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Friday, October 7, 2011

Silence is Golden


He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. (Isaiah 53:7)  It is really incomprehensible to us that Jesus, the perfect Son of God, would be oppressed and afflicted for us.  A Lamb sacrificed for our sins became the one and only sufficient sacrifice to pay for them.  And now there is no condemnation that we face because of our reliance upon Him for the salvation of our souls.  However, notice the verse states that He was silent under this oppression and affliction (three times in one verse).  Thus Jesus becomes a pattern for us.  When people revile us, we don’t revile them.  We cannot be overcome by evil but must overcome evil with good (cf. Rom 12.20-21).  While a time may come for a scathing denouncement of error (see Jesus confront the Pharisees in Matt 23), the fact remains that we must be kind to one another, tender hearted, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us.  Surely the silence of Jesus is golden!