“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 of 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
53:4-6 (NKJV).
Webster defines “vicarious” as “serving instead of someone or something
else; in the place of.” Scholars
define verses 4-6 of Isaiah 53 as bearing the central theme and the very heart of
the “Suffering Servant” passage (Isaiah 53).
The Suffering Servant bore the penalty of others’ sins. He Himself was innocent. That was the whole thesis of the
redemption.plan: the just for the
unjust; the innocent for the guilty. His
wounds were marked with our transgressions.
His bruises took the brunt of our iniquities. In His chastisement, He was our shield to
guarantee us peace. When stripes were
angrily directed upon His body, the stripes bore our own healing from guilt and
sin. Then in poetic illustration the
prophet declares:
We
have gone astray like sheep.
We
have chosen our own way.
He
bore the heavy load of our iniquities.
Vicariously,
He took our sins away!
At Christmas we have tender thoughts of
the Baby in a manger. We hear glad songs
of angel chorus singing above the din of human cacophonies: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth,
peace, good will to men.”
But ever in the background of the manger
and shepherds, of wise men and Joseph, Mary and the Babe, the cross looms. It is as immanent as night and day, as sure
as darkness following sunset. And why
the cross? It was the most terrible form
of Roman death, the ultimate for the worst offenders of the Pax Romana. Although Pilate would declare, “I have found no guilt in him deserving
death” (Luke 23:22), as ruler he
still gave way to the demands of the crowd and delivered Jesus up to be
crucified. Although Jesus Himself was
innocent, without sin, He became as the guilty one, wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities,” the vicarious sacrifice for all time and
for all people. He was “smitten by God and afflicted.” This is almost incomprehensible to us,
that God Himself would be the ultimate authority to permit the sufferings of
the Servant. He could easily have sent
ten thousand angels to save Him from death.
At the moment of darkest sin-bearing when God could not look upon Jesus
on the cross because of the weight of sin that covered Him, God turned His
face. Then we have the most pitiable of all the sayings of Jesus on the
cross: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (see Psalm 22:1 and
Matthew 27:46). But it was at that point
that the vicarious sacrifice was made for us.
Prayer:
We cannot understand the vicarious suffering of the perfect, sinless Son
of God for our sins, we who like sheep, stupid and helpless, have all gone
amiss of God’s perfect creation of us and His intention for us. But through the Suffering Servant’s vicarious
sacrifice, we are restored, brought into the eternal fold of God. At Christmastime and every day, we thank you,
Lord.
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