CHRIST the ROOT from DRY GROUND. “He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isa 53:2). James Culross writes: “The heart of the thing is, that men did not see the beauty that was there. He did not answer to their ideal. He lacked the characteristics they admired. His greatness was not shaped to their thoughts. Having misread the prophecies, having imagined another deliverer than God had promised, being blind to the heavenly while their souls lay open to the earthly, they found nothing worth gazing on in Jehovah’s Servant when He came. They would have welcomed a plumed and mail-clad warrior, riding forth to battle, and would have shouted before Him, ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty.’ But they have no admiration and no welcome for One who comes, meek and lowly, to make His soul an offering for sin. Their sin did not trouble them. Why should a Savior from sin delight them?”
