what wondrous love

Tis the season for love. We hear it in the holiday songs. We watch it on the holiday movies. We feel it as we buy and wrap presents for those we hold dear. But Isaiah paints a love that looks quite different than the glitz and glam of the holidays. A love not based in feeling, but in surrender and sacrifice. A love that requires a response. The wondrous love of Jesus Christ.

He was despised and rejected. God’s face turns from our Creator on the cross. We turn our face because we’d like to forget we’re the fallen creation. It’s hard to look on a love you do not deserve and you cannot match. That requires humility. So we turn away in search of some lesser love to make us feel better about ourselves. Someone or thing that makes us feel less like the wretched sinner and more like the judge we fancy we are. And, like the Judge of all the earth on that fateful day, we hide our face from Christ. And He is despised and rejected of men.

By Lippo Memmi - LivioAndronico, CC BY-SA 4.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org

He has borne our grief and carried our sorrows.  And we consider Him not quite enough for that. We thrash about for something else to lift the load. Some escape. A pill. A move. A therapy. A friend. A group. A special truth. A change. We throw our whole life into pursuit of these things. Creation groans under the weight of the curse, and we spend ourselves crying out to it for relief. We suffer loss. Everywhere and at all times there is what could have been but wasn’t. And what happened but shouldn’t have. What we had once, but it was snatched away.  What we want so badly but can’t. And we feel it. And in the fever of our feeling we begin to think our Saviour humbled and weak. Afflicted. Somehow unable. And He would bear our grief and carry our sorrows.

He was wounded and bruised for our transgression. And we would live our days in the gnawing, soul-squeezing grip of secret sin. Hiding our errors. Closeting our temptations. Covering our lies. Doing what we would not do. And our enemy prowls about satisfied and smug. And our Creator stands wounded and bruised and triumphant over that sin.

He was afflicted and oppressed willingly. Like a silent lamb to the slaughter, He chooses the path of the Father’s will. And we choose our own way. Forge our own path. We think deep down we know what is the best course for our lives. The course to our happiness and contentment must be something of our own making. Something other than faith and obedience.  Something more than submission to narrow truth. When push comes to shove, we make sure we’re pointed in the direction of our own understanding.

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But the wonder is that this love will not be stopped.

The promised love that was planted at the feet of a broken, humiliated Adam has shot up and bloomed in the person of Jesus Christ and now is the season of plenty. The fruition. The lush and flourishing love of Christ that would be an aloe to the sting of our weaknesses. The arms that would carry our heaviest hurt are even now outstretched and strong. You see, the Saviour can be rejected because He is still present and calling. He is still Emmanuel. Inviting us to drink long draughts from the well of our salvation dug deep at the cost of His own life. The love that exalted valleys and crumbled mountains has leveled a straight and peaceful path for our wayward, aching feet. And His love will not and cannot be stopped.

This is the wondrous love of Jesus.

Beth