Isaiah 53:3-5 - Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary

THE DESPISED AND REJECTED SAVIOUR

Isaiah 53:3. He is despised and rejected of men, &c.

This is a summary of the history of our Lord, as it is recorded by the four Evangelists. His very first hours on earth may be cited in proof of its correctness. No place could be found for Him even in an inn. His life was a life of poverty. Scorn and insult followed Him everywhere. His life closed amid circumstances of unspeakable ignominy. In these facts we have,
I. A reason for not being very strongly desirous of popularity. It is natural to desire the approval of our fellow-men; but no wise and good man will make this the end of his actions. He will seek to do right; if men applaud him for doing so, well; but if not, he will not be greatly grieved. He will not murmur because he is called to drink of the cup that Christ drank of. Shall the servant be above his Lord?

II. A consolation when fidelity to duty exposes us to unpopularity. To be reproached and ridiculed; to have our actions misjudged and our motives misrepresented; to be deserted by those whom we regarded as our friends, to be pursued by the enmity of foes whom we have not wronged, is a bitter trial. But if it should be ours, let us remember that Christ trod the same path of suffering, and sympathises with us.

III. An argument for entire consecration to the service of Christ.—The shame and suffering of which the text speaks, Christ endured for us (2 Corinthians 5:14-16).—W. H. Sullivan, M.A.: Parish Sermons, pp. 206–222).

THE MAN OF SORROWS

Isaiah 53:3. A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.

The subject of the sorrows of the Saviour has proved to be more efficacious for comfort to mourners than any other theme in the compass of revelation, or out of it. Christ is in all attitudes “the consolation of Israel,” but He is most so as a man of sorrows. As Aaron’s rod swallowed up all the other rods, so the griefs of Jesus make our griefs disappear.

I. “A MAN.” We can never meditate too much upon Christ’s blessed person as God and as man. He who is here called a man was certainly “very God of very God;” “a man,” and “a man of sorrows,” and yet at the same time “God over all, blessed for ever.” His manhood was not the less real and substantial. It differed from our own humanity in the absence of sin, but it differed in no other respect. He was no phantasm, but a man of flesh and blood, even as ourselves; a man needing sleep, requiring food and subject to pain, and a man who, in the end, yielded up His life to death (Philippians 2:7).

This condescending participation in our nature brings the Lord Jesus very near to us in relationship. Inasmuch as He was man, though also God, He was, according to Hebrew law, our goel—our kinsman, next of kin. According to the law, if an inheritance had been lost, it was the right of the next of kin to redeem it. Our Lord Jesus exercised His legal right, and seeing us sold into bondage and our inheritance taken from us, came forward to redeem both us and all our lost estate. A blessed thing it was for us that we had such a kinsman!—It would not have been consistent with Divine justice for any other substitution to have been accepted for us, except that of a man. Man sinned, and man must make reparation for the injury done to the Divine honour.

Sinner, thou mightest well tremble to approach Him whom thou hast so grievously offended; but there is a man ordained to mediate between thee and God (H. E. I. 889).
Every child of God ought also to be comforted by the fact that our Redeemer is one of our own race, tempted in all points like as we are, that He might be able to succour them that are tempted. The sympathy of Jesus is the next most precious thing to His sacrifice. [1617]

[1617] It has been to me, in seasons of great pain, superlatively comfortable to know that in every pang which racks His people the Lord Jesus has a fellow-feeling. How completely it takes the bitterness out of grief to know that it, once was suffered by Him! The Macedonian soldiers, it is said, made long forced marches which seemed to be beyond the power of mortal endurance, but the reason for their untiring energy lay in Alexander’s presence. He was accustomed to walk with them, and bear the like fatigue. If the king himself had been carried like a Persian monarch in a palanquin, in the midst of easy, luxurious state, the soldiers would soon have grown tired; but, when they looked upon the king of men himself, hungering when they hungered, thirsting when they thirsted, often putting aside the cup of water offered to him, and passing it to a fellow-soldier who looked more faint than himself, they could not dream of repining. Every Macedonian felt that he could endure any fatigue if Alexander could. This day, assuredly, we can bear poverty, slander, contempt, or bodily pain, or death itself, because Jesus Christ our Lord has borne it.—Spurgeon.

II. “A MAN OF SORROWS.” The expression is intended to be very emphatic, it is not “a sorrowful man,” but “a man of sorrows,” as if He were made up of sorrows, and they were constituent elements of His being. Some are men of pleasure, others men of wealth, but He was “a man of sorrows.”
Our Lord is called “a man of sorrows,”

(1.) For peculiarity, for this was His peculiar token and special mark. We might well call Him “a man of holiness;” for there was no fault in Him: or a man of labours, for He did His Father’s business earnestly; or “a man of eloquence,” for never man spake like this man. Yet had we gazed upon Christ and been asked afterwards what was the most striking peculiarity in Him, we should have said His sorrows. The various parts of His character were so singularly harmonious that no one quality predominated, so as to become a leading feature. But there was a peculiarity, and it lay in the fact that “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men,” through the excessive griefs which continually passed over His spirit. Tears were His insignia, and the cross His escutcheon. He was the warrior in black armour, and not as now the rider upon the white horse. He was the lord of grief, the prince of pain, the emperor of anguish, a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”

2. By way of eminence. He was not only sorrowful, but pre-eminent among the sorrowful. All men have a burden to bear, but His was heaviest of all. Common sufferers must give place, for none can match with Him in woe. He who was the most obedient Son smarted most under the rod when He was stricken of God and afflicted; no other of the smitten ones have sweat great drops of blood, or in the same bitterness of anguish cried, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

The reasons for this superior sorrow may be found in the fact that with His sorrow there was no admixture of sin. Sin deserves sorrow, but it also blunts the edge of grief by rendering the soul untender and unsympathetic. We do not start at sin as Jesus did, we do not tremble at the sinner’s doom as Jesus would. His was a perfect nature, which, because it knew no sin, was not in its element amid sorrow, but was like a land bird driven out to sea by the gale. To the robber the jail is his home, and the prison fare is the meat to which he is accustomed, but to an innocent man a prison is misery, and everything about it is strange and foreign. Our Lord’s pure nature was peculiarly sensitive of any contact with sin; we, alas! by the Fall, have lost much of that feeling. Our hands grow horny with toiling, and our hearts with sinning; but our Lord was, as it were, like a man whose flesh was all one quivering wound; He was delicately sensitive of every touch of sin. We go through thorn-brakes and briars of sin because we are clothed with indifference, but imagine a naked man, compelled to traverse a forest of briars—and such was the Saviour, as to His moral sensitiveness. He could see sin where we cannot see it, and feel its heinousness as we cannot feel it: there was therefore more to grieve Him, and He was more capable of being grieved.
Side by side with His painful sensitiveness of the evil of sin, was His gracious tenderness towards the sorrows of others. All men’s sorrows were His sorrows. His heart was so large, that it was inevitable that He should become “a man of sorrows.”
Besides this, our Saviour had a peculiar relationship to sin. Sin was laid upon Him, and He was Himself numbered with the transgressors; and therefore He was called to bear the terrible blows of Divine justice, and suffered unknown, immeasurable agonies. “It pleased the Father to bruise Him, He hath put Him to grief.” behold the man, and mark how vain it would be to seek His equal sorrow.

3. To indicate the constancy of His afflictions. Born in a stable, sorrow received Him, and only on the cross at His last breath did sorrow part with Him. His disciples might forsake Him, but His sorrows would not leave Him. He was often alone without a man, but never alone without a grief.

4. Because of the variety of His woes; He was a man not of sorrow only, but of “sorrows.” All the sufferings of the body and of the soul were known to Him. Affliction emptied its quiver upon Him, making His heart the target for all conceivable woes.

(1.) Our Lord was a man of sorrows as to His poverty. Oh, you who are in want, your want is not so abject as His: He had not where to lay His head, but you have at least some humble roof to shelter you.

(2.) Our Saviour knew the heart-rendings of bereavement. Jesus wept, as He stood at the tomb of Lazarus.

(3.) Perhaps the bitterest of His sorrows were those which were connected with His gracious work. He came as the Messiah sent of God, on an embassage of love, and men rejected His claims. There was no name of contempt which they did not pour upon Him; nay, it was not merely contempt, but they proceeded to falsehood, slander, and blasphemy. There was not a word He spoke but they would wrest it; not a doctrine but what they would misrepresent it: He could not speak but what they would find in His words some occasion against Him. Was there ever man so full of goodwill to others, who received such disgraceful treatment from those He longed to serve?

(4.) His was a lonely life; even when He was with His followers, He was alone. [1620]

(5.) In the last crowning sorrows of His life, there came upon Him the penal inflictions from God, the chastisement of our peace, which was upon Him. The sharpest scourging and severest griefs were all within; while the hand of God bruised Him, and the iron rod of justice broke Him, as it were, upon the wheel.

