Jesus was our sin bearer

JESUS WAS OUR SIN-BEARER
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all.—Isaiah53:6.
Isaiah53:6
GreatTexts of the Bible
Our Sin-bearer
All we like sheephave gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.—Isaiah53:6.
We do not know, and there is no gain in guessing, who the sufferer was who is
thus commemorated. “Vicarious suffering,” it has been said, “is not a
dogmatic but an experimental truth … a greatliving fact of human
experience, evident to men’s eyes, and appreciable, in its meaning, to their
consciences.”Somebody—Jeremiahoranother—lived a life of absolute self-
devotion and, as appeared, of defeat as absolute, and then he passedaway
without remark. There was nothing in him to draw the eyes of his
contemporaries, nothing but his sufferings, from which, as average healthy
creatures, they were rather inclined to turn away. He was one from whom
men hide their faces, seeking to avoid him on the street;and he made so little
impression on his age that the writer adds, “Who of his generationeven
consideredthat he had ceasedto live?” Whateverthe nobility of his life may

have been, that was the extent of its prosperity—a failure which had not even
the compensationofpublicity.
And yet when that life was over it somehow refusedto be done. It is no
uncommon experience for us to discover, weeksormonths after an event, that
we have been more observantthan we imagined. When a situation, which in
no way concernedus at the time, is recalledin memory, fragmentary
impressions come drifting back, words which unconsciouslywe had marked,
looks which had been noted; and we fit them togetherso that we begin
actually to understand the episode from which we fancied we had carried
nothing away. That is how the prophet proceeds. He, also, had been one of the
unobservant, but something from that forgottenincident remained, insistent,
provocative to the mind; and by degrees he beganto spell out the meaning of
what he had not regarded, until in the figure of that forgottensufferer he
found a key to the mystery of God’s way in redeeming men. It is by self-
devoting love like that, he says, that men are healed, and God’s Servant when
He comes will surely take that away.1 [Note:W. M. Macgregor.]
But there is only one Individual in history of whom it is a likeness. The life
and death of Jesus Christ—lived and died five hundred years after the very
latestdate to which any one has assignedthis prophecy—fit it feature by
feature, tint by tint, as nothing else can. And the minute external
correspondencesbetweenthe prophet’s vision and the Gospelstory,
important as these literal resemblances are, are mainly important as pointing
onwards to the complete correspondence betweenthe spirit and functions of
the suffering servant of the prophecy and of the Jesus Christ of the Gospel
history.
I

All we, like sheep
1. All we have gone astray.—The speakersare primarily the penitent Jewish
nation, who at last have learned how much they had at first misunderstood
the servantof the Lord. But the “we” and the “all” of our text may very fairly
be widened out so as to include the whole world, and every individual of the
race. Iniquity is the universal burden of us all.
In the Journal of Biblical Literature for 1910 (PartI., p. 24) Dr. W. H. Cobb
points out that the Hebrew word koltranslated “all” is not an adjective but a
substantive, and has the definite article prefixed to it. Accordingly, to bring
out the force of the original, he translates this passage, “The whole ofus
wandered like sheep.” It is the universe of mankind; there is no break in its
uniformity. In the same way he renders Deuteronomy6:5, “Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with the whole of thy heart,” for it is not merely an intense
love that God demands, it is an undivided love; no part of the heart is to be
given to the love of any other god.
(1) The fact that every man is a transgressorof the law of God is the prime
fact of humanity, and the all-important truth needed for the apprehension of
the very rudiments of the Gospel. We shall never know what we need, or be
able to understand what Christianity, as gathered in Christ—who is
Christianity—offers to do for us, unless our eyes are opened and our
consciencesmade sensitive to the unwelcome but undeniable truth that we all
“have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” I believe that almostall of
the mistakenand unworthy conceptions ofChristianity which have afflicted
and do afflict the world are directly traceable to this—the failure to
apprehend the radical fact affecting men’s condition that they are all sinful,
and therefore separatedfrom God.1 [Note:A. Maclaren.]

There are differences immensely important in other respects betweenmen,
differences of culture, of talent, of opportunity; differences of outward life:
some living respectable, decent, cleanlylives, full of many virtues and many
graces;some, perhaps, having done many a thing that, if it did not bring them
within the grip of criminal law, at leastsets them outside the decent,
respectable classesofsociety. But, whatever may be the superficial
differences, down below there is identity; and beneath all varieties of garb and
vesture, and all diversities of culture, intelligence, profession, andall
differences of degrees ofcivilisation and of rank and position, wise man and
fool, cultured man and savage, saintand criminal, loftiest and lowliest, all are
alike in this, that they have sinned.
“Gone Astray!” Two little words spokenin a moment, but how humbling to
man’s pride!
There are men of greatintellectual graspand culture. They have sweptthe
heavens with telescopes,and searchedthem out. They have explored and
masteredthe secrets ofthe earth. To them science andart have laid bare their
treasures. We admire and honour them. We do well; for their discoveries
conferimmense benefits upon the human race. But God looks down upon
every one of them by nature, and says, “Gone Astray!” There are men of
greatwealth. Broad acres ownthem as lord, their rent-roll is reckonedby
hundreds of thousands of pounds. In addition to this, they are philanthropic
and kind. It is joy to them to succourthe fatherless, and to care for the widow.
With open hand they delight to help forward any scheme which promises to
lighten the sufferings of their fellow-men. We love these men. We do well to do
so. But God looks downupon every one of them by nature, and says, “Gone
Astray!” There are men of the strictestintegrity and the highest morality. All
their business transactions are conducted with honour; and in all their private
relationships they are scrupulously upright. Everybody respects andtrusts
them; yet God looks downupon them all by nature and says, “Gone Astray!”

