Isaiah 53:5 - Wrath and Discipline

Editor's Note: With chagrin, I must remark that our slowly progressing study of Isaiah 53 might be the longest running series in blogging history. This particular post has been 15 months in the making! I hope it was worth the wait. The challenges contained in this verse led to the recent series of posts on the extent of the atonement, which had to be sorted through before this post could be finished. May you be blessed by the encouragements given through Isaiah in his astoundingly deep words about the work of Christ in our behalf.

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, 

He was crushed for our iniquities; 

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, 

And by His scourging we are healed.

This verse is a response to the preceding phrase: "we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:4b). It answers the questions, "Why was He so afflicted, grieved and sorrowful?" and, "Why would God treat Him this way?" The reasons are clear: because we sinned, and in order to restore us.


Here Isaiah brings the substitutionary and representative aspects of Christ's work into focus. As substitute, Christ stands in the place of the condemned sinner and receives the full outpouring of God's wrath. Yet He stands also in the place of the redeemed sinner and represents that sinner in the corrective judgments that will bring full restoration. As the believer's substitute, Christ closes the door on wrath. As his representative, He opens the blessed way into God's discipline - the way of sonship.

First he endures wrath so that we can escape from it, then He experiences divine discipline so we can embrace it. There is the wrath which we deserve but haven't yet received, and then there is the discipline we need but can't receive without first being accepted as sons. Christ suffers the one substitutionally so that we can't suffer it, and the other representatively so that we may join Him in it. 

The Substitutionary Suffering of Christ

The verse divides neatly into two halves, indicating substitutionary atonement first, and then representative suffering. As our substitute, Christ suffered in our stead - so that the sting of sin and death is now removed. Thus, as believers, we can never experience what He experienced there. We could have, and should have, but by God's grace we never will. This is the message of the first half of the verse:

But He was pierced through for our transgressions, 

He was crushed for our iniquities; 

Pierced Through - Heb. HHALAL, חָלַל = to wound (fatally), bore through, pierce, bore. The word can also have the meaning: to profane, defile, pollute, desecrate

In the literal sense, Christ was "pierced" 5 times; in each hand, in each foot, and then in His side. In the figurative sense, God allowed him to be defiled by our sin. Sin defiles the soul, piercing and killing it.


Crushed - Heb. DAKA, דָּכָא = to crush, be crushed, be contrite, be broken

Though our Lord experienced the most intense physical pain, He was not crushed physically. In fact, He was preserved from the breaking of bones (Exodus 12:46; Numbers 9:12; Psalm 34:20). He was spiritually broken, crushed and made contrite by the bearing of our sins. The weight and pressure of them was hideously oppressive to His soul.

Here He is treated as an enemy, and not as a son. "Piercing" and "crushing" describe the furious destruction that would be meted out upon one's adversary. One pierces and crushes his foe, not his child. Thus, Christ represented the enemies of God and experienced the kind of destruction they are due: the terror of having to bear their own iniquity and its destructive results.

The Representative Suffering of Christ

As our representative - our brother - Christ suffered with us. In the first half of the verse, he accomplished what was needed to justify us. But in the second half he brings about our much needed sanctification. In this sense He not only suffers for us, but also with us, and in order that we may suffer with Him. He thus provides the ground by which we can be accepted, not merely as sinners justified through a gifted righteousness, but also as sons sanctified through experiential identification with THE SON. This is the message of the second half of the verse:

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, 

And by His scourging we are healed.

Chastening - Heb. MUSAR מוּסָר = discipline, chastening, correction. "Essentially, it is a bond, a checking, restraint, i.e., correction which results in education." (Zodhiates)

Well-being - Heb. SHALOM שָׁלוֹם = completeness, soundness, welfare, peace. ". . . Shalom is a harmonious state of soul and mind, both externally and internally. . . . Though shalom can mean the absence of strife, it usually is much more. It expresses completeness, harmony, and fulfillment." (Zodhiates)

Scourging - Heb. HHABURAH חַבּוּרָה = bruise, stripe, wound, blow

Proverbs 20:30 Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts.


Healed - Heb. RAPHA רָפָא = to heal, make healthful

In the second half of the verse, He suffers the corrective discipline which would be administered to a beloved but disobedient son. "Chastening" and "scourging" describe the discipline a Father administers to his erring child. Christ was standing in our place, no longer as rebellious sinners deserving wrath, but as justified sons needing the Father's discipline. He suffers this discipline not so that we can avoid it, but so that we can enter into it with Him.

