Isaiah 53:9

THE BURIAL OF JESUS

Isaiah 53:9. And He made His grave with the wicked, &c.

The death and resurrection of Christ are frequently dwelt upon by preachers and writers; but His burial is seldom distinctly alluded to. Yet it is spoken of in Scripture as a most important fact (Acts 13:29; 1 Corinthians 15:4; Ephesians 4:9).

I. THE HONOURABLE BURIAL GRANTED TO JESUS WHO HAD BEEN SO IGNOMINIOUSLY PUT TO DEATH.

1. He was to have been buried with criminals. “They appointed Him His grave with criminals” (Dr. Calkins). Not satisfied with His sufferings and death, they sought to insult Him even in death by wishing to bury His corpse with criminals (Matthew 27:38; John 19:31). They intended to heap the highest possible indignity upon Him, denying him the privilege of an honourable burial (1 Kings 21:19; Isaiah 14:19; Jeremiah 26:23). As a matter of course, since He was put to death with wicked men, He would naturally have been buried with them, unless there had been some special interposition in His case. He was given up to be treated as a criminal; He was made to take the place of a murderer, Barabbas, on the cross; He was subjected to the same indignity and cruelty to which the two malefactors were, and it was evidently designed also that He should be buried in the same manner, and probably in the same grave (John 19:31). Who can but wonder at the striking accuracy of the prediction?

2. He was really buried in a grave that was intended for the corpse of a rich man. “With a rich man after His death.” The purpose which had been cherished in regard to His burial was not accomplished. He was buried by persons of distinction: Joseph and Nicodemus—men of rank—secret disciples now emboldened. How different this from the interment of malefactors! How striking and accurate the fulfilment of prophecy! (Matthew 27:57; John 19:39). “He who died as a malefactor was buried as a king.” All the more remarkable because during His life He was associated with the poor, and was Himself poor. The humiliation was over, and the exaltation was begun!

II. THE REASON WHY JESUS RECEIVED SUCH HONOURABLE TREATMENT. It was found in the fact—

1. That He had done no wrong. “Because,” rather, although “He had done no violence”,—had not by harsh and injurious conduct provoked such treatment, or in any way deserved it at their hands. He was perfectly innocent—suffered without having committed any crime. To none did He do wrong. He was charged with perverting the nation and sowing sedition, but the charge was utterly false. He had done no violence, but “went about doing good.” His actions were always prompted by purest benevolence. Evidently with this passage in view, the Apostle Peter says of the Lord Jesus: “Who did no sin,” &c. (1 Peter 2:20). Those who knew Him best spake thus. Well did Peter remember the unsullied purity, the loving gentleness, the high principles of our Lord. As he looked back on that life, it must have seemed like a pure pellucid stream flowing amid charred unsightly rocks.

2. That there was no deceit in His mouth. He was no deceiver, though He was regarded and treated as one. He was perfectly candid and sincere, true and holy. He was in all respects what He professed to be, and He imposed on no one by any false and unfounded claim (Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 2:22). Duplicity, craft, and deceit are the accustomed methods of false teachers. He neither pandered to the rich nor flattered the poor. When in the greatest peril, He adopts no ingenious arguments nor methods for escape. All He said was plain, undisguised, unclouded, bold. He never disguised His abhorrence of falsehood. He did not promise more than He intended to perform. He did not hide from His followers the consequences of their position: “Ye must be hated,” &c. None of His enemies could take up that challenge of His, “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” The judge that tried Him declared, “I find no fault in Him,” and the centurion that executed Him professed that “certainly He was a righteous man.”

Thus, by Divine arrangement, Jesus received such honourable treatment immediately after His ignominious death as a vindication of His spotless character.
III. PRACTICAL LESSONS SUGGESTED BY THE HONOURABLE BURIAL OF JESUS.

1. The character of Jesus is unique. He stands alone among men. He was spotlessly pure in the midst of universal pollution. Then He must be something more than a mere man. “Truly this is THE SON OF GOD.” How admirably qualified is He to act as our substitute, and to present a sacrifice for our sin! Had He been guilty of a single sin, what could He have done for us? of what merit His obedience? of what value His death? of what efficacy His intercession?

2. The purity of Jesus in word and deed should be sought by us. Here on earth, in flesh and blood, and under the conditions to which men in general are subject, He exhibited a perfect character, and so stands before us as a true, complete, and universal pattern and example. We are commanded to be imitators of Him (Ephesians 5:1; 1 Peter 2:21). Let us follow Him as if we trod exactly behind Him. Let there be the closest imitation. Take heed to your deceitful heart (Psalms 32:2). Guard against deceit of mouth (Psalms 120:3), and deceit in practice, &c. If we suffer, let us be careful that it shall not be on account of our faults. Let us seek grace so to live as not to deserve the reproaches of others, and to be able to bear them with patience if we are called to suffer them. The purity of Jesus can never be congenial to us until our hearts are regenerated.

