W K Tweedie
Isaiah 53:5. He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.
How blessed they are who can thus appropriate the results of the Saviour’s atonement! He died, the just for the unjust. He endured what they should have endured. The wrath of God for sin, the hiding of His countenance from the sinner, with all the woe to which sin can lead on earth – all this the Saviour bore when that good Shepherd laid down His life for the sheep.
But thousands never derive any benefit from that amazing plan of substitution. To them it becomes only the perverted occasion of augmenting their guilt; it becomes a saviour of death unto death.
How blessed then they are who can appropriate the benefits of Christ’s atoning death, who can humbly say, Christ “loved me, and gave Himself for me”! “He was wounded for our transgressions”; then divine justice will not wound me also. “He was bruised for our iniquities”; then the just and holy God will not bruise me also. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him”; and the holy God cannot punish me also, for that would be to punish twice for the same transgression. “With His stripes we are healed”; then I cannot die the second death, for Christ has tasted death for me, a believer in His name.
The believer has the privilege of reasoning like this. And, my soul, honour the Spirit, that He may thus teach you. Let it be the business of your earthly existence to make sure of a dwelling in the house not made with hands. Count everything intrusive and irrelevant which would hinder that work.
And, to stimulate you in it, think of those who have reached the limits of their threescore years and ten with no provision for eternity, with nothing on which to die but a mere peradventure. When they stood as little children by their mother’s knee, they knew as much of their eternity, and their prospects there, as they do now, when they are within an hour or a day of their decisive meeting with their Judge! Now, can such men be wise? Do they love themselves? No, they have forsaken their own mercies, and their case should warn us to “give diligence”, as God has commanded, to “make [our] calling and election sure”.
1Taken, with editing, from Tweedie’s volume, Glad Tidings of the Gospel of Peace.