Expositions of Holy Scripture: Isaiah and Jeremiah Part 40

II. The Servant's work in His sufferings.

The margin of the Revised Version gives the best rendering--'His soul shall make an offering for sin.' The word employed for 'offering' means a trespa.s.s offering, and carries us at once back to the sacrificial system. The trespa.s.s offering was distinguished from other offerings.

The central idea of it seems to have been to represent sin or guilt as _debt_, and the sacrifice as making compensation. We must keep in view the variety of ideas embodied in His sacrifice, and how all correspond to realities in our wants and spiritual experience.

Now there are three points here:--

a. The representation that Christ's death is a sacrifice. Clearly connecting with whole Mosaic system--and that in the sense of a trespa.s.s offering. Christ seems to quote this verse in John x. 15, when He speaks of laying down His life, and when He declares that He came to 'give His life a _ransom_ for many.' At any rate here is the great word, sacrifice, proclaimed for the first time in connection with Messiah. Here the prophet interprets the meaning of all the types and shadows of the law.

That sacrificial system bore witness to deep wants of men's souls, and prophesied of One in whom these were all met and satisfied.

b. His voluntary surrender.

He is sacrifice, but He is Priest also. His soul makes the offering, and His soul is the offering and offers itself in concurrence with the Divine Will. It is difficult and necessary to keep that double aspect in view, and never to think of Jesus as an unwilling Victim, nor of G.o.d as angry and needing to be appeased by blood.

c. The thought that the true meaning of His sufferings is only reached when we contemplate the effects that have flowed from them. The pleasure of the Lord in bruising Him is a mystery until we see how pleasure of the Lord prospers in the hand of the Crucified.

III. The work of the Servant after death.

Surely this paradox, so baldly stated, is meant to be an enigma to startle and to rouse curiosity. This dead Servant is to see of the travail of His soul, and to prolong His days. All the interpretations of this chapter which refuse to see Jesus in it shiver on this rock.

What a contrast there is between plat.i.tudes about the spirit of the nation rising transformed from its grave of captivity (which was only very partially the case), and the historical fulfilment in Jesus Christ! Here, at any rate, hundreds of years before His Resurrection, is a word that seems to point to such a fact, and to me it appears that all fair interpretation is on the side of the Messianic reference.

Note the singularity of special points.

a. Having died, the Servant sees His offspring.

The sacrifice of Christ is the great power which draws men to Him, and moves to repentance, faith, love. His death was the communication of life. Nowhere else in the world's history is the teacher's death the beginning of His gathering of pupils, and not only has the dead Servant children, but He _sees_ them. That representation is expressive of the mutual intercourse, strange and deep, whereby we feel that He is truly with us, 'Jesus Christ, whom having not seen we love.'

b. Having died, the Servant prolongs His days.

He lives a continuous life, without an end, for ever. The best commentary is the word which John heard, as he felt the hand of the Christ laid on his prostrate form: 'I became dead, and lo, I am alive for evermore.'

c. Having died, the Servant carries into effect the divine purposes.

'Prosper' implies progressive advancement. Christ's Sacrifice carried out the divine pleasure, and by His Sacrifice the divine pleasure is further carried out.

If Christ is the means of carrying out the divine purpose, consider what this implies of divinity in His nature, of correspondence between His will and the divine.

But Jesus not only carries into effect the divine purpose as a consequence of a past act, but by His present energy this dead man is a living power in the world today. Is He not?

The sole explanation of the vitality of Christianity, and the sole reason which makes its message a gospel to any soul, is Christ's death for the world and present life in the world.

THE SUFFERING SERVANT--V

'He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; and He shall bear their iniquities'--ISAIAH liii. 11.

These are all but the closing words of this great prophecy, and are the fitting crown of all that has gone before. We have been listening to the voice of a member of the race to whom the Servant of the Lord belonged, whether we limit that to the Jewish people or include in it all humanity. That voice has been confessing for the speaker and his brethren their common misapprehensions of the Servant, their blindness to the meaning of His sufferings and the mystery of His death. It has been proclaiming the true significance of these as now he had learned them, and has in verse 10 touched the mystery of the reward and triumph of the Servant.

That note of His glory and coronation is caught up in the two closing verses, which, in substance, are the continuation of the idea of verse 10. But this ident.i.ty of substance makes the variety of form the more emphatic. Observe the '_My_ Servant' of verse 11, and the '_I_ will divide' of verse 12. These oblige us to take this as the voice of G.o.d.

