The LORD Hath Laid On Him the Iniquity Of Us All - Isaiah 53

Turn with me to Isaiah 53.

1 Who has believed what they heard from us?  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 

3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; 

and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth. 

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 

9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; 

when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. 

11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 

12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, 

because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Here in this wondrous passage, while many things might be highlighted and commented upon, perhaps the most important and obvious truth is the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death.  We see several times that the suffering Servant of God did not suffer because of personal sin or guilt.  Rather, it is stated here repeatedly and clearly that Christ suffered in His earthly life, and ultimately upon the cross, for the sake of others, for those He came to save.  Look again at the following verses:

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; (v4)

But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was 

the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (v5)

. . . the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v6)

. . . stricken for the transgression of my people? (v8)

. . . when his soul makes an offering for guilt, (v10)

. . . by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted 

righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. (v11)

. . . yet he bore the sin of many, (v12)

Christ bore our griefs, our sorrows.  Upon the cross He was wounded for our transgressions, our iniquities, our guilt, and our sin.  Not His own.  He had none.  The Lord Jesus was the sinless, spotless, guiltless, holy, good, and innocent Lamb of God who was sacrificed for the sin of others.  Even the thief upon the cross next to Jesus understood He was an innocent man.

For many years, there has been controversy regarding this substitution of our sin for Christ’s righteousness within so-called evangelical circles.  Most of the controversy revolves around one word.  The debate rages over whether Christ was actually punished for the sake of others.  Was the cross a punishment of sin by God?  Was Jesus really punished with the punishment we deserve, or was something else taking place at Calvary?  

“Brian McLaren (of Emergent Church infamy) addresses this issue briefly in his book, The Story We Find Ourselves In.  His fictional character Kerry, who happens to be a seeker, asks how Jesus fits in to God’s story.  Carol, a Christian, answers with a summary of substitutionary atonement: “Well, I believe that God sent Jesus into the world to absorb all the punishment for our sins.  That’s what the cross was all about.  It was Jesus absorbing the punishment that all of us deserve.  He became the substitute for all of us.  As he suffered and died, all our wrongs were paid for, so all of us can be forgiven.”  Kerry responds: “For starters, if God wants to forgive us, why doesn’t he just do it?  How does punishing an innocent person make things better?  That just sounds like one more injustice in the cosmic equation.  It sounds like divine child abuse.” 1

The cross was “divine child abuse.“  What MacLaren and others are saying is that Christ’s death on the cross was unjust and therefore abusive on the part of God.  Not only is it wrong for a righteous God to punish the innocent by making them guilty with the sins of others, but what loving Father would crucify His own Son?  This kind of logic coming from supposedly wise and learned theologians causes doubts to rise in the hearts of many.  And there could not be a more crucial doctrine upon which to cast doubt than the doctrine of the penal substitution of Christ upon the cross for sinners, that Jesus was actually punished on the cross in our place.  If that is not true, if our sin was not punished in Christ upon the cross, then there is no salvation to be had and we still carry the guilt of our sin.

But I understand the dilemma.  The question being asked is, “Is it right to punish the innocent for the sake of the guilty?  Is it fair that God should make His own Son a substitute for sinners and punish their sin in Him, instead of punishing the truly guilty party, the sinner?  Aside from the fact that it would be utterly disastrous for us, shouldn’t we be held accountable for our own sin?  How can God be holy, and just, and crucify an innocent Person?”

Listen to Proverbs 17:15 - “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.”  According to this verse, God must be an abomination to Himself on both counts.  That is exactly what takes place, so we’re told, upon the cross: The righteous Lord Jesus is condemned and many wicked are made righteous.  God justifies the wicked and condemns the righteous, the very things that are abominable to God.  So what do we do with this?  Is there a double standard here?

Yes.  There is a double standard, and we should be happy for it!  J.I. Packer said it this way: “When man justifies the wicked, it is a miscarriage of justice which God hates, but when God justifies the ungodly it is a miracle of grace for us to adore.” 2  And all God’s people say Amen! to that.  The apostle Paul says exactly the same thing in Romans 4:5 - God justifies the ungodly.  The way God justifies ungodly people while simultaneously not violating His own justice is by providing His suffering Servant as a substitute whom He crushes in our place.  And the motivation behind it all is love.

Now someone may say, “Keith, I realize it was just a movie, but I saw The Passion of the Christ.  I didn’t see a lot of love there.  It sure didn’t look like God loved Jesus when He was crucified.”  Very true.  And we know the reality of Christ’s death was far worse than any movie could depict it.  As we read through Isaiah 53, we see that the Lord Jesus endured the wrath of God against sin.  He was stricken, afflicted, wounded, bruised, crushed, beaten with stripes, oppressed, and slaughtered “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23 ESV).  How can we say the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus was motivated by love?  Even more, how can the slaughter of an innocent man be an act of love on God’s part?  That is the question being raised by MacLaren and others.

Beloved, we believe the cross was an act of love, not from the Father toward the Son.  Obviously not.  But it was an act of love from the Father AND the Son toward us who believe.  The substitutionary crucifixion of the Lord Jesus on behalf of Christians was a collaborative effort of the Trinity driven by love for us:

The “New Testament presents God's gift of his Son to die as the supreme expression of his love to men.  'God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son' (John 3:16).  'God is love, . . . Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins' (1 John 4:8-10).  'God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us' (Rom. 5:8).  Similarly, the New Testament presents the Son's voluntary acceptance of death as the supreme expression of his love to men.  [Paul writes,] 'He loved me, and gave himself for me' (Gal. 2:20).  [Jesus said] 'Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.  You are my friends . . .' (John 15:13f.)  And the two loves, the love of Father and Son, are one . . . .” 3

Ever since the Garden of Eden, we’ve seen example after example of God’s sacrificial love toward men.  In Genesis 3, we see God Himself performing the first animal sacrifice in order to provide skins for Adam and Eve to cover the shame of their nakedness which was a result of their sin.  It was a sacrifice made by God, motivated by love.  In Genesis 22, we read of God’s instruction to Abraham to take his son, his only son, and offer him as a sacrifice.  But Isaac’s life was spared when God lovingly provided a ram which Abraham sacrificed in his son’s place.  