[1620] Even if they sympathised with Him to the utmost of their capacity, they could not enter into such griefs as His. A father in a house with many little children about him, cannot tell his babes his griefs; if he did they would not comprehend him. What know they of his anxious business transactions, or his crushing losses? Poor little things, their father does not wish they should be able to sympathise with him; he looks down upon them, and rejoices that their toys will comfort them, and that their little prattle will not be broken in upon by his great griefs. The Saviour, from the very dignity of His nature, must suffer alone. The mountain-side, with Christ upon it, seems to me to be a suggestive symbol of His earthly life. His great soul lived in vast solitudes, sublime and terrible, and there amid a midnight of trouble, His spirit communed with the Father, no one being able to accompany Him into the dark glens and gloomy ravines of His unique experience. Of all His life’s warfare He might have said in some senses, “of the people there was none with me;” and at the last it became literally true, for they all forsook Him—one denied Him and another betrayed Him, so that He trod the wine-press alone.—Spurgeon.

III. “ACQUAINTED WITH GRIEF.”

1. With grief He had an intimate acquaintance. He did not know merely what it was in others, but it came home to Himself. We have read of grief, sympathised with grief, sometimes felt grief: but the Lord felt it more intensely than other men in His innermost soul; He, beyond us all, was conversant with this black-letter lore.

2. It was a continuous acquaintance. It was indeed a growing acquaintance with grief, for each step took Him deeper down into the grim shades of sorrow. As there is a progress in the teaching of Christ and in the life of Christ, so is there also in the griefs of Christ. The tempest lowered darker, and darker, and darker. His sun rose in a cloud, but it set in congregated horrors of heaped-up night, till, in a moment, the clouds were suddenly rent in sunder, and, as a loud voice proclaimed, “It is finished!” glorious morning dawned where all expected an eternal night.

3. This acquaintance of Christ with grief was a voluntary acquaintance for our sakes. He need never have known a grief at all, and at any moment He might have said to grief, Farewell. But He remained to the end, out of love to us, grief’s acquaintance.

What shall I say in conclusion, but just this: let us admire the superlative love of Jesus. O love, what hast thou done! Thou art omnipotent in suffering. Few of us can bear pain, perhaps fewer still of us can bear misrepresentation, slander, and ingratitude. These are horrible hornets which sting as with fire: men have been driven to madness by cruel scandals which have distilled from venomous tongues. Christ, throughout life, bore these and other sufferings. Let us love Him, as we think of how much He must have loved us.—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1099.

“Behold the man!” There is a fascination in His human sympathies, tears, words, that is irresistible. As we toil on our way amid sorrow and distress, we remember Who it is that has power to succour the tempted (Hebrews 4:15). The Redeemer was emphatically “a man of sorrows.” In the Gospel narrative this is more frequently implied than expressed, although there are not wanting passages in which it is definitely stated (Mark 3:5; John 11:35; Matthew 26:37-38).

There are various causes for sorrow:—
I. ISOLATION OF SPIRIT.—It is no mere conceit, in which the poet tells us that

“Not e’en the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.”

A wiser than he had said: “The heart knoweth its own bitterness,” &c. This solitariness of spirit was the heritage of Christ.

1. There was no spirit on earth that could claim perfect kindred with His spirit. No sympathy—in the true use of the word—could be between Him and sinful souls. The best and holiest could not look upon life from His standpoint, nor enter into His feelings, nor share His aspirations.

2. He was love personified; they were selfish. The affections of His heart were perpetually welling up like an inexhaustible fountain; they were wrapped up in self, and knew no higher delight than self-gratification—no higher principle than love of self.

3. His heart yearned after companionship, and found it not. It called to its fellows, but they understood not its language. Hence He was alone (Isaiah 63:3).

II. THE CONTEMPLATION OF SORROW IN OTHERS. This was pre-eminently the case with Jesus Christ. When the news of the Baptist’s death was brought to Him, He went into the wilderness, but at the cry of human need He soon came forth again; and as soon as He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion toward them, and healed their sick. As He journeyed from place to place there were always appeals to His tenderest feelings. Not often was He called to the house of mirth; but He was frequently sought to go to the house of mourning. We find Him once at a marriage feast; once at the table of Simon; twice “eating with publicans and sinners,” and sharing the modest hospitalities of Bethany; but sorrowing hearts were always seeking His comfort and His help.
III. BEREAVEMENT. The world has never heard a more touching story than that at Bethany. For Himself He shed no tears, and gently reproved those who wept for Him but; the sight of misery in others drew floods of tears from His eyes.

IV. DISAPPOINTMENT. Of this Jesus tasted to the full. “He went about doing good;” surely from all the seed He sowed He had a right to expect a bountiful harvest! Yet the seed fell for the most part on unproductive soil (Matthew 13:1-9). The nine lepers who returned not to give thanks for their cleansing were but typical of multitudes who selfishly received all and gave nothing in return (Psalms 106:13). Thousands followed Him, because “they did eat of the loaves and were filled;” Those who attached themselves to Him were but few, while even these left Him at the last. Was there not something of disappointment in the compassion that moved Him to say, “O Jerusalem,” &c.? (Matthew 23:37.) Said not Isaiah truly, He was “a man of sorrows”? Tears were His meat day and night, and He could say: “Reproach hath broken My beart,” &c. (Psalms 69:20).—Frederick Wagstaff: Study and Pulpit, New Series (1876), pp. 237–239.

I. The sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. A sanctuary we should enter with reverence, &c.

1. His were chiefly agonies of the soul.
2. The magnitude and intensity of any soul’s sufferings are in proportion to the soul’s greatness. The greater the soul, the greater its capacity for suffering.
3. How the agonies of His soul and body reacted upon each other. The agony of His soul, acting upon the body, produced utter prostration. His physical suffering reacted again upon His soul.
4. We must also take into account their propitiatory character.

II. The relation of His sufferings to those of whom it is here said that they despise and reject Him.

1. The object for which He came was to save them.
2. To despise and reject Him is a poor return for all His love.
3. We may well be ashamed that the Lord of life and glory should receive such treatment in our world. He is despised and rejected still. He that despiseth Christ wrongeth his own soul—deprives it of its highest and only true and enduring bliss. You cannot do without Christ.—L. H. Byrnes, B.A.: The Christian World, June 8, 1866.

How pathetic is the designation here applied to the Messiah, and how truly was it verified in Jesus—“A Man of Sorrows!”
I. The fact that the Lord Jesus was, in His humiliation, a Man of Sorrows. There are minds that resent this description, that deem it incredible that it should apply to a Divine Being, or regard such a picture as marred by an unwholesome sentiment. In fact, the true and full impression of the picture can only be received by those who acknowledge both the Deity and the Humanity of Christ. We recognise several elements in this sorrow.

1. There was personal sorrow when He wept tears of grief, when there escaped Him groans of disappointment.

2. The sorrow of sympathy and compassion, when He grieved for His friends, for His nation, for the disobedient and rebellious, for the sin stricken race of man.

3. Christ’s was progressive sorrow. It gathered thick as a cloud above His head as His ministry advanced. It culminated with life’s close in Gethsemane and on Calvary.

II. How it came to pass that the Lord Jesus was a Man of Sorrows.

1. It was through His contact with sin and with sinners,—to a nature like His how specially painful and distressing.

2. It was also through His conscious bearing of sin; the sins of the whole world having been laid upon Him and assumed by Him.

3. He suffered through His conflict with sin, He endured the contradiction of sinners. Wounds and scars were inflicted upon His sensitive nature in this appalling battle.

III. With what intent the Lord Jesus deigned to become a Man of Sorrows.

1. That He might be the representative man, the Head of an afflicted humanity.

2. That He might be the Saviour—perfect through sufferings, as the Captain of our salvation.

3. That He might be a sympathising High Priest, touched with a feeling of our infirmities. His sorrows were to avert our woes and to procure our bliss.—The Homiletical Library, vol. ii. p. 78.

I. The language of our text does not describe the case of one who encountered only the ordinary or the average amount of the trials which belong to human life. There is implied in it a pre-eminence in sorrow, a peculiarly deep experience of grief.
II. Of all the many griefs of the Divine Redeemer in His human life, there was not one which He Himself either needed or deserved to bear.
III. All the sufferings of the Lord Jesus, so painful, and so entirely unnecessary and undeserved on His own account, were endured with unwavering fortitude, [1623]

[1623] He was to the last moment of His life a willing sufferer. He was moved, deeply moved by sorrow; and He wept—wept often, it is probable. Tears are the innocent, and many times the sweet relief of the distressed. He dreaded suffering, too, like others, when He saw its near approach, and felt the instinctive desire to be saved from its bitter pangs; but, notwithstanding this, His fortitude was steady and unyielding; so that He met the hour of anguish, at all times, with a noble constancy of soul. When human nature, almost overborne by the weight of anguish, prompted the petition, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” the unbending strength of moral purpose, the enduring energy of perfect self-devotion, at once dictated the addition: “Father, Thy will be done.” … Even His last mournful exclamation under the hidings of the Father’s face, in the last affecting scene on Calvary, is no exception to the truth of these remarks; for that was only a testimony to the world of the extremity of the anguish which its Redeemer consented to endure, and not at all the utterance of faltering or failing resolution.—Ray Palmer.

