What a bitter sweet Christmas, yet it’s good to know that I have a high priest who sympathizes with my weaknesses and pain.
Christ is not just an example, a “good person” or “teacher” but he was the Word made flesh. He is the Creator of the universe who came to save his people from their sins. There are so many glorious verses that reveal Christ in the Old and New Testament. But I choose to share Isaiah 53 (plus it’s what I really needed):
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
3He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
7He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
8By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?
9And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief;g
when his soul makesh an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
11Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
12Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.