In the first part of the verse, He suffered for the sin of the whole world. In the second, He suffered for the benefit of those who are redeemed and brought to sonship through His suffering. As He suffered the fullness of divine wrath for the sin of the world, so He suffered the fullness of divine discipline for the sins of the believer.

Thus we find God, in the process of making atonement, already responding to the anticipated effects of the atonement.

We now share in Christ's sufferings. We take up our crosses and follow Him. Christian suffering and sanctification in the New Testament are framed as a participation in the sufferings of Christ, and a sharing in the cross.

Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me."
Luke 9:23 And He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me."
Luke 14:27 "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
I Peter 2:24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
I Peter 4:1-2 Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
Romans 6:10-11 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

The first half of Isaiah 53:5 showed us our culpability as sinners under God's wrath. The second half speaks of our well being as God's redeemed children. Contained in every line, and forming the link between these two concepts, is the suffering of Christ in behalf of sinners. His suffering accomplishes our justification and empowers our sanctification.

Geoffrey Bingham on the Cross and Justification

I don't know much about this Anglican preacher from Australia, but I know I was deeply stirred by his teaching on the cross in this old video which has only received a few hundred views on YouTube. Bingham speaks with great insight about human depravity, and thus also with great insight into the grace of Christ. His side comments about the winds of doctrine that were floating around when this was filmed in 1985 are timeless.


He is the second preacher I've heard propose the unique (but, I believe, correct) theory that Christ's prayer in Gethsemane was a plea that He might survive the sufferings of the garden in order to go on to the cross - and not in any way a plea to avoid the cross as most commentators assume (note Bingham's comments around the 43 minute mark). The textual evidence for this position is striking if you take the time to study the passages closely.


More information on Bingham and a long list of his books can be found by clicking here. Many of his books are available as PDF scans for FREE. 

Isaiah 53:4 - Stricken of God

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.

In verse 3, we found the Savior acquainted with grief.

Here we find that it is our grief He bears.

In verse 3, we found the Savior a man of sorrows.

Here we find that it is our sorrows He carries.

In verse 3, we found that we did not take account of the Savior.

Here, we find that our account of Him was misguided.

• "Surely" is the Hebrew word AKEN, אָכֵן, meaning "truly," or, "in reality," or, "but in truth," denoting a strong contrast between this verse and the one before it.
• "He Himself" is the emphatic Hebrew demontrative pronoun, HUW', הוּא, showing that He personally and voluntarily lifted our burdens when we were not even aware.
• "We ourselves" is the emphatic Hebrew personal pronoun, 'ANACHNUW, אֲנַחְנוּ, indicating that our own judgment was far from the reality, and when we finally took notice of Him we drew the wrong conclusions. The cross forces us to take account of Jesus Christ - yet we must not only notice Him, but also discover what His work means.

Why Does He Suffer So?

The common belief in Jesus' day was that a person suffered as a result of his own sin or that of his parents. Suffering was not voluntary, it was not in behalf of others, and it was considered to be a well deserved punishment meted out by God against evildoers. Apparently the book of Job had little effect on the thinking of first century Israel.

While He suffered, the people looked at Jesus and concluded He was being punished by God. This far along they were correct. But they failed to apprehend the reasons: that He suffered voluntarily, bearing only the wrath that we deserved for our sins. Christ's motivation and the motivation of the Father were both misinterpreted because the underlying cause of His suffering was not seen for what it was: a substitution for us, due to His representation of us, resulting in an imputation of sin from us . . . with the attending wrath of God pressing down heavily upon Him.

The sorrow and grief of sin are infinitely heavy. Can you feel them in your soul? Have guilt, condemnation and the wounding of conscience trampled you down into the miry mud bog of despair? Are you drowning in the turmoil of a heart that is deeply aware of its sinfulness? It may seem that way at times, but you and I barely know the measure of the weight of our guiltiness. Only Jesus truly knows it. Our finite emotions can hardly sense the true depth of our trouble. Yes, it's worse than you think. Our sin-warped minds are hard pressed to formulate the real implications of our revolt against Almighty Goodness. We have only a slight perception of these things . . . and even what we have is nearly unbearable to our fragile spirits.


Moreover, our perception of our own sin is stretched out over a lifetime and revealed progressively. Jesus carried it all - yours, mine, the whole world's - concentrated together in one small bit of time and space, a mere 3 hours! Imagine the weight He felt in His soul. No wonder His sweat was like great drops of blood in the hours leading to this event, and He uttered the most grave self-assessment: "I am deeply sorrowful to the point of death."

