Surely *he* hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; and we, we did regard him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
Isaiah 53 reads like a confession. A people look back at Someone they once wrote off, and at last see what was happening. Verse 4 sets two things side by side: a burden He truly carried, and a verdict about Him that was wrong.
Two Hebrew words tie this verse back to the "man of sorrows" in verse 3. Matthew shows what they point to.
The "Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" is the same as "surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The Hebrew words are kho-li (grief) and mak'o-voth (sorrows). Matthew shows us that this applies to His healing their diseases and sicknesses. The Lord that healed them entered, as Man, into all the sorrows of which they had to be healed.
Scripture itself quotes this verse in one place: Matthew 8:17. Commentators say that one use settles the question.
It is well known how good and learned men have worked in vain over Isa. 53:4. They have not paid attention to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matt. 8:17. There it is applied to the grace with which He used His power to remove infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews… If any inspired writer had applied Isa. 53:4 to the atonement anywhere, that would settle it. It is only applied to Christ's ministry or at least miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit in 1 Peter 2:24, Heb. 9:28, refers to Isa. 53:11-12.
The verse says He bore and carried. Commentators ask what those words add to an act of power.
In what sense did Jesus, our Lord, take their infirmities, and bear their sicknesses? I believe it is this. He never used the power that was in Him to deal with sickness or infirmity as a mere act of power. In deep compassionate feeling He entered into the whole reality of the case. He healed, and He bore its burden on His heart before God as truly as He took it away from men.
More was happening in Him than the miracle showed.
He felt their miseries and bondage. In His tender heart He carried their burdens. He was afflicted among them because they were afflicted. Power went out of Him to heal them, and the loads He lifted from them weighed down His spirit. He felt these things in His spirit, for disease could not seize or defile His sinless, holy body.
Some read verse 4 as proof that the atonement covers bodily healing. Commentators reject that.
When He used His power in love and sympathy, Christ never healed an ill without bearing it on His spirit. But this is not atonement… bearing on the heart in sympathy is quite another thing from atonement. To apply the principle of atonement here is simply nonsense. Was Christ sick in our place when He made atonement on the cross? He did suffer wrath and bore our sin so as to come under it. But in these healings He was exercising power.
There is also a simpler reason the theory is unnecessary.
The atonement for sickness that people speak of could not be needed. If sin is atoned for, mercy can come in anywhere to relieve and heal the body: that which meets the cause can of course meet its effects also.
The second half of the verse is the confession of a mistake. They saw His suffering and drew the opposite conclusion from the truth.
The passage in Isaiah clearly does not refer to the atoning and substitutionary sufferings of Christ, as the verses right after it do (Isa. 53:5-6). It refers to the effects of His service among men. The Jews, blinded by unbelief, treated those effects as a visitation from God. So they said, "He is mad"; "this man is not of God"; "He has a demon" — counting Him a Gehazi, a Uzziah, "stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted."
Gehazi and Uzziah were men struck with disease as a judgment from God.
Their mistake was not that God's hand was on Him. It was about why.
They had thought that God's hand was out against Him, as if He Himself were under God's displeasure. But the stroke was upon Him "for the transgression of my people."
The "we" of this verse is a people who once judged Him and now judge themselves. That confession is not theirs alone.
This is the language of the godly remnant when they look on Him whom they pierced, and the believer today believes the same truth… How very plain and how very sure is the word of God, God be praised for it!
- Borne — "griefs" and "sorrows" cover sickness and burdens. Matthew 8:17 is the only inspired use of this verse, and it points to His healing ministry.
- Felt — He never healed by bare power. He carried each case on His heart before God as He lifted it off the sufferer.
- Distinguished — bearing in sympathy (v. 4) is not bearing sin under wrath (v. 5 on). Healing was never atonement.
- Misjudged — they saw His sorrow and concluded God was against Him. They put Him with men struck by God.
- Confessed — the "we" is a people who reverse their own verdict. A believer today makes the same confession.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53 is a confession, and the speakers keep saying "we" and "our" — and this verse is where they stop guessing about the sufferer and name what His suffering did. The questions it raises are simple and huge: who is saying "we," what wounds are these, and what is the healing?
One writer counts up the verses, then draws out what that means for each of us:
Here is a remarkable fact: as printed in our English Bibles, verse 5 is the central verse of this chapter, which really begins with verse 13 of Isaiah 52. It is therefore the central verse of the central chapter of the central section of this latter part of Isaiah. And without doubt it predicts truth that is central both to our soul's salvation and to our soul's experience. The transgressions, the iniquities were mine, each of us has to say, but the wounding, the bruising were not mine but His. The peace, the healing are mine, but the chastisement, the stripes that bought them, were not mine but His. In all this He was my Substitute.
The confession belongs first to a people who once judged Him wrongly and later admit the truth:
It is not the Gentiles, the non-Jewish nations, but the Jews who say, "Who would have believed our report? … He carried our pains, while we thought God had struck Him down and punished Him. Yet He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and His wounds brought us healing." It is Israel who speak this way, when they repent and confess their past unbelief. They had thought He was hateful to God, when in truth He was making atonement for their transgressions.
Others can say the same words too, but the writers set one condition:
In these verses, we must remember, the "we" and the "us" are those who believe, whether ourselves today or the godly remnant of Israel in a coming day. And those who believe are those who have first confessed that they are sinners.
The verse before speaks of griefs and sorrows carried. This one speaks of something more, and one writer marks the shift:
In sympathy He bore our griefs: in atonement He bore the punishment due to our sins. Blessed Saviour! "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace." There was no other way. But thanks be to God, we can now say, "with His wounds we are healed." The wounds were His; the healing is ours.
