of God.

This recognition of a fundamental “wrongness” in us is what makes it so difficult to turn to Christ. This is particularly so for those who are very religious or those who have high moral standards. Their natural goodness is their greatest weakness, for it provides a shield of delusion in respect to their true nature and their desperate need for God. In the end, turning to God represents the most difficult decision we will ever make, for it implies a conscious decision to make God, rather than self, the centre of reality.

Isaiah’s encounter with God leaves no room for self-delusion. In the presence of God, the reality of his corruption bursts through. This is a disaster, for it does not only signal his own demise. Ultimately, it also signals the demise of his people, for the condition that plagues him, he shares with his people: “I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips” (6:5).

Isaiah’s predicament is enormous, but not all is lost. God has a solution for Isaiah, but not only for Isaiah. “Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out’ ” (6:6–7).

An act of utter mercy

The live coal is a symbol of purification. It denotes God’s redemptive action towards Isaiah and represents a concrete manifestation of forgiveness and cleansing. It is portrayed as an act of utter mercy. A contrite heart is all that is required from Isaiah.

The forgiveness extended to the prophet is life-transforming. He is now free to hear God’s invitation to partner with him (6:8). While there is precious little hope that the people will hear (6:9–10), Isaiah’s experience is the proof that there is hope of forgiveness and transformation for all those who will listen (6:13). The promise of forgiveness and radical transformation is more than a shimmering mirage. It is there simply for the asking.

As difficult as it is for many of us to understand and accept, there is no contradiction between the portrait of God in the Old Testament and the God revealed in the person of Jesus. They are one and the same: merciful beyond human understanding, loving, grieving for those who are in the throes of self-destruction, relentlessly pleading with all men and women to turn away from their sins.

There is no theological rupture between the Old and the New. The reality of sin, our propensity to rebel against God, the reality of judgment, the offer of forgiveness and salvation, and the invitation to partner with God is the story of the Old and the New Testament. How that story is told may vary, but in the end, the message remains the same.

Whether we experience God’s forgiveness or Jesus’ judgment³ is something that God the Father and God the Son ultimately leave to us. It is, for better or for worse, the “awe-full” burden of human free will and the inevitable corollary of human dignity.

In John 12:38–41 (NIV), the Gospel writer says,

This was to fulfill the word spoken by Isaiah the prophet: “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn – and I would heal them.

Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him.

Note: This is the conclusion of this series.

1. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), 93.
2. All biblical references, unless stated, are taken from the New Revised Standard Version.
3. We too often forget that Jesus never romanticized spiritual reality as much as we like to do. He spoke frequently of the reality of judgment on those who would not accept God’s offer. John 3:17–18 is a sober sample of Jesus’ teachings in that respect: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Pierre Gilbert is associate professor of Old Testament studies at Canadian Mennonite University/Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Winnipeg.