IV. In all the griefs and sorrows which the blessed Saviour suffered, His mind was chiefly occupied with the good results in which His sufferings were to issue (Hebrews 12:2).

PRACTICAL LESSONS.

1. If even the Son of God, when on earth, was a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, we certainly should not think it strange that days of trial are appointed unto us.
2. If our blessed Lord felt keenly what He suffered, and was even moved to tears, we need not reproach ourselves because we deeply feel our trials, and cannot but weep in the fulness of our grief (P. D. 3287).
3. If Christ was a willing sufferer, deliberately choosing to suffer for the good of others, we surely should consent to suffer for our own advantage (H. E. I. 158; P. D. 3239, 3246).
4. If our blessed Lord made less account of what He suffered than of the good results which were to follow, it is wise at least in us to do the same (H. E. I. 2204–2221, 3678–3704).—Bay Palmer, D.D.: The National Preacher, vol. xxxviii. pp. 25–34.)

THE SUFFERING SAVIOUR

Isaiah 53:3-5. He is despised and rejected of men. &c.

A deliverer was expected. “The desire of all nations.” What sort of personage was He? He was a disappointment, and was treated as one. For He was a suffering Saviour. Yet this is His glory.
I. A SUFFERING SAVIOUR IN PROPHECY.

The text predicts this. Picture out the kind of career indicated in the text. Men admire grandeur, despise poverty and suffering. But He was “a man of sorrows;” and it is quite possible that He carried in His countenance the marks of inward suffering. Prophecy required that He should be a sufferer: this chapter, and many other passages. There are in fact two classes of prophecies—the one represents Him as a sufferer, the other as a reigning King. If He had not suffered, the proof of His Messiahship would have been fatally defective (Luke 18:31-34; Luke 24:26-27; Luke 24:44-46; Acts 3:18).

II. A SUFFERING SAVIOUR IN HISTORY.
“Behold the man,” said Pilate. Was He not rejected, despised, “a man of sorrows”? Fine natures feel such a position as that in which He was placed, coarse natures do not. And there were deeper causes of sorrow than man could fathom. The prospect immediately before Him was sorrowful enough. He had said, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour.” “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” He had agonised in the garden. He had sweat, as it were, great drops of blood. He had cried out for the cup to pass away. He had felt the bitterness of betrayal. He had been tried by the Jewish court. He had been crowned and scourged by the Roman soldiery. Ere many hours had passed He felt the shame, the pain, the fever of crucifixion. He was forsaken of God. His heart broke. His sufferings ended only with His life.
Such were the facts of history. Such were the requirements of prophecy. Thus—

1. Scripture was fulfilled.
2. His Messiahship was proved.
3. Satisfaction was made for sin. Repentance by itself is no satisfaction for past sin (H. E.

1. 4225–4228). Nor is reformation. Nor is there any force within man’s depraved nature that would impel to repentance. Therefore atonement is needed by another: Himself suitable as being Divine, human, sinless (Isaiah 53:4).

Such is the Saviour. Thus He suffered. Measuring love by the labour it is willing to undergo, the suffering it is willing to endure, the sacrifices it is willing to make, does the love of Christ burn in our hearts with intensity such as might be expected from our obligations to Him?
Have we indeed all received Him? Do not some, like the Jews, despise and reject Him? Reflect on this.

1. Its ingratitude.

2. Its presumption. In effect it says that God hath done an unnecessary thing in giving His Son: because the end could have been gained without it. Or, that the personal acceptance of Christ, though required in the Gospel, is an unnecessary requirement: because the salvation will be given without it.

3. Its rebelliousness. It is determined love of sin and resistance of God.—J. Rawlinson.

The sufferings of Christ must always be the main subject of the believer’s thought, for no other can compare with this either in the intensity, the universality, or the duration of its interests. Strangers may think the Cross repulsive, for it is to the Greeks foolishness; but to believers it is a revelation of the power and the goodness of God. “We preach Christ crucified,” says St. Paul, and from his day unto our own “Christ crucified” is the only foundation of hope, the only rock of faith, and the only bulwark against death. No wonder, then, that the absorbing enthusiasm of Christianity has been proved able to break mighty empires in pieces, and to subdue to itself the fiercest of human passions! Neither is this a subject of merely local interest. Moses might be compared to one of those desert chiefs whose very name is unheard in civilised lands, but Christ rather resembles those majestic conquerors who have aspired after a universal and enduring kingdom. Not Jerusalem, or Rome, but all the races of mankind, are ransomed by His death. Of this theme the Church will never weary, for, so long as there is a sorrow to heal, a temptation to conquer, or a sin to pardon—so long, in fact, as man continues to be man, so long will there be need of Jesus and the Resurrection. No advancement of knowledge or civilisation can atone for the want of a Saviour. Now that same Saviour on whom we trust was also the hope of the ancient prophets. We look back on an accomplished fact, and they looked forward to a glorious promise.
I. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE LORD’S LIFE. The sorrows of our Saviour’s life are in some respects more completely above our sympathy than those of His death; for, while we can understand the pang of the nail or the thorn, we cannot so easily realise His mental or moral sorrows. Yet these latter are not to be overlooked. There was,

1. Our Lord’s loneliness. Loneliness is the inevitable penalty of greatness. Our Lord’s loneliness may seem unimportant if we look only at His divinity, but He was as perfectly man as He was truly God. Whatever, therefore, is painful to sinless man was equally painful to Christ. Now no proof is needed that man hates to be alone. How lonely was His life! A few friends gathered round Him for a time, but forsook Him in His utmost need. Burdened with the world’s redemption, He was too great and high for human sympathy. The source of all kindness, and the Creator of all families, yet of Him we are compelled to say, “He hath trodden the winepress alone.” (See p. 478.)

2. His uninterrupted self-denial. No doubt an accomplished act of self-denial always produces satisfaction. The very nature of self-denial requires that the painful feelings predominate, otherwise the act would be self-indulgence. What life, then, can compare with the life of Christ? Whatever is pleasant He put far from Him, and whatever is painful He took as His own. Christ lived in sorrow because sorrow was His own free choice. Yet we may gladly remember the suffering Saviour. A Redeemer who lived in pomp and honour, amid the palaces of the state and the triumphs of nations, would be too grand for ordinary men; but when we see Him walking in weariness and in pain, or bitterly mourning at the tomb of a friend, or forsaken by the chosen twelve, then we remember that He was “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.”

3. Our Lord’s purity and compassion. It may not at first be obvious that the purity of our Lord’s nature should produce sorrow; and yet, when we consider that He gave Himself up to the battle against impurity, we may conceive how He would shrink from contact with it. Contrast the splendid purity of that palace which He forsook, with that foul and loathsome dungeon of pollution which He entered, God’s holiness with our corruption, and then judge whether it was a small thing for Christ to live among men. Sin troubles only the pure, but sorrow appeals to all. Such an emotion always filled our Saviour’s breast. He saw all men, of every race and age, involved in one common ruin, &c. At last the burden of compassion became too heavy even for Him to bear, and He longed for the relief of the shame and agony of the cross (Luke 12:50).

4. The ingratitude and opposition of the Jews. Though no comparison can fully illustrate this subject, yet suppose that, when Satan’s host was cast down from heaven, a blessed spirit compassionated the awful ruin; suppose that, from the sacred light above, he journeys to the guilty darkness below, and there, by his own keen sorrow, he expiates the sin of the lost; yet suppose also that, while this strong spirit was kindling hope even in hell, all the spirits of the lost should agree to curse and torment their benefactor. “Impossible,” you cry; “impossible even in hell!” Alas! it was possible on earth. Count up the miracles of mercy, and then consider how soon indifference became ingratitude, and ingratitude ripened into opposition. We may blush for our humanity. Those who yesterday ate the sacred bread, to-day cry, “Crucify Him!” &c.

II. THE SUFFERINGS OF OUR LORD’S DEATH. We may not press too closely into that mysterious scene of woe. It is rather a topic for thought than speech.

1. Our Lord’s death was bitter and painful. “They pierced,” says the prophet, “my hands and my feet;” and, adds Isaiah, “He was smitten of God and afflicted.” For six hours He hung upon the cross. Yet doubtless His sorest sufferings were mental, for He bore all the sins of all the world. In some mysterious manner, the debt which we could never pay through all eternity, He paid in a moment of time. Yet surely He was supported by Divine consolation? Alas, no! He who stands in my place stands beneath offended justice; and hence, perhaps, that strange, mysterious cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Yet, as these sufferings were extreme, so the result of them was excellent. By them He purchased everlasting redemption for man; and equally by them He inspires us with a holy horror of sin.

2. Our Lord’s death was apparently that of a criminal. He was numbered with the transgressors. “We did esteem Him judicially smitten,” says Isaiah, and, adds the Evangelist, “He was crucified between two thieves.” The vilest wretch who dies to-day, amid the horrors of a public execution, is kindlier treated, meets with more sympathy and less contempt than did the Lord of glory. Consider, then, the innocence of His character, and the apparent guilt of His death. How great the contrast!

3. Thus our Lord died amid ignominy and contempt. The Romans considered crucifixion to be a doom too base for any but the vilest slaves, &c.

