Why the Lord's Servant Suffered So Deeply
This was the meditation on Isaiah 53:4-6 I used in the Good Friday service.
When we see a calamity come down on the head of a man, our first response often goes to the question of cause:
“Why?”
“Why must this person suffer such great sorrow?”
And sometimes, we find ourselves indulging the self-righteous instinct to suspect we know the answer to that question: the sufferer must have done something wrong.
This is nothing new.
This tendency to blame the victim actually has ancient precedents.
In the oldest book in the Bible, we hear Job’s friends tell him that his calamities must be God’s judgment for some secret sin, so he should confess and repent.
Hundreds of years later, on seeing a beggar who had been blind from birth, Jesus’ disciples ask Him a casual theological question: “Whose sin is the cause for this man’s suffering? His or his parents’?”
This the theological assumption we find underlying Isaiah’s words about the Suffering Servant of the Lord, a man whose life would be filled with sorrows of all kinds:
The Suffering Servant would know grief and carry a burden of sorrow.
He would be regarded as one stricken by God and afflicted.
The Suffering Servant would be pierced and crushed and wounded.
He would experience the chastisement, the severe punishment, of God.
The Suffering Servant would bear the public shame of iniquity and guilt.
But this time, says Isaiah, there is a twist. The great sorrow and humiliation we see in this man is due to no fault of his own.
As we read Isaiah’s haunting words about the man who would bear such great suffering, and we discover that we ourselves are the cause of His sorrow:
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds 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.
So we see that the one who is the object of pity and scorn and ridicule is actually standing in place of the guilty. The one who should be filled with sorrow, the one who should be stricken and crushed and wounded, the one who should experience the severe punishment of God and the shame of iniquity… that guilty man stands apart and only observes another suffering in his place.
I am that guilty man.
And Jesus is the One Isaiah saw enduring the blows that should have fallen on me. Jesus is the One who suffered in my place, in the place of all who would put their trust in Him.
And yet on the day that Jesus stood in the place of sinners, He was the only One who understood what was happening. Everyone else misinterpreted what they saw. All they could see was a martyr’s noble death or the well-deserved end for a troublemaker.
But Jesus knew what He was doing that day. He was suffering in my place, in the place of all who would put their trust in Him.
How can we respond to such great generosity, such breath-taking, unexpected kindness?
We cannot respond in kind.
We cannot recompense the Father for giving up His Son.
And even if we gave our entire life to serving Jesus, we could not pay Him back for what He’s done for us.
All we can do is receive His kindness with profound gratitude and say with the Apostle Paul, “Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.”
Persevere, Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship