A Debt I Can Never Pay

³ He was despised and forsaken of men,A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;And like one from whom men hide their faceHe was despised, and we did not esteem Him.⁴ Surely our griefs He Himself bore,And our sorrows He carried;Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,Smitten of God, and afflicted.⁵ But He was pierced through for our transgressions,He was crushed for our iniquities;The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,And by His scourging we are healed.(Isaiah 53:5-3)

He created us and continues to love us and forgive us, even though he knows us. When He visited us we tortured and killed Him out of hate and fear and political intrigue. He knew it was going to happen to Him from the very moment He created us, but He knew He had to do it if we were to be saved. He knew we were going to humiliate Him, to spit on Him, to whip Him within an inch of His life, then finally torture Him to death. He knew we were going to do this and more, to besmirch Him, to use His name as a foul oath, to blame Him for our own wicked sinful, hateful, arrogant, thoughts and deeds, to hate Him. Yet still He calls us friends

¹² “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are My friends if you do what I command you. ¹⁵ No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.  (John 15:12-15) 

And I can only wonder in amazement at the love He has for us to not crush us like we deserve, but to sweep us up into His arms and call us friends, to adopt us into His family.