Isaiah 53:6

6. The sufferings described in Isaiah 53:5 were those endured by Jehovah’s innocent and righteous Servant, such as he took on himself; and this voluntary endurance in our stead became the source of our healing. The confession still is, He actually suffered. We, the restored ones of Israel, see the case differently from what we did in Isaiah 53:1-3. We also see that he suffered on our account. All we like sheep have (stupidly) gone astray We have selfishly sought our own pleasure; have recklessly forgotten God’s commands. This comparison is not unusual. (See Ezekiel 34:5; Mat 9:36 ; 1 Peter 2:25.) The statement here gives the reason for sufferings inexpressible voluntarily endured on our behalf. He suffered to bring reconciliation and peace. As a sinless one he did not, he could not, suffer our own penalty. But his sufferings were an equivalent therefor, in consideration of the greatness and holiness of his person. He suffered in full measure what became an expression of the punishment which as a race we deserve. In this sense the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. He caused to meet in, or to rush upon, his incarnated self, such amount of suffering as should express the fact or consideration of a suffering of penalty due to us on account of our sins; and this by the cordial acceptance of the Sufferer himself. The Messianic Sufferer became the ideal personal Saviour or Atoner typified by the great sacrificial system of the Old Testament. He became the antitypical declaration to the universe of an eternally competent vicarious sacrifice for the sins of this fallen world. The infinitely Just One hovered over (Hebrew, על , Greek, υπερ the unjust, (clear before law,) and meekly willed to take the required blow upon his own head. Still He became not a sinner thereby. He suffered merely as if he were the world’s concentrated body of sinners. In undertaking to save, he encountered the power of sin and broke it; wrought ample expiation for sin, and connected therewith a new covenant of forgiveness for penitent souls. He made his sufferings vicarious, in that himself, who was not in his own person subject to death, did die unto sin as head of a race that was subject so to die.