Isaiah 50:6

Isaiah 50:6
I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.

Yesterday we thought about the Servant’s obedience to the Lord, and how he alone of all people could truthfully say “I have not been rebellious”.  Which is a remarkable thing under any circumstances, but is even more amazing when we remember what obedience to the Lord’s will involved for him. The instructions which he was given didn’t lead him down a path of comfortable satisfaction. Instead, they set him on a collision course with the religious leaders of his day which ended in a shameful, agonising public death.

Today’s verse is not just a metaphor, to tell us that his obedience would be painful. It’s a literal account of the physical pain and humiliation which Jesus endured at the hands of the soldiers who tortured him before his crucifixion. Yet even then, he did not turn away. He didn’t shrink back from the cost of his God-given mission. He does more than simply endure it, like someone resigned to their fate because they have no option to escape. His is a willing, active obedience. He offers his back, his cheeks, his whole body, when he could have escaped in the blink of an eye.  As he took his dying breaths he was taunted by the crowd – “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” He stayed where he was, not because he had no choice, but because we willingly accepted his role as our sacrificial substitute.

This is how we know that the cross is not just a tragic accident. An unfortunate end to a promising life. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when we went to his death in our place. It was all agreed within the Trinity long before anyone laid a hand on Jesus’s body. Long before he even had a body. From before the creation of the world, God knew exactly, to the last blow, what our redemption would cost. And so we get given just a glimpse of it here, written on Isaiah’s scroll, to reassure us of both the Lord’s complete sovereignty and the Servant’s complete, willing obedience.

Let’s give thanks for those things today.