with His stripes we are healed

“with His stripes we are healed”

Isaiah is giving to the Servant’s suffering a meaning that applies directly to salvation. He has spoken of iniquities, transgressions, of penal and vicarious suffering and he has spoken of peace and reconciliation. This statement must be understood in the same line of teaching as it is revealed here. The first application of this healing has to do with sin and the havoc it has caused in human lives. Healing has been accomplished and achieved for us on the cross; it is not something to be attained, it is God’s free gift by grace. It is through His “wounds” or blows inflicted and the lacerations which resulted from his beatings that healing has been accomplished for us. Through His physical brokenness we have healing. His broken body releases the power of God and we are inwardly healed by touching the hem of His garment. This inner healing of the soul and the physical healing of our body is surely understood by the Gospel word “wholeness.” Jesus healed people totally – the healing of the person, restoring fulness and completeness is the mark of the Messiah’s ministry. Physical healing is surely included in the salvation of God, however, Paul urged men to repent and to be reconciled to God but I do not recall that he urged men to be healed! Wherever the gospel was preached in apostolic times it was accompanied by signs and wonders – healings and deliverances, but the greatest gift of all is the love for Jesus poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Verse 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. ”

Isaiah returns to the perverse nature of our hearts, “we” have all turned to his own way; not only did Adam disobey God, but each one of us has sinned wilfully against God: “and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (v6).

There is no break in the sentence - there is the statement of man’s wilful disobedience against God linked by the word “and” to the action of Father in laying on His Servant the iniquity of us all. Earlier we read of the Servant who carried our sorrows who was “smitten by God.” This statement regarding Father’s active judgment of sin brings us to the heart of Messiah’s sufferings which were intensely personal. The LORD laid on Him our sin and thus judged sin in the flesh of the Messiah, “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom.8:3). The emphatic emphasis is on the LORD who has laid on Christ our iniquity. This was the crucial and decisive action of God - the judgment of the Father and the submission of the Son, uniting together as one to judge sin and to gain salvation through the cross.

The LORD’S judgment of sin required the submission of the suffering Servant, causing awful pain and death. The writer to the Hebrews writes,

“But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb.2:9-10).

The Hebrews writer speaks of the perfecting of the Messiah through suffering. If suffering has such an impact on Christ’s humanity, we should rethink our theology of sanctification in line with 2Cor.ch.11-12. In new birth we are truly constituted holy by the regeneration of our heart/nature. The gift of God’s holiness gains perfection through our responsiveness to suffering.

Returning to the text of Isaiah we see the heart of evangelical theology regarding salvation. The Servant has taken, “all our iniquity” on Himself – every individual sin we ever committed has deepened the wounds of our dying Messiah. He bore all this for me! It is my sin that put Him there. Paul said, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief” (1Tim.1:15). This verse shows how deeply he felt about Christ’s death on his behalf. He realized how deep was Jesus’ love for him personally, shown to him especially through Christ’s sufferings, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal.2:20).

The offering up of the Servant was not a spontaneous act of love but it was a considered choice of the will of Jesus to give Himself in sacrificial love by offering Himself up to God as the divine provision in the plan of God to meet our need. Motyer writes of God, “who himself superintends the priestly task (Lev.16:21) of transferring the guilt of the guilty to the head of the servant, giving notice that this is indeed his considered and acceptable satisfaction for sin.”

The dying Servant endures in silence and submits to injustice, abuse, and death

“He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not his mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken. And He made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in His death; because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth” (v7-9; see also Acts 8:26-35).