The confession and belief of earth is hushed, that the recognition and the reward of the Servant may be declared from heaven. An added solemnity is thus given to the words, and the prophecy comes round again to the keynote on which it started in chapter lii, 13, '_My_ Servant.' Notice, too, how the same characteristic is here as in verse 10--that the recapitulation of the sufferings is almost equally prominent with the description of the reward. The two are so woven together that no power can part them. We may take these two verses as setting forth mainly two things--the divine promise that the Servant shall give righteousness to many, and the divine promise that the Servant shall conquer many for Himself.

As to the exposition, 'of' here is probably casual, not part.i.tive, as the Authorised Version has it; 'travail' is not to be understood in the sense of childbirth, but of toil and suffering; 'soul' is equivalent to _life_. This fruit of His soul's travail is further defined in the words which follow. The great result which will be beheld by Him and will fill and content His heart is that 'by His knowledge He shall justify many.' 'By _His_ knowledge' certainly means, by the knowledge of Him on the part of others. The phrase might be taken either objectively or subjectively, but it seems to me that only the former yields an adequate sense. 'My righteous servant' is scarcely emphatic enough. The words in the original stand in an unusual order, which might be represented by 'the righteous one, My servant,' and is intended to put emphasis on the Servant's righteousness, as well as to suggest the connection between His righteousness and His 'justifying,'

in virtue of His being righteous. 'Justify' is an unusual form, and means to procure for, or impart righteousness to. '_The_ many' has stress on the article, and is the ant.i.thesis not to _all_, but to _few_. We might render it 'the ma.s.ses,' an indefinite expression, which if not declaring universality, approaches very near to it, as in Romans v. 19 and Matthew xxvi. 28. 'He shall bear,' a future referring to the Servant in a state of exaltation, and pointing to His continuous work after death. This bearing is the root of our righteousness.

We may put the thoughts here in a definite order.

I. The great work which the Servant carries on.

It consists in giving or imparting righteousness. It seems to me that it is out of place to be too narrow here in interpreting so as to draw distinctions between righteousness imparted and righteousness bestowed.

We should rather take the general idea of _making righteous_, making, in fact, like Himself. Note that this is the work which is Christ's characteristic one. All thoughts of His blessings to the world which omit that are imperfect.

II. The preparation for that making of us righteous.

The roots of our being made righteous by the righteous Servant are found in His bearing our sins. His sin-bearing work is basis of our righteousness. Christ justifies men by giving to them His own righteousness, and taking in turn their sins on Himself that He may expiate them.

Not only 'did He bear our sins in His own body on the tree,' but He _will_ bear them in His exaltation to the Throne, and only because He continuously and eternally does so are we justified on earth and shall we be sanctified in heaven.

III. The condition on which He imparts righteousness.

'His knowledge,' which is to be taken in the profound Biblical sense as including not only understanding but experience also.

Parallels are found in 'This is life eternal to know Thee' (John xvii.

3), and in 'That I may know Him' (Phil. iii. 10). So this prophecy comes very near to the New Testament proclamation of righteousness by faith.

IV. The grand sweep of the Servant's work.

'The many' is indefinite, and its very indefiniteness approximates it to universality. A shadowy vision of a great mult.i.tude that no man can number stretches out, as to the horizon, before the prophet. How many they are he knows not. He knows that they are numerous enough to 'satisfy' the Servant for all His sufferings. He knows, too, that there is no limit to the happy crowd except that which is set by the necessary condition of joining the bands of 'the justified'--namely, 'the knowledge of Him.' They who receive the benefits which the Servant has died and will live to bring cannot be few; they may be all. If any are shut out, they are self-excluded.

V. The Servant's satisfaction.

It may be that the word employed means 'full,' rather than 'content,'

but the latter idea can scarcely be altogether absent from it. We have, then, the great hope that the Servant, gazing on the results of His sufferings, will be content, content to have borne them, content with what they have effected.

'The glory dies not and the grief is past.'

And the 'grief' has had for fruit not only 'glory' gathering round the thorn-pierced head, but reflected glory shining on the brows of 'the many,' whom He has justified and sanctified by their experience of Him and His power. The creative week ended with the 'rest' of the Creator, not because His energy was tired and needed repose, but because He had fully carried out His purpose, and saw the perfected idea embodied in a creation that was 'very good.' The redemptive work ends with the Servant's satisfied contemplation of the many whom He has made like Himself, His better creation.

THE SUFFERING SERVANT--VI

'Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.'--ISAIAH liii. 12.