Holy-Week-Monday

This blog is a part of our Holy Week series.

Dr. Thomas Petter

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 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. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. (Isaiah 53:2-9)

Self-sacrifice is among the noblest of virtues. We cheer for athletes who have committed themselves to a life of self-discipline and sacrifice in order to reach their goals. The powerful images of fire fighters and police officers running back into collapsing buildings on 9/11 are indelibly etched in our minds. And yet, there is an even greater sacrifice foretold by the prophet Isaiah: A king willingly gives up his life, not for the sake of his loyal subjects, but for those who purposefully reject his authority and have “gone astray;” he will  die so that “all of us” might live, Isaiah announces (53:6). The Apostle Paul, writing to Christians in Rome, puts it this way: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7–8 NIV). God’s love is so great that it extends even to his estranged children (all of us) by sending his own Son to die for us, so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

Dr. Thomas Petter is senior professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell.

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This post first appeared in the devotional, Journey to the Resurrection, published by Gordon-Conwell, April 13 – 20, 2014.