Peace and Healing instead of Pain and Punishment.

by Stephanie Page

Recently I studied Isaiah 53. I love this passage. When I was young I memorized it and the words have always been imprinted in my head and on my heart.

"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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. "

As I was studying these words the past few days I really thought on how Jesus was not appealing to look at. How he was marred beyond recognition. Beaten. Pierced. Bruised. Crushed. For me. When I close my eyes and envision my Savior he is beautiful, glorious, shining, handsome, lovely. That is not the picture painted here. Verse 2 says that there was nothing that should attract us to him, not beauty or majesty. He gave all that up, knowingly to justify me (v.11). He took my ugliness, my wrong, my shame, my hurt, my punishment and gave me his rightness, his freedom, his healing, his peace. So I can stand beautiful before my King.

Today I am once again reminded of my desperate need for a Savior. Today I am humbled again at what my Savior did for me.

Are you standing beautiful and free before your Maker today? Do you believe he has taken your uglies and exchanged them for beauty? Who do you know that needs peace and healing inside instead of pain and punishment? Will you share with them what Jesus has done?