“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Isaiah 53:3
We esteemed Him not.
This phrase has stuck with me this Easter season. I prefer to focus on Jesus’ victory over sin and death. Christ is risen! But this declaration that we esteemed Him not—
What does it mean? As I dug deeper, I noticed that this rejection is passive rather than active–apathetic rather than hateful.
At least hatred acknowledges a person or a deed. Apathy goes beyond; apathy doesn’t even care.
Apathy. For our bleeding Savior. Barnes’ says, “…he was regarded as cut off from man…that he was the most abject and vile of mortals in the estimation of others; so vile as not to be deemed worthy of the treatment due to the lowest of men.”
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
Isaiah 53:3
This verse speaks in first person plural of the Jewish nation, but I, for one, can see myself in the “we.”
I am so focused on my risen Lord that I don’t esteem my dying Lord. I grow apathetic to the suffering God on the cross, bearing the weight of sin and shame of mankind. My sin and my shame.
Esteem Him this Easter season. Esteem the dying God and worship the living One.
Photo by Henrique Jacob on Unsplash
My Thoughts From Afar | 