Isaiah 53
2b He has no form or comeliness; There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked— But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.
On the surface, how ugly the cross was. BUT how truly ugly is our sin?! WE have utterly failed…
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
“Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows.”
“And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
“For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.”
“By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities.”
“And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors.”
As you pin your flower to the cross, let these words be the significance of the symbolism:
2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
Though our sin is hideous, the cross of Christ “presents us holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight.” Our sin is pinned to the cross and our lives are hidden in Christ who died on that cross for the sin of the world “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh BUT made alive by the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).
The flower represents the old of your life becoming new and the bag represents the humility of the little we have as we put it at the foot of the cross.