All of us have gone astray. We’ve all gone after our own ways. It’s sin. A just punishment was needed because of that sin. That punishment, that chastisement, was laid upon Jesus to bring us peace, that we would be reconciled to God our Father and no longer be His enemy.

All of our sin, yours, mine, everyone’s, was laid on him. He bore it all Himself. But He didn’t complain. He didn’t open His mouth even though He was pierced and crushed for someone else’s crime.

He submitted to it because it was the Father’s will. For love for the Father, He submitted to the Father’s will. He did not want to do it. In the garden Jesus wrestled against temptation. In Hebrews 12, we’re reminded that we haven’t resisted temptation to the point of shedding blood. Jesus had.

It was agonizingly hard to choose to go to the cross. He had a choice. He says that He could call on His Father and have more than a dozen legions of angels at His disposal. He wasn’t lying. There was a choice. He chose to lay down His life for you, His friend, but before that, He chose the will, the desire, the pleasure of the Father. It was obedience, even to death on the cross.

Jesus’ gift to us doesn’t end there. He makes us righteous. Because of Christ we are accounted as righteous, gaining us that peace and acceptance by the Father. But there’s still more to the gift. The chapter ends with Jesus making intercession for us, the transgressors.

Because of His intercession, because of His prayers for us, He is able to save us to the uttermost. Hebrews 7:25 says it like this, “…he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

He lives to pray for you, to save you.