Jesus is a guilt offering

 ApriL  11

Read Isaiah 53:4-11and reflect on the passage.

Isaiah 53 gives a rundown of hardship, blame, wounds, oppression, sorrow, sin, suffering, and death. As I read it, I want to yell, “YOU’VE GOT THE WRONG GUY, GOD! I’m the guilty one.”

In the Old Testament, when a neighbor sinned he made restitution to the victim, and gave a guilt offering to the Lord because sin against neighbor = disobedience to God and indebtedness to Him, too. This offering was a precursor to Jesus giving His own innocent body as a guilt offering to restore the broken relationship we have with God.

We owe the Lord a debt far greater than we could repay. But we do not need to pay. The Son of Man gave His life as a “ransom for many” paying our debt for us. Jesus says we must simply write off the debts that others owe us. This demand is modeled on and empowered by God’s love toward us: we must forgive and restore as He does.

God had the right guy in Isaiah 53—the only guy willing and able to do the job of carrying the crushing weight of our sin. Because of the joy set before Him, Jesus “endured the cross, scorning its shame.”

To learn more about the biblical concepts of Sacrifice and Atonement, I encourage you to watch this excellent video from the Bible Project: http://bit.ly/SacrificeAtonement

Questions

1. What “debt” does someone owe you? Who has hurt or offended you?

2. What steps can you take today to simply write off that debt, empowered by the love of Jesus?

Prayer

Jesus, You covered my debt saving me from the penalty and power of sin. Make me ready to forgive; gracious and merciful like You.

—Jane Bruns

Lambs, Goats and HO Trains

Have you ever been blamed for something you did not do? It probably has occurred to all of us, and it is not the most pleasant experience in the world.

 When I was perhaps 5 years old, a friend came over to play and we went down in the basement.

My dad had an HO train set in the basement, and I was not allowed to play with it unless he was there. He had modeled a village, the countryside, an unloading station and even a mountain on a piece of plywood. The train would follow the tracks from the village, to the mountain, through the countryside to the loading station.

As a kid, I thought it pretty cool. (In fact, I still do!)

The exact details escape me, but somehow my friend broke a wheel on one of the train’s cars. What does not escape me is that I was punished.

What can I say? Life isn’t fair.

Today’s reading is Isaiah 53. God, through the prophet Isaiah, is telling the Israelites that a messiah is coming. The messiah will be a descendant of King David, but will not be majestic. He will be despised, in spite of what he will do for mankind.

Our messiah, Jesus, is a lamb, a sacrificial lamb at that. Isaiah tells us, “the Lord makes his life a guilt offering.” Jesus is a perfect lamb, sacrificed for our wrongdoings.

But Jesus is more than that, much more indeed.

Isaiah continues by telling us that Jesus, “will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” That is, Jesus is our scapegoat. 

Our wrongdoings are blamed on Jesus and he gets punished for them!

I was not happy at being grounded after school one day for breaking my dad’s train. In all, I probably spent 3 hours in my bedroom.

Jesus paid the ultimate price for my sin, he was put to death. And he spent 3 days in the land of the dead. I have done many, many things that are wrong. I should be the one punished, not Jesus.

Fortunately for me, life isn’t fair.