A Mystery

Anyone who doubts the divine inspiration of scripture only needs to reads the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.  Hundreds of years before the birth and death of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke of His suffering and death with such detail that divine inspiration is the only explanation.   No one could have imagined such a thing as is described.  And, to those who say, that Jesus knew the scripture and orchestrated it so that it would happen as written is stretching beyond anything that is rational.  To read that chapter of Isaiah is like reading an account of the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.  And it also a Word which causes us to see something of what God was doing in that moment.

 

Verse 6 of that 53rd chapter of Isaiah has a line which reads, "...and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."  Men named Jewish Religious Leader and Roman Authority may be blamed for putting Jesus on the cross, but Jesus being on the cross is not so much about who put Him there as what put Him there.  What put Him there was the sin of people like you and me.  Were it not for our sins, the cross would not have been necessary.  Upon Jesus on the cross God somehow mysteriously placed the sins of all of us.  Jesus hung there to die not just because of Pilate's actions, but because of ours as well.

 

Some things I confess to not understanding.  How God did such a thing is beyond the boundaries of my mind.  I have a seminary degree and have spent a lifetime reading the Word and preaching it, but I still confess to the mystery.  How my sin weighted down on the heart of Jesus as He was dying, I do not completely grasp.  How the predicament of separation from God in my life has been resolved through His death is dimly seen, but never clearly.  But, not understanding does not keep me from believing the truth of God's Word and the reality of the dying One on Calvary.  It has not kept me from using it as the foundation for my whole life and trying to point others to the same reality.  The way out of the problem created by our sins was handled on the cross.  Whatever we decide about the cross will not change the reality of what happened there long years ago.