Quintessential Lenten Reading



Isaiah 53:4-6
4Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Chapter 53 of Isaiah is a must read for every believer during the season of Lent. It is completely miraculous that Isaiah penned these words 700 years before Jesus was even born. And yet they carry the essence of why Jesus came in fulfillment of God’s plan.

This week we will be thinking about the fact that we did not see our need for a Savior and go looking for Him. Neither did Jesus stumble upon our need and fill it. His arrival upon the earth as a Man was God’s plan before Adam and Eve were even created. God knew that He was going to have to solve the problem of our sin before He created anything at all. I’ve been asked at numerous Bible Studies why – why did God create us if He knew that we were going to mess things up? Why would He put Himself through that?

I think that’s a stellar question. His actions defy logic in the strictly human sense of the word. But we must always hold in our minds the absolutely undeniable fact that God embodies Love. Love is so much a part of who He is that it overrides our puny human logic. He made us, even knowing we would abandon Him for our sin, because He had to have someone to love. He wanted to have a recipient of all that magnificent love. And what is the most incredibly expression of His love – His death on the cross at our hands, to pay for the sins we commit.

This whole concept flies in the face of a theology that would say, “I have decided to follow Jesus.” That idea means that I went out looking for Jesus because I knew I was a sinner. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus goes looking for us – every time. This entire story is His alone. Yes, there were people around Him, but none of them is responsible for His place on the cross. He chose that for us. He could have (and probably wanted to) end the whole process at any point in time. He was even taunted by those at His feet while He hung there on the Cross to do just that. But His love held him up there – suffering in our stead. That is the suffering servant that Isaiah describes so accurately.

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