There is no need to add that these sorrows were the revelation of eternal love. “Herein is love,” herein and nowhere else is it so affectingly, so unequivocally proved, “Not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”—Bamford Burrows: The Methodist Recorder, March 29, 1877.

SYMPATHY WITH THE SUFFERING
(A Hospital Sunday Sermon.)

Isaiah 53:4. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”

This Scripture is quoted in 1 Peter 2:24, as expressing the Saviour’s substitutionary suffering on the cross. It is quoted in Matthew 8:17, as fulfilled by the Saviour’s healing miracles. It thus at first sight presents a considerable difficulty, which, however, disappears when you remember three things. First, that the scope of this chapter is to exhibit the suffering Saviour. Second, that the thing in the mind of Matthew was the Saviour’s intense sympathy, which took up into Himself the sorrows and sufferings of our fallen nature. Third, that some Scriptures are capable of many fulfilments. A passage may have one main meaning, yet that meaning may contain others within itself, as a tube may contain several tubes, or as a rose may contain many leaves overlapping each other. There is thus in the whole work of Jesus a twofold fulfilment of this important prophecy.

I. THAT WHICH CONSISTED IN HIS ATONING DEATH FOR SIN.

In this sense He took the infirmities and sicknesses of our souls. In the phraseology of the Old Testament the bearing of sin is equivalent to the consequences of its guilt. The Lord Jesus Christ was the great sin-bearer. He took upon Him our nature, not only that He might adequately represent humanity and be an example, but especially that He might bear the sin of man in His death on the cross (1 Peter 2:24; 2 Corinthians 5:21). When you look for a reason why the Son of God became a man and was crucified, you cannot find it in any breach of law by Him, nor in the circumstance that He had provoked the authorities, and fallen under their power. You can only find it in the fact that His death was the atoning satisfaction for sin, on the ground of which its penal consequences can be removed from the sinner; and in the further fact that it is the fullest condemnation of sin, and the most powerful motive to abandon it. Thousands have believed this, and found peace to their consciences; and not only so, they find that faith in Him crucifies sin, and inspires them with the ardent desire to be free from its power. So that our text contains the three ideas essential to the Saviour’s work: viz.,

1. Suffering.
2. Substitution.
3. Salvation.

But this is not the only fulfilment of this prophecy. There is
II. THAT WHICH CONSISTED IN HIS FEELING FOR, AND HELP IN, MEN’S BODILY SUFFERINGS.
We must bear in mind the close connection between the body and the soul. Sin has affected both. While the seat of sin is the soul, the body, as its instrument, participates in the sin. It suffers in consequence of sin. In Scripture all bodily infirmity, suffering, death in man, is traced to sin. The disease of leprosy was selected by Moses as the representation of this truth. The exclusion of the leper from the congregation, and the ceremonies connected with his re-admission, marked and kept this great truth in memory.
It was therefore fitting that He who came to destroy death and sin should take into His view and into His heart, not only the spiritual, but the physical aspects of the case He had undertaken. Man’s completed redemption will be the redemption of the body at the resurrection. The final state of the glorified is one in which there shall be no more sorrow, nor sickness, nor pain, nor death. How then could He who came to accomplish that redemption be indifferent to the sufferings in which He saw a part of the misery He came to remove?
In this view, what a splendid career was His life on earth! There have been philanthropists, like Howard, and Wilberforce, and Clarkson, who have had compassion on the prisoner and the slave. But who has devoted Himself with such fulness of consecration and such forgetfulness of self? Whoever, in so short a time, accomplished so much, left such a mark behind Him in the grateful memories of those whom He had relieved and cured, and whose dark lives He had made bright by His healing touch? He could not see suffering without compassion, and He could not feel compassion without stretching out His hand to help.
In those works of beneficence He furnished a pre-intimation of the spirit that would characterise His religion. We have heard something about the religion of humanity. Men are to live for man rather than for God. Its practical effect will be nothing, because it takes away the motive power that would impel man to live for man. Nothing but the love of God creates the love of man. The idea is as old as Christianity; it is a part of Christianity, it is essential to it, it is borrowed from it. One of the first principles of practical Christianity is that “none of us liveth to himself.” “We live unto the Lord,” and our life to Him is manifested in living and working for our fellow-men. Christianity inspires its votaries with the desire to communicate it to others. But that is not all. In keeping with the idea that Christ has redeemed the human body as well as the human soul, it interests itself in everything that concerns the wellbeing of man. Wherever it is extended, it improves his material condition. The savage becomes civilised. Slavery has been abolished. Even war has yielded to its influence. There is greater reluctance to engage in it; restrictions are imposed on its conduct; benevolent ministers attend friend and foe alike on the battlefield. Christianity leads men to use their material opportunities to the best advantage; yet it does not encourage its votaries to turn coldly from those who have been unsuccessful in the race of life. The numberless institutions of the present day for the improvement of the material condition of the people, as a rule owe their origination and perpetuation to the humanising influence of Christianity.
And in these works of beneficence the Lord Jesus Christ furnished an example to His followers in all ages. Individually and personally they are called upon. They are to interest themselves in the spiritual and temporal wellbeing of man, as He did. They cannot work miracles. But they can perform the daily duties of life. Husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, can imitate His consideration for others. There can be the visit to the sick and the troubled. The poor cannot perhaps be lifted out of their poverty; but they can be helped in it. It is of advantage to do such work personally as far as possible. But much of it can only, at least can best, be done by means of public institutions and societies. Thus the sending the gospel to the heathen. Thus ministration to the sick and wounded is most effectual by means of hospitals. Catch the spirit of Jesus.
The example is enforced by the unparalleled sacrifices He made to gain His end. Think of the number and variety of diseases and sufferings, and do what you can, like Jesus, to heal.—J. Rawlinson.

THE MYSTERY OF OUR LORD’S SUFFERINGS

Isaiah 53:4-5. We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, &c.

No man, free from bias and prejudice, can fail to see that in this chapter the Messiah—the suffering Messiah—is referred to. As little can any open-minded man fail to see, that in it the vicarious nature of Messiah’s sufferings is declared. He is the sinless One who bears on His own heart and life the burden of the sins of others. He is the sent One who bears that burden as God, and for Him.
The pathway of shame which the humbled Saviour trod comes into our view. We see the thick clouds gathering over Him. We hear men reviling the seemingly helpless sufferer. We read the stricken heart that for a moment even fears the Divine forsaking. We catch the dying cry, “It is finished! “and the last heart-breaking sigh. And through the blinding, sympathising tears we read, “He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.”
The mystery of Christ’s sufferings! It may be profitable for us to meditate upon them, asking, What is man’s explanation of them and what is God’s?
I. THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS,—MAN’S EXPLANATION OF IT.
“We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” And it is impossible to say that this is other than a fair view to take from man’s position and with man’s knowledge.

1. Try and realise the process of thought in a man who was told of Christ’s sufferings and death, but had no knowledge of His personal innocence. To such a man it would be plain that God has established an immediate connection between sin and suffering. Throughout His wide domain God “by no means clears the guilty.” The suffering often comes openly, so that men may see it; sometimes it comes only to the man’s spirit; but it always comes. Upon the basis of this constant union between sin and suffering, the man might fairly argue that there must be a connection between suffering and sin, so that wherever he saw suffering he would suspect that sin was its cause (H. E. I. 4490, 4603–4610).

The discipline of chastisement through which the Christian passes may seem opposed to this view; it is only, however, lifting it up into a higher plane, and treating it with qualifying considerations. All discipline carries the idea of punishment; it is the recognition of some evil in the person on whom it rests. Since then the man is prepared to find sin wherever he finds suffering, he will be ready to explain the mystery of Christ’s sufferings by saying, “Christ had sinned.” and such a man, looking upon Christ as condemned by law, would further recognise God’s hand in His sufferings. For if human laws are to gain the respect of men, they must be regarded as the expression of God’s law. It was perhaps thus that the Jewish bigots thought of the Nazarene malefactor. Yet we know, we feel, that this explanation of the mystery of our Lord’s sufferings is insufficient and incorrect. Worthless—nay, wholly wrong—if He be the spotless Lamb of God.

2. Try to realise the process of thought in a man who has some knowledge of Christ’s life, and especially of His personal innocence. Such a man might say, Christ’s sufferings were a special and extraordinary Divine judgment. “He was smitten of God;” His death was a sad calamity. Calamity, that is, suffering of which the sufferer’s sin is not the immediate cause, is no such uncommon thing in the world. The tower of Siloam fell. The sin was Pilate’s; it did not belong to those whose blood was poured forth. They were smitten of God. The world has known many instances in which the innocent has been treated as the guilty. Such cases are mysteries; man can only say of the sufferers—“Smitten of God.” In the case of Christ, this, too, is insufficient; it is but the beginning of an explanation. A calamity! Yes, but only a seeming calamity, seeing that by dying He conquered death. Man cannot of himself explain the mystery of Christ’s sufferings.

II. THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS—GOD’S EXPLANATION OF IT. Notice—

1. That God sustains man’s view, that the sufferings of Christ were His appointment; but He further declares that they were an unusual, and altogether singular appointment. They were the voluntary fulfilment of a Divine decree; the carrying out to its completion, whatever that might involve, of a Divine mission (John 8:42; John 4:34; John 6:38). God the Father gave extraordinary witness to Him as His Son and Messenger (Mark 9:7); ancient prophecy represented Christ as saying, “Lo, I come,” &c. (Psalms 40:7-8); and apostles firmly declare, “We have seen, and do testify,” &c. (1 John 4:14). The direct connection of the life-work and the sufferings of Jesus with the redeeming plan and purpose of God, must be anxiously and watchfully maintained. The question of surpassing interest to us is, “What does God think of it all? How does it all stand related to His purposes of grace?”

2. God’s explanation declares that Christ’s sufferings bore no relation whatever to His own guilt. The text gives an explanation which excludes all others. If He had sinned, it is plain that He must have come under the condemnation of the Divine law, and must have been occupied with bearing the penalties of His own sin. But Christ suffered as the representative or substitute for others; His sufferings were wholly “vicarious;” borne in carrying out the great work He had undertaken, of delivering us from the penalty and the power of sin, and securing for us eternal peace with God. This is God’s wonderful solution of the question, “How shall man be just with God?”

CONCLUSION.—In the restoration of man to the Divine favour we can recognise three stages.

1. A loving purpose towards man cherished in the deep heart of the Holy Father.

2. That Divine and loving purpose effectually wrought out by God’s well-beloved and only begotten Song of Song of Solomon 3. The voluntary and hearty acceptance, by the long-sought children, of the redemption thus gloriously wrought for them. The third stage is yet incomplete. For the love of God does not—perhaps we should say cannot—save you against your will. But is it so, can it be so, that you have no will to be saved? Put out the hand of faith. For “all we like sheep have gone astray, and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”—Rev. Robert Tuck, B.A.: Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv. pp. 8–10.

(Sunday School Address.)

Compare the progress and the unfolding clearness of the Old Testament prophecies of Messiah, to a picture which takes many hands and long years to paint. Picture one man beginning by putting in the bare outline; then another and another comes, and makes the outline more and more complete and clear. Then others come and paint in the figure, form, and dress; and yet others the features and expression of the face. When the picture is complete, behold, it is Jesus of Nazareth: the suffering Saviour.
I. The suffering Saviour. Dwell on the terms in which His sufferings are detailed (see pp. 477–483). Carefully point out that He suffered more in His mind and heart than in His body.

II. The suffering Saviour misunderstood. By those who only look on the surface. By all who have no personal conviction of sin.

III. The mystery of the suffering Saviour revealed. It was vicarious suffering, borne according to the will of God, and borne for us.

IV. The glorious results won by a suffering Saviour. Man’s redemption. His own eternal joy. The triumph of God’s love over man’s sin.—Sunday School Addresses, New Series, p. 157.

THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST

Isaiah 53:5. But He was wounded for our transgressions, &c.

To any one who seriously contemplates the death and sufferings of Jesus Christ, three things suggest themselves as requiring explanation.

1. An innocent man suffers. All testimonies agree as to the purity and perfectness of the life of Jesus. There is a certain violence done to our sense of justice, when we see Him who boldly demanded, “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” and to whose character the Roman judge bears unqualified witness, undergoing the double agonies of an iniquitous trial and a shameful death.

2. The death of Jesus is the apparent defeat and destruction of one who possessed extraordinary and supernatural powers. For Him, whose word could still a tempest, eject a devil, raise the dead, to have escaped the power of the Sanhedrim and of the soldiery would surely have been easy (Matthew 26:53). In the suffering of a person so mighty, there is an intellectual inconsistency quite as remarkable as the moral inconsistency already noted.

3. This apparent defeat and ruin, instead of hindering the progress of His work, became at once, and in all the history of the progress of His doctrine has been emphatically, the instrument whereby a world is conquered. The death of Jesus has not been mourned by His followers, has never been concealed, but rather exulted in and prominently set forward as that to which all men must chiefly look, if they would regard Christ and His mission aright. Here, again, is a difficulty for rationalism to overcome. The innocent suffers as if guilty, the mighty is seized as if in helpless weakness, the shame and the failure result in glory and completest success. What is the philosophy of this? We ask impatiently for the explanation of the wonder. Has any ever been given which approaches the Divinely-revealed meaning supplied to us by our text, “He was wounded,” &c.?

We learn here,

I. That the sufferings of Jesus Christ resulted from our sins. Whether absolutely and universally suffering is the result of sin, we need not now inquire. Two things, at least, are certain: a large amount of suffering is the direct consequence of sin, and it is the habit of men to associate the suffering which comes before them, either directly or indirectly, with sin. Broken law everywhere brings unhappiness, pain, and death.—Now, the sufferings of Jesus could not result from His sin, for He was sinless. What He endured was not in accordance with His deserts. He became the passive recipient of what was laid upon Him.—Much of this we may see: the sin of the people who refused Him, of the leaders who conspired against Him, of the judges who condemned Him. And inasmuch as these represent mankind, inasmuch as there is a corporate unity among all men, inasmuch as the sin of each is itself only an expression and even an outcome of the sin of all the individual specific wrongs against Jesus, and finally, inasmuch as these sins are being repeated by every man—wherever we find refusal of the good, blind and wilful rejection of truth, unfaithfulness to duty and right, ingratitude, craven fear, selfishness and pride—there is a profound meaning, even upon the plane of a merely human interpretation, in the words of the prophet, “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.” It was sin, human sin, our sin, which slew Jesus (P. D. 459).

II. That the sufferings of Jesus were related to the Divine law. Such an analysis of the sufferings of Christ as we have already indicated may be accepted by the inquirer, but it would suggest the further question, Does not this suffering of the innocent reflect upon the law and power of God? The presence of evil and sin everywhere around us is itself a great and awful mystery; but that the most terrible manifestation of evil should be found in the sufferings of the highest being ever revealed to man—this only adds to the horror of the mystery, and envelops our moral nature, the government of God, and God Himself, in a thicker darkness. Ought such a scene to be possible in a world where goodness is supreme? Either God is careless of the right, or indifferent to suffering, or powerless to prevent either the wrong or the result of it. Such must be the conclusion, if the foregoing analysis be final.

But there is an alternative. God may have permitted, nay, even ordained, the sufferings of His Son. In the sacred unity of their nature, the suffering and death of Jesus may be a part of the will and purpose of the Godhead. That it is so, man can never know unless God reveals it. But what if God has revealed it? What if there be a still deeper meaning in the cross and the grave of Jesus, and that thereby God re-enacts His broken law, reveals the exceeding and awful wickedness of sin, and sets up a vindication of law as against wilfulness and sin more splendid than of nature, more powerful than that of conscience, more persuasive than that which thundered from Sinai? What are the facts? Divine law broken by human sin. Divine mercy willing to pardon, but not by a mere remission—a letting off. The sin of man would have been repeated in such a forgiveness by a God as careless of His law as man was disobedient to it. But behold the Son of God cometh. He meets and overcomes it, obeys law completely, perfectly, sets up a life of surpassing beauty and sweetness, nobler than law itself, and yet suffers and dies—at once the fulfiller of law and the victim of sin—in His obedience illustrating the former, and in His death condemning the latter. Now mercy is free. Mercy herself through Jesus Christ is highest justice. Forgiveness by His grace is not the suspension, the destruction of law, but it is the union of law and love—it is love arrayed in garments more awful than those of law, it is law sweetened and beautified by the lineaments of love. Pardon is declared, mercy is extended, forgiveness spoken, and we know not what words can better set forth the blessed truth than the expression of the prophet, “The chastisement making for our peace was upon Him.”

III. That the sufferings of Jesus became remedial of human sinfulness. A consideration of our Lord’s death which placed it only in its historic relation, as one of the facts of the sad history of human wretchedness, and in its objective relation to the re-establishment of Divine law and the procuring of a free course for mercy, is wholly insufficient. In the death of Jesus there is a moral significance in respect of human character and life altogther unique. Its influence upon man’s heart and conduct is incalculable—indeed so great that many regard only these sides of it and neglect the Divine aspect altogether, and refer to this as a result and outcome of the former.

The elevation of our Lord’s nature, especially as it comes out in the midst of His sufferings, would of itself have been a mighty force for the amelioration of all who contemplated it. All greatness ennobles, and when it is the greatness of the good and the gentle, the heroism of love and the power of self-sacrifice, the soul of man not only admires, but is inspired, emulates the example and joins in a holy fellowship. But Christ’s death was the death of one who loved men, and whose love is revealed to us by that wisdom which alone could fathom it, as being personal and individual. Christ was not a mere philanthropist, but before His infinite intelligence every man stood separate and alone; in His infinite heart every man had a place. Hence His sufferings were sufferings for me, for you; His death was in my place, in yours (P. D. 456).

We find that in Him there gathers not only goodness, patience, all the virtues of which man is capable, there exhibited through hostility and even unto death, but there is love—a personal, direct, and individual love—such as would have been equal to all the claim made upon it, to all the burden which it had to bear even if there were only one soul in the world to be redeemed, and that mine or yours. Let this be realised by each man, and see how his spirit will be affected by that love of Christ. What a price for righteousness! What a hindrance to sin! What a discipline, a culture, is here! How life will be inspired, action directed, victory assured for him who lives with the ever-present thought of the love of Christ! Thus will the sinful character be changed, the wounds be healed, a new heart given, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit who applies these “things of Christ,” the soul is regenerated, sanctified, and at last glorified in the perfect blessedness and holiness of heaven. This is what we need within ourselves—this healing grace; and this is what the prophet declares Messiah will bestow, for “with His stripes we are healed.”
With these thoughts, let us surround the holy table of the Lord. Here is the broken body and the shed blood. Here are we reminded of the sufferings which yet glorified law and obtained forgiveness, and are evermore the power of the love which heals and strengthens and at last completely saves.—Ll. D. Bevan, D.D.

These sufferings constituted the price which the incarnate Son of God had voluntarily engaged to pay for human redemption: they were the atonement due for the accumulated sins of a guilty world, and were required by “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”
I. THEIR NATURE.
To form an adequate conception of our Redeemer’s sufferings, we must contemplate Him as forsaken and unsupported, save only by the consciousness of perfect innocence; surrounded by a whole nation of implacable enemies; betrayed by His own treacherous companion; insulted and beaten by a ferocious multitude; dragged, on a perjured accusation, before the judgment-seat; affixed to the accursed tree, where, for six tedious hours of mortal agony, He hangs suspended from His own quivering flesh. Bitter, however, as were the physical sufferings of our Lord, the peculiar agony of His passion did not result solely from that cause. It was the mental anguish that He endured during that awful period; the overwhelming consciousness of God’s anger; the total absence of all aid or consolation from above; the feeling of utter desertion both by God and man, when He approached the tremendous conflict with all the powers of darkness;—it was the pressure of that enormous mass of transferred sin which, as the representative of mankind, He had undertaken to bear. Physically, His sufferings did not differ materially from those of that noble army of Christian heroes who followed His steps to martyrdom and glory; but they had no desertion of the Divine grace and favour to lament—no load of imputed corruption to weigh them down. The Prince of Martyrs felt the unnatural load of His polluted burden; He tottered under its enormous weight, but no assisting hand stretched out to help; alone He had to undergo the tremendous ordeal, without support from His Father, without the comfort and companionship of the Holy Spirit.
Thus was the “Messiah cut off, but not for Himself.” He owed no submission to death, having never fallen under the dominion of sin. The punishment which He underwent was due to us; they were our iniquities for which He was wounded and slain; for our sakes He became as it were the paschal lamb, “sprinkling His blood” for our salvation; for us He consented to be treated like the scapegoat in the wilderness, and to bear in His own person the iniquities of us all. How bitter the ingredients of the cup of which He drank! The annals of mankind can furnish no parallel to the immensity of His sufferings.

II. THEIR OBJECT.
Mankind had been created perfect, but had fallen from their original uprightness into a state of degradation most offensive to the holiness of God. He could not behold His creation, once so happy and sinless, thus corrupted and depraved, without just indignation. Yet in the midst of His wrath He remembered mercy; and, because mankind were too widely alienated from Himself ever to be rescued from the lamentable consequences of the Fall by any exertions of their own, He devised the wonderful expedient of vicarious atonement, by which, through the personal intervention of some friendly mediator, full and perfect satisfaction might be offered, in man’s behalf, to the offended holiness and plighted truth of Heaven. No one could be found sufficient for this purpose but His only SON, who assumed the nature and liabilities of those whom He desired to rescue from destruction. The object for which He came into the world was to redeem mankind—by undergoing the full amount of punishment that had been incurred; by rescuing all that might believe on Him from the dominion of sin and Satan; and by opening a fountain for sin and uncleanness, capable of removing pollution from the entire human race.
These merciful purposes had long been intimated by Divine revelation, and the expectation kept alive by a series of prophecies. The necessity of a real expiation was prefigured by the early institution of blood offerings, in which an innocent victim became an atonement for the sins of the sacrificer, and was supposed to draw down the divine wrath upon itself, and to avert it from the offender. Corresponding intimations were made in all the other types and ordinances of the law, especially in the driving forth of the sin-laden scapegoat into the wilderness, and in the entrance into the holy of holies of the priestly intercessor bearing the blood of sacrifice (Hebrews 9:7; Hebrews 9:11-12).

III. THEIR SUFFICIENCY.

The entire value of our Redeemer’s mediation, the whole efficacy of His atonement, depended on His total freedom from sin. The smallest deviation from the perfection of righteousness would have entirely disqualified Him for the office of a Saviour, by degrading Him to the very condition of those whom He purposed to save. He would have become in His own person a debtor to Divine justice, and thus would have required a surety for Himself, instead of becoming a surety for others. But the spotless holiness of the expiation was secured by His inseparable relation to the Deity; and, for the same reason, a redundancy of merit accrued to Him which rendered the atonement He made abundantly efficacious for the redemption of the world (1 Peter 2:22-24; H. E. I. 377–381).

The surest proof of the entire sufficiency of our Lord’s sufferings and death as an offering for sin consists in His resurrection from the dead. This was the sign to which He had previously referred the Jews as an evidence of His divine power (John 2:19-21); and it was, doubtless, essential that He who claimed a victory over death should exhibit in His own instance the first fruits of that victory by raising Himself from the dead. Had He failed in rescuing Himself, His ability to save others might reasonably have been questioned; but having exercised that power in His own case, much more is He able to raise others from the death of sin to the new life of righteousness and glory. The sufficiency of our Lord’s atonement is still further evident in His public and triumphant ascension into heaven, and in His subsequent fulfilment of the promise that after His departure He would send the Holy Spirit unto them.—George Pellew, D.D.: Sermons, vol. i. pp. 107–124.

Consider I. THE NATURE OF THE REDEEMER’S SUFFERINGS. Physical, but not chiefly so. The physical sufferings of many of the martyrs were greater than His. Mental, and these are harder to endure than physical sufferings. Minds differ in their capacity for suffering; the more capacious and sensitive they are, the greater that capacity (H. E. I. 915). II. THEIR SOURCE: our sins, which He had taken upon Himself. III. THEIR ENDS.

1. That a way of salvation might be opened for all who believe.

2. That a complete triumph over the powers of darkness might be achieved, by the setting up of a kingdom that will never be destroyed (see outlines on Isaiah 53:10-12).—C. B. Woodman: The British Pulpit, vol. iv. pp. 384–393.

I. In His body and in His soul. Heartache is worse than headache. “The sufferings of His soul were the soul of His sufferings.” II. In His earlier and in His later years. Of the babe—boy—man. III. In personal endurance and by sympathy. Sympathy with all the ills of humanity, and with the woes of individual sufferers. IV. From all orders of being. Men—friends, foes, neutrals; devils; GOD—withdrawal, infliction of penalty.

CONCLUSION.—Can the sufferings of Christ be explained apart from the doctrine of the atonement? Ought not the sufferings of Christ for us to draw forth our faith and love? Should not the sufferings of Christ lead us as believers to confide in His sympathy?—G. Brooks: Outlines, p. 79.

(Sacramental Sermon.)

There is nothing else which ought so to affect our hearts as the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. It brings to mind all our misery, all our salvation. It places before us the august emblems of our crucified Master, and calls us to pronounce over His broken body and shed blood the sacramental vow. It is, therefore, one of the most affecting solemnities in which we shall ever be engaged till we get to heaven. Let us endeavour to prepare our hearts for it, while we attend to the two great ideas of the text—

I. It is proper to enter fully into the consideration of our sins, for unless we come to this sacrament as sinners—penitent, emptied of self—we shall fail of entering into the meaning of our ordinance, or holding communion with our Saviour.

1. The number of our sins. Go back to the years of your childhood and youth. Let busy memory call up from forgotten years the thousand sins which time has almost worn from the brain. As we look back on our life, recollection fails us, and well may we say with the Psalmist, “Who can understand his errors?” Surely our hearts should be affected with the number of our sins. Had we sinned but once, the law of God would have condemned us, and we could not have justified ourselves. But we have sinned times without number! eternity alone can calculate their amount!

2. Their enormity. The undisturbed sinner, moving on in his career of carelessness, does not realise the great evil of the sins he commits. He thinks of transgression against God as a trifle, &c. We should measure the enormity of our sin by the evil of it; and the evil of it by the majesty of the Deity we have offended, and by the eternity of punishment which God pronounces over it (H. E. I. 4477–4490).

3. The motives which induced us to sin. Surely the small motives there are to sin, contrasted with the immense motives to holiness, manifest a guilt of the heart which ought to fill our souls with the deepest contrition.

4. The effect our sins have had on others. Sin is a contagious evil; “one sinner destroyeth much good.” We are so situated in human society that we cannot avoid holding an influence over one another. Had we destroyed ourselves only, the evil would not have been so lamentable. But we have dragged others into the same gulf wherein we have so thoughtlessly precipitated ourselves! (H. E. I. 4565).

