According to our English dictionary, the word esteem means to hold in respect and admiration. In Hebrew, it means to value, as in the translation of the word Chashab in Isaiah 53.

Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?  2 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.  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, everyone, 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.

The prophet makes us aware of how Jesus did not come with the usual characteristics the world would normally place a value upon.  As a result, Jesus was not esteemed.  He should have been esteemed according to His real value and worth.  However, by not possessing the things first looked for in order even to get started esteeming someone, the people struggled with esteeming Jesus according to His true value.

We now have the benefit of looking back on what the prophet Isaiah said, knowing what Jesus did for us in full view. The cross is plainly displayed, as are His resurrection from the dead and ascension.

The fact that He suffered as He did to take our sin upon Himself and then, in turn, give us His righteousness.

Today, it is clear that the cross demonstrates God’s love for us, and the love of Christ is said to be shed abroad in our hearts. Paul, as an apostle, encouraged the church to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge, and thereby be filled with all the fullness of God.

But the depth of what He did and His value is not as esteemed as it could be if there is ignorance with regard to His majesty and glory.  An ordinary man can do extraordinary things and be somewhat esteemed for what he did.  But if a distinguished man highly revered and honored does extraordinary things, it is highly esteemed.

If you recall, when Jesus went to His hometown of Nazareth, He could not do many mighty things there, and He was rejected by His people even though they marveled at the gracious words He spoke to them.  They even desired to throw Him off a cliff.  That’s anything but esteeming Him.  Why did this happen?  He was merely Jospeh’s son.  Had they looked at Him as being the Son of God, His value would have greatly gone up.

Today, many wish to present Jesus as ordinary and talk about His loving people as if He were an ordinary person. They do not realize that diminishing who Jesus truly is in His magnificence and majesty diminishes the value of what He did, which in turn diminishes our value as well.

It is one thing to be called a friend by a needy, ordinary person; it is a whole other thing to be called a friend by a very important and highly esteemed person.

If we shy away from presenting Jesus according to the glory He had with His Father before He came and the glory He now has, as revealed in Revelation when John fell as one dead at His feet, we do a disservice to ourselves and others when we seek to present His love and the offer of grace that He alone can provide.

We do not help anyone by making Jesus seem ordinary because we think that doing otherwise might make them uncomfortable.  Heaven sees Him according to the great value that is His, and it makes what He did even more amazing.  It is time once again to regain the esteem for Jesus that He deserves.