Isaiah 53:4-6 THE VICARIOUS SUFFERER The vicarious sufferings of Christ are expressed in the Old Testament by types like Abraham offering Isaac on the altar. A ram nearby was caught in a thicket by its horns, and that ram was killed and put on the altar in Isaac’s place. There are other types and foreshadows of what Christ endured when He died in our place on the cross. Every person who brought a sin offering to the tabernacle and placed their hand on the head of the animal while confessing their sin, and then saw the innocent animal taking the sinner’s place, would be conscious of a vicarious sacrifice. In this chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy, the sufferings of Christ are explicit. Philip the evangelist explained the Gospel, and the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Ethiopian eunuch from these verses. John the Baptist said the “Lamb of God” would bare away the sin of the world. Our Lord Jesus said He came to give His life as a ransom for many. Peter said we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. John said God gave His only begotten Son for “whosoever believeth in Him.” In Hebrews 2:9, we read that “He tasted death for every man.”
This three-verse stanza of the sufferer’s song contains some of the clearest words of the doctrine of substitution that are in the whole Bible. Our Lord was a man of griefs and sorrows, but they were our griefs and sorrows, not His. The identification of our Lord Jesus Christ with us, was for many different reasons. As God, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” [John 1:14]. He identified Himself with our humanity, when “He was found in fashion as a man” [Philippians 2:8]. Our griefs and sorrows were made personal to Him in this passage of scripture. “He was made sin for us” [2nd Corinthians 5:21], when He identified Himself with our sin. Romans 5:8 tells us, “Christ died for us,” identifying Himself with our death. He is willing to identify Himself with us as family [Hebrews 2:11], and is “not ashamed to call us brethren.” Right at this moment, and constantly He is our “Advocate with the Father” [1st John 2:1- 2].
Being “wounded for our transgressions,” indicates that He was pierced, which certainly happened when they nailed Him to the tree, and He suffered there as the Perfect Suffering Servant. All our transgressions, our rebellion, our guilt crushed Him in His holy spirit when the sins of the world bore down in full weight upon Him. He endured that, so we might be healed from the consequences of our sins and forgiven. He made it possible for us to be cleared of all guilt because of the perfections of Himself and the sacrifice He made on our behalf.
A sheep is a stubborn, ignorant and willful creature that wants its own way. By nature, it is unable to protect or defend itself when attacked. Without a shepherd, a sheep is lost. In contrast to the first sheep that goes its own way, is the second sheep in the next stanza of the song. The first sheep has gone “its own way.” That is the essence of sin. Sin is going our own way, rather than God’s way. It is going beyond, or coming short of what God says. It is deviating to one side or the other of what is God’s revealed will to us. How blessed is the fact that the first sheep (any person) who has gone its own way, can personally experience by faith, the fact that “the Lord hath laid on Him, the iniquity of us all.” He conquered sin, when in submission to the just claims of a righteous God, He suffered as the sinless sacrifice for us. He absorbed all that sin demanded, when “He suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”