Who Has Believed Our Report?: Postscript

Isaiah 53:1

Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
[Isaiah 53:1-3 NKJV]

We considered it worthwhile to look at the original scripture quoted in John 12:37-41. Isaiah 53 is perhaps one of the best known chapters in the Book of Isaiah, and here is what Matthew Henry had to say about these verses in his Commentary:

No where in all the Old Testament is it so plainly and fully prophesied, that Christ ought to suffer, and then to enter into his glory, as in this chapter. But to this day few discern, or will acknowledge, that Divine power which goes with the word. The authentic and most important report of salvation for sinners, through the Son of God, is disregarded. The low condition he submitted to, and his appearance in the world, were not agreeable to the ideas the Jews had formed of the Messiah. It was expected that he should come in pomp; instead of that, he grew up as a plant, silently, and insensibly. He had nothing of the glory which one might have thought to meet with him. His whole life was not only humble as to outward condition, but also sorrowful. Being made sin for us, he underwent the sentence sin had exposed us to. Carnal hearts see nothing in the Lord Jesus to desire an interest in him. Alas! by how many is he still despised in his people, and rejected as to his doctrine and authority!

Reading further in Isaiah 53 fleshes out even more of the picture:

Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labour of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
[Isaiah 53:10-12 NKJV]

These last verses make plain what Jesus endured for our redemption — we have been bought at that price…

• His dying to bear the sin of many is to undo the fall of mankind as represented by the story of Adam and Eve; it is a corporate work, which ‘wipes the slate clean’
• but each of us can sin and this is where we have to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. [Philippians 2:12-13 NKJV]

In this, Jesus is our intercessor — a bridge between realms, and like a bridge He carries our weight; He makes a way for us — and that is His reward.

Praise The Lord!

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A HOLY CONDITION: Oswald Chambers on Joy and Peace
Peace: Life In The Spirit

After being born again a man experiences peace, but it is a peace maintained at the point of war. The wrong disposition is no longer in the ascendant, but it is there, and the man knows it is. He is conscious of an alternating experience, sometimes he is in ecstasy, sometimes in the dumps; there is no real stability, no real spiritual triumph. To take this as the experience of full salvation is to prove God not justified in the Atonement.
[from ‘Biblical Ethics’]

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‘Who Has Believed Our Report?’ — Brian Dunne

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