Devotional Thoughts Based on the Glory to God Hymnal

Isaiah 53:3-5

Many Isaiah passages find their way into the season of Advent and Christmas. And others seem right at home in the season of Lent. The words of Isaiah 53 seem to resonate with the suffering of Christ leading up to the cross.

 ³ He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering^[a] and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces^[b]
he was despised, and we held him of no account.

⁴ Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
⁵ But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.

Isaiah 53:3-5

In Lent, we reflect on our own sinfulness, and the price and pain that Christ paid to erase our sinful stain.

One powerful Lenten hymn, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, chronicles the life of this man of suffering:

O sacred Head, now wounded, With grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded With thorns, thine only crown:
What thou, my Lord, has suffered Was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, But thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ‘Tis I deserve thy place;
Look on me with thy favor, Vouchsafe to me thy grace.

The journey toward the cross reminds us all that God’s love was a sacrificial love. The man of sorrow, the Son of Man, paid a price for you and for me.

Prayer

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend, for this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever; and should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never Outlive my love for Thee. Amen.