THE SUFFERING SERVANT OF GOD
Meditations in Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12
GOD’S WONDROUS GRACE

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THIS verse reaches the very heart of the Gospel of God. At the heart of the Gospel of God is an act of pure grace by God - an act of gracious substitution. If we want to classify this act of grace in theological terms, we call it ‘substitutionary atonement’, but this name, though convenient and accurate, is theological and cold. What we have in this verse is the wonder of God’s saving love - such love as passes comprehension, yet an act of love with everlasting consequences of joy for all who will believe and receive it. God and God alone is at the heart of this Gospel. God does everything, and we gratefully receive his love.

May the Spirit of God open up God’s wondrous grace to us afresh, and in power, as we think upon and contemplate this verse.

Grace is an act of pure love to those who do not deserve it. Grace is something that reaches down to those who are helpless and lost, through their own fault and who are entirely deserving of blame and rejection, and saving them and lifting them up without any condition. Grace is an act of love which answers the total need of human helplessness, and gives and does everything to deliver us from our folly, without any cost to the sinner.

In grace, on the one hand we have human beings unworthy and lost; and on the other we have God who reaches down to us in our undeserving, and delivers us.

The first part of the verse before us speaks of human undeserving. In one simple picture we are given a blinding insight upon ourselves and our living.

Firstly, we are like sheep. Human being vaunt their cleverness and their wisdom. We point to technological advance, and claim we are rather special, yet we fail to face the fact of war, cruelty, broken relationships, cheating, selfishness, and much much more, which spoils our world. God, through Isaiah, tells the truth. Human beings, with all our cleverness, are like sheep. We are foolish and wayward. We are not able to look after ourselves.

Secondly, like sheep we have gone astray. Though with our minds, human beings know what is right and good, and also know what we ought to be and how we ought to live, yet we go astray from this. We don’t and can’t live up to our ideals, nor do we seem to want to. One example of this can be found in the fact that we realise that our selfish living is destroying our world and environment, but we are unable to give up our selfish way of life which is swiftly using up the natural resources of the earth, and polluting the environment. We talk a lot, but nations can’t agree on the way forward. There are too many vested interests that get in the way. We want our comfort now.

Thirdly, we have turned to our own way. We have done our own thing. We are selfish. Selfishly we put ourselves first. We applaud words which speak of the need of caring for others, and giving fair share for all, yet when is comes to action, we hold on to our own rights and comforts, even if this brings pain to others.

In a word, humanity is selfish and has turned away from the good which God has written into his creation. We turn the beauty of sex into lust and selfish satisfaction. We turn our need for food into self indulgence. Instead of living for God who created us, and gives us all things, we live for ourselves. God has given us life, and breathe and all the good we enjoy, and humanity takes it for granted, and gives little, if nothing, back to God.

If someone cheats us, we are up in arms, condemn the cheat, claim compensation, and demand that the cheat is brought to justice, yet we cheat God, and are not ready to admit or confess what we have done so, and that we deserve rejection and condemnation in strict justice from God.

The truth is that we are guilty before God our creator. The debt we have incurred with regard to God is enormous, and beyond our ability to pay. God has no obligation to show us any pity or spare us in the least way all the just desert of our failing to live in the way he requires of his creatures. Yet God still loves us. He shows unconditional love to those who are completely undeserving of his love. God shows a love which goes to greatest lengths to save us from our folly and to deliver us from the just consequences of our selfishness. His love reaches down to us in such self giving, that God leaves nothing for us to do in order for us to be saved from our sin, because we have no ability to help in the smallest way to atone for our wrong doing.

This is grace. This is unmerited favour and love. This is God’s love.

The glory and wonder of this revelation in this verse Isaiah was inspired to write is that God acts. Though we have gone astray; though we have wilfully gone our own way, and so rebelled against God; though we have forfeited any regard from God; God has acted in love and grace.

Instead of treating us in strict justice, which could only mean that human beings would be judged, condemned and sentenced to eternal death, God has acted to save, and provide a way we can be forgiven, loved and exalted.

