| “He was despised and rejected by mankind…” |
| —Isaiah 53:3a |
“I despise you!”
Three words, yet they carry such power. Has anyone ever said them to you? No, I’m not talking about a childish outburst. I’m talking about a serious adult conversation. There are few words more emotionally rending than “I despise you.” Now imagine that those words come from the very people for which you intended to die.
Imagine, those same people have all told you they don’t care what you want to do for them. You have done everything you possibly can to show them your love, yet they return only rejection to you.
You are now 33 years old and you have done nothing wrong. Yet because you—in your mercy, grace, and love—have agreed to take on yourself the sins of every human who has ever lived and the sins of every human who would ever live, the people you have come to set free from sin have despised you, as you die a horribly painful death on a cruel Roman cross of torture.
That is exactly how humankind behaved toward our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s exactly what our sins did to Jesus. And that’s exactly what the Prophet Isaiah described when he wrote these words in Isaiah 53:3-4:
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
Jesus paid the price for our sins. In His moment of greatest physical agony, He experienced the rejection of the very ones He intended to save. In the depth of our minds and hearts, as we stand at the foot of the cross at the beginning of this new day, let us pause to consider how great a salvation God has provided for us through the birth, life, suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of His one and only Son, Jesus. And, as a result, let us become overwhelmed with the deepest possible gratitude.
Based on a blog originally posted on Monday, March 21, 2016
