With His Stripes We Are Healed

Mosiah 14:3-6 and Isaiah 53:3-6

He is despised and rejected of men;
  a man of sorrows,
  and acquainted with grief:
    and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs,
         and carried our sorrows:
  yet we did esteem him
    stricken,
    smitten of God,
    and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    he was bruised for our iniquities:
   the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
   and with his stripes we are healed.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray;
    we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all.

This poetic, messianic passage is breathtaking when you really stop to think about the Subject: the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

As I arranged the verses as you see above I was struck by the near equal ratio of pronouns referring to (1) Jesus and (2) to us. Here's a count:

• he, him, his: 11
• we, our, us: 13

So, in a way these verses are as much about us and our predicament as they are about Jesus and his power to save us.

So much more could be said about these verses, but for now I'd rather turn to the musical setting by George Frederich Handel in his great work Messiah:

-Michael Whatcott