"Surely He has borne our sicknesses, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; and the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone tohis own way; and the Lord has made to light on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet He humbled himself, and opened not His mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, He opened not His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? And they made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief; when You shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied: by His knowledge shall my righteous Servant make many righteous; and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Isaiah 53:4-12,RV,margin)
The basis of the foregoing text is the Revised Version, together with the marginal renderings; but in a single instance there has been a slight change from that text, the warrant for which is found in other translations. Do not be content with one reading of it; in every sentence there is food for abundance of meditation.
The central thought of this scripture is Christ the Sin-bearer, but there is a depth in it, which few of those who can so glibly repeat the words of the chapter, have ever thought of. Let us see if we cannot come a little closer to the heart of the matter.
Definition of Prophecy
In the first place, note that although these words were written fully seven hundred years before the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, they are in the past tense. There has been a failure to grasp the breadth of their meaning, owing to a faulty idea of what prophecy is. People have fallen into the idea that a prophet is one who foretells future events, and that all prophecy is merely the statement of something to take place in the future; yet that is not at all the Scripture use of the words. When the woman at the well of Samaria said to Jesus, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet," (John 4:19) it was because He had just told her certain things about her own past life; and when she went into the city to call her friends, she said, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" (John 4:29)
Also when the Jews had seized Jesus, and He was being mocked by them in the High Priest's court, "When they had blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face, and asked Him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote You." (Luke 22:64)
Here we see that to prophesy is to tell things either past or present, which people could not be expected to know of their own wisdom, and that a prophet is one who has the power, the Divine gift, to declare such things.
Again, in the call of Moses we have the Lord's own statement of what a prophet is. When Moses objected to going to Egypt to stand before Pharaoh, on the ground that he was not eloquent, the Lord said, "Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speakwell. And also, behold, he comes forth to meet you; and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. And you shall speak unto him, and put the words in his mouth: and I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what you shall do. And he shall be your spokesman unto the people; and it shall come to pass, that he shall be to you a mouth, and you shall be to him as God." (Exodus 4:14-16) "And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made you a god to Pharaoh; and Aaron your brother, shall be your prophet." (Exodus 7:1)
Aaron was the speaker for Moses, acting merely as the mouth of his brother, and therefore he was his prophet. Thus we see that a prophet is one who speaks for another, giving exact utterance to another's thoughts; and so a prophet of God is one who gives exact expression to the thoughts of God, in words which the Holy Ghost teaches. Prophecy therefore is any statement of God's everlasting truth;--not man's statement, take notice, but God's own statement by the mouth of a man.
So this 53rd chapter of Isaiah is prophecy, but not in the mistaken sense that it is merely a statement of something that was to take place at some time in the future. It is prophecy, because it tells the truth of God, which can never be known without the special enlightenment of the Holy Spirit of God. "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." (1 Corinthians 12:3)
The things contained in this chapter were as true when Isaiah wrote them as they are today. Prophets are not something out of the ordinary course of God's plan, but are indications of what God would do with all men. God would have all men know Him, and everyone able to recognize His truth; but when all go astray, the prophet supplies the lack. It is in God's plan for all to be prophets: "And Moses said unto him, Do you envy for my sake? would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit upon them!" (Numbers 11:29) "Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy. ... I would that you all spoke with tongues, but rather that you prophesied: for greater is he that prophesies than he that speaks with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying. ... And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth." (1 Corinthians 14:1,5,25)
Yet this does not indicate that if this blessed state of things existed, no one would have a more full revelation than another, so that he would be able to impart to the rest; for we find that in all times God's acknowledged prophets have learned from one another. Isaiah simply gave utterance in this chapter to that which everybody ought to have known by the Spirit's own revelation to him personally.
