7 He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word. Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence. 8 Justice miscarried, and he was led off— and did anyone really know what was happening? He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people. Isaiah 53:7-8 (MSG)
Note: the Message is a paraphrase of the Bible, not a word for word translation, nor a phrase for phrase translation. The author chose to use this paraphrase to illustrate a point, not to point to the original language.
As humans we struggle immensely with self justification, especially when it comes to getting wounded or hurt. If we can justify why we are hurt then we can simply put up our convenient walls of “self preservation” and shirk the responsibility of actually having to work things out. What happens many times is we “dehumanize” people, thus making it much easier to defend ourselves and easily reject others.
Imagine if Jesus (who had Divine Right to feel justified in His hurt) had looked to us as humanity and approached His call, death by love, with an attitude of self justification. We see just the opposite. We see a brilliant Rabbi who continually lived and taught about self-renunciation. We see an anointed (by the Holy Spirit) God-man who habitually exercised His choice of denying His self justification, so much so that even when He was being tortured, beaten, mocked, falsely accused, etc that he DIDN’T SAY A WORD!
The proof of our self justification many times is our sinful habit of defending ourselves verbally. What is usually our instinctive reaction when accused (falsely or honestly), offended, hurt or mishandled? Is it not our soul immediately dipping into the reserve of our sinful nature and quickly jumping to the defense of self? Of course it is. We are a self justifying people who have simply missed the centrality of the cross. We, especially Charismatics, are notorious for ignoring the cross and substituting it with the person of the Holy Spirit. If we miss the cross we miss Jesus…if we miss Jesus we miss true freedom from self or death to self.
What if we imbibed the truth of what it really means to deny ourselves the right to be right? We might actually experience pure joy and a pure love for others. It is time for the people of God to understand what it means when Jesus, without a thought for His own welfare, intentionally laid down His privilege, defense and self justification. Again it was a death by love. It was His immense love for you and I that drove Him to such extreme measures.
Today, maybe look into the mirror of your soul and investigate how much evidence you have stored up in order to defend yourself, especially when it comes to getting hurt by those closest to you.
Pastor Bryan
