Daily Devotionals

Grace for Today

Devotional: March 7th

Isaiah 53:10

‘It pleased the Lord to bruise him’

Read John 19:13-30

When the prophet says, ‘It pleased the Lord to bruise him,’ he does not mean us to understand that God found a reason for laughter in the agonies of his Son. God did not take delight and joy in punishing his Son. The text might be read like this: ‘It gave satisfaction to the Lord to bruise him. ‘The Lord himself tells us, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.’ In doing so, he is telling us that his wrath and justice can never be satisfied by the death of the wicked. That is the reason why hell is eternal. Men can never satisfy the infinite wrath and justice of God. The torments of the damned in hell can never give God pleasure and satisfaction. But when God bruised his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Substitute, crushing him beneath the terrible load of our sin, he was pleased with the death of his Son. The sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, pouring out his life’s blood unto death, made an infinite satisfaction to the wrath and justice of God. God, in his infinite holiness and justice, could not require more than Christ offered and he could not be satisfied with less than Christ offered for the ransom of our souls.

Surely the prophet also means us to understand that God is pleased with the sure results of his Son’s death, The Lord God was pleased to ‘make his soul an offering for sin’, because he saw more than the blood of his Son being poured out at Calvary. He saw more than the agony and the groans and the ignominious shame that his Son endured. He saw that as a result (of his Son’s great sacrifice, he would ‘justify many’. He saw all the host of his elect standing around his throne, shouting and singing the praises of his Son, throughout the endless ages of eternity. This was ‘the joy’ which was set before our Savior, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame’. In order to save us, ‘to the praise of the glory of his grace’, ‘it pleased the Lord to bruise him’.