Wounds, bruises and stripes sound like the work of soldiers and mobs. One writer rules that out:
The wounds, the bruises and the stripes that bring blessing did not come from human hands. They tell us what our sins deserved. They tell us what He bore for us at the hand of a righteous and holy God, when He carried our sins.
Some soften the word translated "chastisement" into suffering without penalty. One writer answers by pressing the word itself:
Some argue that "while it is true that Jesus is our substitute, He is our substitute only in suffering, not in punishment. Sin was not punished on the cross. The cross was a scene of wonderful mercy and love, not of wrath and penalty." Yet Scripture still says, "Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace." One scholar, Delitzsch, says of that word, "We have translated the Hebrew word 'musar' as 'punishment,' and the language had no other word for this idea."
Peace, then, is not something we produce or grow into. It comes from a cause outside ourselves:
If the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, then He took our place in drinking that dreadful cup. He was our (believers') representative there. God dealt with Him this way because our sins were laid on Him. That is why peace comes to us. It is not because we became righteous in ourselves. Our peace is the result of His chastisement.
Some read the healing as a promise that our bodies will be cured. The writers disagree, and point to a different healing:
This is not bodily healing. It is healing from the deadly disease of sin. The stripes are the stripes of God's judgment, poured out on Him at the cross.
Another writer answers this more plainly:
Some claim that Christ died for our bodily ills as well, and that the stripes laid on Him were for the healing of our bodies. This is a most dangerous twisting of the truth. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, but nowhere is it written that He died for our bodily diseases.
- Ours. The transgressions and iniquities in this verse belong to us, not to Him.
- His. The wounding, the bruising, the chastisement and the stripes are all His — the exchange runs one way.
- God's. Those stripes came not from human hands but from a righteous God dealing with sins laid on Him.
- Peace. Our peace is the effect of His chastisement, not the effect of any change in us.
- Healing. The healing is healing from the disease of sin. Only those who first confess they are sinners can claim it.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6 stands at the centre of the chapter's confession: a scattered flock, each animal on its own path, and one Man carrying what they all deserved. Commentators press three questions here — what our straying was, who the "we" and "us all" are, and whose hand did the laying.
The verse describes our sin twice over, and one writer reads each clause as a separate charge.
What words are like God's words? Here in two short sentences God describes our character and our condemnation. Like sheep we have strayed, and in our straying we have shown the folly of our sin. "We have turned every one to his own way," and by that we have declared the wilfulness, the wickedness of our sin. After we had declared so definitely and deliberately what we are, what could fall on us but the just condemnation of God? But God has undertaken for us, and whether it be the folly or the wilfulness of our sin — all our iniquity He laid on our Surety. It is the saved remnant of Israel that is speaking these wonderful words, but every believer may use them.
One writer defines sin by that phrase, "his own way."
Sin is lawlessness; doing our own will regardless of God's will, and going our own way independently of Him.
The verse includes everyone, yet no two paths are the same.
The mouth is all the more free and full to admit its wicked folly: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way." There was no exception. All had strayed, yet each in his own evil way. Yet in the face of all these wrongs, and out of His own spontaneous and all-conquering goodness, Jehovah made the iniquity of us all fall on Him.
The pronouns matter. One writer asks who the "we" and the "us" are. His answer decides how far substitution reaches.
In this great verse two things strike us. First, it is "all we" and "us all." Who are the "we" and the "us"? The people of God who confess their sins and believe in the Substitute. Exactly so. The propitiatory work of Christ opens the door in righteousness to whoever will. But its substitutionary effect reaches believers only.
The verb belongs to God, not to us. One writer sets this beside Aaron, who once confessed the people's sins over a goat.
Further, it is the Lord Himself who laid our sins on the Substitute. Aaron no doubt confessed and laid on the head of the goat all that he knew and remembered of the people's transgressions. But how could he confess them all? A well-known hymn may say, "I lay my sins on Jesus," but we may well be thankful that it is not left to us to do it. God Himself has done it by one act, and so done it perfectly.
The verse is repeatedly used as the clearest proof text for one Person standing in the place of another.
Substitution is as certain a truth as Scripture can give us — that is, one person standing in another's place, bearing his sins in His own body on the tree, bruised for them instead of the guilty, who is healed by the other taking the stripes.
The moment matters. Some hold that Christ carried our sins all through His life. One writer answers them from this verse.
If He had been bearing our sins all His life, He must all His life have been abandoned by God. God cannot look on sin with the least allowance. But no: Isaiah 53:6 shows that Jehovah laid our iniquity on His Anointed when He hung on the tree.
If God laid the sins, the believer's peace does not rest on his own grip.
If anything could have made this doubtful, it was our sins. But they were laid — yes, He laid on Christ (Isaiah 53:6) the iniquity of us all. Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Where are they now? When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Not one sin did God leave on the believer; not one did Christ carry into heaven.
The sheep image runs on into rescue. The flock's danger was not only the enemies outside.
They had inward faults as well as outward foes. They had all gone astray. Everyone had turned to his own way. And on the One then speaking to them Jehovah would lay the iniquities of them all. He is the Shepherd, and the sword of divine judgment would soon strike Him for the sake of the flock. He guarantees salvation to anyone who seeks it from Him.
- Straying — the first clause names our folly, the second our wilfulness. All went astray, yet each chose his own route.
- Confession — the "we" here are people who have admitted they are sinners. The door stands open to whoever will, but Christ bears the sins of believers only.
- Laying — God Himself, not the sinner, placed the iniquity on the Substitute. Aaron could never name every sin, so God did it for us, and did it perfectly.
- Timing — God laid the load on Him at the cross. He did not carry it through His life; the bruising and the forsaking belong to that hour.
- Result — God left no sin on the believer, and Christ carried none into heaven. The stricken Shepherd now guarantees salvation to anyone who comes to Him.