Isaiah 50:8–9

Isaiah introduces God's elect Servant, put in the place of Israel who had rejected Him. He is just as truly the obedient and suffering One as He is the Jehovah God of Israel who made heaven and earth. So whatever insults He endured, the outcome is certain, and all the way through He counts on full vindication.

If Christ is not raised, where is His justification? Men treated Him as someone unfit for decent society, unfit even to live in this world. They treated Him with every indignity. Is He left without any justification at all? No, certainly not! Man crucified Him, but God raised Him. His resurrection is His justification, because by it God has declared that man's treatment and judgment of Him was wrong. In Isaiah 50 the Spirit of Christ speaks through the prophet. They strike Him; they pull the hair from His cheeks; they heap shame on Him; they spit in His face. Then He says, "He is near that justifies Me"! So He was, and God raised Him from among the dead. He is declared to be the Just One, the Holy One — yes, the Son of God by resurrection.

One most precious feature of our Lord's obedience to His Father's will was His complete committal of Himself to the Father. No thought of self-vindication entered His mind. "He is near that justifies me" was always the spirit in which He moved on toward the cross. When one of His disciples drew a sword to defend Him in the garden, He said to him, "Put your sword back into its place… Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?"

So Jehovah challenges His foes and sees their ruin sealed in their momentary triumph over Him whom, if man killed, God raised again from the dead. Notice what has often been pointed out: the apostle Paul quotes this passage in Romans 8:33 and applies to the Christian what the Spirit here says of Christ… The same Spirit now applies to us what He spoke then in God's vindication of Christ rejected.

The speaker is Christ Himself. He put Himself in the believer's place to bear his sins and endure their judgment. Now He stands right outside it all and asks: can anything once laid to His account still be found against Him? God has justified the absolute perfection of His work by raising Him from the dead. So who can condemn Christ?… Faith can take up the very words of Christ — indeed, the Holy Spirit makes them our own. If no one can bring a single charge against Christ, no one can bring one against us.

In Isaiah 50 the prophet speaks of the Lord, "He is near that justifies Me."… He will always justify what is right, even if we have to wait some time for Him to do so.