Isaiah 53:9

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

There’s a lot of talk about ‘identity’ in our society at the moment. Whilst we might take issue with where some people now draw the line between which aspects of identity are fixed and which can be chosen, we all recognise the frustration that comes from being wrongly-identified. The passionate football supporter doesn’t take kindly to being thought of as supporting an opposing team. If someone makes a wrong assumption about our political affiliations, we may well be offended. From time to time I get emails intended for a woman in America who must have an email address that’s easily confused with mine. I find it easy to ignore the marketing emails from companies that she has signed up to, giving my email address by mistake. But I mind much more when I get email reminders in her name from a debt management company. I feel like I’ve been wrongly assigned to the category ‘debtor’ and I don’t like it. At least until I remember that it isn’t really me that they’re talking to.

So imagine how it felt for Jesus to be wrongly assigned to the category ‘wicked’. There could be no greater miscarriage of justice than to identify the perfect and holy Son of God as belonging ‘with the wicked’. In our society, we might think that being identified with ‘the rich’ was a compliment, but from the context of these verses it’s clear that being buried with the rich somehow implies an involvement with violence and deceit. His grave ought rightly to have been labelled ‘Here lies the best man who ever lived’. But instead it’s in the section marked ‘Here lie the criminals’.

Yet this wasn’t the first time in his life Jesus had been wrongly-labelled. Throughout his earthly ministry, the Pharisees repeatedly assigned him to an incorrect category. As Jesus himself put it, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, “Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”” The implication is clear – to be a ‘friend of sinners’ must mean that he himself is a sinner. Yet they are only half-wrong. He is certainly not a glutton, nor a drunkard, nor a sinner. But he is the ultimate ‘friend of sinners’. The Servant was willing to be mislabelled, misunderstood and misrepresented, in order that we might be assigned to a category we could never have expected to belong to. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Let’s praise him for that today.