He Took Our Stripes

Good Morning!

Isaiah 53:4-6 (English Standard Version)
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 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.
6 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.

Have you ever heard the term “whipping boy”? Here is how the term is defined on Wikipedia:

A whipping boy, in the 17th and 18th centuries, was a young boy who was assigned to a young prince and was punished when the prince misbehaved or fell behind in his schooling. Whipping boys were established in the English court during the monarchies of the 15th century and 16th centuries. They were created because the idea of the divine right of kings, which stated that kings were appointed by God, and implied that no one but the king was worthy of punishing the king’s son. Since the king was rarely around to punish his son when necessary, tutors to the young prince found it extremely difficult to enforce rules or learning.
Whipping boys were generally of high birth, and were educated with the prince since birth. Due to the fact that the prince and whipping boy grew up together since birth, they usually formed an emotional bond, especially since the prince usually did not have playmates as other children would have had. The strong bond that developed between a prince and his whipping boy dramatically increased the effectiveness of using a whipping boy as a form of punishment for a prince. The idea of the whipping boys was that seeing a friend being whipped or beaten for something that he had done wrong would be likely to ensure that the prince would not make the same mistake again.
The life of a whipping boy was usually one of sorrow and pain,[citation needed] but, sometimes, they were rewarded by the princes they served. King Charles I of England made his whipping boy, William Murray, the first Earl of Dysart in 1643 after he had been living in the palatial Ham House since 1626 under the request of King Charles I.
Whipping boys were some of the earliest "fall guys". The other parallel is the scapegoat, a practice in the early Middle East, and one referred to in the Old Testament, where one goat was sacrificed, but another was sent out to bear the burden of sins.[1] The children's book The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman, which is about a prince and his whipping boy, was the winner of the Newbery Medal in 1987. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A whipping boy was the substitute when the prince misbehaved and deserved punishment. When we read Isaiah 53, we see Jesus being described as our substitute for our sins. Sometimes we forget that the work of the cross was not about Jesus being martyred but about Jesus being sacrificed for our sins. He suffered the agony of the cross so you and I could be reconciled with God. Here’s how Paul put it:

2 Corinthians 5:21 (English Standard Version)
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Jesus accepted the punishment I deserved so that I could be made at one with God. Why would He do that? The answer is simple: He loves me. And that thought makes for a good day…

Agape’



Mr. Jim