The Suffering Servant
Isaiah 52 and 53
“Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.”
We cannot escape the fact that the suffering of the Servant was God’s will and that must challenge all our notions of what it means to serve God and the meaning of suffering itself.
Suffering cannot be an evil to be avoided at all cost if indeed it was God’s will to cause the Servant to suffer. What is clear, however, is that suffering is not a destination but a passageway and the destination is good. In the case of the Servant, God will ensure that the good that he seeks as he obeys in faith and undergo suffering will come to fruition.
Why is it so important that the Servant would challenge the expectations of the world? Surely it is an important message to the world that the things that it values—beauty, strength and power—are not the things that move God nor do they have intrinsic power in themselves. In fact, the core value of the Servant is the fact that he will “act wisely”, surely meaning that he will choose to do the will of God. The real power in the universe is in God. We can be ugly, poor, uneducated, ill-mannered, despised and rejected by society but if we in fact choose to do the will of God we can change the world.
In faith the Servant accepts the will of God to crush him and make him suffer because he believes that God is good. And because of his faith, God is able to use him as an offering for sin, prolonging his days and blessing his offspring. We are the beneficiaries of such love, faith and endurance, even though we are the ones guilty.
What language shall I borrow
to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow,
Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever,
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
outlive my love to Thee.
“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. 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.”