The regenerated righteous are peculiarly aware of their own unworthiness and misery. They feel most pressed down by their corruptions. However, far from leading to hopelessness, this terrible reality causes more dependence on Christ, more humility, more grace, more fleeing to the Word of God for refuge, more pleadings and prayers for deliverance, more sensitivity to the needs of others, more intercession for those who are not blessed with such vast spiritual resources - and all of this builds a sturdiness of character in which hope solidifies us and leads us to an inexplicable joy, peace, and rest! Just as sin is worse than you think, grace is stronger than you realize.

When it comes to our sorrows and griefs, Jesus is the great Carrier. We can - we must - cast our burdens upon Him. We must always remember that those discomfiting revelations of our depravity are but the residual shadows of a condemnation which has already passed. It has been borne by another in our place.


Psalm 55:22 Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

For those who will not cast their burden of sin upon the Lord Christ, the crushing guilt that is felt now is only a shadow of what is to come. But for those who turn to God in faith, trusting Him to bear away their sin, the feeling of condemnation is temporary and ultimately inconsistent with the truth of full redemption in Christ. 


So, in the objective sense, our sin and guilt have already been carried away to judgment. We find nothing but mercy from our self-propitiating Father. But in the subjective sense, we wrestle with sin and guilt and must daily apply the truth of the Gospel against its powerful advances. We also receive God's loving, fatherly discipline, His temporary judgments that are redemptive and spur us on to growth in Christ. While we await the final perfecting of our minds and the redemption of our mortal bodies at the coming of the Lord, we struggle through the process of sanctification. We're on the way to our promised glorification in Christ, but we haven't reached it yet. However, it is so sure and certain that the apostle writes of it as if it is finished: "... whom He justified, He also glorified." (Romans 8:30). He also says we are presently seated with Christ in the heavenlies, though this does not yet appear in our experience. We live between the cross, with its "finished" judgment against our sin, and the ultimate fulfillment of the redemption purchased there. In such a state, we are both wretched justified sinners needing further sanctification, and redeemed saints in the process of being glorified, being made holy, and being changed into His image. This situation itself is only temporary, as we move onward to the culmination in our own experience of God's eternally finished work. It is so finished, and so guaranteed, that we are even now called "holy" and "perfect" and "glorified" in Christ.

He Willingly Bore the Injustice of Bearing our Just Condemnation

"Stricken," "Smitten," and "Afflicted" are each passive participles in the Hebrew, perhaps showing our misapprehension in thinking that Christ was the unwilling recipient of divine justice.

In reality, He was bearing our sins freely and without coercion. He was not merely being acted upon, but was actively and purposefully submitting to the will of the Father. He certainly did not crucify Himself, but He allowed Himself to be crucified. He did not act to stop it, though His agony would have ended with a mere word from His lips or an unuttered prayer for deliverance. And while we stood looking on and misjudged the reasons for His death, He did what we should have been doing: He asked the Father, "My God, My God, WHY . . ." The simple, child-like faith we should have expressed was instead expressed by Him in fulfillment of Job's prophecy: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!" The answer to His question is this: He was forsaken because we are desperate, depraved sinners - and God loves us too much to give us the justice we deserve but cannot bear - so He absorbed His own wrath. And the cross shows us that even for God, this is (to use the human expression) "more easily said than done." There was a price to pay for our lawlessness - a price so costly that God's spoken Word alone was not enough to remedy it - though a Word would have been sufficient to seal our deserved condemnation. For mercy to appear, there needed to be a divine act of bearing sin, and an obedience that answered our disobedience, for the sake of His pure justice. Christ acted, Christ obeyed, and Christ guaranteed the purchase.


The justice He received was the just wrath we were due. There was no sin in Him to elicit any divine judgment or wrath against Him. The inherent virtue in Him merited only praise. He was falsely condemned by the same humanity whose crimes He bore, while at the same time He was rightly condemned by the Father because He stood as our representative receiving the penalty for our crimes. His sufferings were vicarious and substitutionary - in our place.

When you face the darkness of your heart, do you remember His sufferings on behalf of that heart? When you fall into sin, do you believe He suffered to redeem you from that very sin? When you are victorious over temptation, do you thank Him for purchasing that victory? Do you recognize that your obedience in faith is impossible apart from His sacrifice? The cross (including the resurrection) is the flaming core of our faith and the center point of our sanctification. As we live before the cross, bear the cross, gaze upon the cross, meditate upon the cross, sing of the cross, embrace the cross, and love the cross, we grow in newness of life by the same power that raised Him from the dead.


