Isaiah 53:6

WANDERING SHEEP

Isaiah 53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.

Comparisons in Scripture are frequently to be understood with great limitation: perhaps, out of many circumstances, one only is justly applicable to the case. Thus, when our Lord says, “Behold, I come as a thief” (Revelation 16:15)—common sense will fix the resemblance to a single point, that He will come suddenly and unexpectedly.

So, when wandering sinners are compared to wandering sheep, we have a striking image of the danger of their state, and their inability to recover themselves. Sheep wandering without a shepherd are exposed, a defenceless and easy prey, to wild beasts and enemies, and liable to perish for want of pasture; for they are not able either to provide for themselves, or to find their way back to the place from whence they strayed. Whatever they suffer, they continue to wander, and if not sought out, will be lost. Thus far the allusion holds.
But sheep in such a situation are not the subjects of blame. They would be highly blameable, if we could suppose them rational creatures; if they had been under the eye of a careful and provident shepherd, had been capable of knowing him, had wilfully and obstinately renounced his protection and guidance, and voluntarily chosen to plunge themselves into danger, rather than to remain in it any longer.
Thus it is with man.

1. His wandering is rebellious. God made him upright, but he has sought out to himself many inventions (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

2. God has appointed for mankind a safe and pleasant path, by walking in which they shall find rest to their souls; but they say, “We will not walk therein” (Jeremiah 6:16).

3. They were capable of knowing the consequences of going astray, were repeatedly warned of them, were fenced in by wise and good laws, which they presumptuously broke through.
4. When they had wandered from Him, they were again and again invited to return to Him, but they refused. They mocked His messengers, and preferred the misery they had brought upon themselves to the happiness of being under His direction and care.

Surely He emphatically deserves the name of the Good Shepherd, who freely laid down His life to restore sheep of this character.—John Newton: Works, p 712.

We are like sheep,

1. In our proneness to err. No creature is more prone to wander and lose his way than a sheep without a shepherd. So are we apt to transgress the bounds whereby God has hedged up our way (Jeremiah 14:10). This has been manifest in every period of our life (Psalms 25:7; Psalms 19:12).

2. In our readiness to follow evil example. Sheep run after one another, and one straggler draweth away the whole flock; and so men take and do a great deal of hurt by sad examples. Sheep go by troops, and so do men follow the multitude to do evil; what is common passeth into our practice without observation (Ephesians 2:2).

3. In our danger when we have gone astray. Straying sheep, when out of the pasture, are in harm’s way, and exposed to a thousand dangers. Oh, consider what it is for a poor solitary lamb to wander through the mountains, where, it may be, some hungry lion or ravenous wolf looketh for such a prey. Even so is it with straying men: their judgments sleepeth not; it may be in the next hour they will be delivered to destruction (Jeremiah 7:6; Romans 3:16).

4. In our inability to return into the right way. Other animals can find their way home again, but a strayed sheep is irrecoverably lost without the shepherd’s diligence and care. “I could wander by myself, but could not return by myself” (Augustine).

5. In our need of a redeemer.

CONCLUSION.—Has the Good Shepherd brought us back? Then,

1. Let us magnify His self-sacrificing and tender mercy, in following us, and bringing us into the pastures where there is at once safety and true satisfaction.

2. Let us remember for ourselves, and preach to others, that the sheep do not fare the better for going out of the pasture. In departing from God, we turn our back upon our own happiness. The broad and easy ways of sin are pleasing to flesh and blood, but destructive to the soul. Adam thought to find much happiness in forbidden fruit, to mend and better his condition, but was miserably disappointed. The prodigal did not fare well in the far country (Luke 15:14).

3. Let us pray for grace that we may be watchful in the future. Alas, which of us has not sad need to make our own the Psalmist’s confession and prayer (Psalms 119:176)? Though our hearts be set to walk with God in the main, yet there is still in them a proneness to swerve from the right way, either by neglecting our duty to God, or by transgressing against His holy commandment; against this let us be on our guard, that we may not again grieve our Good Shepherd!—Thomas Manton, D.D.: Complete Works, vol. iii. pp. 300–303.

We wander, I. Like sheep, without reason—the pasture was rich, the shepherd kind, the food scarce.
II. Like sheep, aimlessly. The lion prowls for food, the hart in search of water, the sheep without aim.
III. Like sheep, persistently, despising the coming shades of evening, the distant bleatings of the abandoned flock, the loss of fleece and smarting wounds.
IV. Like sheep in peril—defenceless, surrounded by dangers and foes.
V. Like sheep—sought; the Good Shepherd calls to us, “Return.”—Stems and Twigs, second series, pp. 267.