The words of this verse are so amazing, so powerful and so wonderful. God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. God has acted to save. God has stepped in to save us from our folly. God has done something that is complete and effective, which requires nothing from us, except that we admit that we are lost, and reach out in our need to accept God’s loving gift of life.

I don’t know how to get across the incredible revelation here. It is like someone who has been defrauded by another person of a very great sum of money, and then paying the debt himself so the one who did the defrauding may be saved from the just consequences of his action. The defrauded one takes responsibility for the debt, and meets the demands of the law for the theft. It is like someone who has suffered from a murder of their loved one, then stepping forward and agreeing to be executed for the crime, so the murderer may go free.

Imagine for a moment that the death penalty was again in place in our land. Imagine a terrorist being convicted of a heinous murder and condemned to be hanged. Then imagine the one who had been harmed by the murder, stepping forward and saying that he would die in the place of the guilty terrorist. This begins to tell something of the grace of God towards us, yet even this is a pale description of God’s act of grace towards us who have sinned against him.

Isaiah declares this revelation of God’s grace. God laid on HIM, the Servant of God, who we understand to be our Saviour, Jesus Christ, the iniquity of us all. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. God gave his Son, not simply to come into the world to show us where we have gone wrong, and help us to do better. This would not have been able to save us from our sins. God’s justice had to be met. Sin against God and God’s law can’t be left by a just God, and left unpunished. The penalty of the law must be exacted. What is the wondrous grace of God? God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.

The law of God demands that we, who have sinned against God, must die, and be condemned to everlasting hell. This dooms us to everlasting woe. There is nothing we can do to meet the demands of God’s justice. We are lost, and lost by our own fault. God’s wondrous grace is that God totals up all our sins and then makes his one and only Son responsible for all of them. Our Lord Jesus, in total love, accepts this load of guilt and shame. God then judges the sin of the world, and satisfies the justice of his law, by condemning his Son, and pouring out on him all the just penalty for the sin of the world.

In a word, Jesus takes our place. He substitutes himself in the place of us. And so he came into the world to give his life a ransom for many. This is what he said. He took upon himself our guilt, and took responsibility for our sin and set his face firmly to suffer death. So at his trial he did not defend himself from the unjust accusations brought against him, and meekly allowed himself to suffer and die. The Gospel narrative makes plain that there was no power on earth that could have crucified Jesus, if Jesus had not allowed wicked men to crucify him. Pilate, the Roman governor who presided over his trial, claimed to have such power, but Jesus told him that he had no such power unless God had allowed him it. In his life time Jesus proved people could not take him, until he was ready, and so passed through hostile crowds and they could not touch him.

Then as we look at the crucifixion we see something deeper. Under the miraculous cloak of darkness at the crucifixion of Jesus, there was an act of God as the judge of all the earth. God turned away from his Son, and Jesus was condemned to outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Jesus suffered eternity of hell condensed to those three hours. The terrible and awful suffering of the Saviour is hid from us, except for the cry of our dear Saviour wrung from him when he cried, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me’.

The truth is that Jesus was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be the righteousness of God in him. Jesus took our place before the justice of God. Jesus accepted our sin and all its guilt and condemnation in our place and for us, that we may have transferred to us all his perfect and saving righteousness.

What grace! What infinite love is this! God gave his Son to suffer all that we deserve to suffer! Our degradation and our punishment, which we richly deserve God laid on his sinless and perfectly holy Son, that we might have life, and joy, and peace.

Dear friends, God opens the arms of his love to you in this act of substitution. Jesus has died and there on the cross took all your sins upon himself when he died. God offers you Jesus as your Saviour and sin bearer, and promises that when you believe on Jesus, and accept this act of love he did for you, and accept it in sorrow, repentance and faith, then your sins are forgiven forever, and will be remembered no more. God loves you and offers you life which Jesus won for you at so great cost.

Open your heart to God’s love. Enter the embrace of the Saviour with total love and acceptance. ‘Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me.’ ‘Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.’