II. Penitently consider the sufferings of Jesus Christ to atone for men. “But He was wounded for our transgressions.” Jesus Christ helped us when we could not help ourselves.

1. In the sacrifice of Christ the pardon of sin is secured.
2. The justice of God is satisfied.
3. An everlasting righteousness is procured for the sinner.
4. That grace which subdues the heart has been obtained.—Ichabod S. Spencer, D.D.: Discourses on Sacramental Occasions, pp. 178–196.

VICARIOUS SACRIFICE

Isaiah 53:5. But He was wounded for our transgressions, &c.

It is generally admitted that this prophecy refers to Christ, and if so, the vicarious nature of His sufferings and death cannot admit of reasonable dispute. If language has meaning in the text, this must be acknowledged. But there is a previous question started by scepticism, to which it is proper to reply. We maintain then—

I. That the principle of vicarious sacrifice is consistent with the Divine perfections. It has been urged that the sufferings of the innocent for the benefit of the guilty, is utterly inconsistent with perfect justice. This we deny. In doing so we are under no obligation to satisfy human scruples, for our ideas of what Divine justice really is must necessarily be very partial and imperfect, so that dogmatically to affirm what may or may not be harmonised with it, beyond what we learn expressly from Divine revelation upon the subject, is impudent presumption. It would be sufficient to know, as a matter of fact, that the law of vicarious suffering is recognised, not only in Scripture, but is also everywhere manifest in the universe.

1. The vicarious principle is a law of physical being.

(1.) The mineral kingdom suffers for the sake of the vegetable; for the vegetable eats upon the mineral, and lives upon its destruction and conversion.
(2.) The vegetable kingdom, in its turn, suffers for the sustentation of the animal.
(3.) Herb-feeding races of animals die to support the life of carnivora. And geological researches show the laws of prey and death were in commission among animals before sin was introduced by our first parents.
(4.) Again, vegetables and animals alike labour and suffer, and die for the benefit of their offspring.
(5.) How beautifully is the vicarious principle evinced in the voluntary cheerful sufferings of the human mother for the sake of her child (H. E. I. 393–396).
2. The vicarious principle is a law of intellectual being.

(1.) The enjoyment experienced by a reader of a masterly treatise, as its profound and brilliant thoughts successively rise, as by enchantment, is the purchase of the wearisome vigilance, and sustained and often painful effort of the author’s mind.
(2.) The repasts upon which many a Christian congregation are Sabbath after Sabbath delighted, are the sweat of the preacher’s brain.
(3.) The civilisation we inherit with our birth, is the result of an incalculable amount of anxious, laborious, and distressing thought on the part of millions now sleeping in the dust.
(4.) What privations do parents voluntarily suffer in order to secure the education of their children!
3. The vicarious principle is a law of moral being.

(1.) It is the very soul of sympathy. Without sympathy society would lose its charm—a community of stoics.
(2.) The philanthropist facing the horrors of disease and wretchedness, &c. The missionary!
(3.) It is virtue which gives value to sacrifice.

A principle thus universally obtaining cannot but harmonize with the justice of the Universal Ruler. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ is the most marvellous and stupendous exemplification of a law everywhere exemplified.

II. A vicarious sacrifice of infinite merit is indispensable to human salvation.

1. Man is found in the attitude of rebellion against God.

2. Divine justice cannot be sacrificed to mercy (H. E. I. 376).

3. Man has no means by which to commend himself to the mercy of God.

(1.) Repentance of no value without an atonement (H. E. I. 4225–4228).
(2.) Man is too depraved of himself to repent (H. E. I. 4250).
4. The only remaining source is in the vicarious principle.

(1.) The vicarious person must be able to suffer the penalty of human sin.
(2.) He must have sufficient merit to procure the enlightening and sanctifying agency of a Divine worker.

III. The requirements of the vicarious principle are met in the sacrifice of Christ.

1. His merits fully realize the Divine ideal.

(1.) He was pure through the miracle of His birth.
(2.) He was righteous in the fulfilment of every requirement of law.
(3.) In His official capacity He was approved by celestial voices, at His baptism and transfiguration, and with reference to His sufferings at Gethsemane and Calvary.

(4.) Hence His exaltation (John 17:1-5; Philippians 2:9-11).

2. Those merits were devoted to our redemption and salvation.

(1.) This is the great doctrine of the text.
(2.) The marrow of the Gospel.
(3.) They have made provision for the renewal of our nature—God cannot change, and therefore we must be changed. The Holy Spirit helps us to repent and believe the Gospel, &c.

CONCLUSION.—

1. Learn the absurdity of seeking salvation by works
2. Learn the obligation to aim at Christian perfection.

(3.) Learn the necessity of the vicarious principle to the Christian life (Matthew 16:24-26; 1 John 3:16-17).—James Alex. Macdonald: Pulpit Analyst, vol. i. pp. 702–705.

HEALED BY HIS STRIPES

Isaiah 53:5. With His stripes we are healed.

The two great things which the Spirit of Christ in the ancient prophets testified beforehand, were the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow (1 Peter 1:11-12). And when Jesus, after His resurrection, expounded to His disciples, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself, He showed the scope and purport of them all to be that “Christ ought to have suffered, and then to enter into His glory.” But in no part of the Old Testament are these two things so fully exhibited as in this chapter, from which many passages are quoted and applied to Christ in the New Testament.

I. THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH.
II. THE CAUSE AND DESIGN OF THOSE SUFFERINGS.
III. THE BENEFIT WE OBTAIN BY THEM, AND HOW WE OBTAIN IT. “With His stripes we are healed.” We are healed,

1. Of our inattention and unconcern about divine things. The dignity of our Lord’s person, the intensity of His sufferings, and the end for which He endured them, discover that things of a spiritual and divine nature are of infinite moment. Our ignorance and unbelief respecting these things. His sufferings confirm and seal His doctrine, and show the certain truth and unspeakable importance of it, and the reasonableness of a serious study of it, of laying it to heart, and receiving it in faith.

2. Of the disease of self-righteousness and self-confidence. For, if our own righteousness could have saved us, and if we could safely have trusted therein, Christ needed not to have died.

3. Of our love to sin and the commission of it. For how can we love Him and continue the willing servants of the betrayer and murderer of the Son of God, our Saviour? How can we willingly commit sin, which is so great an evil in its own nature, that it could not be pardoned, unless expiated by the sufferings and death of the Son of God, and Lord of glory? (H. E. I., 4589, 4590).

4. Of our love of the riches, honours, and pleasures of this world. For how can we reasonably desire any of these in a world, where our Lord and Master “had not where to lay His head,” where He “was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”?

5. Of our self-indulgence and self-seeking. Since His sufferings and death show that He did not seek Himself, and He died for us, that we “might not live to ourselves” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

6. Of our lukewarmness and sloth. For shall we be indifferent about, and slothful in the pursuit of what cost Him His blood?

7. Of our cowardice and fear of suffering (1 Peter 4:1).

8. Of our diffidence and distrust with respect to the mercy of God, and His pardoning and accepting the penitent.

9. Of an accusing conscience and slavish fear of God, and death and hell (Hebrews 9:13-14).

10. Of our general depravity and corruption of nature (Titus 2:14; Ephesians 5:25-27).

11. Of our weakness and inability. His sufferings have purchased “the spirit of might.”

12. Of our distress and misery, both present and future. For His sufferings bear away our griefs and sorrows; they are an astonishing proof of God’s infinite love to all for whom He undertook; they lay the most solid foundation for the firmest confidence and most lively hope in Him. They show that—

“No man too largely from God’s love can hope,
If what he hopes, he labours to secure.”

Joseph Benson: Sermons, vol. i pp. 232–236.

Ever since the fall, healing has been the chief necessity of manhood. It is a great mercy for us who have to preach, as well as for you who have to hear, that the Gospel healing is so very simple. Our text describes it. These six words contain the marrow of the Gospel.

I. These are sad words. They are part of the mournful piece of music which might be called “the Requiem of the Messiah,”

1. Because they imply disease. This “we” comprehends all the saints, and hence it is clear that all the saints need healing. Those who are to-day before the throne of God, without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, were once defiled as the lepers who were shut out of the camp of Israel. Our fathers were fallen men, and so are we, and so will our children be.

(1.) The disease of sin is of the most loathsome character, and it will lead to the most deadly result in due season. It is none the better because we do not feel it. It is all the worse.

(2.) Sin is also a very painful disease when it is known and felt. Those black days of conviction! A man needs no worse hell than his own sin and an awakened conscience.

2. Because it speaks of suffering. “With His stripes.” find that the word here used is in the singular, and not as the translation would lead you to suppose. I hardly know how to translate the word fully. It is read by some as “weal,” “bruise,” or “wound,” meaning the mark or print of blows upon the skin; but Alexander says the word denotes the tumour raised in flesh by scourging. It is elsewhere translated “blueness,” “hurt,” and “spots,” and evidently refers to the black and blue marks of the scourge. The use of a singular noun may have been intended to set forth that our Lord was as it were reduced to a mass of bruising, and was made one great bruise. [1626] By the suffering which that condition indicated we are saved. Our text alludes partly to the sufferings of His body, but much more to the agonies of His soul. He was smitten in His heart each day of His life. He had to suffer the ills of Providence. He had to run the gauntlet of all mankind. Satan, too, struck at Him. Put these things all together as best you can, for I lack words with which fitly to describe these bruises.

