A Man Who Suffered

He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. - Isaiah 53:3, The Message

It’s strange to think that one of the prophecies of the Messiah was that he would be an outcast, he would suffer, and he would know pain. Many of the other prophecies of the Messiah - both ones in the Bible and ones outside of the Bible - cast the Messiah as a great warrior, triumphant in battle.

But the whole, long passage in Isaiah 53 lays out a different approach. The Messiah would be able to relate to all of us, wherever we are, because suffering is a human condition - and, as Jesus would call himself in the Gospels, the Messiah was the Human One (sometimes translated ‘the Son of Man’). To be human is to suffer, to fail, to feel pain, to be overlooked, to be despised. And that’s what Jesus experienced.

Thinking about the Human One, how does that affect your own experience of grief and suffering?