(Isaiah 53:10, KJV)
“This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”
(Matthew 3:17, KJV)
Not only the King James Version but many English
translations of the Bible, old and modern, use the word “pleased” in both verses,
accurately reflecting the meanings of the relevant words in each original
language. Both the Greek and Hebrew words translated “pleased” have wide
semantic ranges and are frequently rendered as “pleasure” or “delight”.
Still, it seems obvious to us that there
are two very different kinds of pleasure in view here.
Down in the Jordan
The use of “pleased” in Matthew seems quite
natural, doesn’t it? The Father looks down on his Son standing in the Jordan
River and feels absolutely compelled to make a clear distinction between the
Holy One of God and the “brood of vipers” among which his Son has chosen to (symbolically) repent under the hand of John.
Jesus, as always, is doing the will of his Father: living the same life,
passing through the same circumstances, even undergoing all the same rites as
his fellow Hebrews. These “children” share in flesh and blood, so he takes part in the very same things they all do. Today, that means baptism.
Can he help it if remarkable things happen
when he’s just being himself?
So Jesus comes up out of the water and the
Holy Spirit descends like a dove and rests on him. “Well pleased,” says the
Father: eudokeĊ. We
have no difficulty substituting “delighted” here, do we?
Putting the Son to Grief
In Isaiah, however, the use of “pleased” seems
a little harder to account for. If nothing else, common sense and experience inform
us that human fathers who take delight in their sons are appalled and stricken when those children come to serious injury. We would expect no less of God the
Father, would we? Thus the phrase, “pleased [chaphets] to bruise him” sounds more than a little jarring to the modern religious ear.
The three hours of darkness that fall on
the land, the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom, the earthquake, the splitting of rocks and the opening of the graves of the saints — all these testify that the Father was very displeased
indeed with those who had laid wicked hands on his Son.
No, if the Father was pleased at the cross,
it was in a very different sense.
May It Please the Court …
The phrase “May it please the court” is
still heard occasionally, a holdover from a time in which the word “pleasure”
was often a synonym for “will”. No attorney using it imagines for a second that
his request will bring a goofy grin of delight to the face of the jurist in
front of him. What he means is that he hopes the judge will rule in his favour;
that it might be the court’s will to
give him the answer he hopes for.
Likewise, the Father’s delight at the cross
is in the accomplishment of his good and perfect will, not in the suffering of
his Son. As Isaiah puts it only a few verses later:
“When his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”
Satisfied. Entirely satisfied. The Heavenly Court is truly
pleased, folks.
Shaking the Epochs
The guilt of not just a man, a woman or even
a nation is to be atoned for, but the entire family of man throughout all of
human history. In fact, a new sort of family entirely is to come out of this
terrible exercise, a truth of tremendous benefit to you and to me, his “offspring”.
The Son is to rise in resurrection life, his days prolonged eternally — though
of course nobody standing around the cross of the Lord Jesus can foresee this
despite the fact that he has clearly stated it again and again. This will of
God is not just to be grudgingly executed, but to prosper under the hand of the Son, and there is full and complete satisfaction
to be derived from his spotless sacrifice.
If God takes pleasure in the tremendous,
epoch-shaking accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can hardly be
surprised. But can we really envision God delighting in the process of his Son’s abuse? In his bruising?
I think not.
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