Day 14: I am righteous with His righteousness!

I'm deeply impressed and touched by the phrase from Isaiah 53 that says, "yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer.”

I've pondered on that word crush. I've thought to myself, of course Jesus suffered terribly, physically, but I believe that crushing was not so much physical as spiritual. I believe that fearful burden of the guilt of all humanity as by the Father's hand it was laid upon the Son on the cross. It was more than even Jesus could endure. I believe it crushed the very life out of him. And it says it was the Lords' will to crush him.

That's an astonishing statement because how could God take pleasure in that awful scene of suffering? And yet it was so. It was the Lord's will because that was the only way through that divinely ordained exchange by which Jesus became the guilt offering. Only in that way could peace and pardon and righteousness be made available to us.

And significantly there in that 53rd chapter of Isaiah there is no relieving of the darkness, the awful darkness that permeates that chapter up till the 10th verse. But where it speaks about the Lord making his soul a guilt offering, then the darkness breaks and light comes. Let’s read it:

“Yet is was the Lord's will to crush him [Jesus] and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life [or his soul] a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” (NIV)

So once that offering has happened, then the way is open for the light to break forth, eternal light, reconciliation, peace and healing but only when this sin offering had been fully consummated could that take place.

This is referred to by the apostle Paul in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:21, but many Christians don't understand that because they don't realize that the same word means ‘guilt’ and ‘guilt offering’ or ‘sin’ and ‘sin offering’. What Paul says referring to the death of Jesus in 2 Corinthians 5:21 is this:

“God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (NIV)

He's actually quoting Isaiah 53:10. Most people don't perceive that because the word used in Isaiah is a guilt offering or a sin offering. But bear in mind it's one and the same word. So Jesus was made the sin offering, he was made sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Note the exchange: Jesus became sin that we might have his righteousness.