How the Lord Knows Men
We do not need to take time or space to recount the things that are stated in the Gospels concerning Jesus and His sufferings. All are familiar with them. This chapter lets us into the secret of those sufferings. "With His stripes we are healed. ... by His knowledge shall my righteous Servant make many righteous." (Isaiah 53:5,11)
Here we have a parallel to the statement, "By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous." (Romans 5:19)
How can the obedience of one make many righteous? Manifestly only by that One's presence in the many, living the obedience. So we have the answer to the question as to how Christ by His knowledge shall make many righteous. How does He know? Not by laborious search and study, but by personal experience. "The Word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight; but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." (Hebrews 4:12-13)
And this statement comes in connection with the statement that He is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." (Hebrews 4:15) "Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." (Isaiah 53:4)
The Lord knows our frame, not simply because He has made us, but because He himself bears everything that humanity bears. "That which was from the beginning, ... the Word of life," (1 John 1:1) "[Which] was in the beginning with God, ... and ... was God, ... And [which] became flesh, and dwelt among us," (John 1:2,1,14) penetrates to every fiber of every being, and suffers everything to which human flesh is heir. There is not a sickness, not a pain, not a temptation, not an injustice, that oppresses any of the children of men, that does not press with equal weight upon the Lord; nay, it presses even more strongly upon the Lord than it does upon us, because but for His sensibility to the touch of pain or sorrow, we ourselves should have no consciousness of it. It is only His life in us, that makes us conscious of anything. "[He] bears the sin of the world." (John 1:29,RV,margin)
He says, "You have made me to serve with your sins, and wearied me with your iniquities." (Isaiah 43:24)
He is one with all mankind, and everything that touches humanity touches Him.
The Silent Long-Suffering of God
"He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth." (Isaiah 53:7)
Yet He keeps silence. Century after century has the human race been piling sin and misery upon the Lord, by their deviation from the truth, the way of life, yet He bears it without a murmur. Here we catch a glimpse of the meaning of the phrase, "the long-suffering of God." (1 Peter 3:20)
We have ignored His life in us, and have not sought to learn its ways, so that we might yield to them, and so allow Him to bear the load in His own way, and to live His own life unhindered and unfettered, and He has borne it all uncomplainingly.
It was not simply in the High Priest's palace, and in Pilate's court, and on Calvary, that Jesus bore insult and abuse and pain without murmuring; He has been doing that for the last six thousand years; and the very thing which is to His everlasting honor, has been set down to His reproach. Men have charged the Lord with indifference to human suffering, because He did not rise up in His might, and suddenly put an end to it all. How little they knew!
They did not understand that He was literally suffering all these evils, allowing them to be heaped upon Him, and that His silence under the burden of sin and oppression and injustice was the only way of salvation from them, to the human race. They did not know that if at any time He had risen up in His might, and cast off the burden, putting a sudden end to all misery, it would at the same time have put an end to the greater part of the human race. "The long-suffering of our God is salvation." (2 Peter 3:15)
Blessed thing that He does keep silence, even though wicked men take advantage of His silence, to accuse Him of being altogether such a one as themselves! (Psalm 50:21) "The long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah," (1 Peter 3:20) and even yet, "The Lord ... is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) "He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken." (Isaiah 53:8)
But who among the men of His generation consider that He was stricken for the transgression of the people, to whom the stroke was due? Even as nineteen hundred years ago, so today, men do not know the time of their visitation. They do not know that God has visited His people, even coming into their flesh, and has thereby redeemed them, suffering all things for their sakes. If they did, they would know that "by His stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)
In the fact that the Lord is personally present with each individual, not merely sharing, but bearing, all his infirmities, his sicknesses, his sorrows, and his sins, is absolute and complete deliverance from all these things. Marvelous Gospel! No wonder that it is called, "the glorious Gospel." (2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 Timothy 1:1)
It makes known to us the fact that our very consciousness of our fallen condition carries with it the remedy. What could God possibly do for men that He has not done?
Let Us Be Still
Shall we stop without learning the lesson of silence for ourselves? Who has not been made to suffer unjust accusation, and even to feel the smart the more keenly in that it came from friends, who ought to have been more charitable. A knowledge of the fact that the Lord has from the beginning borne infinitely more, which He did not deserve, and that He has borne it silently and uncomplainingly, will help us wonderfully to "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad." (Matthew 5:12)
And then when we remember that He bears every ill that comes upon us, and that it comes upon us only through Him, how the sting is removed! Surely we ought to be able to endure our little portion uncomplainingly, when it only comes to us secondarily, and the Lord bears the whole at first hand.
This is but a suggestion of the comfort that there is in this Gospel of Isaiah; but whoever receives the Lord Jesus by faith may have daily fresh revelations of His presence and power.--Present Truth, March 29, 1900--Isaiah 53:4-12.