He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
— Psalm 103:10
Here we see the greatness of God set against the reality of man.
The Reality of Man
Notice first that the psalmist does not go to great lengths to explain or prove that man is a sinner. He does not build a careful case or lay out his evidence. He simply proclaims it as an established fact — man is a sinner, and man commits iniquity.
It is unfortunate that in our day and age we try to elevate man to a position of moral excellence and high standing. We do this to ourselves when we look at others and compare our sins to theirs, finding ourselves morally acceptable by comparison. We say things like — at least I am not a liar, at least I am not an adulterer, at least I have not murdered anyone or committed any gross sin.
But this is not how the Bible evaluates man. When Scripture looks at man, it measures him not against other people’s holiness but against God’s holiness. And when we begin to look at ourselves through that lens, we immediately find that what the Bible says about us is entirely true.
Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that the heart of man is deceitful above all else and desperately wicked. David writes in Psalm 51, his great psalm of repentance:
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
— Psalm 51:5
Paul writes to the Ephesians:
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
— Ephesians 2:1-3
John states plainly in his first epistle that if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. And God Himself delivers this sobering diagnosis in Genesis 6:
Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
— Genesis 6:5
All of this — the full weight of what Scripture says about the sinfulness and iniquity of man — points us to one conclusion: man cannot redeem himself. He has gone so far as to hate God and shake his fist against God. He is by nature an enemy of God. And God would be completely right and just to allow man to perish in that condition.
The Greatness of God
It is against this dark backdrop that the words of the psalmist become truly staggering. He declares that God has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Here is the greatness of God. Instead of doing what would be the entirely just and natural outcome — given the depth of man’s fallenness — God goes a different route entirely. He makes a way for sin to be atoned for and iniquity to be fully accounted for. And He does this in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus’s life, He fulfils all the righteous requirements of the law. In Jesus’s death, He pays the full penalty required for all who would believe upon Him. And in His resurrection, we see the complete and full satisfaction of everything required for the redemption of man.
And how does God apply this to man? Not by asking him to try harder or be a better person. Not by requiring further works of righteousness — for these are people who were dead in their trespasses and sins. Instead, it is received only on the basis of faith, so that all glory would go to God alone. For this is the very purpose for which man was created — to glorify God.
The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks: What is the chief end of man? The answer: man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Gratitude and Worship
The reason God does not deal with us according to our sinfulness or reward us according to our iniquity is ultimately for His glory and for our good.
May this psalm bring us to a place of deep gratitude and worship — where we look honestly at God’s holiness and come to a full reckoning with the wickedness of our sin, and where we look to Christ and rest with full confidence in the sufficiency of His finished work.
Grace and peace.
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