It is acknowledged here by the person speaking, that all had, like sheep, broken the hedge of God’s law, forsaken their good and ever blessed Shepherd, and wandered into paths perilous and pernicious. We are not likened to one of the more noble and intelligent animals, but to a silly sheep. All sin is folly, all sinners are fools. You will observe that the creature selected for comparison is one that cannot live without care and attention. There is no such thing as a wild sheep. The creature’s happiness, its safety, and very existence, all depend upon its being under a nurture and care far above its own. Yet for all that the sheep strays from the shepherd. If there be but one gap in the hedge, the sheep will find it out. If there be but one possibility out of five hundred that by any means the flock shall wander, one of the flock will be quite certain to discover that possibility, and all its companions will avail themselves of it. So is it with man. He is quick of understanding for evil things. But that very creature which is so quickwitted to wander is the least likely of all animals to return. And such is man—wise to do evil, but foolish towards that which is good. With a hundred eyes, like Argus, he searches out opportunities for sinning; but, like Bartimeus, he is stone blind as to repentance and return to God.
The sheep goes astray ungratefully. It owes everything to the shepherd, and yet forsakes the hand that feeds it and heals its diseases. The sheep goes astray repeatedly. If restored to-day, it may not stray to-day, if it cannot; but it will to-morrow, if it can. The sheep wanders further and further, from bad to worse. There is no limit to its wandering except its weakness. See ye not your own selves as in a mirror?—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 925.

DIVERSITY AND INDIVIDUALITY IN TRANSGRESSION

Isaiah 53:6. We have turned every one to his own way.

I. A NOTICEABLE FACT.
We all resemble each other, in that we all like sheep have gone astray; but we all differ from each other, more or less, in the manner of our departure from God. There are many ways of sinning; though there be one path to heaven, there are many roads to hell. Each man chooses his own road and the choices vary for several reasons:—

1. Because each mind is more or less individually active. While in an unrenewed condition, it is active in devising means for its own gratification (Psalms 64:6).

2. Because of the diversity of our constitutions. We see plainly that the body hath some indirect influence on the mind, and that the condition of the mind follows the constitution of the body. Moreover, Satan adapts his temptation according to what he perceives to be our constitutional tendencies (H. E. I. 4680).

3. Because of the variety of our businesses and position in the world. Many men are engaged in ways of sin because they best suit with their employments; it is the sin of their calling, as vainglory in a minister (1 Timothy 3:6). So worldliness suits a man of business, or deceitfulness in his trade. Callings and businesses have their several corruptions, and into these, through the wickedness of their hearts, men slide.

4. Because of the differences in our education. Their education in the home as well as in school!

5. Because of the differences in the company into which we are drawn, and of the examples that are thus set before us. Men learn from those with whom they converse. Hence come national sins, partly, as they run in the blood, but more by way of example. Of the German we learn drunkenness and gluttony; of the French wantonness, &c. Hence also come individual sins. Hence the importance of shunning the society of the evil, and consorting only with the godly (H. E. I. 2123–2148, 4693, 4700).

II. PRACTICAL USES TO BE MADE OF THIS FACT.

1. Do not be too ready to bless yourselves, merely because the sins of others do not break out upon you; do not flatter yourselves because you do not run into the same sins that others do. The devil may take you in another snare that suiteth more with your temper and condition of life. Some are sensual, some vainglorious, some worldly, &c.; many meet in hell that do not go thither the same way. A man may not be as other men, and yet he may not be as he should be (Luke 18:11). For many reasons men made light of the invitation to the marriage feast (Matthew 22:5), but each excuse ruined. One hath business to keep him from Christ, another pleasures, another the pomps and vanities of the present world, another his superstitious observances; but each of these things obstructs the power of the truth, and the receiving of Christ into the soul. Thou hatest this or that public blemish, but what are thy faults? (John 8:7.) Do not rashly censure others, and descant on their faults; look within!

2. Stop your way of sinning; pluck out thy right eye, cut off thy right hand (Matthew 5:29). Your trial lieth there, as Abraham was tried in the call to offer up his Isaac; and David voucheth it as a mark of his sincerity (Psalms 18:23).

3. As we look back upon our past, and humble ourselves before God, let us penitently confess, not only the sinfulness of our nature, which we have in common with all men, but also the personal transgressions by which individually we have grieved Him.
4. As to our future, there are two things we must do.
(1.) We must walk circumspectly. We must look carefully at and around our way, and make sure that it is also the way of God (Proverbs 4:26; Proverbs 14:12); remembering that while there are many evil paths, there is but one right one. To save us from mistake, four waymarks have been mercifully given us. First, at the entrance of the way which leads to life everlasting there is a strait gate—so strait that we can enter it only by putting off all our sins, and giving ourselves entirely to the Lord. Secondly, it is a narrow way, and sometimes a very rugged way, so that much self-denial is needed to enable us to continue in it. Thirdly, it is a way in which you have little company (Matthew 7:14). Fourthly, it is a way in which, if we look carefully, we can discern Christ’s footsteps (1 Peter 2:21).

(2.) We must walk prayerfully, day by day asking God to keep us in His way. It is pleasanter the further it is pursued, and it conducts to a glorious resting place (Proverbs 3:17).—Thomas Manton, D.D.: Works, vol. iii. pp. 304–308.

GUILT CONFESSED, MERCY ACKNOWLEDGED

Isaiah 53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray, &c.

Our text expresses the sentiment of those, and of those only, who are acquainted with the misery of our fallen state, feel their own concern in it, and approve of the method which God has provided for their deliverance and recovery. It contains—
I. A CONFESSION OF GUILT AND WRETCHEDNESS. “All we … way.”

1. It is a sufficient proof of our depravity, that we prefer our own ways to the Lord’s; nor can He inflict a heavier judgment upon us in this life, than to give us up entirely to the way of our own hearts.

