Slaughtered and Silent
Slaughtered and Silent
Jeb Graydon
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”
These beautiful verses highlight one of the most noteworthy parts of the crucifixion: Christ’s refusal to defend Himself during His unjust trial, sentencing, and crucifixion. Though He could have called upon tens of thousands of angels to come defend Him from the Roman authorities and the Jewish crowd, Christ remained silent. When Peter drew his sword to defend Jesus during His arrest in the garden, Jesus commanded him to put it away (John 18:11). Here is the vivid picture of Christ as our perfect Lamb, who was slaughtered for our sins. Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God in John 1:29, and is called the Lamb 28 times in the book of Revelation. So, in today’s passage, Isaiah is prophesying about the events of Good Friday nearly 800 years before they occurred.
The suffering Jesus experienced on the cross that day was not simply the nails through His hands, the thorns in His brow, and the whips on His back. Rather, the wrath of God from every single sin committed by every single one of His people was concentrated on Him while He hung on that cross. Brothers and sisters, that is an unimaginable amount of suffering. Yet while Jesus Christ was in the midst of being slaughtered, He remained silent.
How should we consider the crucifixion of Christ? Was it a tragedy? Was the crucifixion of Christ a result of Satan gaining the upper hand and thwarting the ministry of the God-Man? Far from it. While the crucifixion was certainly something He did not deserve, it was an event which was planned from before the creation of the world. It was first prophesied about all the way back in Genesis 3:15, clearly showing us that this was no “plan B” wherein God tried to figure out how to solve the problem of sin after Adam and Eve disobeyed in the Garden of Eden. Christ came down from Heaven and put on flesh for the very purpose of becoming kill-able. No, the crucifixion was not a tragedy. It was a victory. It was the foreordained plan for God to gather unto Himself a people of His own (1 Peter 2:9). That is why we call today “Good Friday.”
Reflection: Spend time reflecting on the magnitude of the suffering which Christ took on willingly and silently. Consider how “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). What Jesus experienced on Good Friday is what each one of us truly deserves for our sins. Offer a prayer of thanks to God for giving us His one and only Son to be our Lamb which was slaughtered in the place of those who repent and put their faith in Him.