February 23

1 Peter 2:24—Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.

He came into the sinner’s world.—Himself sinless, he took our nature. Accustomed to the pure atmosphere of his own bright home, He allowed his ears and eyes to be assailed by sounds and sight; beneath which they must have smarted. His blessed feet trod among the dust of death, the mounds of graves, and the traps that men laid to catch Him. And all for love of us.

He lived the sinner’s life.—Not a sinner’s life, but the ordinary life of men. He wrought in the carpenter’s shed; attended wedding festivals, and heartrending funerals; ate, and drank, and slept. He sailed in the boat with his fisher-friends; sat wearied at the well-head; and was hungry with the sharp morning air.

He sympathized with the sinners’ griefs.—In their affliction He was afflicted. He often groaned, and sighed, and wept. When leprosy with its sores, bereavement with its heart-rending loneliness, dumbness and deafness, and devil-possession, came beneath his notice, they elicited the profoundest response from his sympathetic heart.

He died the sinner’s death.—He was wounded for our transgressions. He was treated as the scapegoat, the leper, the sin-offering of the human family. The iniquities of us all met in Him, as the dark waters of the streets pour into one whirling pool. He stood as our substitute, sacrifice, and satisfaction the guilt, and curse, and penalty of a broken law borne and exhausted in his suffering nature.

He is preparing the sinner’s home.—"I go to prepare n place for you"; and no mother was ever more intent on preparing his bedroom for her sailor-boy on his return, than Jesus on preparing heaven.