2. There is only one right way, but a thousand ways of being wrong. If you are not following Christ, you are wandering from God. The profane and the self-righteous, the open sinner and the hypocrite, the lover of pleasure and the lover of gold, the formal Papist and the formal Protestant, though they seem to travel different roads, though they pity or censure each other, will meet at last (unless the grace of God prevent) in the same state of final and hopeless misery. Whatever character you may bear amongst men, if you have not faith and holiness, you certainly are not in the way of life (Mark 16:16; Hebrews 12:14).

3. As wandering sheep are liable to innumerable dangers which they can neither see nor prevent, such is our condition, until, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are stopped, and turned, and brought into the fold of the Good Shepherd.

II. AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF MERCY.
Where sin abounded, grace has much more abounded. Man sinned, and Messiah suffered. “The Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” On what grounds! On the ground of His voluntary substitution for sinners, as their covenant head and representative (H. E. I. 396).—John Newton: Complete Works, pp. 712, 713.

In few words, this text contains the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It consists of lamentation and consolation.
I. LAMENTATION.
It is a lamentation over human sinfulness. “All we … way.” Here is sinfulness—

1. In its nature. It is a departure from God. It is transgression of the law which defines the boundaries within which God’s responsible creatures should keep. If they overleap or break them down, if they trespass into the territories beyond, they become sinners. Man has strayed from God.

2. In its reality. It is no ideal thing. It has passed into history. It is the sternest of living facts. From the fatal hour when the first transgression was committed, the holy God has witnessed the perpetration of sins beyond the power of any intellect other than His own to enumerate or estimate. But He numbers and estimates them with unerring accuracy.

3. In its universality. There are no exceptions. “All.” The whole flock has followed the leader. The manner in which this is to be accounted for may be disputable, may be mysterious. The fact is neither. Scripture, history, observation, experience unite in the testimony that, with the exception of the incarnate Son of God, all have sinned.

4. In its variety. It does not run onwards in a straight line, as the sinfulness which appears in action would if it were merely imitation of example. The various modes of sin show that it results from a radical tendency to sin in the present state of human nature. According to peculiarities of circumstances, taste, temperament, men transgress. Ten thousand paths of sin strike off in as many directions, each possessing its peculiar attraction to different characters and dispositions. A lamentable ingenuity is displayed in the invention of various ways in which God may be sinned against.

5. In its degrees. The universality predicted of it does not imply that every one is equally sinful. Every sheep of the flock has wandered from the fold, some further than others. But let not this be made a refuge from the accusations of conscience. Because some one has committed fewer crimes than his neighbour, he persuades himself that his case calls for no alarm. He imagines that because wickedness is universal, it has overgrown the power of God to punish it; that there is something in the crowd which lessens the wretchedness of the individual; that the sin and misery of others will be greater than his own. He deems it impossible for himself to fall over the precipice, because it is not so near the point of departure as the pit which opens to engulph another who has chosen a different and swifter road to ruin. One transgression constitutes a sinner. Perhaps you underrate your own transgressions and overrate those of others. The degrees of guilt God alone understands. He sees and knows the heart’s wickedness.

All, then, have gone astray. All are guilty. All need mercy. This is the lamentation of the text. But it contains also
II. CONSOLATION.
“The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” It is found in the substitution of the suffering Saviour. This truth may be—

1. Explained. Our iniquities have been laid on Christ the Son of God. No inferior person could bear such a load. The story of Jesus is the story of Him who has placed Himself, although innocent, in the sinner’s position before the law. His death was instead of the death the sinner deserved.

2. Confirmed. Those who by wicked hands crucified Him were the instruments by whom the determinate counsel of God was carried out. The Lord appointed Him. He prepared the way by type, and prophecy, and history. He has accepted the atoning sacrifice. He declared it openly by the resurrection from the dead. He was thus proclaimed in the preaching of apostles (2 Corinthians 5:21).

3. Applied. Is this consolation for you? Are you drinking life from this fountain? Have you, as a penitent sinner, applied for this mercy? Is Jesus your trust? Then your debt is paid. You owe it no longer. What you owe is gratitude and love to Jesus. Dismiss distress and fear. Enter into the liberty which shows itself in loving services.—J. Rawlinson.

SIN LAID ON JESUS

Isaiah 53:6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

The verse opens with a confession of sin common to all the persons intended in the verse. The confession is also special and particular. It is the mark of genuine repentance that while it naturally associates itself with other penitents, it also feels that it must take up a position of loneliness. “We have turned every one to his own way” is a confession importing that each man had sinned against light peculiar to himself, or sinned with an aggravation which he at least could not perceive in his fellow. It is very unreserved. There is not a single syllable by way of excuse; there is not a word to detract from the force of the confession. It is moreover singularly thoughtful, for thoughtless persons do not use a metaphor so appropriate as the text: “All we like sheep have gone astray”—like a creature cared for, but not capable of grateful attachment to the hand that cares for it; like a creature wise enough to find the gap in the hedge by which to escape, but so silly as to have no propensity or desire to return to the place from which it had perversely wandered; like sheep habitually, constantly, wilfully, foolishly, without power to return, we have gone astray. I wish that all our confessions of sin showed a like thoughtfulness, for to use words of general confession without our soul entering into them may be but a “repentance that needeth to be repented of,” an insult and mockery to high Heaven vented in that very place where there ought to have been the greatest possible tenderness and holy fear.