3. The burial of Jesus should divest the grave of its terror. These bodies of ours must fail and faint and die, and go down to the cold grave to return to their native dust. What then? Shall we who are “risen with Christ,” dread to rest where He Himself lay? Shall we fear to be consigned to the place in which He, who is the “resurrection and the life,” reposed? Shall we doubt that He will bring us forth in triumph from the dominion of the grave; that He will clothe us with a body all beauteous and immortal like His own, &c.? The darkness of the grave is the forerunner of the unparalleled brightness of the resurrection life. “Come, see the place where the Lord lay,” and learn to view without fear your own final resting-place, and rejoice in the assurance that His resurrection is the pledge and earnest of your own.—A. Tucker.

EXPIATION

Isaiah 53:10. Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.

Both Jews and Gentiles knew pretty well what “an offering for sin” meant. The Gentiles had been in the habit of offering sacrifices. The Jews, however, had by far the clearer idea of it. What was meant by a sin-offering?… This was always the idea of a sin-offering—a perfect victim taking the place of the offender.
Christ has been made by God an offering for sin. Oh, that we may be able to do in reality what the Jew did in symbol! May we put our hand upon the head of Christ Jesus; as we see Him offered up upon the cross for guilty men, may we know that our sins are transferred to Him!
I. SIN DESERVES AND DEMANDS PUNISHMENT.

Some say that there is no reason in sin itself why it should be punished, but that God punishes offences for the sake of society at large. This is what is called the governmental theory—that it is necessary for the maintenance of good order that an offender should be punished, but that there is nothing in sin itself which absolutely requires a penalty. Now, we assert, and we believe we have God’s warrant for it, that sin intrinsically and in itself demands and deserves the just anger of God, and that that anger should be displayed in the form of a punishment. To establish this, let me appeal to the conscience, not of a man who has, by years of sin, dwindled it down to the very lowest degree, but of an awakened sinner under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Ask this man, who is now really in the possession of his true senses, whether he believes that sin deserves punishment, and his answer will be quick, sharp, and decisive—“Deserve it? Ay, indeed; and the wonder is that I have not suffered it. I feel that if God should smite me now, without hope or offer of mercy, to the lowest hell, I should only have what I justly deserve; and I feel that if I be not punished for my sins, or if there be not some plan found by which my sin can be punished in another, I cannot understand how God can be just at all. How shall He be the Judge of all the earth if He suffer offences to go unpunished?” There has been a dispute whether men have any innate ideas, but surely this idea is in us as early as anything, that virtue deserves reward, and sin deserves punishment. Add to this, that God has absolutely declared His displeasure against sin itself (Jeremiah 44:4; Deuteronomy 25:16, &c). There is nothing more clear in Scripture than the truth that sin is in itself so detestable to God that He must and will put forth His tremendous strength to crush it, and to make the offender feel that it is an evil and a bitter thing to offend against the Most High (H. E. I., 2281, 2282).

The other idea, that sin is only to be punished for the sake of the community, involves injustice. If I am to be damned for the sake of other people, I demur to it. If my sin intrinsically deserves the wrath of God, and I am sent to perdition as the result of this fact, I have nothing to say. Conscience binds my tongue. But if I am told that I am only sent there as a part of a scheme of moral government, and that I am sent into torment to impress others with a sense of right, I ask that some one else should have the place of preacher to the people, and that I may be one of those whose felicity it shall be to be preached to, for I see no reason in justice why I should be selected as the victim. Really, when men run away from the simplicities of the Gospel in order to make Jehovah more kind, it is strange how unjust and unkind they make Him.
The reverse of this doctrine, that sin demands punishment, may be used to prove it, for it is highly immoral, dangerous, and opens the flood-gates of licentiousness to teach that sin can go unpunished. If sin deserve not to be punished, what is Tophet but injustice on a monstrous scale? Go and preach this in hell, and you will have quenched the fire which is for ever to burn, and the worm of conscience will die. And then come to earth, and go, like Jonah went, though with another message than Jonah carried, through the streets and thoroughfares of the exceeding great city, and proclaim that sin is not to be punished for its own intrinsic desert and baseness. But, if you expect your prophecy to be believed, enlarge the number of your jails, and seek for fresh fields for transportation in the interests of society; for if any doctrine can breed villains, this will.
It is written clearly upon the conscience of every one of us, that sin must be punished. Here are you and I brought into this dilemma—we have sinned, and we must be punished for it: it is impossible, absolutely, that sin can be forgiven without a sacrifice: God must be just, if heaven falls. But God, in His infinite wisdom, has devised a way by which justice can be satisfied, and yet mercy be triumphant. Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, took upon Himself the form of man, and offered unto divine justice that which was accepted as an equivalent for the punishment due to all His people.
II. THE PROVISION AND ACCEPTANCE OF A SUBSTITUTE FOR SINNERS IS AN ACT OF GRACE.
It is no act of grace for a person to accept a pecuniary debt on my behalf of another person. If I owe a man twenty pounds, it is no matter to him who shall pay the twenty pounds, so long as it is paid. But it is not so in penal matters. If a man be condemned to be imprisoned, there is no law, no justice which can compel the lawgiver to accept a substitute for him. If the sovereign should permit another to suffer in his stead, it must be the sovereign’s own act and deed; he must use his own discretion as to whether he will accept the substitute or not, and if he do so, it is an act of grace. In God’s case, if He had said, in the infinite sovereignty of His absolute will, “I will have no substitute, but each man shall suffer for himself, he who sinneth shall die,” none could have murmured. It was grace, and only grace which led God to say, “I will accept a substitute.”

