Jesus in Isaiah 53
Jesus in Isaiah 53
There is much to learn about our lovely Lord Jesus in Isaiah. Chapter 53 is full of wonderful insights. Let’s look at some of them.
Right at the outset we have a question that helps us be certain of the hope we have.
Isaiah 53:1 asks, “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (NIV) Paul uses this text to explain that not everyone who hears the Gospel accepts it as the truth. Here’s what he had to say in Romans 10:16, “But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” (NIV)
From this we can take reassurance that our hope that believing God, choosing to take Him at His word, is all that is necessary for us to gain righteousness and eternal life. Paul goes on in this part of Romans to talk about how the Hebrew people refused to believe God, and the message was received by the Gentiles. This is the difference between spiritual life and spiritual death because spiritual life is found only in God through Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53:2 “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (NIV)
When we looked at Jesus in Isaiah 11, we saw the same description. In verse one there we read, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.” Here we note that this shoot is tender.
In Isaiah 42:3 we find this picture of the tenderness and gentleness of Jesus. It says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.” (NIV) This is quoted by Matthew as well.
In Romans 2:4, Paul tells us that God’s kindness leads people to repentance. It is clear that tenderness is a trait we should expect of Jesus. We find similar language in Galatians 5:22. The fruit of the spirit includes love, patience, kindness and gentleness. This is what we can expect from God because this is what God is like.
Verse 2 in our text goes on to say that Jesus had no beauty or majesty or anything in His appearance that would attract us to Him or cause us to desire Him. I think this is so important for us to consider.
Jesus is the almighty God of the universe, the creator of all that is. He could have come to earth in power with great majesty and fanfare. He could have been stunningly beautiful arrayed in light. He could have overwhelmed every person on the planet and caused them to come to Him by the sheer glory and power of His infinite perfection.
But God is not like that. He is love. He is uninterested in relationships based on coercion, pressure, or emotional infatuation. So instead, He came as a baby. The Almighty laid down His prerogatives as deity and took upon Himself the form of a servant.
Philippians 2:6–8 relates this with great clarity. “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (NIV)
Picking up now with verse 3 of our text in Isaiah 53.
Isaiah 53:3 “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.”
Indeed, having come as a baby, completely dependent on His earthly parents, Jesus was unrecognizable. The Bible recounts in John 1:10–11 that “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” (NIV)
More than simply not being beautiful and attractive, Jesus was like one from whom people hide their faces. The one true God in human flesh was despised and rejected. As Philippians 2 says, He took the very nature of a servant. He was held in low esteem. Jesus was familiar with suffering and pain.
Jesus knows exactly what it’s like to be human. He knows what it feels like to live within the limitations of time and space, to live in bodies of flesh and blood. He knows what it is to face rejection, to be reviled and despised, to be betrayed by friends.
Hebrews 4:15–16 tells us that, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (NIV)
This is such a beautiful and reassuring message of hope and peace. As James 3:2 says, we all stumble in many ways. It is so comforting to know that when we fail to behave in godly ways we can talk to Jesus about it and He will not respond with judgement and shaming. We can share our failures with Him, and He will respond with compassion because He “gets” it. He has been where we are in those moments. We can count on Him to be merciful and graceful. We can be sure that He will build us up and encourage us toward the better things we were designed for.
Now to Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (NIV)
To say that a great deal took place at the cross is at once the truth and a great understatement. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. What this means is not always well appreciated. The word “sin” at its most basic means missing the mark. What mark is that you ask? Jesus told us in Matthew 5:48. There, He said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (NIV) We see this in Isaiah as well. In Isaiah 64:6 we find, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” (NIV)
The Bible is clear that the natural consequence of sin is death. That may seem harsh, but it is the truth because the source of life is God. As we read in Psalm 100:3 “the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.” (NIV) And as verse six points out, like sheep, we have all gone astray and turned to our own way.
There is a saying among sheep farmers. They say, “As soon as a sheep is born it starts looking for a way to die.” They say that because sheep are notorious for going off and getting themselves into bad situations. Without the shepherd, sheep would not fare well at all. In the same way, apart from God, we would not (indeed we could not) exist. We wander off and get into trouble. We refuse to listen to what our Shepherd says is best for us and go our own way instead. In many ways, the moment we are born, we begin looking for a way to die. We are sure not perfect.
Because we are imperfect, we are incompatible with God. Nothing impure can exist in God and God cannot live in or join Himself to, anything imperfect. This incompatibility exists at the level of our being, our spirit. Apart from Jesus, we are spiritually dead to God. We need to be connected to the source of life, and that is what Jesus did at the cross. In the verse we are studying we learn that what Jesus did in laying down His life He did for us. Because Jesus is perfect His sacrifice takes away our guilt, heals us, and gives us peace with God. We become compatible with Him, we are immersed into Him, we become joined with Him in our spirit, and by that union, He lives in us.