I. Let us consider the text by way of exposition.

1. It may be well to give the marginal translation of the text, “Jehovah hath made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all.” The first thought that demands notice is the meeting of sin. Sin I may compare to the rays of some evil sun. Sin was scattered throughout this world as abundantly as light, and Christ is made to suffer the full effect of the baleful rays which stream from the sun of sin. God as it were holds up a burning glass, and concentrates all the scattered rays in a focus upon Christ. That seems to be the thought of the text, “The Lord hath focused upon Him the iniquity of us all.” That which was scattered abroad everywhere is here brought into terrible concentration; upon the devoted head of our blessed Lord all the sin of His people was made to meet. [1632]

[1632] Before a great storm when the sky is growing black and the wind is beginning to howl, you have seen the clouds hurrying from almost every point of the compass as though the great day of battle were come, and all the dread artillery of God were hurrying to the field. In the centre of the whirlwind and the storm, when the lightnings threaten to set all heaven on a blaze, and the black clouds fold on fold labour to conceal the light of day, you have a very graphic metaphor of the meeting of all sin upon the person of Christ; the sin of the ages past and the sin of the ages to come, the sins of those of the elect who were in heathendom, and of those who were in Jewry; the sin of the young and of the old, sin original and sin actual, all made to meet, all the black clouds concentrated and brought together into one great tempest, that it might rush in one tremendous tornado upon the person of the great Redeemer and substitute. As when a thousand streamlets dash down the mountain side in the day of rain, and all meet in one deep swollen lake; that lake the Saviour’s heart, those gushing torrents, the sins of us all who are here described as making a full confession of our sins. Or, to take a metaphor not from nature but from commerce, suppose the debts of a great number of persons to be all gathered up, the scattered bonds and bills that are to be honoured or dishonoured on such and such a day, and all these laid upon one person who undertakes the responsibility of meeting every one of them without a single assistant; such was the condition of the Saviour; the Lord made to meet on Him the debts of all His people, so that He became responsible for all the obligations of every one of those whom His Father had given Him, whatsoever their debts might be. Or if these metaphors do not suffice to set forth the meaning, take the text in our own version, “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all;” put upon Him, as a burden is laid upon a man’s back, all the burdens of all His people; put upon His head, as the high priest of old laid upon the scape-goat, all the sin of the beloved ones that He might bear them in His own person. The two translations are perfectly consistent; all sins are made to meet, and then having met together and been tied up in one crushing load the whole burden is laid upon Him.—Spurgeon.

The expression “laid on Him” is rendered in the margin “hath made to meet on Him,” and allusion is supposed to be made to the scape-goat (Leviticus 16:8). This ceremony was typical of the Great Sinbearer; but it is only a part of Christ’s atoning work, the other part being represented by the other goat which was slain in sacrifice. The scape-goat alone is not an adequate representation. Besides, the verb has a stronger meaning than the laying of hands on the head. It conveys the idea of violent collision—to strike, push, urge. “Jehovah hath made to strike or rush upon Him the iniquity of us all.” Our sin was the procuring cause of Christ’s death, and actually brought it about. He was appointed to occupy the place of sinners, and to bear the punishment which they had incurred, and which, but for His enduring it, they must have suffered in their own persons.

Other interpreters see a different figure in this clause. The verse, they think, would be disjointed and broken, unless the image introduced at the beginning be regarded as underlying the whole. As man’s transgression is exhibited as a strayed flock, the atonement made for them would naturally be represented as the means employed to bring them back to the fold, or to avert the evils to which they are exposed. Our iniquity is like a band of ravening wolves, but Jehovah appoints His Son to come in between us and our destroyers. This is the very picture which Jesus Himself draws (John 10:11). But we cannot understand the passage in this light, without doing violence to the language of the prophet. Were the figure carried out in the last clause, we should have some such statement as that of Peter (1 Peter 2:25). We, therefore, take the words in their literal sense. The statement, no doubt, is obscure, and could not be fully comprehended until its fulfilment; but, viewed in the light of Gethsemane and Calvary, it has a fulness of meaning and a completeness of realisation. We must remember that the prophet views the death of Christ as just over; all His agonies are vividly before him, and he says, “The Lord hath caused the iniquity of us all to strike upon Him.” The standpoint of the prophet, from which he surveys his subject, is placed between the humiliation and the exaltation of our Lord, when He lay in Joseph’s tomb. From that point he looks back on the sufferings, and forward to the triumphs and glories of the Redeemer.—William Guthrie, M.A.

2. Sin was made to meet upon the suffering person of the innocent substitute. I have said “the suffering person,” because the connection of the text requires it (Isaiah 53:5). The Lord Jesus would have been incapable of receiving the sin of all His people as their substitute, had He been Himself a sinner; but He was the spotless Lamb of God, and therefore He was on all accounts capable of standing in the room, place, and stead of sinful men. The doctrine of the text is, that Christ did stand in such a position as to take upon Himself the iniquity of all His people, remaining still Himself innocent; having no personal sin, being incapable of any, but yet taking the sin of others upon Himself. Not only was Christ treated as if He had been guilty, but the very sin itself was, I know not how, laid upon His head (2 Corinthians 5:21). Is it not written, “He shall bear,” not merely the punishment of their sin, nor the imputation of their sin, but “He shall bear their iniquities”? Our sin is laid on Jesus in even a deeper and truer sense than is expressed by the term “imputation.”

