Handed Over for Our Sins

Isaiah 53:1-12 

1 Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.

3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.

5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

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.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.

8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

9 And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.

11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.

12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus the Messiah, the Servant of God most high, He was handed over to punishment and death as if guilty for the sins of all mankind from Adam’s spiritual loins.  Who would believe such a report of what God would do in an act of grace at His own Son’s expense?  It is unbelievable and absurd to the mere minds of men that He would do this.  Yet He has.  This tender plant grew up as an ordinary man in many regards (except for the visit to the temple when He was twelve years old), not as we picture like the most tall and handsome man, but without outward beauty.  He was despised and rejected by those He came to atone for with his own suffering and death in their place, a man of sorrows who experienced our grief amidst a world of sin.  We did not hold Him in high regard, yet this one bore our grief of sin’s disease and our sorrow in falling short of righteousness and hope.  Our sins and sin nature we inherited from Adam were the cause for His suffering and beating so we would not have to suffer our sin’s accountability for eternity, which punishment brought us peace with God in His suffering and crucifixion to pay the Judge of all the eternal price of death with the life of His blood (Leviticus 17:11, John 6:53).  By the stripes of His punishment we are healed of sin’s malady of bondage (1 Peter 2:24), as lost sheep (1 Peter 2:25) going our own ways instead of His way of righteousness and holiness after His image in which we are created.  The sickness of our souls is the healing spoken of here, for physical healing is just an outward reminder of the true work of healing Christ brings us through His suffering and death in our place on our behalf.  Yes, He took on the sin of the world in those actions for us.  Yet as a lamb for the sheep He Himself let us lead Him to His death as to the slaughter of the sacrificial lamb on the altar outside the temple for our atonement and to a lesser degree as a sheep quietly and silently endures shearing (Matthew 26:63, 27:12).  It is written that He allowed Himself to be beaten for our transgressions against God, our sins we commit daily and the very iniquitous nature of our scarred souls from our spiritual inheritance.  He was imprisoned, judged, and quickly executed as it was ordained by God’s predetermined will, just as Psalm 22 describes the crucifixion so vividly for us as well.  He was cruelly put to death on the torturous cross with poor sinners like you and I, but laid to rest in a rich man’s tomb as verse 9 spells out.  He never lied nor was violent and so did not deserve such a death, yet it was our violence and sin which required it.  As the ultimate sin offering, Jesus the Christ the suffering Servant, He was so wounded and it grieved His Father and ours in heaven, bit it was necessary to satisfy the justice and righteous wrath of God on all our sin’s transgressions against Him and His word.  This was God’s pleasure to allow His only Son to suffer and sacrifice Himself because we who believe and trust this work of Him for us can be reunited forever in Him with the Father as designed in Eden’s Garden.  We are justified by this suffering and death as we are justified by Him bearing our iniquity.  He was actually counted among the sinners as our representative to bear our sin and put it to death in a finality which not yearly sacrifice could ever accomplish (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 10:10).  Therefore, He who emptied His life to death for us, who identified with sinners like us, He is given the name above all names and worshiped with genuflecting knees for all eternity (Philippians 2:9-11), just as it was planned from the beginning (1 Peter 1:20).  Why?  So that as 1 Peter 1:21 says so we, “through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”  The prophets proclaimed Christ as the suffering Servant who would suffer and die so we might live in Him and be righteous in His righteousness.  It shows Jesus the Christ handed over for our sins by God to atone for our sin and reconcile us to Him.  This is eternal life with an absolute hope of reconciliation with God in Christ, that Jesus Christ took our pain of sin and sadness as if it were His own, to the point where He seemed afflicted by God.  These were our sins on the sinless one.  He then was beaten to suffer in our place for our due punishment, bringing peace in reconciling us to God.  He healed us by being beaten, then died to cover our sin's justice, but also rose again to offer hope in a rebirth, a way to finally be able to do as He says out of love and with Him living inside us!  Again I am in awe of God's plan to bring us back to Himself from our disobedience and unworthiness; in Christ who was to come Isaiah gave the message how the Christ would see our wandering in sin, take on our sin as if He should take our punishment instead, let Himself be murdered with criminals, and do all to be able to stand between us and God's just punishment to deliver us.  He set us free who trust and believe.  Amen!