Why a Rose?

Let me tell you the most incredible story I know. It begins with the Prophecy of a Rose:

For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,

And as a root out of dry ground.

He has no form or comeliness;

And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.

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.

Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten by God and afflicted.

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.

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.

Isaiah 53:2-6

I always wonder how we could despise something so beautiful as the Rose--Christ, the source of beauty and truth, the One who created all the world and pronounced it "very good." But the answer is obvious. It is because He laid aside His glory ("...made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men" Phil. 2:7). We--I--did not reject Him because He looked like a man, but because He revealed what men are. He lived perfectly, as I cannot, and He suffered perfectly for my sins. He bore my thorns. And when they had nailed Him, head bent and bleeding, to a wooden cross, God crushed the Rose, His only Son. How strange that I should recognize the beauty of the rose because of its thorns--my thorns! But it is true: I love Him because He first loved me, and demonstrated it to me in this, that Christ died for my sins. And there is more. After He had taken my place, bearing my sin and shame, He gave me His place and His beauty: "I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys" (Song of Solomon 2:1). What a beautiful thing is the Church! And we have not yet seen her as she will be, for we have not yet seen Christ in His glory. When we do, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And we will know, really know, that secret Rose.