3. It has been asked, Was it just that sin should thus be laid upon Christ? Our reply is fourfold. We believe it was rightly so,

(1.) Because it was the act of Him who must do right, for “the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

(2.) Christ voluntarily took this sin upon Himself (John 10:18; H. E. I. 913).

(3.) There was a relationship between our Lord and His people, which is too often forgotten, but which rendered it natural that He should bear the sin of His people. Why does the text speak of our sinning like sheep? I think it is because it would call to our recollection that Christ is our Shepherd. It is not that Christ took upon Himself the sins of strangers. Remember that there always was a union of a most mysterious and intimate kind between those who sinned and the Christ who suffered. The Lord Jesus stood in the relationship of a married husband unto His Church, and it was not, therefore, a strange thing that He should bear her burdens.

(4.) This plan of salvation is precisely similar to the method of our ruin. How did we fall? Not by any one of us actually ruining himself. Our own sin is the ground of ultimate punishment, but the ground of our original fall lay in another. If we grant the fall,—and we must grant the fact, however we may dislike the principle,—we cannot think it unjust that God should give us a plan of salvation based upon the same principle of federal headship.

4. Sin lying upon Christ brought upon Him all the consequences connected with it. [1635] God cannot look where there is sin with any pleasure, and though, as far as Jesus is personally concerned, He is the Father’s beloved Son in whom He is well pleased, it was not possible that He should enjoy the light of His Father’s presence while He was made sin for us; consequently He went through a horror of great darkness, the root and source of which was the withdrawing of the conscious enjoyment of His Father’s presence. More than that, not only was light withdrawn, but positive sorrow was inflicted. God must punish sin [1638] and though the sin was not Christ’s by His actually doing it, yet it was laid upon Him, and therefore He was made a curse for us.

[1635] For a more careful and discriminating statement of this point, see the outline by Dr. Alexander, p. 506.
[1638] 1. His attribute of justice, which is as undoubtedly a part of His glory as His attribute of love, required that sin should be punished. 2. As God had been pleased to make a moral universe to be governed by laws, there would be an end of all government if the breaking of law involved no penalty whatever. 3. Inasmuch as there is sin in the world, it is the highest benevolence to do all that can be done to restrain the horrible pest. It would be far from benevolent for our government to throw wide the doors of all the jails, to abolish the office of the judge, to suffer every thief and every offender of every kind to go unpunished; instead of mercy it would be cruelty; it might be mercy to the offending, but it would be intolerable injustice towards the upright and inoffensive. God’s very benevolence demands that the detestable rebellion of sin against. His supreme authority should be put down with a firm hand, that men may not flatter themselves that they can do evil and yet go unpunished. The necessities of moral government require that sin must be punished.—Spurgeon.

What were the pangs which Christ endured? I cannot tell you. You have read the story of His crucifixion. That is only the shell, but the inward kernel who shall describe? His griefs are worthy to be described according to the Greek Liturgy as “unknown sufferings.” The height and depth, the length and breadth of what Jesus Christ endured nor heart can guess, nor tongue can tell, nor can imagination frame; God only knows the griefs to which the Son of God was put when the Lord made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all (H. E. I. 915). To crown all there came death itself. Death is the punishment for sin, and whatever it may mean, whatever over and beyond natural death was intended in the sentence, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,” Christ felt. Death went through and through Him, until “He bowed His head, and gave up the ghost.” “He became obedient to death, even to the death of the cross.”

II. Now consecrate a few moments to hallowed contemplation. Think,

1. Of the astounding mass of sin that must have been laid on Christ (John 1:29; 1 John 2:2). All the sins against light and knowledge, sins against law and gospel, week-day sins, Sabbath sins, hand sins, lip sins, heart sins, sins against the Father, sins against the Son, sins against the Holy Ghost, sins of all shapes, all laid upon Him!

2. The amazing love of Jesus, which brought Him to do all this (Romans 5:6. H. E. I. 920, 946–949).

3. The matchless security which this plan of salvation offers. I do not see in what point that man is vulnerable who can feel and know that Christ has borne his sin. I look at the attributes of God, and though to me, as a sinner, they all seem bristling as with sharp points, thrusting themselves upon me; yet when I know that Jesus died for me, and did literally take my sin, what fear I the attributes of God? (H. E. I. 2286). There is justice, sharp and bright, like a lance; but justice is my friend. If God be just, He cannot punish me for sin for which Jesus has offered satisfaction. As long as there is justice in the heart of Deity, it cannot be that a soul justly claiming Christ as his substitute can himself be punished. As for mercy, love, truth, honour, everything matchless, Godlike, and divine about Deity, I say of all these, “You are my friends; you are all guarantees that since Jesus died for me I cannot die.” How grandly does the apostle put it! (Romans 8:33).

4. What, then, are the claims of Jesus Christ upon you and upon me? Did our blessed Lord take your sin, my brethren, and suffer all its terrific consequences for you, so that you are delivered? By His blood and wounds, by His death, and by the love that made Him die, I conjure you treat Him as He should be treated! You will tell me that you have obeyed His precepts. I am glad to hear it. But if you can say this, I am not content; it does not seem to me that with such a leader as Christ mere obedience should be all. Napoleon singularly enough had power to get the hearts of men twisted and twined about him; when he was in his wars there were many of his captains and even of his private soldiers who not only marched with the quick obedience of a soldier wherever they were bidden, but who felt an enthusiasm for him. Have you never heard of him who threw himself in the way of the shot to receive it in his bosom to save the Emperor? No obedience, no law could have required that, of him, but enthusiastic love moved him to it; and it is such enthusiasm that my Master deserves in the very highest degree from us.—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 694.