Dear friend, let us pray thus: may the cross of Christ - and the Christ of the cross - ever captivate our hearts!

Some Clarifications on Faith, Works, Justification and Sanctification

EDITOR'S NOTE: Recently I posted a video of John Gerstner teaching about justification. Afterwards, I had a long conversation with Tony Hayling about the pros and cons of Gerstner's choice of words. Tony eventually sent me the following treatise, which was a wonderful gift. It is an exposition of justification and sanctification by faith alone, the like of which I have rarely seen. I don't think Gerstner would disagree with what's written here, but Tony makes some important points that the video leaves out. Frankly, I rank this on a par with Luther's famous treatise on Justification by Faith. I doubt I am overstating the case. Like Luther, Hayling takes us to the Gospel, and Christ, and grace, and a sovereign God for EVERYTHING related to our salvation. Unlike Luther, Hayling believes the book of James is canonical.

Justification and Sanctification by Faith

By Tony Hayling

Justification is about what Jesus has done. Sanctification is about abiding in what Jesus has done. IF one is truly justified then one HAS BEEN sanctified in the sense of being set aside for holy use (like the vessels in the temple were sanctified).

The frequent misapplication of the complementarian idea that we have a "duty faith" to PRODUCE good works IF we are justified (by which some mean "saved") is actually a Roman Catholic heresy. It's where Tetzel made his living. It's where Luther stood in the breach and refused to budge. The Catholics never had a problem with salvation by grace through faith - their problem was the tiny, tiny word "alone."

Either we are saved (meaning the whole ball of wax from justification to glorification) by grace alone through faith alone or we are saved by a grace which gets us started, but cannot finish the job. We know from Philippians 1:6 that such a statement is heresy.

So I go surprisingly far down the road with those other heretics, the Grace Evangelical Society. But there is a significant difference. They believe that a confession of faith, once made, secures a person's salvation; a person is saved by WHAT THEY DO (even though they can flatly deny it later); and they are saved even if they later deny the faith. True Christians do not believe these things. They do not believe they are saved BY faith, but THROUGH it. It is something GOD does - but it is something that God DOES (in other words, there is evidence of God's activity, namely by the obedience of faith).

Not only is entire salvation something that God did in Christ on the cross for those He came to save, but it is something He upholds by keeping those whom He justified. In fact, He clearly stated that not one of those He died for can be lost (or snatched out of His hand). The problem arises when people start talking in terms of OUR part, as if our not doing that part could have any effect upon what God has done once for all in Christ. The very gates of hell cannot deflect or prevent what God purposed to do from eternity in creating, saving and glorifying His church in Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of justification tells us HOW God saves. It does not save of itself. Faith is the means by which God saves, but faith itself does not save. Our faith is not in our faith. Our faith is always in what God HAS DONE. He has justified His elect and nobody can undo that.

The question arises as to what difference this makes in sanctification. You've heard the truism "We are justified (or saved) through faith alone, but a faith that saves is never alone". I think people mean by this that a truly saved person WILL produce fruit. But they so often misrepresent it by implying that a person MUST produce fruit - thereby driving a poor struggling saint right back to the LAW, when they thought they were saved by an act of grace while they were yet sinners. Who changed the rules?

We will NEVER - NEVER - produce godly works by fear or guilt. That was the whole idea of the law - to show us our spiritual impotency. Godly works are the fruit of abiding in the finished work of Christ. "There is forgiveness with Thee, THAT thou mayest be feared."

I cannot overemphasize the need to get this

exactly right. Works are not really what we DO so much as what God manifests through and in us because we are looking at what He did in Jesus Christ. It's sort of like walking a tightrope over Niagara falls. We keep looking straight ahead (at the risen, glorified Christ) and we're fine. We look down at our own feet and we start to fall.

The warning and admonishment passages, apart from Christ, can only kill the soul. They are law.

They say "do this or else". But that is not the gospel. The gospel says, "Jesus Christ did this for you - believe in Him". As Paul rightly said, there is nothing wrong with the law. It is good and perfect and not one jot or tittle will pass away. But it lacks the power to save. It can condemn and it can kill. In fact, that is its purpose in the drama of redemption AND sanctification.

Why begin in the spirit and finish in the flesh? The commands to do and to act righteously exist as pedagogues to bring us to Christ. Even in the gospel age. Especially in the gospel age. We cannot maintain or keep our salvation by deeds of righteousness. We "maintain" and "keep" it in exactly the same way that we first received it - by believing in Jesus Christ and His finished work. That abiding is what produces fruit in the true believer.

