THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF GOD
Meditations in Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CROSS

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THERE is no doubt that Isaiah is speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ here in this chapter and of his incarnate life here on earth. The words of our text in this sermon are therefore speaking about Christ's death and about the cross. The cross is the heart and climax of Christ's life and work here on earth, and therefore is the core of his work for us. There is no more important thing for us than to understand correctly the meaning of Christ's death on the cross, for this is the heart of His saving work for us.

The importance of the Scripture before us is that it tells us the truth about the cross of Jesus and his dying there. We will never understand the cross of Jesus unless we let Scripture form our understanding. We must expel any leaning on our own understanding, nor allow any preconceived thoughts and feelings to interfere with what the Scripture is telling us.

This is expressed in the words 'yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted'. There is no doubt about the nature of crucifixion in the culture of the time when Jesus lived on earth. Crucifixion was a form of execution used by the Romans to punish really bad criminals. Roman justice on the whole was better and fairer than most, though it had its blemishes and failure, so the natural understanding of the cross is that Jesus was being punished for some serious crime that he had committed. As the systems of justice on earth are ordained of God to curb evil, we may well assume on a first and superficial evaluation that Jesus was being punished in God's purpose for some evil he had committed. We would esteem him stricken by God.

If we enquired more deeply, the pure and gracious character of Jesus, and the evidence of a pure and caring life, would call into question that superficial understanding of the crucifixion. We have to acknowledge that Jesus did nothing worthy of such punishment. Indeed that he did nothing wrong whatsoever. The more we delve into the life of Jesus, the more we realise that here was the one really good man that has ever lived.

Human understanding almost universally is correct to this point. It is human evaluation beyond this point which goes so drastically wrong. Some have evaluated the cross as the sad overcoming of a good man by the forces of evil, and that Jesus was impotent to do anything about it. This sort of thing may be true of many other less good human beings down history, but it can't be true of Jesus from the evidence of his life. Jesus was not weak as others of us are weak. So often in the Gospel narratives we see the Jews seeking to take Jesus and kill him, but Jesus passes unharmed through the angry mob. They can't touch him unless he wills that they do. Jesus told Pilate this at his trial. He told Pilate, the Roman governor, that he would have no power over him unless given by God, and that at that very moment Jesus could have called on supernatural power to effect his release.

From this evaluation others have interpreted the cross as Jesus willingly going to the cross, and suffering the malice and hate of sinful people, to demonstrate his great love, and that his love reaches to the vilest sinner, and that he loves us in spite of all we do to him and to God, and will forgive. This will not do either. There is no doubt that the cross is a demonstration of God's love, but God's love is much much greater than just this. What good is forgiveness which does not remove our sense of guilt, nor does anything to deliver from the power of sin and corruption in our lives.

The fact is that forgiveness is not possible just by wishing it could be. Forgiveness must be according to justice and law. Forgiveness can only be real when an offended law has been satisfied. If this is not so, then forgiveness is a fantasy and has no reality. God's love would be a very ineffective thing if it was only a feeling of good will towards us without any power to effect a reconciliation between God and the sinner.

Human understanding of the cross is a failure because human wisdom can only try to bridge the chasm of the problem of sin by watering down the problem, making light of evil, and sentimentalising God's love. Human understanding can find no way that the problem of our sin can be truly overcome so that we can dwell in the love of God.

We must face the fact about the cross as it was in history and as is revealed in our text. The fact is that the cross was a place of execution. Historically this is what it was for. The cross was a place where the punishment for sin was exacted, and penalty for sin inflicted upon the sinner. This is no less true in the case of Jesus, and the cross is meant to bring this reality vividly to our understanding. Jesus, the sinless Saviour and the holy one, went to the cross voluntarily to be executed as the price and punishment for sin. This is the amazing extent of God's love for sinners.

Its is entirely true that Jesus was sinless. As a man he was the only man who has ever lived on this earth without sinning even in the smallest way. Yet he was executed upon the cross because of sin, and was suffering the whole just penalty for sin. He stood before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor in Palestine, and before a very imperfect human court, and it was outwardly Pilate who pronounced the death sentence, though at the same time proclaiming Christ's innocence. In reality Jesus was standing before the judgement seat of God. He was being judged by the pure law of God and it was God who was pronouncing the sentence, not just of physical death but eternal death of hell.

This is the fact, that the cross was the place of execution for our sins and the sin of the world. He was pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities. Jesus in his trial never defended himself from the false accusations the Jews accused him of. He remained silent, and by this showing that he was accepting the sin and guilt not his own. The fact is that Jesus was standing in the place of sinners, and accepting their guilt, making himself responsible for the sinner�s sin and accepting the just judgement of God against that sin as our substitute and representative, and then suffering the punishment, fully satisfying God's law and justice. In this way Jesus removed our guilt eternally and forever, and God forgives all who come to him through Jesus, justly and completely.

Here is real, solid, effective and triumphant love. It is a love that effectively saves us. It is a love which paid the ultimate cost. God sent his Son to Hell in our place, such was the love of God for sinners. "There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in" so we sing in the hymn 'There is a green hill far away'. These two lines in this hymn express the truth that sin can not be forgiven unless the punishment for sin is carried out in full. There is a price to be paid for sin, and that price is death and eternal separation from God. Paul tells us so in his letter to the Romans when he says "the wages of sin is death" and Jesus in Matthew 25 that the penalty for sin is eternal death. If we, the sinners, had to bear this cost, it would be our eternal loss. We could never pay it and live. God's love for us is this that he was ready to pay the awesome cost in the person of his incarnate Son, for he was the only one good enough to pay the price of sin, and was the only one precious enough to meet the tremendous cost.