Our faith is retrospective as Isaiah’s was anticipatory; faith annihilates the past, and the believer stands in the presence of an actual cross. A stupendous fact is that to which our faith turns. Satan tried to lay iniquity on Christ, and failed. Having met Satan and the powers of evil in struggle after struggle, He yet challenged blame with absolute assurance (John 8:46). Wicked men strove to lay iniquity on Christ. Judas (Matthew 26:4), Pilate (Matthew 22:21). The Church of Jerusalem sought to lay iniquity on Him as guilty of impiety. But he was most devout. He received the sign of the covenant in circumcision, and feast days, &c., were observed by Him with conscientious devotion and carefulness. All these many powers were foiled in attaching sin to the person or character of Jesus Christ. What, then, means the darkness that gathers around the cross? “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” That which sinners failed to do, God in sovereignty that day accomplished, and this sinless Man has become the substitute for the race (2 Corinthians 5:21).

I. THE MEETING-PLACE OF ALL SIN IS THE CROSS OF CHRIST. In the margin, our text is rendered, “Hath made the iniquity of us all to meet on Him.”

II. THE MEETING-PLACE OF SIN IS THE MERCY-SEAT FOR ALL SINNERS.

1. How gracious is the assurance!
2. To rest in this assurance is to make sure of our salvation.
3. This should render our worship grateful.

CONCLUSION.—The imperative claim Christ has upon the soul. If you will not consent that your iniquites shall meet on Christ, bear them you must yourself.—Stephen H. Tyng, jr., D.D.: Study and Homilitic Monthly, new series, vol. iv. pp. 328, 329.

CHRIST BEARING OUR SINS

Isaiah 53:6. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

1 Peter 2:24. Who His own self bear our sins in His own body on the tree.

These texts are not unusual declarations of Scripture, but are of a very numerous class. The doctrine which they set before us is woven into the very texture of Christianity, and furnishes the great resting-place of faith. And, what is especially proper to be observed this day, it is the truth of all others which we are coming to celebrate at the holy table. Yet it has been so altered, and diminished, and shorn of its genuine dignity and proportions, that we often need to reexamine its meaning, and reassert the foundations of our faith. In our own day there is a manifest tendency to explain away its import, and to concede undue force to the objections of opponents. These objections have in many instances been aimed at opinions charged upon us, which we do not hold; at exaggerations, perversions, and even caricatures of the truth: and all the changes have been rung on the terms imputation, satisfaction, and substitution, as if these had been found chargeable with inherent injustice or absurdity. The very first thing, therefore, which we should attempt, is to clear away certain mists which have been conjured up around the Scriptural statement.
I. WHAT WE DO NOT MEAN BY CHRIST BEARING OUR SINS.

1. When we assert that Christ bore our sins, we do not mean that He was a sinner. He is, by way of eminence, “Jesus Christ the righteous.” Only as such could He ever have cleared away our guilt. He bore our sins, without bearing their power or their pollution. Of their vileness and lawlessness His soul had no experience.

2. We do not mean that He suffered, pain of conscience. Remorse is the necessary consequence of sin, and part of its punishment. But He who knew no sin, could know no repentance, no contrition, no personal regrets, no anguish of guilty self-accusation. Even in Gethsemane, when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, and on the cross, when He pierced heaven with His imploring cry, He could no more suffer compunction of conscience, than He could speak falsehood, or blaspheme.

3. We do not mean that Christ was at any time personally displeasing to God. He bore the wrath of God, but He bore it representatively. He never was more pleasing to God, He never was more righteous, He never was more acceptable and lovely, He never was more intensely and immeasurably fulfilling the will of God, than when He cried, Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani! If this exclamation has a difficulty, it is a difficulty for the adversaries of substitution: let them explain it. For our part, we hold it to be an awfully mysterious expression of the truth, that at that moment of darkness and earthquake, Jesus Christ was so involved in the consequences of our sin, as to sink under the sense of agony, and to feel the absence of all consoling divine influence. But while angels stooped to look into these things, they might have heard from the invisible throne the words of infinite complacency: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!” The all-holy Jehovah cannot hate holiness, and could not hate His only-begotten Son, in the exercise of the sublimest holiness which the universe has known.

4. We do not mean that there was any transfer of personal character. The chief strength of our opposers lies in this fallacy. They charge us with maintaining a transfer of personal attributes, and moral qualities, and easily triumph over the phantom which they have raised. We, as well they, hold such a transfer to be impossible and absurd: and (be it declared for the thousandth time) it is no such thing which we mean by the imputation of sins to Christ. Our sins must ever remain our sins, and the sins of no one else, as a matter of fact, as a historical verity, as a personal transaction. As deeds, and as connected with sinful motives and desires, they attach to our own persons, and are to be repented of, and eternally remembered by us as our own. And, on the other hand, Christ’s acts and sufferings, as matter of fact and history, are and cannot but for ever be, His own acts and sufferings, and those of no other being in the universe. There is no confounding of personality, nor has such a thing ever been maintained by our theologians, though assiduously and pertinaciously charged, during at least two centuries. We hold indeed an intimate and blessed union between the head and the members; we hold that our sins were visited on Him, and that His righteousness enures to our benefit, but we repudiate all such commingling of personality as this imagined tenet would convey.

