By His Wounds We Are Healed

We are all spending Good Friday like never before. And it probably is a good thing. For as long as my adult life can remember, the general atmosphere of Holy Week was vacation, rest, Boracay and everything in between. Now, we are “forced” to celebrate the life, death of resurrection of Jesus probably in a way all of us are more vulnerable to understand and experience.

As we think and remember what happened on that Friday afternoon 2000 years ago, let’s think about this prophecy by the prophet Isaiah:

“But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)

Some will use this as a “healing” verse, especially we’re now in the midst of this Covid-19 pandemic. We can. Nothing wrong with that. But let me just say that the wounds and pains that Jesus endured 2000 years ago is more than for the healing of our sickness and defeating the virus.

You see, all of us have the greatest virus that this world has even experienced. This is the virus of rebellion against God — we call this ‘sin’. All of us have rebelled against God in one way of the other. We are all separated from Him because of it. Some of you are “asymptomatic.” You thought you don’t have it, but deep inside of you, you know that you’re empty. You’re looking for more and you don’t know why. It is because you are separated from God, the true source of meaning. Paul, the apostle, said that the penalty of sin is death. Not just physical death — something that we are all scared of now — but spiritual death — the only thing that we should really be scared of, that is eternal separation from God from this life and the life to come.

The cure from this virus of sin is not paying it back with good works or joining a religion. The cure is none other than the wounds of Jesus on that cross.

We are healed from his stripes when the guilt of our sins were taken away from us and was transferred to him. We are healed from his stripes because now, Jesus can relate with us when he became sin for us. He paid our past, present and future sins. And that’s how the virus was crashed. That’s how his wounds made us whole.

You may be sick today and you don’t know it. Physically, maybe. But spiritually, certainly — at a time in you life, or even now. Why don’t you repent, that is, change you mind from trusting in yourself into trusting in what Jesus has done for you. Accept him now as the cure from his virus called sin and be joined together with the Father from today to eternity. Jesus is our only hope.