My thought in Psalm 8:3-4 is in context with Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the text – “I look up at your macro-skies (the great world; the universe, or the visible system of worlds), dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings – Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, Why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way?” David asks, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him (Psalm 8:4)? The question is asked twice in Job, “What is man, that You should magnify him (7:17)? What is man that he should be clean (15:14)? And again in Psalm 144:3, “LORD, what is man, that You take knowledge of him? or the son of man, that You make account of him? Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. … So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them.” Man was made last in the order of creation, he is the chief masterpiece of the whole creation made in the likeness and image of God his maker, perfect and without blemish in his origin. How is this image and likeness attained? Judicially we have reached it, “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Col.2:9-10). (Col.3:10-11) Paul brings the question over into Hebrews 2:6, “But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that You are mindful of him? or the son of man, that You visit him?”; applying this to the Man Christ Jesus. “You made Him a little lower than the angels.” The word ‘little’ may not so much intend the degree of His humiliation, as the duration of it; for it may be rendered, ‘a little while’. It respects the time of His suffering, death; and the time from His incarnation to His resurrection. Strictly this applies to the man Christ Jesus and the elect: if applied to mankind as a whole we have a contradiction with such passages as Ps.7:11. He can only be mindful toward Jesus and those who have been brought into favor with Him through His redeeming blood, (see Ps.139:17, Jer. 29:11). Practically we strive for it. How so? “But growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be glory both now and for ever. Amen 2 Pet.3:18; Ps. 92:12; Hos. 14:5; Mal.4:2; Eph. 4:15; Col. 1:10; 2 Tim.1:3; I Pet. 2:2. The original man (Adam) came forth from the hand of his Maker perfect in every aspect of the word; but Adam, being the representative of the race, transgressed; there we are in the transgression and in the state of perdition with him. Is there hope? Yes there is hope, but only in the second Adam, only in the New Man! “The first man is of the earth, …; the second man is the Lord from heaven” I Cor.15:47). Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2Cor.5:17).So why does He bother with us? Because in Christ He only sees us as Christ the New Man, not having spot or wrinkle Eph.5:25-27: (Eph.2:15: 4:24). Study the scripture text out, a good study for devotion.
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