But the latter half of the remnant's reply is a confession, not only of their once unbelief but of their now faith as simple as it is real and deep.
“Surely our sicknesses (or, griefs) he bore and carried our sorrows, and we regarded him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him, and with his stripes was healing to us. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid (or, made to light) upon him the iniquity of us all” (vers. 4-6).
It is well that we have the divine application of ver. 4 in the Gospel of Matt. 8:1717That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. (Matthew 8:17), where it is cited from the Septuagint as “Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases.” It is not meant that He suffered under them as a matter of fact; but that He took them on His spirit and was burdened by their weight, whilst He removed them by His gracious intervention. He was perfect in this respect as in all others. What a contrast with Moses in Egypt inflicting scourges on the oppressors of Israel and despisers of the “I am” and with Elijah in the midst of apostate Israel recalling the guilty king and people from Baal to Jehovah! Here we have God in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not reckoning to them their offenses, but not yet the sinless One made sin for us that we might become God's righteousness in Him. It was He who, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and power, went throughout doing good and healing all that were under the devil's power, because God was with Him. And it appears from this remarkable word of the prophet as applied by the apostle that as He healed in divine energy, He took the infirmities and the sicknesses as a load of sorrow on Himself before God.
Do we not see the detail of this peculiar way especially in the Gospel of Mark? Take the leper in chap. 1, the paralytic of chap. 2, the demoniac of chap. 4, the raised daughter of the synagogue ruler in chap. 5, the deaf and dumb in chap. 7, the blind man of Bethsaida in chap. 8, and the son with a dumb spirit in chap. 9. It was not only power that dispelled the evil, but His deep interest and grace in the way wherein He did it, as the perfect servant of man's need in God's power. Truly “He hath done all things well.” Thus we gain a truth through the prophet by understanding ver. 4 of His wondrous way in healing the afflicted, instead of forcing it to speak of His very distinct work of propitiation for our sins, which required far more and different from the cure of infirmities and diseases appreciated aright before God.
It is in vers. 5 and 6 that the godly remnant express their infinite debt in His suffering for them, instead of being regarded as one stricken, smitten of God and afflicted like Job, or in another way a Gehazi or an Uzziah. “But he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed (or, healing was to us).” The figures are abundant and as strikingly differ: but they all agree in revealing Him as the expiatory sufferer and substitute: the ever present shadows throughout the Jewish ritual of His atoning for the believer's felt need and deepest want before God as a guilty sinner. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin.”
The blood of such creatures did all that was available till the Lamb of God came and suffered for us, not only made sin and become a curse on the tree, but for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. For every shadow met and was more than fulfilled on our account in Him who glorified God as God in His death for sin, as He had in His life glorified Him as His Father in an equally perfect obedience. It is unbelieving blindness to see in His cross nothing more than a martyrdom for the truth and an example of holy love. These elements were in it beyond doubt, but incomparably more: the absolute necessity on God's part as well as ours of One as truly God as man, one mediator both of God and men, Christ Jesus man, who gave Himself a ransom for all, who suffered for sins once (and once was ample), Just for unjust, that He might bring us to God, not yet to heaven (however surely this in due time) but (what was of the utmost moment for the soul now and here) “to God.” And what can be plainer than the prophet's figures? He (none other in heaven or on earth could avail), He only, He truly, He effectually “was wounded,” not as reward for any good in us, but “for our transgressions.” When in their darkness they did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, it was governmental, and significant of God's displeasure. But now they knew by divine teaching and state it as a certain truth that only in sovereign grace to helpless and otherwise ruined sinners, was He therein wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. It was God's way to save righteously. If the Jews did not dispute that through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death; and thus death passed upon all men for that all sinned (adding then their personal sins to Adam's transgression); much rather did the grace of God, and the free gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ exceed unto the many. Was it not worthy of God and due to the Savior, that where sin abounded, grace should exceedingly surpass? Compare the unworthy first man's sin with the all-worthy Second's suffering for sins. Who but an unbeliever could fail to see the infinite contrast, that grace should flow abundantly for the salvation of the believer, as judgment must act all the more certainly against those who despise such a God and such a Savior?
Peace with God, for such as we were, needed an immovable foundation. And He is the foundation, righteous and holy even for us through “the blood of His cross.” “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” Who else could have borne it? Sinful man must have sunk under what sin deserved irretrievably and forever. But He whom knowing no sin God made sin for us endured to the utmost, and was raised righteously and triumphantly, Jesus Christ the same yesterday and to-day and forever. “And with His stripes we are healed.” Such is the one divine and only panacea for any and every lost one who bows to the Crucified One and to the righteousness of God, abjuring his own righteousness but confessing his guilt and ruin.
This is what takes away not only guilt but guile, and stablishes him that had been dishonest and deceitful in integrity even in God's sight. The mouth is all the freer and fuller to own its wicked folly: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned each to his own way.” There was no exception: all astray, yet each in his own evil way. Yet in the face of all wrongs, and in His own spontaneous and all-overcoming goodness Jehovah caused to light upon Him the iniquity of us all.
Did not one of our own poets sing “I lay my sins on Jesus?” Nay, friend, God's truth is far beyond thy hymn. Jehovah who knew all laid the iniquity of all that believe on Him. Is not this far greater, better, and surer? We have all had habits of sin, even those converted young; and a sinful habit genders forgetfulness as well as heedlessness of sins. Which of us could be so confident for eternal salvation as to rely on our own memory in laying our sins on Jesus? How awful to have presumed fatally in such a case! How blessed, even apart from that danger, to have the certainty that God does perfectly for the believer what he himself could only do imperfectly! What grace on His part, and what pitiful consideration of our shortcoming He who could not but feel abhorrent every act of self-will, every uprising of independency and rebellion, caused the vile mass of iniquity to light on His head who is here shown to be its infinitely suffering Sin-bearer, willing because Jehovah willed it in a grace which is His prerogative, to save the lost.