Behold, My Servant will prosper,
He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted.
Just as many were appalled at you, My people,
So His appearance was marred beyond that of a man,
And His form beyond the sons of mankind.
So He will sprinkle many nations,
Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;
For what they had not been told, they will see,
And what they had not heard, they will understand.Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
And like a root out of dry ground;
He has no stately form or majesty
That we would look at Him,
Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.
He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,
And our pains that He carried;
Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,
Struck down by God, and humiliated.
But He was pierced for our offenses,
He was crushed for our wrongdoings;
The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
All of us, like sheep, have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the LORD has caused the wrongdoing of us all
To fall on Him.He was oppressed and afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth;
Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
So He did not open His mouth.
By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
And as for His generation, who considered
That He was cut off from the land of the living
For the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due?
And His grave was assigned with wicked men,
Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.But the LORD desired
To crush Him, causing Him grief;
If He renders Himself as a guilt offering,
He will see His offspring,
He will prolong His days,
And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
As a result of the anguish of His soul,
He will see it and be satisfied;
By His knowledge the Righteous One,
My Servant, will justify the many,
For He will bear their wrongdoings.
Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great,
And He will divide the plunder with the strong,
Because He poured out His life unto death,
And was counted with wrongdoers;
Yet He Himself bore the sin of many,
And interceded for the wrongdoers. (Isaiah 52:13–53:12 NASB)
A few weeks ago, I was invited to a small dinner party by one of our church members. There were nine men, many of whom were Catholic, all professed followers of Jesus. I only knew the host and two other men there.
Our host opened up the dinner conversation by highlighting the fact that we were all there because of our love of Jesus and his love of us.
As the conversation continued, many shared their love of God and celebrated the work he did for us, what he went through to effect our salvation – all good stuff.
And yet, something was stirring in me.
Were we holding Jesus’s sacrifice for us with the fullness God desires for us to?
I felt it needed to be noted that while everything being preached, testified to, and shared was really good and very true, Jesus was more than the instrument of our salvation; as God in the flesh and our Lord, he is also a model for our living.
The Spirit within Christ’s obedience, his courage and sacrifice, the very Spirit that raised him from the dead even, is the same Spirit that animates his Church.
The humility, the love of the other, and the sacrifice he lived are to be modeled in the people who bear his name as Christians.
How often do we meditate on the Author of our salvation and what he did for us while we were yet sinners, and ask him to guide our posture and service toward sinners in our day?
How often do we see Jesus’s life and ministry as a model of service to others instead of just a tool God used to save us?
When do we stop and let the reality that God stooped down to take on flesh on our behalf inform how we see our hurting and lost neighbors?
In what ways has Christ’s love tenderized our hearts, if it has at all?
Wayne Stapleton is the VP of Cross-Cultural Engagement and Emerging Leader Engagement.
