And when the evening was come, they brought to him many possessed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all that were ill;
Evening comes, and a whole town brings its sick and its demon-oppressed to Jesus, who frees and heals them all. The next verse ties this to Isaiah — He took our illnesses and bore our diseases — a strange thing to say of a man healing other people.
One writer pictures who was in that crowd.
The Lord of glory held a great reception that night. But the crowd was not the kind found in the courts of the world's great ones. He was greater than Solomon, yet no Queen of Sheba was there with her gifts. The day is coming when all nations will fall down before Him. Those who honoured Him that night were only a company of invalids. Nor did they seek His face in vain.
The spirits leave because He speaks. Nothing around Him could do the same.
The demons had entered these people and left them morally and spiritually defiled. They were brought into the presence of the Son of God, "and He cast out the spirits with a word." The foul spirits that brought such distress to men could not defile the Son of God. More than that, they could not stay in His presence once He spoke the word.
When Scripture notes the power of Jesus in casting out the evil spirits, it links that power to the kingdom and to Himself as the anointed One. He could do it with a word. The Jewish system, meanwhile, could not free its children from this terrible affliction at all.
He healed all of them. But it was not merely a show of power.
Peter's sick mother-in-law rises up at His word. The evil spirits leave the people they had entered, at once. All the sick are healed. But it was not merely power. His heart was in it and felt it all. "He took our illnesses and bore our diseases." His miracles were miracles of goodness. They were not merely a few miracles given as a testimony. They were deliverance from all the effect of sin and Satan's power.
Verse 17 explains verse 16. One writer asks in what sense Jesus bore what He healed. (Older translations read "infirmities" and "sicknesses" where the ESV has "illnesses" and "diseases".)
In what sense did Jesus, our Lord, take their infirmities and bear their sicknesses? In this, I believe: He never used the power that was in Him to meet sickness or infirmity as a matter of mere 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. Sickness and infirmity could not touch Him, and that is exactly why He was free to take up each consequence of sin in this way.
There is an order to it — three steps, not one.
In Matthew we see the Lord taking away the sicknesses and the infirmities of His people. But look at the passage in Isaiah that this act fulfils, and you will see that He first took these burdens on His own shoulders. In His own tender grace and unspeakable compassion, He went down in spirit under the load of the sorrow of those who sought His aid. Then He carried it on His own heart before God, and last of all He took it away.
Some take Isaiah 53:4 as proof that bodily healing belongs to the atonement. One writer answers from where the New Testament applies that verse.
It is well known that good and learned men have laboured in vain over Isaiah 53:4. The reason is that they have not paid attention to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matthew 8:17. There the Holy Spirit applies it to the grace with which Christ used His power to remove infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews… If any inspired writer applied Isaiah 53:4 to the atonement, that would settle it. But Scripture applies it only to Christ's ministry, or at least His miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit points to Isaiah 53:11-12, in 1 Peter 2:24 and Hebrews 9:28.
What He carried that evening did not end that evening.
This is how Jesus was "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." This is how He qualified Himself to be our sympathising High Priest on high. He did not take these physical infirmities on His own body; He bore them on His spirit. His acts of healing were not acts of power only. They were acts of sympathy as well.
- Word — the spirits went out at a spoken command; the religion around Him could not match that.
- All — He healed every sick person brought that evening; the reach was total, not selective.
- Bore — He never removed a trouble without first going down under its weight in His own spirit.
- Order — He took the burden up, carried it before God, then took it away; healing was the last step, not the only one.
- Priest — that bearing is what fits Him to feel with His people still, and it is distinct from bearing sin at the cross.
so that that should be fulfilled which was spoken through Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases.
Matthew has just described an evening of healing, and he says these cures fulfilled a word from Isaiah. That raises two questions: when was Isaiah's word fulfilled, and how did Jesus "take" and "bear" the very illnesses He was removing?
Matthew does not leave the timing open. He ties Isaiah's words to that evening's work. Commentators press this against the idea that the line describes the cross:
Here we are told very clearly how and when the Scripture in Isaiah was fulfilled. It was NOT fulfilled on the cross. It WAS fulfilled in the actual deeds of healing that He performed when He was here on earth. The Scripture just quoted says this as plainly as possible.
This matters in practice. The verse is often pulled into arguments about sickness in a believer's life:
Some have used these words wrongly. They take them to mean that He bore our sicknesses on the cross, and so a believer ought never to be ill. The right application is found here. He did not relieve men without feeling their sorrows and sicknesses. He bore in His spirit the weight of the very evils that He dismissed by His power.
So if He was never ill Himself, what did the bearing involve? One answer: sympathy does not depend on being in the same condition.
I do not doubt that His whole soul entered into our infirmities and sicknesses. He felt their whole sorrow and burden before God, in the full sense of what they were. He did so to set them aside and to bar Satan's power over them. But was He sick and infirm because He Himself took our infirmities? Clearly not. In a word, it is not being Himself in the state He sympathises with that gives the sympathy.
And this fellow-feeling was of a kind no one else could offer:
This was entirely sympathetic — the power of fellow-feeling, which in Him was perfect. He had no sicknesses or infirmities of His own... But by sympathy — by perfect fellow-feeling — "He took our illnesses and bore our diseases." Only a perfect man could have done this. We may feel for one another and with one another; but only Jesus could make human infirmity and sickness His own.
The New Testament quotes Isaiah 53 more than once. Commentators notice that it does not use every verse for the same thing:
It is well known that good and learned men have laboured in vain over Isaiah 53:4. They did not pay attention to how the Holy Spirit uses it in Matthew 8:17. There the Spirit applies it to the grace with which He used His power to remove infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews... Isaiah 53:4 is applied only to Christ's ministry, or at least to His miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit in 1 Peter 2:24 and Hebrews 9:28 refers to Isaiah 53:11-12.
So one chapter speaks of two different things: the healing He did while He lived, and His death for our sins.
Matthew's setting is Israel. The healings showed who was standing among them:
He does not yet forsake Israel... Jesus put Himself in heart under the weight of all the sorrows that oppressed Israel, in order to relieve and heal them. He is still Emmanuel. He feels for their misery and is afflicted in all their affliction. Yet He has come in with power that shows He is able to deliver them.
That same fellow-feeling shapes His work for us now:
This is how Jesus came to "sympathize with our weaknesses" (Heb. 4:15). This is how He qualified Himself to be our sympathising High Priest on high. Not that He took these physical infirmities on His own body, but He bore them on His spirit. His acts of healing were not acts of power only, but acts of sympathy as well... When the deaf man who could not speak stood before Him, He looked up to heaven and sighed (Mark 7:34). At the grave of Lazarus He groaned in spirit, was troubled, and wept (John 11:33-38).
His way of serving also sets the pattern for how His people treat one another:
How wonderfully He entered into our sorrows at every step of His path, and served us in love. We read, "He took our illnesses and bore our diseases" (Matt. 8:17). Following in His steps, we shall serve one another in love. In doing so we display something of the excellencies of Christ.
- Power — He healed by His own power, dismissing the very evils that crushed people.
- Feeling — that power never came alone. He bore in His spirit the weight He lifted off others, though He was never sick Himself.
- Timing — these writers read the prophecy as fulfilled in His healing ministry, not on the cross. For His death for our sins, the New Testament quotes later verses of Isaiah 53.
- Priesthood — that same fellow-feeling qualifies Him as our High Priest, who sympathizes with our weaknesses.
- Pattern — those who follow Him carry one another's sorrows in the same way. In doing so they show something of Christ.