Pierced for Us

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 92, Pierced for Us.

Hear this word. Let it land:

"But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:5.

Isaiah wrote that seven hundred years before the cross ever stood. Seven hundred years. Before the wood was cut. Before the name Jesus had ever passed a human lip. God had already written it down. Calvary did not catch heaven off guard. It was a promise kept. It was a plan held in love before time understood what was coming.

And look at what Isaiah sees. Pierced. Crushed. Every word carries weight. This is not poetic decoration on a religious story — it is precise language for a transaction. Every wound had a reason. And the reason had a name. Your name. Mine. Our transgressions — the things we did while knowing better. Our iniquities — the deep twistings of the heart that only we and God have ever seen. He took all of it. He absorbed the full weight of what our sin deserved, so that we would never have to absorb it ourselves.

Think about the exchange. He receives the punishment — we receive the peace. There is no more unequal trade in all of human history. And the breathtaking thing is that He was the one who proposed it. No one forced His hand. Pilate did not catch Him off guard. The crowd did not corner Him. Jesus walked toward the cross. Feet moving forward, arms open, purpose fixed. And the purpose was you. To reach you in every dark place where guilt has taken up residence, in every corner of your soul you believe God would rather not look at — and say: I already paid for this.

His wounds heal. That is not a vague metaphor. What sin shattered — the peace, the sense of identity, the deep knowing that you are loved — flows back whole from the very scars He chose to carry. The healing does not come in spite of the cross. It comes through it. Because He went all the way down into what sin does to a person, so He could lift out from there everything sin had stolen.

So I want to ask you — not with judgment, with a father's love — what are you still carrying? What is the name of the guilt you wake up holding every single morning? You know what it is. It keeps circling. It keeps weighing. And Jesus is saying today, in this ancient verse that time could not erase: that is precisely what I came to carry instead of you.

So do this today. Before breakfast, before you pick up your phone, before the day swallows everything — give that guilt a name. Just one name, in one honest sentence. And speak it to God: "I am leaving this at the cross." Not as a ritual. As a real act of faith. Because the cross is not decoration on a wall. It is the place where the weight stops.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.