There might be some confusion about the means by which fruit is manifested. It is manifested through the exercise of our faith - God will neither believe nor repent FOR us. We are means. We are vessels. For a good deed to be done it must be manifested in our words and through our actions. But we step into heresy when we attribute those deeds to our own stick-to-it-iveness. We have forgotten already Who it is that is in us to will and to do of His good pleasure. We are not admonished to work, but to work OUT our own salvation. The difference is huge. Working OUT our salvation is simply being in constant remembrance of what God has done for us. If we truly do this, then fruit is INEVITABLE. But I would never in a million years employ the term NECESSARY. It's too misleading - especially today, in a Christian environment in which people already believe that they are helping God out by choosing to believe Him. The seed of Arminianism has rotted the truth from the root. And it has grown to full blown Pelagianism in many places because people have bought the lie that God does His part and we must do ours.

Jonah 2:9 is clear. Salvation (all of it) is of the Lord. Jonah's saga is proof positive that those whom He justifies, He sanctifies. It is proof that God produces willingness in His people. He does it by revealing Himself to them and in them. He does NOT do it by commanding them to do something and leaving it up to them. That is death. Augustine pleaded with God to command what He would, but to grant that which He commanded. He knew that the command could only

condemn him in his own mind (even in the gospel age) but that God could use the command, through Jesus Christ, to produce fruit in him.

This whole concept is a hill I will die on. It disturbs me that there is a Christianity out there in which people see themselves as saved by the power of God and kept by something that they themselves do - or MUST do. Law has no place except to bring us to Christ. If there is anything we MUST do it is to believe in the One Whom He has sent - period. End of story. But that is not enough for those who would get some trace of human work in by the back door. I'll say it one more time - we are not justified by what we do, neither are we sanctified by what we do. We are justified and sanctified by what Jesus Christ did once for all in His life, death and resurrection. Our job is to walk in it by looking to those facts and believing with the faith that God works in us.

This fundamental truth is so easily perverted because fertile ground exists for the heresy of human contribution even in professing believers. It is taught from many pulpits - even evangelical pulpits. Are men like Gerstner technically right when they use the word "necessary" in the way they do. Well, yes. But what help is it to be "right" by dotting the "i"s when the whole sense is perverted because the listeners have no idea of the nuances involved. 16th Century terms for technical aspects of doctrine play well in Seminary or Reformed blogdom, but will they play in Peoria?

Will we BELIEVE God - that He will produce the fruit if we abide in Christ - or will we go down to Egypt for horses and chariots because we want back-up in case God fails? Are we our own insurance policy? Or is God perfectly able to do what he says He will do?

The truth about law and gospel I discovered without the aid of any modern church - indeed quite in spite of them. And once discovered, it is a truth I shall never relinquish - that it is only by looking to Christ that any good is borne in and through us at all. It is never on account of what we do, nor what we imagine needs to be done that we are either justified or sanctified. Ours is all response in faith to what God has done to make us fit for His kingdom.

I give you below an extract from a rare and out of print work by Luther called "God's Word and God's Work":

The most acceptable service we can do and show to God, and which alone He desires of us, is that He be praised of us; but He is not praised unless He first be loved; He is not loved unless He first be bountiful and does well; He does well when He is gracious; gracious when He forgives sins. Now who are those that love Him? They are that small flock of the faithful who acknowledge such graces and know that through Christ they have forgiveness of their sins.

I see that it is in the seeing, and holding to, and believing of Who Christ is and what He alone has done that the flower of good works blossoms. It is BECAUSE we believe that we HAVE BEEN SAVED (justified and set apart) that we produce fruit. The production of fruit is not to the fruit's credit, nor is it truly within the fruit's power to grow, but that of the vine or the tree.

John Gerstner On Faith, Works, and Justification

In this video, the late Presbyterian theologian John Gerstner passionately argues for justification by faith alone. He does a beautiful job of explaining this paradox, which the unbelieving simply cannot understand.

Dr. R.C. Sproul was one of Gerstner's seminary students. You may notice the resemblance in style.


Gerstner drives over three dangerous errors on his way to stating the truth . . .

Error: We are saved by Works
Error: We are saved by Faith plus Works
Error: We are saved by Faith minus Works
Truth: We are saved by Faith Alone, from which God-honoring works must (and will) subsequently spring.