[1626] Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were intertwisted here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of His flagellations. My soul, stand here, and weep over His poor stricken body. Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon Him without tears, as He stands before you the mirror of agonising love. He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of His own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which His stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief. If we have ever loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.—Spurgeon.

II. These are glad words.

1. Because they speak of the healing we need. Understand these words. Of that virtual healing which was given you in the day when Jesus Christ died upon the cross. But there is an actual application of the great expiation to us when by faith we receive it individually. To as many as have believed in Jesus, His stripes have given the healing of forgiveness, and it has conquered the deadly power of sin. Men have tried to overcome their passions by the contemplation of death, but they have failed to bury sin in the grave; they have striven to subdue the rage of lust within their nature by meditating upon hell, but that has only rendered the heart hard and callous to love’s appeals. He who once believingly beholds the mystery of Christ suffering for him shakes off the viper of sin into the fire which consumed the great sacrifice. Where falls the blood of the atonement, sin’s hand is palsied, its grasp is relaxed, its sceptre falls, it vacates the throne of the heart; and the spirit of grace, and truth, and love, and righteousness, occupies the royal seat. Behold Christ smarting in your stead, and you will never despair again. It is a universal medicine. There is no disease by which your soul can be afflicted, but an application of the blue bruises of your Lord will take out the deadly virus from your soul.

2. Because of the honour which the healing brings to Christ. Child of God, if thou wouldst give glory to God, declare that thou art healed. Be not always saying, “I hope I am saved.” A crucified Saviour is the sole and only hope of a sinful world.

III. These are very suggestive words. Whenever a man is healed through the stripes of Christ, the instincts of his nature should make him say, “I will spend the strength I have, as a healed man, for Him who healed me.” If you know that Jesus has healed you, serve Him, by telling others about the healing medicine. Tell it to your children; tell it to your servants; leave none around you ignorant of it. Hang it up everywhere in letters of boldest type. “With His stripes we are healed.”—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1068.

I. A LAMENTABLE DISEASE ASSUMED

1. The baneful result of transgression.
2. Universal in its prevalency.
3. Hereditary in its descent.
4. Incurable by human agency.

II. AN INFALLIBLE PHYSICIAN SPECIFIED.

1. Infinite in Wisdom
2. Impartial in attendance.
3. Ever easy of access.
4. Gratuitous in His practice.

III. THE REMEDY HE EMPLOYS. “His stripes,” i.e. the atonement.

1. Divine in its appointment.
2. Easy in its application.
3. Universal in its adaptation.
4. Infallible in its efficacy.

IV. THE CURE EFFECTED BY IT.

1. Is now no novelty.
2. Is radical in its nature.
3. Is happy in its influences.

CONCLUSION.—This subject tends,

1. To promote humility.
2. To produce self-examination.
3. To encourage the desponding penitent.
4. To excite fervent gratitude.—Four Hundred Sketches, vol. ii. p. 93.

I. THE MEDICINE WHICH IS HERE PRESCRIBED—the stripes of our Saviour. I take the term “stripes” to comprehend all the physical and spiritual sufferings of our Lord, with especial reference to those chastisements of our peace which preceded rather than actually caused His sin-atoning death: it is by these that our souls are healed.
“But why?” say you.

1. Because our Lord, as a sufferer, was not a private person, but suffered as a public individual, and an appointed representative. Hence the effects of His grief are applied to us, and with His stripes we are healed.
2. Our Lord was not merely man, or else His sufferings could not have availed for the multitude who now are healed thereby.

But healing is a work that is carried on within, and the text rather leads me to speak of the effect of the stripes of Christ upon our characters and natures than upon the result produced in our position before God.

II. THE MATCHLESS CURES WROUGHT BY THIS REMARKABLE MEDICINE. Look at two pictures. Look at man without the stricken Saviour; and then behold man with the Saviour, healed by His stripes.
III. THE MALADIES WHICH THIS WONDROUS MEDICINE REMOVES. The great root of all this mischief, the curse which fell on man through Adam’s sin, is already effectually removed. But I am now to speak of diseases which we have felt and bemoaned, and which still trouble the family of God.

1. The mania of despair.

2. The stony heart.

3. The paralysis of doubt.

4. Stiffness of the knee-joint of prayer.

5. Numbness of soul.

6. The fever of pride.

7. The leprosy of selfishness.

8. The fretting consumption of worldliness. (See also p. 494.)

IV. THE CURATIVE PROPERTIES OF THIS MEDICINE. All manner of good this divine remedy works in our spiritual constitution. The stripes of Jesus when well considered,

1. Arrest spiritual disorder.
2. Quicken all the powers of the spiritual man to resist the disease.
3. They restore to the man that which he lost in strength by sin.
4. They soothe the agony of conviction.
5. They eradicate the power of sin; they pull it up by the root; destroy the beasts in their lair; put to death the power of sin in our members.

V. THE MODES OF THE WORKING OF THIS MEDICINE. How does it work? Briefly, its effect upon the mind is this. The sinner hearing of the death of the incarnate God is led by the force of truth and the power of the Holy Spirit to believe in the mcarnate God. After faith come gratitude, love, obedience, &c. [1629]

[1629] Looking upon the “stripes” of Jesus, one may be led, 1. To think of the awfully malignant nature of sin, which would require for its expiation so great a sacrifice as that of the Son of God, and of the great depravity of his own heart in having been so destitute of love towards one so full of grace and goodness toward him. He is thus brought to tremble for his sin, and to mourn for it with deep contrition. And here is true repentance. 2. The inestimable value of the sacrifice, and the boundless love of God manifested in it, show him also that an atonement of most amply sufficient value has been offered for his sin; that the gracious God must be most mercifully disposed and willing to pardon and save him. Thus a comfortable and satisfying faith is generated in his heart. 3. The apprehension of the favouring mind in God towards him, with all the love manifested in the sufferings of Christ, disposes his heart to the love of God. 4. Seeing also that he owes his renewed being and hopes to his God and Saviour, he is ready to give himself wholly to His service. For he feels the force of the apostle’s words (Romans 12:1; 1 Corinthians 14:15). 5. When in the service of Christ he meets with great difficulties and trials, he remembers that Christ bore for him his eternal sufferings, and thinks little of anything he can endure for Him in his short life upon earth. 6. From the contemplation of the humiliation and death of Christ flow endless streams of benevolence, readiness to give, or to do, or endure anything for our neighbour (2 Corinthians 8:9; 1 John 3:16). 7. While that contemplation urges him to devote himself to the service of God and the promotion of his neighbour’s good, it also keeps him humble in his greatest zeal, both by the example of his crucified Saviour, and also by the remembrance that his only hope of mercy rests in his coming as a worthless creature for salvation to Christ, in reliance upon His merits alone. 8. Every one who has been brought to such views of sin as the sufferings of Jesus set forth, feels himself strongly repelled, by those sufferings, from all sin. Shall he add another sin to those by which he has pierced his beloved Saviour with sorrow and pain? Here is a most cogent motive to the resistance of temptation in the true believer. And if he finds difficulty in such resistance, he remembers that his Saviour suffered crucifixion for him, and feels that he must therefore think little of “crucifying the flesh, with its affections and lusts,” or His sake (1 Peter 4:1-2).

Thus the due effect of the sufferings of Christ upon man is the entire renovation of his heart. It tends to purify him from all sin, to fashion his soul in the frame of perfect holiness, to urge him to devoted zeal in all ways of piety and charity. The wisdom of God in appointing those sufferings as the means of our salvation, is justified in the beauty of holiness to which those who duly look upon them are thus brought. As the Israelites looked upon the brazen serpent till they were healed, so let us look upon our suffering Saviour till all the disorders of our souls are remedied, and we are restored to the “spirit of love and of a sound mind.”—R. L. Cotton, M.A.: The Way of Salvation, pp. 95–99.

VI. ITS REMARKABLY EASY APPLICATION. There are some materia medica which would be curative, but they are so difficult in administration and attended with so much risk in their operation, that they are rarely if ever employed; but the medicine prescribed in the text is very simple in itself, and very simply received; so simple is its reception that, if there be a willing mind here to receive it, it may be received by any of you at this very instant, for God’s Holy Spirit is present to help you. How, then, does a man get the stripes to heal him?

1. He hears about them.
2. Faith cometh by hearing; that is, the hearer believes that Jesus is the Son of God, and he trusts in Him to save his soul.
3. Having believed, whenever the power of his faith begins to relax, he goes to hearing again, or else to what is even better, after once having heard to benefit, he resorts to contemplation; he resorts to the Lord’s table that he may be helped by the outward signs; he reads the Bible that the letter of the word may refresh his memory as to its spirit, and he often seeks a season of quiet, &c.—Poor sinner, simply trust and thou art healed; backsliding saint, contemplate and believe again.

Since the medicine is so efficacious, since it is already prepared and freely presented, I do beseech you take it.—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 834.