In Exodus 12, we read about the Passover lamb that was killed in order that the Angel of Death might pass over the homes of the Hebrews.  They took the lamb’s blood and sprinkled it around the door and all their firstborn were spared that awful night in Egypt.  In Leviticus 16, we read God’s instructions to the High Priest of the children of Israel.  Annually, he was to take a goat and symbolically place the sins of the Jews upon the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness, never to be seen again.  

Here in Isaiah 53, we see the clearest expression of substitution in the entire Old Testament that those other passages point toward.  God’s Servant, in whom His soul delights, will be sent into the world to be the sacrifice substituted for the people they both love.  Their sins will be placed upon the Servant by the Father, and through His punishment and death, God says, by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 

This is what we mean when we say we believe in a penal substitutionary death, a sacrifice of the Son of God by God for sinners, motivated by love.  Somehow, in a way we will probably never fully comprehend, Christ willingly bore all the punishment we as believers deserve for our sins against God so that we might be saved from God’s just punishment.

“The notion which the phrase 'penal substitution' expresses is that Jesus Christ our Lord, moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgment for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won us forgiveness, adoption and glory.  To affirm penal substitution is to say that believers are in debt to Christ specifically for this, and that this is the mainspring of all their joy, peace and praise both now and for eternity.” 4

“. . . [W]hat Christ bore on the cross was the Godforsakenness of penal judgment, which we shall never have to bear because He accepted it in our place.” 5  All of it.

The work of Christ upon the cross for our sakes is the mainspring, the powerful truth that drives all our joy, peace and praise both now and for eternity!  When we look at these passages and read these comments, it is difficult for me to understand how anyone who seriously and conscientiously claims to be a Christian, who is presumably trusting exclusively in the work of Christ upon the cross to effect their own salvation - it is difficult for me to understand how such a person could ever even think of the crucifixion in terms of “divine child abuse”, much less print those thoughts in a book.  For a self-professed Christian to publicly criticize God’s actions toward the Lord Jesus on the cross for our sakes is, in my opinion, ample reason to question whether that person knows the God of the Bible at all.

Two things are obvious upon reading the Scriptures in regard to the cross of Christ: 1) The love of God and of Christ for His Bride is deeper than we will ever comprehend throughout all eternity, and 2) The hatred of a holy God toward our sin is infinite because the only Person who could be found that could satisfy our debt to God was His own Son.  That being the case, Paul says, 

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The love of the Father towards us in sending His Son into the world, and the love of the Son toward us in submitting to His Father in all things, even to the death of the cross, surpasses knowledge.  It is beyond our mental ability to comprehend such a love, and yet we somehow know and understand it to be true.  Because of love, God the Father made the Lord Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2Corinthians 5:21 ESV).  The Father made the Son to be sin, and it pleased the Lord to crush Him for our sakes.  So when the Lord Jesus cries out upon the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”, the answer to that question is, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die - 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  (Romans 5:6 ESV)

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32 ESV)

And that is the whole point!  God’s punishment of His Son in our place, for our sin, actually procured for us all things!  Christ’s death purchased for us everything we need to be justified in God’s sight.  Not only did Christ suffer our punishment, but He purchased “all things” necessary in order for us to enjoy God and salvation forever.  It is through the punishment of the Lord Jesus that the Father is able to bless us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places! (Ephesians 1:3 ESV).  

God, through Christ, has done everything necessary in order for us who were once rebels against His Law, condemned by His Law, enemies of God and lovers of our own sin, . . . 

- to be granted repentance from our sin,

- to be granted forgiveness for our sin,

- to be granted faith to actually believe the Gospel message,

- to be reconciled to God and His Law,

- to become righteous in His sight,

- to be adopted as His own children,

- to be a member of His Body, the Church,

- to be included as His Bride for whom Christ died.

- to be granted eternal life,

- to be saved from the eternal death we all most assuredly deserve.

God, through the willing obedience of His own Son, and moved by love, accomplished everything that was necessary in order to not only procure my salvation, but supply it to me.  There is no possibility that anyone for whom Christ died will ever see God’s wrath against him for his own sin.  That is why the apostle John says with a sense of awe, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”  (1John 3:1 ESV).

What kind of love is this that God would punish His own Son, and the Son would willingly receive that awful, indescribable crushing punishment of His Father, for our sakes, so that we might become God’s children?  How can such a thing be true?  

But this is what the Bible is all about: God’s work in redeeming sinners for the sake of His own great and wonderful name.  And that work is so great that I will never, ever have to face God’s condemnation.  The punishment Christ received for me, I will never see.  That is the extent of God’s love for His people.  That is the magnitude of the work of God and of Christ upon the cross for all who believe.  

Shouldn’t all this affect how we celebrate Christmas?  Isn’t this what the Incarnation is all about?  This is the reason why the Jesus came into the world: to be the Lamb of God who takes away our sin by bearing the punishment for our sin.  And as a consequence, we are granted every blessing God has to give.  

Now we’ve come to the second most difficult part of a sermon: the closing paragraph.  How do we draw this all together?  I think the best way to do that today is by remembering once again the death of Christ for us in communion.

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1. http://adrianwarnock.com/2007/07/brian-mclaren-supports-steve-chalke-about-the-cross/

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/ji_packer/Packer.crossachieve.html

5. Ibid.