Isaiah 53:5 Context
Isaiah 53 speaks of the “suffering Messiah” and is one of the most famous passages of prophecy about Christ in the entire Bible.
Not only does it foretell the manner of Christ’s death, but it also spells out exactly why he had to die: for our sins.
Isaiah 53:5 Meaning
This chapter is one of the saddest but also one of the most hopeful in all of Scripture. It is heartbreakingly sad because it depicts the pain, loneliness, and suffering of our Lord and Savior.
It even horrifyingly talks about how it was God’s will to crush him. How can this be? The only explanation is sin.
Sin, our rebellion against God, is so utterly reprehensible that it must be punished.
And yet God, in all three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—loves us so much that the Father was willing to punish the Son instead of us, and the Son was willing to bear it.
But this chapter is also hopeful. How valuable we must be to God for him to go through all this for us. Every one of us “like sheep has gone astray” (v. 6). But he loved us even in our wandering.
This verse tells us where peace and healing come from. They can’t appear without a real acknowledgment of sin and a payment for that sin. They come, of course, from God’s grace, shown through Christ’s death on our behalf.
Isaiah 53:5 Application
Acknowledge how you’ve gone astray from the God who loved you. Repent of your wandering and come back to him. Then thank him for the brutal punishment he took on your behalf. It wasn’t easy, but Jesus sees that you are worth it.
“Jesus said to her,‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.’”