Jesus Brings Life

Scripture Reading: Isaiah 53:1-6, John 3:14-21, Hebrews 9:15, Hebrews 9:27-28

Every year around this time, I write down important dates for the new year: birthdays of family and friends, anniversaries of important dates (both good and hard), even national holidays. I’m reminded that we celebrate and remember those we do because of the impact they had on us and in the world. This next year, my family will remember parents, grandparents, and babies who are with Jesus and who all changed us. We’ll celebrate birthdays. We’ll talk about presidents, veterans, and other important figures whose contributions have shaped our country. We mark our months and seasons with these stories because they shape our story. So as the Christmas season comes to a close, it’s only natural to look at the climax of Jesus’s story on the cross, a path of suffering and pain on our behalf.

In Isaiah 53, we see a hard-to-grasp depiction of the Servant of the Lord. This passage can feel staggering in contrast to the idyllic ambiance that often surrounds the Christmas season—it’s hard to sit with the truth that Jesus came to earth to bring us victory through His own surrender. He afforded us rescue at the cost of handing Himself over to torture and death. But I find the poem of Isaiah 53 comforting when considering the new year ahead.

This past year brought pain and chaos that my family could have never imagined. But isn’t that how most years go? They all seem to have a mix of unexpected pain and delight. You can plan and calendar and dream, but there will always be surprises, which is surely by design. Wouldn’t it be awful to know some of the events in our lives ahead of time? As I reflect over the last year, the truth I want to hold onto while walking into the new year is that for each sorrow and joy on the horizon, Jesus is there. He is “a man of suffering” (Isaiah 53:3). He is acquainted with pain. In fact, He chose it so that He could be with us through ours. John tells us that God sent Jesus, crowned with the glory of being God’s one and only Son to live as the Suffering Servant and to die in order to save us from sin, death, and eternal separation from Him (John 3:16–17). He knows our pain in a very personal way.

Maybe it’s a bit of a downer to end the year thinking about the pain ahead in the new one. But praise the Lord that every sorrow and pain we will experience we now see paired with hope of Jesus’s resurrection. Yes, He suffered and died, but then God raised Him to a new and restored life on the other side of death—and He promises us the same wholeness at His return. For every moment of anguish and tears, the Son of suffering is graciously with us, reminding us that through Him light has broken into the darkness (vv.19–21) and because of His death, He has brought us true life. The delight of resurrection beckons us to keep walking in faithfulness and hope as we look forward to His second advent when He will make all things new.

Written by Becca Owens