'He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.' (Isaiah 53:3-4)
When we walk the path of sorrow, we can know that our Saviour leads us along the way, because He has been there. Jesus knew the pain of suffering. He bore our pain as well as His own. Think about it: the eternal Son took on flesh and submitted Himself to suffer and die. He 'became obedient to death - even death on a cross!' (Phil 2:8). We won't ever understand completely the depths of His suffering, but whenever we suffer, we can know that He understands our grief completely.
Jesus comes as Emmanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23), but from His birth He was rejected, born in humble surroundings and soon forced to become a refugee to Egypt. He worked as a carpenter for 18 years, the 'unknown years' we know virtually nothing about. He led an ordinary human existence in those years and as a manual labourer, a tradesman, He would have known pain and tiredness. Yet, unlike us, He never allowed His own physical frailty to lead Him into sin. He never lost His temper, never said anything He later regretted. He was a man who suffered without sinning.
We like to make excuses for ourselves, don't we? When we're feeling ill or tired, we snap a little more easily, but we shrug it off. I do it all the time! Yet at those times when we're humanly at our weakest, God invites us to draw near, to say 'no' to the opportunity for sin, and 'yes' to deeper imitation of our perfect Saviour. He did it, and by His Spirit He gives us power to do it too.
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