Devotion Isaiah 53:5 Because Of Love

Isaiah 53:5 – 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.

Philippians 2:6-8 – Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Jesus died for me.  Because I was, and am, a sinner who could not and cannot stop sinning in some way, much too often.  I was helpless and hopeless to live out a sinless life, which is God’s standard.  Why this perfection?  Because it is how He made us.  Because He made us to be like Him.  He didn’t make us corrupt.  He loved us enough to give us a free will.  What did we do with it, we sinned like a child who, knowing it wrong, steals candy and then goes in the corner of a bedroom to hide from being found, from being found out.  We might protest that a child stealing candy is not such an awful thing, it is what kids do.  Right, kids who are born with a sin nature (that would be all of us) and that would be every person not created, it is how we all are born.  So a child stealing candy is not a good thing and we will teach the child not to steal, but it is, to us, not a big thing.  But we only think that it is not a “big thing” because we compare that to all the sins of the world.  It certainly is not a big thing when we consider all of our own sins.  But we are not God.  God made us like Himself, sinless.  Only God knows the beauty that Adam and Ever were in their sinless nature.  After they sinned, they saw the difference in each other.  They tried to cover up the change.  Before they were beautiful and sinless and now they were not.  God’s beautiful children were now marred.  God mourned the marring that sin did to His children and Adam and Eve remembered until the day they died the beauty of the innocence they once had, but then had lost due to their own fault.  There is no doubt that they regretted it every day of their lives.  Adam and Eve knew the beauty of what God created us to be.  Adam and Eve had to see they disease of sin in their all their babies and descendants, and they lived long lives and saw many descendants as Adam lived to be nine hundred thirty years old (Genesis 5:5). Sin is ugly.  Sin is destructive.  Sin hurts.  Sin kills.

So all of us have the stain of sin upon us (Romans 3:10).  None of us are the sinless souls that God created mankind to be (Romans 3:23).  Yes, a small child’s sin of stealing candy is small to us because it is small compared to all our own sins.   Yet we must remember that God is sinless.  Remember that the Lord calls us to be sinless and yet none of us are. Next to God, any sin on our soul is a very ugly thing.  We don’t truly know what a sinless soul in a man looks like, but God does.  The state of true peace and happiness comes with a complete and perfect union with God and that state does not happen with sin in our lives.  And that, Beloved, is why Jesus willingly stepped down from His throne, emptied Himself of the power of His divinity to live as a man.  Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin (Hebrews 9:22).  The shedding of blood of an innocent animal cannot pay the full price of our sin.  Jesus was the final and all-cleansing sacrifice.  We either come in by Him or not at all.  Now, Jesus the only way and no other sacrifice remains (John 14:6, Hebrews 10:26).  God sacrificing Himself in the form of a man is the only sacrifice so eternally and infinitely valuable that the putrid sin of man can be ripped from the soul of a person so as to set them free to be what they were intended to be, pure and shining.  Only the sacrifice of God Himself in the form of a man, with all of God’s love on full display (John 3:16), could pay the price.

Jesus did that.  He knew what He was stepping into.  He did it because God loves us.  He stepped down to be hated, cursed at, tortured and murdered and He did it for us.  Only the innocent blood of Jesus, who was both God and man, could pay the price for our sins.  That is what Jesus did.  The Good News for all of us is that His sacrifice was so powerful, so eternal, and that the benefits extend to us and all people who are ever born, from every nation, starting with the Jew and then to the world.  Yes, Jesus did that!.  Praise the Lord!  Praise God! Oh praise God!