He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Isaiah 53:3 NIVUK
This seems to be just about the strangest text to read at Christmas time.
I mean, at Good Friday – we get it.
But now? At a time when everything is all about peace and joy and love?
Maybe not.
Or is it?
You see, there is a fundamental truth about Christmas that we don’t like to think about, but we should. And when we do it opens our eyes like no other.
Jesus was born to suffer.
He was not born just to be a baby. He was not just born to be victorious. He was born to suffer, and to suffer like us.
Don’t believe me? Let’s look at a famous verse from Hebrews:
In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.
Hebrews 2:10 NIVUK
The word ‘perfect’ here doesn’t mean morally perfect. It means ‘to accomplish’. In other words, Jesus accomplished all He had to accomplish only by suffering.
And again:
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
Hebrews 2:14-15 NIVUK
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to feel sympathy for our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16 NIVUK
In other words, Jesus is sympathetic (or even empathetic) and perfect in His knowledge because He suffered.
The conduit to Jesus’ suffering was not just the cross. No, it was His birth. Because through that birth, Jesus left behind all the trappings of earth to live a human life:
who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!
Philippians 2:6-8 NIVUK
So, you see, the purpose of Christmas is that Christ would come to die for our sins on the cross – absolutely, yes – but also that, on the way to the cross, He might live a human life like ours.
Isaiah goes even further – further than many of us would like Him to go. The very next verse from ours says this:
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
Isaiah 53:4 NIVUK
The word translated ‘pain’ can also be translated in a number of ways, such as: ‘disease’ (c.f. Matthew 8:17), ‘malady’, ‘grief’, ‘anxiety’, ‘calamity’.
Jesus came to earth to bear them all. For us.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The Bible is abundantly and painfully clear: Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth was to suffer and die on the cross for us. That much we can all agree on. The Bible also teaches us that He is an advocate for us in Heaven:
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
1 John 2:1 NIVUK
But what makes Him such an effective advocate is both His sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sins, and the fact that He endured being part of the human race for thirty-three years, bore all our pain and diseases and griefs and anxieties on the cross and is therefore intimately acquainted with what it means to be us.
In other words, in a unique way that no other being in the world can claim, Jesus understands.
The Bible teaches that Jesus suffered for us. And we understand that easily:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.
1 Peter 3:18 NIVUK
But the Bible also teaches that He suffered with us, enduring the same troubles and pain that we do, in order that He might understand us fully and intercede for us in Heaven.
Theologians talk about a concept called ‘incarnation’. Or, as John calls it:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14 NIVUK
Or, as The Message puts it rather colourfully:
The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.
John 1:14 MSG
That means He experienced all that we experience and then some more, because Jesus was fully God – absolutely – but also fully human.
There are many this Christmas for whom the Festive season will not be joyous.
There are those who are missing relatives they lost.
There are those who are grieving because ether know they will not be able to give their children the same experience they did before.
There are those whose family relationships are so on edge that they can’t anticipate Christmas Day being at all ‘joy to the world, peace on earth to all men’.
These people might not want to meet a baby Jesus, or even a Teacher Jesus, and some might even struggle with a Triumphant Jesus because they might not feel all that triumphant right now.
But a Jesus who feels, a Jesus who knows, a Jesus who listens and a Jesus who understands because He’s been there?
That might be the Jesus they need to hear from right now.
Questions
In what ways did Jesus experience everything it means to be us?
Why might this be something people need to hear about this year?
What difference does it make to you that Jesus walked this earth as a human being like you?
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