This grace of God is yet further magnified in the providing of such a substitute as Christ—on Christ’s part that He should give up Himself, the prince of life, to die; the king of glory to be despised and rejected of men. Think of the unexampled love which shines in Christ’s gift of Himself. But the Father gives the Son (John 3:16). To give your wealth is something, if you make yourself poor, but to give your child is something more. I implore you, do not look upon the sacrifice of Christ as an act of mere vengeance on the Father’s part. Never imagine that Jesus died to make the Father complacent towards us. Jesus’ death is the effect of overwhelming and infinite love on the Father’s part. Never indulge the atrocious thought that there was justice, and justice only here; but magnify the love and pity of God in that He did devise and accomplish the great plan of salvation by an atoning sacrifice (H. E. I. 390, 2319–2321).

III. JESUS IS THE MOST FITTING PERSON TO BE A SUBSTITUTE, AND HIS WORK IS THE MOST FITTING WORK TO BE A SATISFACTION.
Consider what sort of a mediator was needed. He must be one who had no debt of his own. If Christ had been at all under the law naturally, if it had been His duty to do what it is our duty to do, it is plain He could only have lived for Himself; and if He had any sin of His own, He could only have died for Himself, seeing His obligations to do and to suffer would have been His just due to the righteousness and the vengeance of God. Jesus Christ was perfectly exempt from service, and therefore could volunteer to undertake it for our sake.
There was needed, also, one of the same nature with us. Such was Jesus Christ. For this purpose He became man. Made in all points like unto us, being a man, and standing exactly in a man’s place, becoming a real Adam, standing quite in the first Adam’s place, He was a fit person to become a substitute for us.
The dignity of His sacred person made Him the most proper substitute. A mere man could at most be a substitute for one other man. Crush him as you will, and make him feel in his life every pang which flesh is heir to, but he can only suffer what one man would have suffered. He could not even then have suffered an equivalent for that eternal misery which the ungodly deserve; and if he were a mere man, he must suffer precisely the same. A difference may be made in the penalty, when there is a difference in the person, but if the person be the same, the penalty must be exactly the same in degree and quality. But the dignity of the Son of God, the dignity of His nature, changes the whole matter; it puts such a singular efficacy into every groan and every pang, that it needs not that His pang should be eternal, or that He should die a second death; it adds a special force to the substitution, and thus one bleeding Saviour can make atonement for millions of sinful men, and the Captain of our salvation can bring multitudes unto glory.
One other condition needs to be fulfilled. The person so free from personal service, and so truly in our nature, and yet so exalted in person, should also be accepted and ordained of God. Our text gives this a full solution, in that it says, “He shall make His soul an offering for sin.” Christ did not make Himself a sin-offering without a warrant from the Most High: God made Him so. “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”

IV. CHRIST’S WORK AND THE EFFECTS OF THAT WORK ARE NOW COMPLETE.
Christ has made an atonement so complete that He never need suffer again. The death-knell of the penalty rings in the dying words of the Saviour, “It is finished.” Do you ask for a proof of this? Remember that Christ rose again from the dead. If he had not completed His work of penalty-suffering, He would have been left in the tomb till now. More than that; He has ascended up on high. Think you He would have returned thither with unexpiated sin red upon His garments? Do you suppose He would have ascended to the rest and to the reward of an accomplished work?
Complete also in its effects. There is now complete pardon for every soul which believeth in Christ. You need not do anything to make the atonement of Christ sufficient to pardon you. It wants no ekeing out—pardon, full and free, is now presented in the name of Jesus, proclaimed to every creature under heaven.—C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 561.