Isaiah 53 is about the Lord Jesus Christ according to Acts 8 and Philip the Evangelist.
When we read of the suffering servant we read of Jesus.
The prophet tells us: ‘Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and with his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all’ (53.4-6).
Three facts
Three facts about the cross of Christ are made very clear here.
First, Christ’s death was a substitutionary work. ‘Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows’ (v.4a). The words ‘took up’ picture someone having to carry a crushing load, but he (the suffering servant, Jesus) comes alongside and lifts the burden from us, takes it up himself and then carries it in our place. But he takes not just our sorrows, but the cause and root of all our sufferings and sorrows — that is, human sin (v.6).
Second, Christ’s death was a penal work (v.5). Christ’s substituting himself to be the one who carried our sins was with the purpose of him suffering the punishment we deserve for our sins and so satisfying God’s justice on our behalf. This is why we use the term ‘penal substitution’ to describe what Christ was doing for us as he died on the cross. ‘But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.’
Third, Christ’s death was a divine work (v.6): ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all’. We self-willed wandering sheep going our own way are each responsible for our choices, for our sins, all going in our different directions. But, by contrast, the LORD God has made all our sins and iniquities to meet together on Christ. They were laid upon him by God so that they would be dealt with and we would be justly forgiven. This penal substitution was from God’s hand.
These three truths make the basis for the classic evangelical understanding of what Jesus did for us at the cross. It is this wonderful combination of grace and justice which causes the believing sinner to rejoice and give unending praise to God.
Lying at the heart of the gospel, it is not surprising that the idea of the cross as God worked, penal substitution often comes under attack.
Two objections
There are two objections which those who do not like what the Scriptures teach throw up concerning penal substitution.
1. How can one person’s sin be transferred to another person?
It is we ourselves who are responsible for our sin. How can that responsibility be switched to someone else? ‘It can’t be done!’ people say. ‘When one human being is charged with committing a felony which was actually perpetrated by another person, we call that a miscarriage of justice!’
But, although that is, of course, generally true, it is not quite the full picture is it? For example, when a child or a minor does something wrong — they are the person who has done the wrong — often the law will hold the parents responsible. The parents themselves were not the ones who did wrong. Nevertheless they are held responsible. That is what all the shenanigans over truancy were about not too long ago in Britain with government proposals for parents being fined for their youngsters failing to turn up to school. Even at a human level, it’s not impossible that sin and responsibility can be legally transferred. So there is the first argument which weighs against this objection.
But, further, God indicated throughout the Old Testament the transfer of sin and guilt. It was pictured in the animal sacrifices offered by the Old Testament priesthood. This is explicit in the use of the scapegoat used in the sacrificial ceremonies of the Day of Atonement. We read of Aaron, the high priest in Leviticus 16.21,22: ‘He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites — all their sins — and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed to the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert’.
Here we have an Old Testament picture of the switching of our sins to Christ, who carried them to the cross, that solitary place of abandonment, so they never return to us again. This is the work God achieved through Christ, not simply in picture form, but in reality.
2. Isn’t it simply monstrous injustice for someone to suffer for another person’s sins?
Here is a second objection closely related to the first. This concerns not the possibility of transferring guilt, but the justice of such a thing. ‘How could it be at all right, for example, to execute your granny for the murder you carried out?’ some might object. ‘That’s the kind of thing a totalitarian dictator would do, not a just and loving God.’ But the answer to this objection resides in the uniqueness of who Jesus is.
Firstly, this objection may carry weight if Jesus was and is just a man, but he is not. He is the Son of God. He is God and man in one person (John 1.1,14, John 5.18; Philippians 2.6). As God, Jesus is not some innocent third party who is frog-marched off to a kangaroo court which leads to the gallows. He is one with his Father and fully complicit in the plan of our salvation. Again his willingness to suffer is the theme of Isaiah 53.7-9. ‘He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.’ Though he is unjustly accused, he says nothing (v.7). He raised no protest. If the Son of God raises no protest about the justice of the cross, why should we?
Secondly, Jesus’s substitutionary death for us would have been an injustice if his death had been the end of him. But it wasn’t, and Jesus knew it wouldn’t be. In John 10.17, Jesus says: ‘The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life — only to take it up again’. He truly and fully died for us, but he was not, as it were robbed of the rest of his life. As a righteous man, as the Son of God, he would rise again. Again, Isaiah foresaw this in his prophecy: ‘Though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days… After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied’ (53.10,11).
Indeed, Christ himself, as the victim, in no way lost out by the cross, but rather his true worth, his amazing love and kindness to sinners, his true glory was displayed to all the universe for time and forever through what he did for us there. In the light of the cross all heaven for all eternity sings ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain’.
The cross is gruesome, and awful, because our sins are gruesome and awful, but it is not unjust. The cross is the work of God and as such is carried out with perfect justice and integrity, and that means that with perfect justice and integrity God can forgive sinners like you and me.
One response
We should respond to what Christ has done for us at the cross with utter devotion to him. Our sins are gone. We are to understand, believe and worship and adore! The well-known words of C.T. Studd are more than appropriate: ‘If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him’.
This article is an edited version of a chapter from At the Cross by John Benton, recently published by Evangelical Press (£6.99, ISBN 978-0-85234-741-6).
