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ISAIAH 53:5 “BUT HE WAS WOUNDED FOR OUR TRANSGRESSIONS, HE WAS BRUISED FOR OUR INIQUITIES; THE CHASTISEMENT OF OUR PEACE WAS UPON HIM, AND BY HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED.” (NKJV, KJV, ASV, RSV)
“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed.” (NASB)
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (NIV)
“But He was wounded and bruised for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace; He was lashed and we were healed!” (TLB)
It was His plan from the beginning of time. He knew that we would fall in sin, but He created us anyway. He desired to be with us, to have us to be like Him and to have us love Him with all of our hearts. He knew that one day, a price would have to be paid for our sins and that we could not possibly pay that price. Only He could do that. And the only way He could was to become flesh.
Our faith, our religion is the only one in which God actually became man. All other attempts at defining faith in God rely on us working our way back to Him. Only Christianity follows the claim that God became man so that He could take our place on a cross.
Our last chapter focused on the very real fact that we worship One God. That God planned from the beginning to become man, just like us, so He could die for us. Jesus is the only example throughout eternity who was both Man and God…He was the God-Man. Having focused on Jesus absolute divinity, we must quickly run to the truth that He was also very much flesh and blood.
We believe that Jesus was born in the flesh, miraculously of a virgin, but certainly in the flesh. In Isaiah, the prophet foretold of Him: “The Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” (God with us!) (Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23). Luke 1:26-27 tells us of the fulfilment of that prophecy: “…the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”
In the desert, in the beginning of His ministry, Jesus was tempted by Satan as a man. Luke 4:1-13 tells us that, in the flesh like us, Jesus was tempted through hunger, the offers of power and the fulfilment of all desires. He overcame those temptations instead of submitting to them, like we most likely would have.
Hebrews 4:15 tell us that He sympathizes with our weaknesses, “but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” That tells me that when I am tempted to lie, Jesus was tempted to lie too. Even in my most secret, darkest temptations, I can be assured that Jesus, the Man, was tempted just like I am. Yet unlike me and my failures, Jesus did not submit to those temptations. He was perfect throughout His life, not only so He might be my perfect sacrifice but also, as it says in Heb 2:18 that, “In that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” Jesus as God never sinned. Jesus as Man, however, most assuredly suffered every temptation that we suffer too. As a result, He is exceedingly able to help us in our temptations.
Jesus was truly and fully man and felt everything we felt. Luke 2:40 tells us that like all children, He “grew and became strong.” If we had seen Him as a child, we most likely would have considered Him just like any other child. Luke 4:2 tells us He was hungry, just like any one of us would be hungry after a long time without food. Luke 8:23 tells us He needed sleep, just like we do. Like us, Jesus experienced sorrow and trouble, Matthew 26:37-38. We think we get overwhelmed. Here Jesus said He was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” Have you ever felt that overwhelmed?
Jesus experienced poverty like none of us have ever known. He testified in Luke 9:58 that He literally had “no place to lay his head.” He experienced exhaustion and tiredness. In John 4:6 we see Him “tired as he was from the journey” so he sat down by the well and waited for a drink of water.
Jesus was very much flesh and blood, like any other man. Even after His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples to look at His hands and his feet. “It is I myself,” He said. “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
John wrote in John 1:14, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory…” He was here, right here on earth with us. We saw Him, we touched Him, heard His voice and walked with Him. Philippians 2:7 tells us He “took on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.”
1 Timothy 3:16 attempts to explain this miracle of the God-Man to us: “Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
Jesus’ ultimate demonstration of his “Man-ness” would best be demonstrated, of course, by His death. Hebrews 2:14-15 says, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
If we had been there two thousand years ago, we could have seen Jesus bleed like any other man would after such physical abuse. We might have heard Him cry out in pain from the beatings. We would have felt the sorrow of His mother watching her son die. Ultimately, at the foot of the cross, we could have even watched Him take His last breath. Jesus died as a man, but also God in flesh. He did that for me!
I love to study, learn and be enlightened by the amazing miracle that Jesus was, is and always will be God. I love to marvel in the wisdom of the plan that God would care so much for me that He would become flesh, so He could identify with me and I with Him, suffer like I do, feel my pain and ultimately sacrifice Himself for me.
Jesus truly is God. But we lose much if we see Him only as God and forget He became Man. He bled and died a physical death for all mankind. It was the only death/sacrifice that would suffice.
As a man, He thirsted at the well. As God, He saved the woman’s soul from Hell. As a man, He slept in a boat. As God, the waves ceased when He spoke. As a man, He cried when Lazarus died. As God, Lazarus came forth when He cried. (Thank you Rodney Griffin.) Oh, what a Savior! Worship Him today!
Questions to consider: What other approaches have men invented to try to explain God? Why? Why could our own payment for our sins never be enough to redeem us? What weight did the prophecy of Jesus coming over a thousand years before it happen (Isaiah 7:14) give to the actual event? Is it easier to believe Jesus was a man than it is that He was God? Why?
Other Scriptures to read: Closely compare Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23 and Luke 1:26-27. 1 John 4:2 sets the standard for what beliefs are from God and which ones are not. That standard is confession that Jesus came in the flesh. Big Question: How was the “Word made flesh?”
Songs to sing: “He Was Wounded for Our Transgressions,” Jimmy Swaggart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WXBrNngvh4&list=PLHd6fRcTUPKNiv47sD7IirIULne6uZSJV
“So Much God,” Rodney Griffin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGTXDf2Begw
 
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