The Father and The Son

The great ol' story is the story of the Father and the Son working together to save a rebellious humanity by making the ultimate sacrifice. The Father must part with the Son and the Son must be depart from the Father. The Father must punish the Son and the Son must bear the punishment of the Father meant for sinners. The Father must abandon the Son and The Son must be forsaken by the Father. The Father must make the Son to be sin on sinners behalf and the Son must suffer the Father's punishment for sin on sinners behalf.



Isaiah 52:13-53:12 depicts the story best, as Franz Delitzsch said "it looks as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha."

Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
he shall be high and lifted up,
and shall be exalted.
As many were astonished at you—
his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—
so shall he sprinkle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which has not been told them they see,
and that which they have not heard they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.

There must have been deep anguish in the Father's heart when He righteously poured out His wrath upon the Son and there was deep agony weighing upon the Son when He drank the cup of the Father's wrath but there was another emotion. Isaiah 53:10 says it was "the will (or pleasure) of the Lord to crush Him." How could that be? How could the Father ever will or take pleasure in that? Well let me illustrate it by quoting a story that John Piper wrote to highlight this mind numbing verse:

Once there was a land ruled by a wicked prince. He had come from a foreign country and enslaved all the people of the land and made them miserable with hard labor in his coal mines across the deep canyon. He had built a massive trestle for the trains that carried his slaves across the canyon to the mines each morning, and it was heavily guarded.

Two men were still free in this land—one old and the other young. They lived on an inaccessible cliff overlooking the trestle. They hated the trestle, and they resolved together to blow it up. They planned and they prayed and they reminded themselves of the reality of heaven.

The night for the deed came. Their hearts were pounding with joy. It was a hard plan. It would be possible to time the guard's trek so that the explosive could be carried quickly to the vulnerable spot on the trestle. But it is certain that the man would be seen on the way back. To make sure the trestle blew up the young man would detonate it by hand on the trestle.

But they believed in heaven and they loved the people of the land. And so even this sacrifice made their hearts leap with joy. The hour came. They folded their map, stood from the table, and embraced each other. When the young man got to the door, he turned with the explosive on his back, looked at the old man, and said, "I love you, Father." And the old man took a deep breath—with joy—and said, "I love you too, Son."

So, may this Good Friday be a time when you drink richly of the love of God and search deeply the wounds of the Savior.