Isaiah 53
Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. (Is. 53:10)
Isaiah 53 begins with a question: “Who has believed what he has heard from us?” (v. 1). Considering all that happens to the suffering servant, it’s a fair question. How can such violence, such tragedy, such injustice be tolerated? How can the righteous suffer and the guilty go free? Why was the promised deliverer crushed for our iniquities? Verse 10 gives the answer to these mounting questions: “It was the will of the Lord to crush him.”
This may seem like an unsatisfying answer. “This only makes it worse,” we may think. “I could scarcely accept such punishment befalling an innocent man. I could barely embrace the idea that the righteous would suffer in the place of the guilty. But this is altogether too much. How does it help to know that it was the Lord’s will to crush him?”
But this is good news, and worth reflecting upon as a fitting summary to this entire section on the work of Christ.
Because it was the Lord’s will to crush him, we can behold the glory of our triune God in planning and procuring our redemption. The Father did not punish the Son as a helpless victim of cosmic child abuse. The Son went to the cross freely and willingly. Likewise, the Son did not appease an angry God as some sort of divine good cop to the Father’s divine bad cop. The Father sent his Son to the cross freely and willingly. The good news of Good Friday is that the Father did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Rom. 8:32) and that the Son drank the bitter cup of God’s wrath for our sakes (Mark 14:36).
Because it was the Lord’s will to crush him, we can rest secure in the love of God. The cross did not change the mind of God. Good Friday did not happen so that God could love us, but because he already loved those whom he had chosen in Christ. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:8). In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).
And finally, because it was the Lord’s will to crush him, we can be sure that full satisfaction has been made for our sins. If the cross is something other than divine judgment upon the divine Son of God, if Good Friday is not the eternal, redemptive plan of God executed fully and finally on a hill outside Jerusalem, then we cannot know if our sins have truly been forgiven. We cannot be sure that Christ’s death was enough. We cannot be certain that it is finished.
But if Isaiah 53:10 is the answer to all the problems mounting in verses 1–9, then we can say with the psalmist the words that Jesus himself quoted: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes” (Ps. 118:22–23; Mark 12:10–11). And then we can say with all our might and savor with all our hearts the very next verse in that psalm: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24).
This article is adapted from Daily Doctrine: A One-Year Guide to Systematic Theology by Kevin DeYoung.
Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church (PCA) in Matthews, North Carolina and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.
