Living the Cross Centered Life Quotes - Day 24

From Living the Cross Centered Life, by C.J. Mahaney:

Surprisingly, one of the best places in Scripture to reflect deeply on the meaning of Christ’s death is not in the New Testament, but in the Old—in a passage Spurgeon described as “the Bible in miniature and the gospel in essence.” He was speaking of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah.

This chapter “takes us to the heart of the human problem and the heart of the divine mind,” according to Derek Tidball in The Message of the Cross; he calls it “one of the peaks of the Old Testament’s revelation of God. From this vantage point we obtain a clear view of His work on the far-off summit of Calvary and gain a definitive perspective on its meaning.”

Though Isaiah 53 was written some seven hundred years before Christ’s death, “it looks,” writes Franz Delitzsch, “as if it had been written beneath the cross upon Golgotha”
No other portion of sacred Scripture gives us such a profound and detailed account of Christ’s suffering on the cross—while revealing as well its glorious meaning. All of Scripture is blood-stained, but Christ’s death is particularly pronounced in this passage. From his unique and inspired vantage point, the prophet Isaiah brings us right to the cross…so we can behold the Savior hanging there, and begin to understand what it all means. (p 49)