Marred Yet Such Beauty

 

  

 

None was ever so marred as the Saviour

None was ever so marred as he

Yet as we look back on his purpose

There is such a wondrous beauty.

 

He came to his own who refused him

They swore he could not be the Christ,

Just a handful he had gathered round him

All but one the world would entice.

 

It was he who created the universe

It must have cringed at the way he was treated

When only at the triumphal entry

As King of the world he was greeted.

 

The rocks would have cried out he had stated

Had there been no subjects on hand

For into Jerusalem rode the King of all kings

In keeping with the Father’s plan.

 

 

Just a few days later such wondrous beauty

Was marred beyond compare

As the Saviour bore the cross to Calvary-

The one that none of us could bare.

 

In a real sense it was our cross he carried

For we are the guilty ones,

It was we who had engaged in rebellion

Even from creation’s dawn.

 

But not one of us was able to bare it

In that it was a price to heavy for us to pay,

And even if the whole world had given its all

It would not have reached half of the way.

 

There was only one that could qualify

That could take the sins of the world away,

It was the Saviour, marred beyond recognition

Yet, displaying a radiant beauty that day.

 

 

For how else could you explain his words?

“Forgive them Father; they know not what they do”

When beyond the depth of his agony

There was something greater he held in view.

 

It was the world that he had created

Lounging in the far reaching depths of sin,

The very people he had come to rescue

Were same people that had crucified him.

 

Hence the title of “marred yet such beauty”

As the Saviour hung from Calvary’s tree,

The paradox of all paradoxes emerges

Jesus died so we could live eternally.

 

A silhouetted figure on that Judean hill

A picture of heaven’s beauty and human vice,

The sinless Saviour confronts man’s sin

In the world’s greatest ever sacrifice.

 

Here was God’s finest and mankind’s worst

A just and gracious God reaching out to unjust man,

Jesus, the sacrificial lamb and scapegoat:

The instrument that was God’s redemptive plan.

 

Marred yet such beauty in one and the same

A paradox impossible made possible in Christ,

An extreme miscarriage of justice on the part of man

Shows the supreme love of God in His Son’s sacrifice.

 

Stewart Russell © July 2018