“The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him— our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.”
The magnitude of this concept of divine sacrifice that entailed taking on human form and utter debasement to redeem another, and to carry this out in obedience to the end so as to offer a new life that transcends the terrestrial — overpowering death, as we know it — and placing within one’s heart a love for your neighbor is an amazingly mind-altering thing. Isaiah is describing here the state of human affairs in light of divine intervention. This is not fair; God is not fair — God is forgiving! Do you see it? Will you accept him today?
