5.25.26 – Isaiah 53, Part 1: He Goes Ahead of Us, Not Instead of Us

For the past fifty days, we have focused our attention on grace—how proud God is of us through our obedience—on past, present, and future aspects of salvation, and on four weeks devoted to blood through the sacrificial system, adding additional thoughts to John 1:29: "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

One major focal point is that He goes ahead of us, not instead of us. That is powerful, and that phrase will continue to do work for us in this week's Isaiah 53 study. However, this Isaiah 53 text is likely what people have been waiting for—politely and silently. I have received very little pushback or critique on these fifty days of study, which has surprised me. Maybe that means something good—people are hearing and listening.

But there is a passage, a section of Scripture, that I think many people would say blows up everything I have been saying. It is in the book of Isaiah, chapter 53—the Suffering Servant. If someone wanted to push back on these fifty days, you might ask, "What about the Suffering Servant?" It is probably the strongest text for the position I have been challenging over the past seven weeks. There are a number of New Testament texts we have not gotten to yet, but let me read Isaiah 53—a section of it, the way most of us were taught to read it:

"He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to crush Him."

If you grew up in evangelical Christianity—or really Christianity at all—that text sounds like one thing and one thing only: He was punished instead of us. The penalty was transferred. Divine justice required it, and Yeshua absorbed it.

What I cannot do is tell you the text does not say what it says. That is not what I will try to do. Instead, I am asking you to read it more carefully with me, inside the framework we have established for the last seven weeks. This week we will walk through Isaiah 53—not all verse by verse, but mostly.

Before we do, I want to put four tools in your hands—four categories you need to know when reading this chapter. Without them, the chapter sounds like one thing. With them, it says something else.

First: Has anyone heard the term vicarious atonement? Vicarious suffering? Isaiah 53 absolutely contains vicarious suffering. The servant suffers because of others. The servant bears something on behalf of many. The servant carries what they could not carry. We are not pretending that is not there. But hear me carefully: vicarious suffering is not the same thing as penal substitution.

It is worth pausing on the word vicarious. There are two definitions:

1. Experienced through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another.

2. Performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another, or to the advantage/benefit of another.

One definition does not require substitution at all; the other allows it. The same word goes both ways. Vicarious suffering is biblical. It is everywhere in the story Israel has been telling for thousands of years—before Yeshua and after Yeshua. But vicarious is not the same as Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA).

Penal substitution is a specific and further claim, with four parts:

• God's retributive justice required punishment.

• That punishment was legally transferred from the guilty to an innocent substitute.

• God's divine wrath was satisfied by the transfer.

• Forgiveness became possible as a result.

You can affirm everything Isaiah 53 actually says about the Suffering Servant without affirming any of those four PSA ideas. And it is worth noting—I have not said this yet—the fully formalized version of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is credited to a man in the 11th century. The Reformers crystallized it a few centuries later. I am not asking you to stand against 4,000 years of biblical consensus—there is not an unbroken consensus. That doctrine is later. I am asking you to look at a doctrine that became standard only relatively recently. The 11th century is a long time ago, but it is not Isaiah's time.

So the first tool is simply to understand vicarious suffering.

Second: this little word for. We just do not think about it. "He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, by His wounds we are healed." When most of us hear for, we hear "instead of." Wounded instead, crushed instead, suffered instead, so we would not have to. But for does not automatically mean "instead of." For can mean "because of," "on account of," "for the benefit of," or "on behalf of."

If for only ever meant "instead of," the New Testament would be a mess to interpret. Ephesians 3:1—Paul is a prisoner for the Gentiles, not instead of them, but on their behalf. 1 Corinthians 12:7—the Spirit is given for the common good, not instead of the common good, but on behalf of it. No one reads those verses that way. The English word for carries a range, and the preposition behind it is very extensive. The question is never whether the servant suffered for the people—of course he did. The question is: what kind of for is this? It does not have to mean "instead of." It can mean on our behalf, for our healing, to bring us into life.

Third: remember the Joseph pattern. The suffering of the righteous is not novel. It is not a foreign concept that Christianity imported, invented, and imposed back into the Bible. This category existed long in Jewish thought—before Yeshua, after Yeshua. The righteous one is bound up with the people. His faithfulness matters. His suffering can expose sin, awaken mercy, bring life, and become a means through which God brings redemption to an entire people.

Israel already knows the righteous can stand in the breach. Think of Moses at the calf—he is willing to be erased. Think of the prophets—they suffer because they carry God's word to a generation that does not want to hear it: mocked, rejected, imprisoned, killed. Think of the righteous sufferer throughout the Psalms—surrounded, falsely accused, yet vindicated by God in the end. Isaiah's servant stands in that world. He is the righteous one whose suffering exposes sin and becomes the means through which the Lord's purposes are realized. That is not foreign to Israel's story—that is Israel's story.

If I had to point to one place in the Torah where this Isaiah 53 pattern becomes clear, it is Joseph. Genesis 50:20. And that is for tomorrow :-)

Happy first day of the week and first day of counting toward the firstfruits of the wine. Huh?

Shalom,
Alan