THE LOVE THAT WOULD DIE FOR YOU

A series from the book of Isaiah: Chapter 53

I want to invite you to read this ISAIAH chapter 53 meditatively. When I encountered this chapter back in our class. My teacher asked us one question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” We all have different answers but the teacher was looking for only one word that no one was able to answer. That one important word that describes everything about Christ is what our teacher was looking for. We said love, teacher, model, example, shepherd, guide, friend, father, lover, and all but all these do not even measure to a certain degree of the value of that word.

My teacher told us that we all should have an understanding of this word before anything else in our lives as Christians. We needed to understand that JESUS WAS OUR SUBSTITUTE. This is the very role that He played why He needed to come here, be like us, and live like us. He needed to be the perfect ADAM that the first Adam failed to do. He will be the only perfect substitute that is able to do what we all have failed to do. Christ is the only perfect payment for the sin that broke the law of God in heaven.

We are all dumbfounded, yes, many times, we exalt Christ’s attributes and nature of love but we never have ever thought of that SUBSTITUTIONARY WORKS HE HAS DONE FOR US TO BE SET FREE FROM THE DOMINION, INFLUENCE, AND EFFECT OF SIN FOREVER. AS HE WILL ALSO BE THE ONE WHO WILL DEFEAT SATAN WITH HIS PURE RIGHTEOUSNESS.

More than everything God has given us the perfect substitute that we do not need to take the punishment for the sins we have committed. There is no greater love than this.

53 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2 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. 3 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.

4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 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. 6 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.

7 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. 8 By oppression[a] 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.[b] 9 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.

10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes[c] his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. 11 After he has suffered, he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e]; by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[g] and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[h] because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Friends, Christ became our substitute not because he was forced to or obliged to.

It was all because He loves us that much and He wouldn’t let go.

Without Christ we are eternally lost.

In Christ, we have the hope and assurance to be

restored and be back to God for eternity.