This leads us to the way our text opens. "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows".

We are rather shallow creatures. When we think of infirmities and sorrows, all we tend to think about is the immediate weaknesses and griefs we suffer in this temporal life. We think of bodily sickness. We think of rejection, and bereavement, and failure and so on, and the sorrow and suffering this brings. It is true that all suffering can be traced back to the advent of sin into the world, even though our immediate sufferings have nothing directly to do with any particular wrong in our lives. Sickness is due to sin in the world and the curse on life because of it, but has usually nothing to do with any particular sin of the sufferer. Sickness is not a sign God is punishing us for some particular sin. However we all suffer sickness due to the curse on this world which God uttered when Adam sinned.

But this infirmity and sorrow is only a little thing to the infirmity and sorrow which will be ours unless our sin is dealt with, and the payment made. As we have already understood in this sermon, sin cannot go unpunished. This punishment is the infirmity and sorrow which we will all have to face for all eternity unless this payment is paid for us. How precious is the words of this revelation from God given to us by Isaiah. "Surely He, Jesus Christ, took our infirmities and carried our sorrows." Jesus suffered the pains of hell in our place. He suffered eternal death for us and instead of us. This is what it means when we read Peter saying in his letter 'He bore our sins in his body on the cross'.

There is no love like the love of Jesus. There is no greater love than the love of God. What sacrifice! what cost! what suffering borne in love for us! Again a hymn expresses our emotions as we contemplate the cross - 'I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me'.

We can't say that God was striking Jesus on the cross for any personal sin of Jesus, because we know that Jesus was sinless. His life testifies to this fact. Yet God did strike Jesus. We have this great truth at the end of verse 6 "the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all".

However we must not suppose that God was striking Jesus for his own sin. God's testimony concerning Jesus was that he was his one and only well beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased. God was pleased with his Son because his Son was one with him in all things. Further the testimony of the life of Jesus is of his utmost purity and perfection of life. Pilate, the Roman governor who tried Jesus, testified to his sinlessness, though in fear of the Jews he gave Jesus up to be crucified.

God's infinite love for sinners yearned that they may be saved from their sin and its dread consequence, yet God's infinite holiness could not be reconciled to the sinner unless and until the defilement of sin had been removed and God's law on account of sin had been satisfied. It was God's infinite wisdom, love and power, which devised the only way He could be just and at the same time account the sinner just and righteous in his sight.

So it was God who laid on Jesus all our sin. It was Jesus who in love submitted wholeheartedly to the will of the Father and agreed to take responsibility for all our sin, and it was God who smote Jesus on the cross with the final and full punishment for sin, and visited the judgement for the sin of the world on His one and only dearly loved Son.

This is why the cross is so infinitely powerful and meets all that is required for us to be justified before God and accounted righteous in his sight. The infinite value of Jesus, God's Son, made his death of infinite value and more than enough to atone for all sin. It was God, the judge of all the earth, who gave his Son as the substitute sin bearer, and so we are sure that the death of Jesus meets all the holy demands of the justice of God, and fully brings our acquittal and the verdict of not guilty any more in God's sight.

The understanding of the cross as the place where the sin of the world was fully punished, and the justice of God fully met, is no vain imagining of the human mind, but the very will and wisdom of God. It is this fact that makes the cross, and Jesus dying there, the rock of our salvation. We may be certain Jesus fully atoned for our sin. We may be certain that we are fully justified before God through faith in Jesus. We can be eternally secure even though we are grieved at our constant falling short of the glory of God, because our standing before God as righteous is not upon the ground of our imperfect efforts at holiness, but on the perfect work of Jesus in atoning for our sin upon the cross.

The work of Jesus which God planned and executed was a perfect work. It was finished once and for all when Jesus cried on the cross 'It is finished'. God gave testimony to this fact when he raised Jesus from the dead, and raised him to heaven to sit at his right hand on the throne of heaven. Christ's work is perfect and complete, and so can't be diminished through our continual sinning. Further when God struck Jesus for the sin of the world, it was not only the sins we have committed already up to this point of time that were included, but as is revealed, it was the sin of the world - that is all the sin that has and ever will be committed by God's chosen people who believe on Jesus.

I finish with verses from two hymns. They are not sung much today and don't appear in modern hymn books, but they express this glorious truth we have been considering together. I quote them so that we may be able to lay hold of this salvation more deeply by faith and live in the joy of it.

John Newton wrote -
Let us love, and sing, and wonder;
Let us praise the Saviour's Name.
He has hushed the Law's loud thunder;
He has quenched mount Sinai's flame.
He has washed us in his blood.
He has brought us near to God.

Augustus Toplady wrote -
A debtor to mercy alone,
Of covenant mercy I sing;
Nor fear to draw near to Thy throne,
My person and offerings to bring.
The wrath of a sin hating God,
With me hath nothing to do.
My Saviour's obedience to blood,
Hides all my transgressions from view.