This happens because we are made righteous at the core of our being, our spirit. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (NIV) As our text in Isaiah said, “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Jesus did everything necessary for us to be made righteous and then He gave us the credit for it. In Him we have been made the very righteousness of God. Romans 5:1–2 talks of the peace resulting from our newfound righteousness. It reads, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.” (NIV)
As an aside here, there are those who read Isaiah 53:4 to mean that we who are in Christ can expect never to be ill. They use several arguments to justify this view, but it is incorrect. This is talking about spiritual healing of that ultimate sickness we inherited from the first people—sin. To say that all believers should expect physical health is cruel and dangerous. It is clear that believers suffer from diseases of every kind. Paul had physical issues, as did Timothy. Teaching otherwise causes pain, confusion, and doubt in God’s children and those do not come from Him.
Picking up our study now in Isaiah 53:7-9 “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
This is such an amazing statement. I cannot imagine going through the kind of difficulty Jesus faced without grumbling, complaining, and generally being no fun to be around. We see none of that in Him. The reason is that God is love. This hearkens back to the tenderness and gentleness we read about in the first couple of verses of Isaiah 53.
Jesus did not defend Himself. Instead, He trusted the Father to know what was best for Him and to carry out His plan despite, in, and through the rejection and derision He endured.
Jesus was unfairly convicted. His trial was a sham. False witnesses were presented. So obviously biased was it that Luke records in 23:13–14 “Pilate called together the chief priests, the rulers and the people, and said to them, “You brought me this man as one who was inciting the people to rebellion. I have examined him in your presence and have found no basis for your charges against him.” (NIV)
We know the result. Jesus was indeed “cut off from the land of the living.” His life was forfeit for our wrongdoings. 2 Corinthians 5:19 sheds light on what was taking place. It tells us that, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” (NIV)
Jesus died a criminal’s death. The great God of love allowed Himself to be killed by those He created. Although He had never sinned in any way, He was treated as if He had committed every sin of every person in all of history. He was, as we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “Made to be sin.” He took upon Himself the iniquity of us all, as we read earlier in verse six of our text.
In so doing, the innocent Lamb of God bore the sin of the entire world and made forgiveness possible for everyone.
Finishing up now, let’s look at Isaiah 53 verses 10-12.
10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
The death of Jesus made an end to sin as we learn from Hebrews 9:26 which reads in part, “he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (NIV)
Now, in these two wonderful verses we see the other half of the good news of Jesus Christ. Here we learn that though Jesus died to take away the sin of the world, He will see His offspring, He will once again see the light of life, and He will be satisfied.
I really like the way the NET Bible translates this. It reads, “Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done.” Isaiah 53:11a (NET) I think this rendering of the text is bolstered by Hebrews 12:2 where we read, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (NIV)
Romans 4:25 makes it clear that two things happened. One when Jesus died and another when He was raised from the dead. It says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (NIV) Our justification means that we have been given such righteousness that it is just as if we had never sinned. More than that, it is as if we were sinless just as Jesus is sinless.
Since, according to 2 Corinthians 5:21, we have been given His righteousness, we stand righteous, holy, and blameless. Ephesians 1:4 puts it this way, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” (NIV)
We are fully and finally compatible with God, or as Romans 11:16 says, “if the root is holy, so are the branches.
We meet the righteous requirement of the Law. Paul talks about this idea in Romans 8:3-4. There he wrote, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (NIV)
At our core, we are made perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. The righteous requirement of the law is perfection, just as Jesus said in Matthew 5:48, which we read way back at the beginning of this study. I’m sure you remember that. He said, “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” That sort of thing will stick with you.
So, Jesus did all this wonderful stuff. It is amazing. It is awesome. It is good beyond words. The last verse in Isaiah 53 says this, “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”
The reward of Jesus is great. Everything is summed up in Him. His enemies are defeated. His name is exalted.
Inconceivably, every bit of His greatness is living in each of us. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in us. Knowing this, Paul urges the Philippians (and by extension us) this way.
Philippians 2:5–11
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (NIV)
The wonderful things about Jesus that we find in this passage in Philippians tie in perfectly with all we have been learning about Him from Isaiah.
Finally, Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians speaks volumes to us. It is my prayer for each of you.
Ephesians 1:17–23 (NIV)
17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength
20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,
21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church,
23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
May Father grant you all of this.
