Have you ever been pleased with a bad thing because you knew it would produce something good? The doctor was cleaning the abrasion on my knee, and it hurt like crazy. I didn’t like it a bit – but I was pleased. He was getting the impurities out, and I knew it was the only way it would heal correctly.
Isaiah makes this point about the sufferings of Christ. In Isaiah 53:10 he says, “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief.”
This is one of the most amazing statements in the Bible with regard to the death of Christ. You see, the sufferings of Jesus appear to be the result of mob action – a vicious evil – an uncontrolled horror. Now those things are there, but there is more to it than that. The text says “The Lord was pleased to crush Him.” John Oswalt in his commentary makes this comment: “Above everything else this statement makes it clear that this person’s tragic story was not an accident of history, a good person in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The word, “was pleased” is a Hebrew verb that means “to find pleasure in; to delight in.”
What it is saying is that God found pleasure in the death of His Son! He delighted in it. Now God is not a sadist. He does not find pleasure in the sufferings of others. The point is that He took pleasure in the suffering and death of His Son because of what it would accomplish.
Often I would discipline my children by making a deliberate choice to inflict suffering on them. In a sense I took pleasure in their suffering because there was the good intent of correcting evil. In like manner, the Lord was the One who crushed Jesus, and He took pleasure in doing it, knowing it was the only means by which the world might be saved.
Hey – How could all these bad things happen to this good Person? To save you! That’s how.