II. WHAT WE DO MEAN WHEN WE ASSERT THAT CHRIST BORE OUR SINS.

1. The Lord Jesus Christ bore our nature. It was the all-essential preliminary to His whole work. To be our Head, “the Word was made flesh.”

2. Christ actually endured pain, It was in this way only that He could bear our sins.

3. The Lord Jesus Christ suffered for our sins. It is one of those truths which lie on the very surface of the Scripture, and which must be twisted into violent metaphor, before it can be robbed of its meaning. To give but a few instances— Isaiah 53:4; Romans 5:6; Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Thessalonians 5:10; 1 Peter 2:21; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:1.

They declare, first, that Christ’s sufferings were for us, and secondly, that they were for our sins. A friend, a father, a husband, a sister, may suffer, and yet not for us; or these beloved ones may suffer for us, and yet not for our sins. But the suffering of Jesus stands out with this striking peculiarity, that it is always represented as being, not only for our sakes, but for our sins.

4. Christ bore our sins, in this sense, that He bore the penalty of our sins. This is the primary, obvious, and necessary meaning of the words. “Christ died for us,” that is, died in our stead.

But here the adversary rejoins, that penalty must always attach to the person; that he who has sinned must be punished; and that the suffering of the innocent cannot benefit the guilty. If this were true, it would at once cut off all our hopes, and put an end to all proper atonement. But it is not true. The Church in all ages has held first, that sin for its own sake deserves the wrath and curse of God; and secondly, that to redeem us from the law, God sent His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, who in His own person fulfilled those demands, and endured that curse in our stead. And this is so far from violating any of our natural principles of justice, that it is of all things most suited to relieve and pacify the afflicted conscience.
The Scriptures represent the penalty as a debt, which our Surety pays for us (H. E. I. 383). We are familiar with substitution of this kind in civil cases, which would not be true, if such commutation were in itself repugnant to the common sense of justice among mankind. Ancient history has striking instances of similar substitution in criminal and capital cases. And the reason why this is not admitted in such cases, under modern jurisdiction, is not any injustice in the principle. The case, we admit, must be a peculiar one in which such a substitution can take place; and if ever there was a case thus peculiar, in which the innocent might suffer for the guilty, it is surely this. To make such suffering allowable, the innocent person must be one who has lordship and dominion over his own life; which men in common life have not; but which the Son of God had: “I lay it down of Myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Again, the innocent surety must assume the place and penalty of his own free will: which was eminently and gloriously true of the Lord Jesus. Again, he must be able to answer all the demands of the law, for those whom he represented. Again, he must be able to restore himself from death: no mere man could do this, and therefore if such a substitution were to take place in a capital instance, the state would lose a good citizen. In the substitution, then, of this willing, glorious, triumphant Surety, there is no injustice, but infinite grace.

They object to us that it is incredible that the holy and just God should charge upon Christ the sins of others, and thus make the innocent suffer in the place of the guilty. But let them answer, Is it more credible, or more equitable, that the holy and just God should subject the innocent Redeemer to such sufferings, without any such imputation? Christ suffered and died. This is the admitted fact. Now, did He suffer as a surety for the sinner, taking his place? or did He suffer, without being a surety, as an innocent being, by a mere arbitrary infliction? The difficulty appears to be altogether with the objectors to atonement. [1641]

[1641] All the ancient sacrifices wrote in letters of blood the word Substitution. For what, after all, is the idea of sacrifice but the innocent dying for the guilty? It was an emblem which the feeblest mind might comprehend. There, on the altar, is a spotless lamb—the emblem of innocence. Here am I, a polluted sinner. I lay my right hand on the unblemished victim, and straightway it becomes in type a sinner. I should have died—but now the victim dies: it dies for me—it dies in my place. It was thus the way was prepared for the Lamb of God, that taketh away thesinof the world. It is not here and there, but everywhere, that the Bible thus represents the method of our salvation (Isaiah 53:5; Isaiah 53:10; Galatians 3:13; 2 Corinthians 5:21). This doctrine is taught in expressions which cannot be mistaken by an unbiassed mind. And we never find unsophisticated persons troubled with those difficulties which have made this doctrine a stumbling-block to Jews and philosophers. There is something intelligible and lovely in Christ’s coming into our place and dying for us. Especially when a soul is overwhelmed with a sense of sin and dread of eternal wrath, the truth is the only thing which can give life.—Alexander.

5. Christ so bore our sins, as to remove from us all their penal consequences, and secure our salvation. By that suffering He exhausted the penalty and discharged the debt. He who believes, in the very moment of believing, becomes one with Christ, and graciously entitled to all that Christ has purchased for His people. The death of Christ is not merely a transaction which makes our pardon possible, contingent, or even probable: it secures it. It breaks all the penal force of the law. Whatever chastisements, even death itself, may henceforth befall the believer, none of them can befall him in the character of punishment. The law is as fully and eternally at peace with a justified sinner, as though he had never sinned. And this is the glad news which first of all brings peace to the soul of a convinced penitent. He beholds the Cross, and sees how God can be just, and yet the justifier of the ungodly that believeth in Jesus.

