Isaiah 53:8

CHRIST STRICKEN
(Sacramental Service.)

Isaiah 53:8. For the transgression of my people was He stricken.

The general doctrine of the text is that of an expiation for sinners, made by an innocent victim substituted in their place. In the substitution of an innocent being to suffer in the room of the guilty (and especially such a being as Jesus Christ), and in pardoning and accepting the guilty into favour on that account, there appears a departure from all our common ideas of justice and propriety, &c. We have no disposition to diminish this singularity. It stands alone. But we certainly shall fail of the just and real essence of the Christian religion in our hearts, if we do not have faith in this expiation; and if our minds cannot compass the whole amazing matter, we may hope at least to have some gleams of illumination, like the lightning’s flash on the dark bosom of the storm. Let us see:
I. The wonder of this punishment for sin laid upon an innocent and Divine Being accords with our best conceptions of God. The most just conception of God that we have ever had is that of an incomprehensible Being. The high wonder of this expiation agrees with the infinitude of God. A suffering Christ is an infinite wonder; and, therefore, the wonder of the doctrine of an expiation for sinners by the sufferings of the innocent, instead of being a reason for our incredulity, is really a reason for our faith. The innocence, the person, and the expiation of the Victim, all accord with the incomprehensible God, &c. Be yond us, and peculiar in everything else, He is beyond us and peculiar in the great atonement.

II. Our God has different modes of giving intimations of Himself. We cannot learn all that we are able to know of Him in any one spot, or by any one transaction. To lead us on He has employed grades, and built one scaffolding above another. There is matter which came from nothing at His bidding; and in this world we may learn something of His control over matter. We may lift our eyes beyond this world, and as we look out upon the stars, we may add to our knowledge of God’s government over material things. Beyond matter is mind. Beyond mere intelligence there is a kingdom of sensibilities. Still beyond there is a moral kingdom. The world of grace is still higher. Redemption—the salvation of sinners—is not a matter of mere creation, or mere government or recovery from ruin merely; it is a matter of mercy to the sinning and the punishment of sin. This matter evidently lies beyond all others. “Stricken for my people” is just the amazing thing which the rising gradations of the revelations of God demand.

III. The mystery, the wonder of this redemption of sinners, by “stripes” laid on Christ, accords with us, as well as it accords with God. We are sinners. See what sin hath done. Some symbols of its mischief are visible. It blasted paradise, &c.! Sin has broken up our relations with God. Our Creator, our final Judge, is against us! The law which sin has broken is God’s law—the law for the immortal spirit—the law for eternity to come! Eternity! The mind staggers under the weight of that idea. To last on for ever, a sinner cut off from God, and no more at peace with myself than with Him; to feel eternally the gnawings of “the worm that dieth not” and the wrath of God! Sooner come annihilation! Now, in the presence of these wants, this sin which has no analogy, which has broken up our peace relations with God, this conscience, these agonies of a fearing spirit, and this dreadful eternity—what shall God do for us? What do we want Him to do? Just what He has done. We want Him to meet our infinite fears with His infinite offers, our worst foes with His ineffable grace; to show us while we stand trembling before His justice, that something has been done which that justice cannot find fault with—something which shall wave the peace-branch over the door into eternity! He has done it. It is His own work, on His own authority, like Him, and just because it has such wonders about it as the innocence and mysterious person of a suffering Christ, our faith can trust it. Where we most fear, God is most wonderful. The excellence and the innocence of the sacrifice as the ground of our peace, shows us that the august redemption perfectly assorts with the ineffable woes and wants of our sinful condition.

4. The uses we ought to make of this subject are not trivial. There are those who have no living faith in this atonement, and who will not come to the memorial of it. Why? Simply because of two things.

(1.) They have low and grovelling ideas of God—ideas very much confined to His earthly things and His natural attributes.
(2.) They do not justly realise their condition and necessities as sinners. If men have inadequate notions of God, they will have inadequate notions of sin. If they have inadequate notions of sin, they will have inadequate notions of Christ; and then there will be nothing seen in their condition to drive them, and nothing in His character to draw them, to His infinite sacrifice. If they had anything like a just idea of what it is to be a sinner, they would look to the sacrifice of Christ with amazing gladness and gratitude.—Ichabod S. Spencer, D.D.: Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 412–431.