The suffering Savior

2:26 p.m. Today's project is to meditate on the tremendous suffering our Lord Jesus went through to bring us salvation, the gift of eternal life!

Yesterday, I quoted Isaiah 53:2, about the appearance of the Man Jesus: "He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him." And we know from Matthew 26:48 that Judas had to pre-arrange a signal in order for the ones sent by the scribes and Pharisees to identify and arrest Jesus, because He did not stand out physically. Our beloved Lord, portrayed so beautifully in religious art, apparently had a very common appearance!

But the resemblance to ordinary men stopped there, as all four gospels describe the beatings and whipping Jesus received at the hands of the Jews and the Gentiles, joined in satanic league together! But Isaiah's prophecy (53:3) tells us in grievous detail how a sinful world received Him: "He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him." think of jesus' grieving heart! Jesus wept over Jerusalem, for the destruction that their unbelief would bring 70 years later; the disciples fled at His arrest; Peter denied knowing Him three times.

And I personally rejected Jesus Christ for the first 28 years of my life--what about you? It was all of mankind's sin--our sin-- from the beginning to the end of the world, that put Jesus on the cross!

The Father had to strike His Son! It is because God cannot look upon sin, because He is holy. JESUS TOOK OUR PUNISHMENT.

Isaiah 53: 4b-5 (New Living Translation) says, "And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed."

How bad did the beating, spitting, and whipping get, before Jesus was ordered to carry His own cross? Isaiah 52:14 (NLT) describes Him: "Many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man."

To think that my sin put Him on that cross, that He suffered so and died for me, makes me want to break down crying...I am overcome, and would be utterly overcome with sorrow and shame, if I did not believe with all my heart that it was God's plan to sacrifice His Son, because He knew that there was no other way to make men fit for His presence in heaven. We are clean and forgiven because Christ took our place--the Father sees us through the Son!

"He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed," Isaiah 53:5 says. Believers now have peace with God!!

How I love Jesus!

Tomorrow: How did Jesus die?