Isaiah 14

Friday, March 29, 2013
Good Friday

Isaiah 14

...is a thoroughly unfitting chapter to read on Good Friday.

It is God at His most wrathful and, more than that, vengeful.  I have wrath of my own, and so I understand it in others more readily.  I make excuses for it regularly.  But I try to steer clear of revenge.

I have often tried to explain to my mother on a recurring argument over a certain young man's actions that I don't believe in vengeance, but I do believe in righteous anger.  I do believe in compassion for the sinner and, what's more, complete forgiveness - the moment that the behavior stops.  Forgiveness before then seems ridiculous to me.  How can you forgive ongoing behavior?  You have to deal with ongoing behavior.

And perhaps that's what's going on here - but this passage so laboriously illustrates how powerless and then miserable Babylon and particularly its braggart king will be.  That seems like revenge - doling out punishment after the power to do harm has been removed.

But then, perhaps this is the perfect reading for Good Friday.  This is a reminder of how it used to be, before the Price was paid.  This is a remind of what His Suffering saved us from.  This is a way of keeping fresh in our minds just what we have been saved from.

This is what should have been ours.  This is the just vengeance, long after the behavior has stopped.

This idea of forgiveness, even cosmic forgiveness...it's so new, compared to human history.  And it was so very dearly bought.