CONCLUSION.—

1. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we should learn to look on sin with shame and horror. How intense must that evil be which demands such a sacrifice!

2. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we should see in Him the object of saving faith. In all the universe of nature and grace—this is the point for the eye of a convinced sinner.

3. When we behold Christ bearing our sins, we have before us the greatest of all motives to personal holiness. When temptation comes in a like tide, cast your eyes to the Cross (H. E. I. 4589, 4590).—J. W. Alexander, D.D.: The Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii. pp. 222–226.

DIVINE LOVE IN CHRIST’S PASSION

Isaiah 53:6. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

“I know the thoughts that I think towards you, thoughts of peace, and not of evil,” said the Lord to His people. And if we could know the thoughts He thinks towards us, we should hardly tell how to admire sufficiently His love for us, or to humble ourselves enough for our baseness towards Him.
The love which God hath for us is manifested in our creation, and in His continual care over us ever since we were born. But in a measure far beyond that in all other instances of His love, it is displayed in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ. But, unhappily, after all that is said of the redeeming love of God, with all the proofs of it in the wonderful things done for our salvation, many have little notion of the Divine kindness exercised in this great and glorious work. Were it better understood, more hearts would be melted into sorrowful contrition for sin, and thence brought to faith and holiness, and so prepared for the kingdom of God.

Let us consider, then, how awful is the accumulated weight of sin laid upon Jesus—“the iniquities of us all,” of the entire human race! (1 John 2:2). Oh, how can we calculate the weight of this burden? how can we number and measure the sins of the whole world? how can we estimate the punishment due to them which our Saviour endured in our stead? The sins that began with the sins of Eve and Adam, and have been increasing in all times and climes ever since, how appalling their number! When we call to mind that one sin was sufficient, in the judgment of the righteous God, to condemn men to sorrow and death, we wonder not that the contemplation of the burden that awaited our Saviour in atoning for “the iniquities of us all” laid Him prostrate in Gethsemane, caused Him to sweat “as it were great drops of blood,” and to pray that if it were possible that “cup” might pass from Him. No man with his present confined faculties can form an adequate notion of the weight of affliction which Christ endured, when He stood in the place of a world of sinners. All we can say is, that it was something which was equivalent, in the scales of Divine justice, to the eternal punishment due to the sins of all mankind (1 Peter 2:24; Romans 3:26). After all the notions I can form of the sufferings of Jesus, all that I can do as a thinker is to stand with awful astonishment contemplating the cross, overwhelmed with thoughts of the unseen and unknown sufferings of my Redeemer.

I. Now, our apprehension of the love of Jesus must run parallel with our apprehension of His sufferings. The more He had to endure, the greater effort of love must have been required to urge Him to undergo it. If a man, seeing another whom he loved condemned to a cruel death, were to go and suffer in his place, we should stand amazed at such a man, and say that he was possessed of an extraordinary measure of charity. How much more, if he were to endure for him the everlasting sufferings of hell! But, how incomprehensibly great would his charity appear, if he could call down upon himself sufferings equivalent to the eternal sufferings of the whole race of mankind! Yet when we contemplate Jesus on the cross, we see one having thus acted. How infinitely great, how stupendous, this makes the love of Christ appear!

The manner in which He suffered also manifests His love for us. With all the mighty love with which He was urged through His sufferings, with all the strength of firmness and resolution with which He endured to the end, with all the immeasurable greatness of His passion, and the vast amount of good He was accomplishing, still there was no vain display of His love or of His endurance, no boast of the great things He was effecting. Not a word did He utter of what He was enduring, or what He was purchasing for us. Humble and quiet lowliness and gentle meekness were the dispositions manifested in Him, through all that He did and suffered for us (Isaiah 53:7). Now, it is always true love that is the secret of lowly suffering for others. Who can see lowly sorrow, and humble patience and resignation in bitter affliction, especially when it is endured for the benefit of others, without a feeling of love towards the charitable sufferer? Must not that which we see manifested in Jesus attract us to Him, and excite in our hearts admiring love? (P. D. 2340, 2341).

II. In proportion to the sorrow and pain which were laid upon the Son of God, is the measure of the Father’s love in giving Him up to such suffering abasement for us. Here also we see that the Divine love is beyond all bound or measure of ours. If the sufferings and abasements of the Son were infinitely, immeasurably great, the love of the Father, who gave Him up to the pain and humiliation of the cross, must be incomprehensible also. Oh, where is our heart, that we are so little affected with God’s redeeming love; that our return for it is ingratitude and sin? But our very worthlessness magnifies the Divine love. Had it been for unhappy creatures in misery, but not in fault, that God gave His beloved Son, had it been even for those who would one and all prize, highly value, and abound in love for what was done for them, still the love of God in this unspeakable gift would have been immeasurably great; but how incomprehensibly vast does it appear, when we consider how offensive in God’s sight sin has made mankind, how great a portion of mankind never take any notice at all of the Divine love in the great redemption, and how slow the best of us are to see and be grateful for “the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness to us through Christ Jesus!” We feel that it rises above all speech or thought of ours (Romans 5:7. H. E. I. 2318–2337. P. D. 1468, 2345).—R. L. Cotton, M.A.: The Way of Salvation, pp. 78–91.