Isaiah’s Hope, Part 2: Suffering Servant

Isaiah offers a second vision of the coming King, one that seems to contradict the first. That’s the Suffering Servant. In four passages–42:1–4; 49:1–7; 50:4–9; and 52:13–53:12—a surprising and strangely brutalized figure appears. Though non-violent, he will bring justice to the earth. But how can he, who is such a pathetic figure? “Despised and rejected,” “like a lamb to the slaughter,” “my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.”

There is no precedent for this in the Old Testament. Kings and judges redeemed through power, not suffering.

The comfort in the Suffering Servant comes in the idea of sacrifice, that the Servant is a sin offering that purifies his people.

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.
6We 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. (53:5-6)

This was a completely new idea—that a sin offering on our behalf could be, not just a sacrificial animal, but a fellow human being. The thought of human sacrifice is enough to make you squirm. For this reason alone, the Suffering Servant passages were hard for Israelites to incorporate into their faith.

Yet I suspect the biggest obstacle to appropriating the Suffering Servant passages into Israel’s faith lay in in something much closer to the surface. The passages assume that Israel’s problems were not simply Babylonian armies, but their wicked hearts that had turned away from God (while continuing to attend worship services). A glorious king could deal with their enemies, but only the highest order of sacrificial substitution could absolve their wickedness. It would require God’s own Chosen One to die on the altar.

It’s unclear whether any Israelites between Isaiah’s day and Jesus’—seven hundred years, more or less—could fathom what Isaiah predicted, let alone find comfort in it. They knew, just as we do, that they were a sinful people. Yet nobody understood—not even Jesus’ disciples—that Jesus would fulfill this prophecy by dying a cruel death at the hands of the Roman oppressors.

These strange Suffering Servant prophecies are the special property of those of us who live on this side of Jesus’s resurrection. Even for us, the medicine is hard to swallow. It means accepting that our problems are not brought on simply by our enemies, but by our own sinful failings. Nobody likes to look in the mirror and find that kind of ugliness.

But who can deny that we, corporately, as Americans and as American Christians, are sick beyond understanding? Individually, we may be able to cling to a sense of virtue. Where, though, is the virtue of our country, and of our Church? We are in a desperate condition.

Someone has to pay a price for this immorality. Not us, however. Isaiah’s comfort is that God’s own Servant suffers for us.

Make no mistake, our world is full of enemies. There are those who dedicate themselves to making America ugly, and who profit from a politicized Church. It is not enough to defeat those enemies, however. We might trounce them in the courts and on Twitter and at the ballot box, but the problems will not disappear. That is because we, victorious, remain part of the problem. Our comfort comes in acknowledging our own corporate sin-sickness, accepting it as belonging to us (and not just our enemies), and recognizing God’s plan for absolving us. He sent Jesus as our substitute, to pay the price for our part in our sin-sick world.