Jesus, the Suffering Servant

Jesus, the Suffering Servant

Most of us can never know what it is like to have someone voluntarily die in our place. But that is what Jesus did. He died in our place, and He died of His own free will. In John 10:18, Jesus said, “No one takes it (life) from me but I lay it down of my own accord.” The purpose of His death was stated in John 10:15 when Jesus said, “I lay down my life for my sheep.”

Centuries earlier Jesus’ death had been foretold. In what scholars call the Fifth Suffering Servant Song of Isaiah (Isa. 52:12-53:12), the details of what happened to Jesus are recounted in astonishing detail.

Chapter 53 begins by describing the hostile beginning of God’s Suffering Servant. He grew up “like a tender shoot,” like a “root in dry ground.” A tender shoot is one easily destroyed or cut down. The dry ground analogy speaks of the struggle to survive. Jesus was born away from home, cut off from the support system enjoyed by most infants. His early years were spent in a foreign country, Egypt. He and his family were political refugees fleeing the fearful wrath of King Herod who sought Jesus’ death.

The circumstances of His earliest days attest to Jesus’ vulnerability and His struggle to survive.

Although His was a kingly mission, it was void of majestic surroundings. Jesus was born in a stable, laid in a feeding trough for a bed, warmed by the hay fed to barn animals. Jesus had a spiritual mission, but He was not raised a priest. His earthly father was Joseph, a carpenter, and Jesus learned his earthly father’s trade.

Political zealots wanted to make Jesus an earthly king even though Jesus said His kingdom “was not of this world.” Selfish followers tried to use their position to gain power and influence even though Jesus said “the greatest among you must be servant of all.” Charlatans like Judas Iscariot tried to usurp Jesus’ power for selfish ends.

In His hometown of Nazareth, the people who watched Him grow into adulthood turned against Him, even tried to throw Him off a cliff.

Earthly family members misunderstood Him, thought Him deranged and tried to take Him home where He could heal and recover. At His death, even his closest disciples ran and hid.

Political leaders and religious leaders alike despised Jesus, even feared Him.

As the Scripture foretold, Jesus was “despised, rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” The Suffering Servant would be the innocent suffering for the guilty. That is what Jesus did. The pronouns of verses four through six illustrate the point. It was our infirmities, our sorrow, our transgressions, our iniquities taken by Him. It was we who went astray. It was we “who turned to our own ways.”

But it was Jesus who “took up our infirmities,” who “carried our sorrows,” who was “pierced for our transgressions,” who was “crushed for our iniquities.” It was Jesus on whom was “laid the iniquity of us all.” What He did, He did for us.

When Jesus had opportunity to escape the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, He chose not to flee. Instead, He waited for them and greeted His would-be captors on their arrival. When Peter wielded a sword in His defense, Jesus told him to put it away. Willingly Jesus went, “like a lamb to the slaughter,” saying for this purpose had He come into the world.

While standing before Pilate, the Jewish accusers berated Jesus with charge after charge. Later, Herod begged Jesus to do some trick as entertainment.

To both, Jesus responded with silence. “As a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.” He had done no violence nor was any deceit found in His mouth. “I find no fault in Him,” Pilate declared. Still he was put to death, cut off from the land of the living by the worst kind of oppression.

Jesus was ridiculed, spit upon, beaten with a whip that laid open the skin with every touch. Finally, He was hung on a cross and placed between two thieves. He hung there until life’s final breath slipped away; not just from Him, but from His companions in death.  Isaiah’s Suffering Servant would be “assigned a grave with the wicked.”

The irony of Jesus’ life continued in His death. For though He had been judged a criminal and executed among thieves, Jesus’ grave was that of a rich man. Joseph of Arimathea claimed the body of Jesus and placed the body in his own tomb, a freshly hewn cave where no other body had ever been laid.

Again, the writing of the prophet was fulfilled when he wrote “and with the rich in his death.”

The grave was not the final word.

For Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, there was hope beyond the grave. “Though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days,” Isaiah wrote in verse 10. In the next verse he added, “After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied.”

On Sunday after Jesus’ death and burial on Friday, the power of God reached into the Judean hillside and made resurrection a reality. Not only did Jesus see life again, just as the prophet said, “My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.”

It is one thing to acknowledge Jesus bore the iniquities of many. It is another to confess that Jesus, God’s Suffering Servant, bore one’s own iniquity. The first statement is a recounting of readings. The second is the declaration of a believer.  It is the believer who is justified, who becomes one of the spiritual “offspring” whom Jesus will see after death.

Easter is for believers. It is about resurrection, about life beyond the grave, about God’s redemptive actions through Jesus Christ foretold centuries earlier by the prophet. I pray you can celebrate Easter as a believer, one who knows Jesus bore your sins and iniquities when He gave Himself as a once-for-all guilt offering and died on Calvary’s cross.