2 for 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.
3 He 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. — [isaiah 53:2-3]
a man of sorrows
how would our culture accept Jesus if He stood among us today?
i’d like to think that we would immediately recognize him, and it would change everything. we would be amazed by Him. we would praise Him and fall before Him in worship. politics, and all kinds of arguments would no longer matter. what need would there be for anything else if the Messiah Himself is walking among us?
yet Jesus did walk among us. He lived among the people of israel, the people who should have known Him best, and He was not honored for who He really was.
in this passage Jesus is described with words like sorrow, grief, despised, rejected.
In Jesus we find everything we could ever need. when we accept Jesus we are gaining more than the world could ever offer us. yet humanity still looks on Him as someone without majesty. without any outward beauty that would make us want to be around Him.
God, the creator of all there is, the embodiment of all glory and majesty, chose to dwell among us as just an average ‘one of us’. not as someone attractive and powerful, but as someone without majesty, someone humble, someone who was despised. Jesus relates to human suffering on a level we will never know. when we are rejected, we must remember that He was rejected too (John 15:20).
when we look at the world and ask, “why won’t they just listen!”, we have to remember that they didn’t listen to Him either (luke 19:44).
to those who choose to remain in sin, there is nothing appealing about Jesus. Yet to those of us who have accepted His grace, who believe His truth, and live in His Word, we have found an immeasurable treasure that can only be found in Him.
Jesus was despised, but this in no way changes who He is – the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He chose humility out of His great love so that we may have relationship with Him. praise be to God for dwelling among us as one of us, and praise that He will one day return in the fullness of His glory!
~ jason soroski