God’s Suffering Servant – Isaiah chapter 52:13 to 53:10
The sanitisation of Easter?
What is it from a Christian perspective? There would be no Easter without Jesus.
God’s Servant.
See, my servant will act wisely;
Isaiah 52:13
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
“See, my servant” – look here for the answer.
God’s Servant suffers
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
Isaiah 53:3
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
People still despise Him.
God’s Servant suffers innocently
He was oppressed and afflicted,
Isaiah 53:7-9
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
He had done nothing wrong, ever, and only good.
God’s Servant suffers innocently for others
Surely he took up our pain
Isaiah 53:4-6
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
The greatest swap in history. We should be pierced, wounded, but He was instead. And voluntarily: “he poured out his life unto death, Isaiah 53:12”.
An Unsanitised Easter
The early Christians saw Isaiah’s words, written over 700 years before, as pointing to Jesus.
21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
22 ‘He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.’23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 ‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’ 25 For ‘you were like sheep going astray’, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
1 Peter 2:21-25
A sanitised Easter cannot help us, but the unsanitised version is our onlu, and sure, hope.
