Isaiah 53:4-6 Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.… I. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SUFFERING. It depicts, by simple force of language, its extreme intensity - not a suffering springing from internal weakness of nature, and so withering and dying like a lamp for want of oil, but "like a torch in its full flame bent and ruffled, and at length blown out by the breath of a north wind." It was a diffused suffering, according to the expression of the psalmist, "like water in his bowels, or oil in his bones." "In his person we may see grief in its height and supremacy, triumphant, crowned and arrayed in purple, grief reigning and doing the utmost that it was able." In proportion to the fineness of the nature is the sensitiveness, and in proportion to the sensitiveness, the capacity for suffering. In these words, "stricken, pierced, afflicted, crushed, beaten with stripes," we have a cumulation of strong touches in the picture. Add to this, "smitten of God." The allusion is said to be to leprosy, regarded as a punishment for grievous sin (Numbers 12:9, 10; 2 Kings 15:5; Psalm 51:7). "The measure of every passion is the operation of the agent. We must not measure the Divine strokes by the proportion of those blows which are inflicted by the greatest and most exasperated mortal. Every blow inflicted by the fiercest tyrant can reach no further than the body, and the body is but the dwelling-place, not any part, of the soul. None can reach the conscience but he who made it. God is able, merely by letting a few drops of his wrath fall upon the guilty conscience, so to scald with a lively sense of sin, that the man shall live a continual terror to himself. His own breast shall echo peals of vengeance to him every hour. Suffering must needs be grievous when infinite justice passes sentence, and infinite power does execution" (South). An "unparalleled greatness" of suffering is, then, here indicated. II. THE VICARIOUS NATURE OF THE SUFFERING. He bore our sicknesses; "the first of twelve distinct assertions in this one chapter of the vicarious character of the sufferings of the Servant." They are "because of our rebellions" and of "our iniquities." The punishment which is the means of "our peace" and welfare fell upon him; we have been healed through his stripes. The iniquity of all has been made to light upon him. "As the avenger of blood pursues the murderer, so punishment by an inner necessity overtakes the sinner (Psalm 40:12; Numbers 32:23; cf. Deuteronomy 27:15). And inasmuch as the Servant, by Jehovah's will, has made himself the Substitute of the Jewish nation, it follows that the punishment of the latter must fall upon him." After all that has been written for ages upon this difficult subject of vicarious suffering or punishment, there remain difficulties not to be surmounted by our reason. How can punishment be transferred? How can the suffering due to the sinner be imposed upon an innocent person? How can any honest mind admit such a confusion of relation, even were it offered, as a means of escape from penalty? The answers to these questions are given in poetic metaphors, and analogies which do not reach to the heart of the matter, and forensic quibbles which are not lovely in connection with spiritual matters. For all that, there is something the heart of all men fixes upon as lovely, Divine, adorable, in the idea of a man laying down his life for his brethren, a patriot for his country. Much of this deep feeling enters into the old legends, often of a woman - an Alkestis, a Makaria, an Hesione; often of a man - a son of Mesa, King of Moab, a Menoikeus, a Curtius. If we begin to criticize, we lose the sense and spirit of these sweet stories. So with the great tradition of the Servant of Jehovah, and with the still greater tradition by which our lives and hearts have been formed. III. APPLICATION. Every Christian thinks of Christ when he reads these beautiful words. Who but he can inspire us with the willingness to "crucify the flesh, with the affections and lusts"? "Nature, indeed, cannot, will not, prompt it; but Christianity, which rises many strains above nature, must and will. The best sacrifice to a crucified Saviour is a crucified lust, a bleeding heart, and a dying corruption. Let the ambitious man lay his pride in the dust, the covetous man deposit his treasures in the banks of charity and liberality, and let the voluptuous epicure renounce his cups and his whores, - and this will be a present to Heaven better than a whole hecatomb; nor could the fruit of his body fall so grateful a sacrifice upon God's altar as the sin of his soul" (South). - J. Parallel Verses KJV: Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. |
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