Isaiah 53:1-12
Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

I almost wanted to just post these verses and nothing else. Because this is it. This is the crucifixion. This is what Jesus did, what He felt, what He endured, what He experienced. What He knew He would face when He chose to come into this world. What God knew would come to pass before He even created Adam. Surely it was unbearable. Surely it was something we could never have endured, and so He went and did it for us. We are the transgressors here. We are the sinners, the unrighteous ones, the ones who deserved to die in our sins and be punished brutally for them. We deserved wounds and suffering and rejection. We deserved the unending sorrow of eternal death.

But Jesus took all of that instead. God in a human body took upon Himself the weight of it all, the burden of it all, the heaviness of it all, the pain of it all. It was laid on Him by the Father. It was His doing alone and completely. We might have gone kicking and screaming, but He was silent and submissive. We would have been guilty, but He was sinless and innocent, without deceit or violence. We would have done anything to avoid it or escape from it, but He went towards it willingly and it pleased Him to do so. He took our place. It should be my name here, and yours, all of us. It should be, but it wasn’t. He took it so we didn’t have to. And how can that even be so? Only love. Only mercy. Only a perfect plan by a holy God.

Look, then, if you will, closely at the suffering Savior and see what He did for us. See what it cost Him. And then see what we’ve gained, because that is there, too. We have healing from His wounds. We are justified because of His sacrifice. We have life from His death. We are forgiven, reconciled to the Father, set free. Sin is such a heavy thing to bear, a weighty and burdensome thing, something that didn’t belong in this world. It required a sacrifice, the shedding of blood, the giving of life. And there was Jesus coming along and picking it up, bearing it all upon Himself, and not being completely crushed by it all like we would have been, but gaining the victory, overcoming in power and might that only He has. As brutal as it all was, I’m so thankful for the cross, so thankful for my Savior, so thankful that Jesus came and saved me.