Christ the Lord of All | Holy Week DevotionalSýnishorn

In Isaiah 53, the prophet Isaiah was given what may well be the most significant prophecy of Christ ever uttered. Hundreds of years before Christ came into the world, Isaiah spoke of God’s suffering servant. This anointed servant would be rejected by men, scorned, and despised. He would be a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). During the final days of Jesus’ life, we see just how true that description is.

Tim Keller once made a powerful point about the nature of suffering. Every living creature has the capacity to suffer, but the depth of that suffering depends on awareness. A plant suffers when it is damaged, but a plant can’t suffer to the same magnitude as a dog can suffer. A dog would certainly suffer if it faced abuse, but that same experience would be far worse if experienced by a man or woman. Humans have a greater awareness—we have the ability to comprehend the depths of physical brokenness, evil, betrayal, and injustice to a far greater extent than simpler animals. This means we suffer more deeply when we encounter it.

When we think of Christ, who he is, and what he came to accomplish, we must keep his humanity and divinity equally in mind. If we lose track of either, we lose track of everything. The Church has always confessed that Christ is both the “true God” and “true man.” He is the genuine article—like God in every way, but with a human nature exactly like ours as well. When he was betrayed, he experienced betrayal as anyone experiences betrayal. When he was overwhelmed, he experienced the crushing weight of that anxiety as any of us might. But he does not experience suffering with only the awareness of a simple man. Although he faced his suffering with the ordinary frailties of human nature, he did so with perfect comprehension of the evil he was facing. He was weak like a man but faced his torments with the full awareness of God.

The final events of Christ’s life were the sum total of all our worst nightmares. He suffered injustice, betrayal, crushing fear, and physical torment. While awaiting his fate, overwhelmed in the garden, his disciples slept instead of praying for his strength. He was faithful to all, to the point of death, yet he was betrayed unto death by one of the twelve. While Peter was once willing to storm Rome or even the gates of hell with his sword in hand, in the end, he pretended that Jesus was a stranger. Jesus was a truly innocent man but was condemned at the hands of wicked tyrants and false teachers. Those tasked to guide God’s people were the very ones who sought to destroy him. His judge, despite knowing him to be innocent, condemned him to death anyway. He was beaten within an inch of his life, made to carry his cross, stripped naked, and nailed to the tree. Every indignity, every manner of disgrace, was heaped upon his shoulders. Man of sorrows, indeed. The sufferings of Christ were not only the greatest evil ever experienced, but the revelation of heaven’s glory. At the place of greatest evil, the full revelation of God’s love and mercy shines forth.

Although he faced horrific evil, God’s purposes were only good. The sacrifice of Jesus was “an offering for guilt” (Isa. 53:10). This man of sorrows was “pierced for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5). Although Jesus’ captors looked at him as one “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted,” Isaiah says that “the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand” (Isa. 53:4, 10). He would be rejected by men, but God would give him an abundant inheritance. He would be “cut off [from] the land of the living” but, by God’s power, “he shall see his offspring [and] prolong his days” (Isa. 53:8, 10). He is the “founder of [our] salvation” who was made “perfect through suffering’ (Heb. 2:10). His “chastisement [has] brought us peace and by his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).

There is good news and bad news before us. The bad news is that your sins are far worse than you could ever imagine, shown plainly by the fact that God would have to face what Jesus did in order to make us clean. You are genuinely without hope, without any opportunity to be redeemed, if you should choose to stand on your own. But the good news is that God’s love goes beyond the depths of our sin. The good news is that even sinners as great as we are never need to wonder whether God loves us, or if our salvation is in question. God loves us. His love for us is so great that he was willing to suffer beyond what we could ever fathom. And he is able to redeem us from sin, from death, and our greatest sorrows, because that man of sorrows is our Lord.

God came into the world, to face the world’s evils and to make an end to them. God came to vanquish sin, destroying it by his holiness. God came to suffer evil, in order that our comfort could never be taken. God came to take the mortal blow, that death would be destroyed. No matter what you face today because of Christ—the Lord of Sorrows—you can say with confidence, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psa. 23:6).

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