“For our sake he made Him to be sin who knew no sin,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
2 Corinthians 5:21
A prominent plastic surgeon, Maxwell Maltz, tells the following story. There once was a man who had a beautiful wife and family. He loved
her deeply as she did him. They lived a joyful life until one day when tragedy struck. The man’s parents, very elderly, lived nearby. One day the man received notification from the alarm company that there was a fire at his parent’s home. He rushed there to find the house roaring in flames. Heroically, he tried to enter the house to rescue his mother and father. The flames were fierce and beat him back every time he tried to find his parents, Finally the flames consumed the home and his parents were gone but in the process the man had horribly disfigured his face.
Defeated, discouraged and so ashamed of his appearance that he
refused to allow anyone—including his wife—to see his face. He locked himself in his bedroom and would let no one come near him or see him. His wife was devastated and she tried everything she knew to help her husband see things differently. Nothing worked.
Finally at the end of her rope she went to a plastic surgeon. She described the situation and the plastic surgeon confidently told her that he could correct the situation – he could restore her husband’s face just as it was. The woman sadly shook her head. The problem was not with his face but with his heart. “What then, did you come to me for?”, asked the surgeon. “I want you to disfigure my face so I can be like him! If I can share in his pain, then maybe he will let me back into his life.”
The doctor refused her request but she so touched his heart he went to visit the husband. Standing at the bedroom door he told the man he could repair his face but there was no response. Finally the doctor told the man of his wife’s request to disfigure her so she could be with him. After a while, the door knob turned and the man came out of the room. Like in the movie, King Kong, where after the great ape’s death a man proclaimed “beauty killed the beast”, in this story love touched the man’s heart where nothing else could.
Now think about what God did for all mankind, for you and for me. We were marred by sin. Think of the worst thing you have ever done. Think of the shame and grief of appearing before God with that sin visible to Him. Think of the pain of knowing that that one sin keeps us from entering into the place he had planned and prepared for us to spend eternity with Him in. Now magnify that one sin multiple thousands of times as we look at how we have consistently and even deliberately sinned against His word, His will – against Him.
Now picture Jesus who goes to God and asks to be disfigured for us -to pay for our sin that we cannot escape. Unlike the doctor, God agrees. It is the only way that you, I and all all mankind can be redeemed,. There is literally no other way. Picture the Lord’s disfigurement. That partially occurred at the cross. The anger of man attacked a holy God who came to heal their disfigurement – lashed with a cat of nine tails, his beard pulled out by its roots, spat upon, stripped naked, a crown of thorns jammed onto his head – pure hate poured out on the one who truly loved them. Bu that was not the greatest disfigurement of Christ. He took that awful sin you and I committed, plus the thousands of others and he bore their shame in front of His Father as He paid the full penalty of each of our sins. Now multiple that by the billions of people who have lived on this earth and we begin to get a sense of the horror of what the Lord faced in that three hours of darkness on that Friday afternoon.
Like the wife who asked to be disfigured for her husband, it was the love of Christ that caused Him to be willing to be disfigured
for us so that we can be healed and look like Him.