According to Isaiah 52, Jesus’ visage is marred more than that of any other man. Marred more than a man in a train wreck, a plane crash, Hiroshima? Yes. You see, it’s not only that Jesus’ beard was plucked out, that His back was beaten, that His side was pierced, that His wrists were nailed. It’s the psychological and spiritual stress He experienced in the Garden of Gethsemane which caused the blood vessels in His face to burst. Jesus experienced marring and scarring in ways we’ll never understand until we see Him.

But here is the interesting thing: The terror which would mar Him psychologically and physiologically was not due to the physical suffering He would endure, nor to the blood He would shed. The one thing which terrorized our Hero was that He knew He would, for a time, lose contact with His Father as He who knew no sin became sin for us.

We shudder at the thought of hearing our boss say, ‘You’re through,’ or of our girlfriend saying, ‘Goodbye.’ But if someone were to say, ‘You’re going to lose fellowship with the Father for a day,’ we wouldn’t care. Why is it that we are nonchalant about that which terrified Jesus — and we are fearful about that which He said ‘Let not your hearts be troubled’?

Jesus was close to His Father,
drew His life from His Father,
was in love with His Father.

That’s why He bled from His face at the thought of being out of fellowship with His Father for even a short period of time. That’s why He asked that this particular cup be taken from Him. That’s why He was marred more than any other man in history. Truly, when we see Jesus, we’ll be awed, amazed, and broken by what He did to get us to Heaven.