Every once in a while when I’m reading through the Bible I come across a verse or a passage that, when I read it, I have to stop for a moment and sort of take it in. I have to take time to dwell on it for a while before moving on.
I came across such a passage recently while reading through the book of Isaiah. I’ve read Isaiah numerous times, but as it has happened so often, whenever I read through the Bible, there’s always a verse or a passage that gets my attention that didn’t get my attention the first two or three times I read it. That’s what I love about reading the word of God. Something new always jumps out at me.
In this instance, it was Isaiah chapter 49, verse 16 (and it was the first part of that verse that got my attention), but Isaiah 49 verse 16 says, See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. And when I read that, I had to stop right there. I asked myself, “When we look at the palms of Jesus’ hands, what will we see?”
Jesus appeared to His disciple Thomas shortly after the resurrection, right after Thomas declared that he would not believe Jesus had risen unless he could touch the nail holes in His hands. When Jesus appeared to him, He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” And Thomas said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:27-28)
Isaiah 49 verse 16, I believe, makes a reference to the nail holes in the palms of Jesus’ hands. But…how is that possible since Isaiah lived some 700 years before Jesus was born? Well, we have to keep in mind that God is not bound by time. Time was created by God just as the world and universe in which we live were created by God. So time has no hold on God. And Jesus, being that He is God, is not bound by the laws of the physical universe He created. He is Lord and ruler over the universe and everything in it, and that includes time. So that is how Jesus could look at the nail marks in His hands and say to Isaiah 700 years before He came to this earth, “I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”
Matthew Henry had this to say in his commentary on that verse – Some apply his engraving his church on the palms of his hands to the wounds in Christ’s hands when he was crucified; he will look on the nail marks in his hands and be forever mindful of those for whom he suffered and died.
When Jesus was nailed to that cross, he was taking the punishment for every sin that has been committed by everyone who has ever lived. He paid the price for every single sin, past, present, and future. It’s through His sacrifice, His death on the cross, that we have been redeemed. As the Apostle Paul reminded the Corinthian believers in his first letter to that church, we have been bought for a price. Of course, that price was the life of Christ.
Jesus’ death on the cross was an atoning sacrifice. It was for our sins that Jesus went to the cross. It was for our sins that rusty iron spikes were driven through His palms. I believe, as Matthew Henry wrote, that when Jesus looks at the scars in his hands, He sees the price that He paid for our sins. He sees redeemed sinners. In a literal sense, we are engraved on the palms of Jesus’ hands.
And one day, we will see those hands. We will look upon the scars and in that moment that we will fully understand the depth of Jesus’ love!
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