Day 3 - Week 27 - 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 with His stripes we are healed."

....He was bruised for our iniquities....

Bruised = Hebrew, Daka' = to be crushed, to be shattered, to be made contrite

Do you ever look up a word and have to look up another word to get more understanding.  Such was my case tonight.  When I looked up the Hebrew, daka', and saw the word "contrite", I had to go to regular dictionary to get the exact meaning.  It's not like I didn't know what it meant, but I didn't know exactly what it meant! 

So, contrite = Sincerely penitent or feeling regret or sorrow, especially for one's own actions  

So in putting together all the definitions we can say that Christ was crushed, shattered, and made to feel very sorrowful for His own actions...?  Not quite!  The next three words tell us that it was "for our iniquities."

But Christ's role as our Savior caused Him to take on our iniquities in a very personal way.  Our sin became His sin, and don't you know that He felt a great deal of regret and sorrow over the heap of sin that we piled upon Him. 

2 Corinthians 5:21 states it beautifully,

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

When I read the account of Jesus weeping over the city of Jerusalem, it makes me think of His sorrow and regret over our sinfulness.  Not only that He was viewing it knowing that He would bear the burden of it, but of His sorrow over seeing that we choose sin over obedience, and how that must hurt Him when He knows the love that is behind every directive that God gives us.

Yesterday we learned that transgressions translates to rebellion.  We know that rebellion is at the root cause of our separation of God.  So tonight, what does the word "iniquities" imply?

Iniquities = Hebrew, 'avon = perversity, depravity, guilt

Here we go again!  Sure we know the words perversity and depravity, but actual definitions?

Perversity = turned away from the (morally) right; willfully erring; wicked; or obstinately in the wrong, stubborn, intractable, wayward

Depravity = moral debasement

Lovely descriptors of us, aren't they?  But, regrettably, accurate descriptors...for without Christ, we ARE turned away from the morally right, we ARE willfully erring from God's ways, we ARE wicked and obstinately in the wrong.  And without Christ we are totally morally debased.  These are the qualities that Christ took on for us that caused Him to be bruised, crushed and shattered.  Can you imagine how Holy Jesus Christ must have felt with the infiltration of these absolutely foreign characteristics coming into His being as He hung on the cross.  I think the only thing that could have gotten Him through that horrific experience is knowing that with His sacrifice, that those who came to understand and accept His absolutely incredible love for us would never carry those characteristics with them into the presence of His Father.  That we would be given a different description...forgiven children of God!

Amazing love, how can it be, that You, my Lord, should die for me?