Do you like to suffer? How is your pain tolerance? Can you tolerate large quantities of physical pain? Can you tolerate mental anguish? What allows you to withstand the pain you experience? Do you pull from a bigger and deeper source?
Being able to endure physical pain and mental anguish is very difficult to do. There are some professions that train regularly to be able to do so. They may seem to be superhuman. But for most of us, we struggle with enduring the physical pain and mental anguish.
Isaiah speaks of a suffering servant who suffers from both. He is beaten and afflicted. He is wounded for our transgressions. But the physical pain is not the worst of it. It is His mental anguish over our transgressions that causes Him the greatest pain.
When we look at the meaning of the original language, His mental anguish is so horrific that He becomes unrecognizable. So much so that He doesn’t even resemble a human being. His face is contorted, distorted, and transformed. This is not how Jesus is portrayed in the movies.
We must recall an image of extreme pain from mental anguish when we remember Jesus going to the cross. It is this picture, a view of our Savior who is virtually overcome with despair, that changes us. If is by viewing Him being totally distraught because of our sin that He bore for us that will cause us to pause the next time we go to commit our favorite sin.
I pray we all gain a new perspective of our Savior. I pray we see His mental anguish written on His face. I pray each one of us will change our ways because of the pain He felt for us. Jesus faced physical pain. Jesus faced mental anguish. He bore your sins. He loves you.
Isaiah 53:3
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Marty Pressey 