Daily Manna · Day 128 · May 8
Wounded for Us
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
When something has gone wrong, who pays for the damage?
People have always had to answer that question. In Isaiah's world, the answer was an animal. The worshipper brought a lamb with no flaw into the temple courtyard and laid his hands on its head to show his guilt passing over to it. The whole place smelled of blood and smoke. In our world, the answer is usually ourselves. We pay with overwork and with saying sorry, and we carry a low, constant sense of debt, owed to someone we could not even name.
You can set Isaiah 53 beside those sacrifices, but notice the difference. The one who suffers here is not an animal. He is a person, and He stays silent by choice: "he opened not his mouth." The chapter gives every wound a reason. He was "wounded for our transgressions," and He was "bruised for our iniquities." The punishment that brings us peace was laid on Him. Then the next verse says it plainly: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
In Isaiah's day, the worshipper had to bring his own animal to the courtyard. That is the great difference this chapter announces. No worshipper carried this sacrifice in. The LORD Himself laid our sin on Him.
So the healing at the end of the verse, "with his stripes we are healed," is not a general promise to fix your circumstances. If you read it that way, your faith may break the first week life does not get easier. It is healing for our going astray. That is the wound this exchange was made for, and the exchange has already been made. Nothing is still owed on that account. You do not have to keep paying it down by being good, because He has paid it in full.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 128 is Gain the Whole World (Mark 8:36).