Our God Transfigures Weakness into Divine Glory

1. How does the prophet depict the coming of God in the person of Christ in Isaiah 53:1-6?

Answer - Isaiah describes Jesus with the humblest—and most pitiful—of human terms. Jesus is "like a root out of dry ground," almost indiscernible and certainly nothing about which we would normally take notice. Jesus had "no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." Unlike most artist depictions of Jesus, he apparently was physically unattractive. As a result of his humble person and his unlikely teaching that he was God in the flesh, Jesus was "despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering." When bad things happened to Jesus, it was only natural to assume that he was "stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted," that he deserved this divine punishment.

2. What point about Jesus is he attempting to drive home?

Answer - In other words, Jesus the man was apparently the weakest of the weak.

3. True or false: When Jesus took on human flesh, he was forced to take on the nature of a weak servant (see Philippians 2:5-8).

Answer - False. Jesus was not "forced" to take on the nature of a servant. Jesus certainly could have freely chosen to come into this world and display all of his glory and grandeur, but that was not the purpose of God's coming into this world. He came to save us, and he did that by becoming our servant (Matthew 20:28). As St Paul teaches us in Philippians 2, Jesus willingly and freely surrendered the use and display of his divinity (though he always maintained possession of his deity), freely choosing to make "himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant," and become "obedient to death—even death on a cross!" Our Savior came to us in weakness and lowliness in order to serve us. Notice that in verse 5, St Paul calls us to have exactly the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus in our dealings with one another!

4. True or false: Weakness is a bad thing.