If we scan
The wide or narrow circle of our friends
And weightheir worth, we find, alas!that all,
Even in the glance of charity, possess
Some spot; and if we haply mark ourselves,
We are not perfect! E’en humanity,
Like the spoilt picture of some master-mind,
Hath much it may admire, but prominent
The fault obtrudes! And as when Lucifer
Poured the dark drop at Eden’s fountain-head,
He poisoned every stream; e’en so when Eve
The cup of disobedience tastedthere,

She gave to all her children naughtiness.1 [Note:EbenezerPalmer.]
(2) The verse says first, “all we”;but immediately afterwards it says also,
“every one.” Eachsonand daughter of Adam has strayed far awayfrom the
fold of the GoodShepherd, and no one is able to find his own way back again.
The wilderness of sin is so large that the erring flock gets scatteredand
separatedinto innumerable bypaths. Every child of Adam has his own
peculiar form of sinfulness. One man hates his brother man; another has not
in his heart the love of God. One man’s sins are sins of the flesh; another
man’s are sins of the spirit. The besetting sin of one heart is pride—a high
flying sin; while the sin of anotheris vanity—a creeping thing. Here we find
the vice of drunkenness, and there the love of money. The sins of Esauwere of
a different class from those of his brother Jacob. The faults of John the
Apostle were not the same as those of Simon Peter.
John Bunyan, in The Pilgrim’s Progress,illustrates admirably this truth that
“we have turned every one to his own way.” He does so in the very names
which he gives to worldly men and false pilgrims. There are “Obstinate and
Pliable,” “Simple, Sloth, and Presumption,” “Formalistand Hypocrisy,”
“Timorous and Mistrust,” “Talkative,” “Ignorance,” “Vain-Confidence,” and
many others. Some are guilty of “secretfaults,” and others of “presumptuous
sins.” The sins of one are black, those of a secondare scarlet, and those of a
third are red like crimson. Eachturns to “his own way.”1 [Note:C. Jerdan,
Messages to the Children, p. 73.]
You have heard Handel’s “Messiah.”I never realisedhow beautiful this
figure was until I heard the music of this particular part, “All we like sheep
have gone astray.” If you listen to the music you see the sheepbeginning to go
astray, and then as the notes are sung out you see one go this way and another
that way, and another yonder way. Even in wandering they do not keep

together, and that marvellous musician has expressedit in music—one note
seems to show which way this sheepgoes, andanother that sheep, and another
that. There is a process ofscattering vividly depicted in the whole music.2
[Note:D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women, and Children, v. p. 446.]
2. Like sheep.
1. Spurgeonhas well saidthat the sheepis a creature exceedinglyquick-witted
upon the one matter of going astray. If there be but one gapin the hedge, the
sheepwill find it out. If there be but one possibility out of five hundred that by
any means the flock shall wander, one of the flock will be certain to discover
that possibility, and all its companions will avail themselves of it. So is it with
man. He is quick of understanding for evil things. God made man upright, but
he hath sought out many inventions, the inventions being all to destroy his
own uprightness, and to do despite to the law of God. But that very creature
who is so quick-witted to wander is the leastlikely of all animals to return.
The ox knowethits owner, and the ass knows its master’s crib; even the swine
that will wanderby day will return to the trough at night, and the dog will
scentout his master over many a league;but not so the sheep. Sharp as it is to
discoveropportunities for going astray, it seems to be bereft of all wit or will
to come back to the fold. And such is man—wise to do evil, but foolish
towards that which is good. With a hundred eyes, like Argus, he searches out
opportunities for sinning; but, like Bartimeus, he is stone blind as to
repentance and return to God.
When I was a boy in my own country, I used to notice that when the clouds
were gathering and a storm threatened, the shepherd would go round the
shoulder of the hill and fetch all the sheep that happened to be on the stormy
side back under the shadow of a greatrock, so that, when the storm at length
raged, the sheepwere all safely sheltered. The sheep had not the sense to find
that place out for themselves, and though the shepherd had done that scores

of times for them, yet they never thought of doing it without his aid.1 [Note:
D. Davies, Talks withMen, Women, and Children, v. p. 445.]
2. It is not written, “All we like wolves, like tigers,” but “All we like sheep
have gone astray.” We do not usually associatethe thought of something so
silly, so whimsical, so essentiallyharmless as a sheep with the awful deeps and
disobediences ofthe human heart.
In this assertionof the prophet there is not so much as a hint of hereditary
tendencies forcing themselves into uncontrollable action, of innate devilry in
man manifesting itself in a species ofSatanic concert;it simply amounts to a
matter of pitiable moral weakness.Like sheep, like simpletons, have we gone
astray. Whether he is right or wrong, this is what the writer says. And it is
worth our while to think, to take in the fact, that the prophet-poet uses the
word “sheep” in this highly-wrought passage, ratherthan some word that
connotes a very different force, as in tiger, wolf, or snake. If we settle it in our
mind that men in large numbers go wrong, not because theymust and cannot
help it, but because they are fools and will not help it, the conviction may not
do much for our natural conceit, but it will probably serve a useful purpose in
a more important direction.
A sheepdoes not intentionally go astray. It nibbles itself astray. It puts its
head down to the grass, and begins to eat, and eat, and eat, and at lastlooking
up finds it has wandered far from the flock, and is lost. It was so absorbed in
feeding, that it paid no heed to its whereabouts. Menbecome thoughtlessly
absorbedin something or other, and never call halt to look around to
ascertainin what direction they are tending. Men gettheir heads down
making money. It absorbs all their energies andall their thoughts, and almost
unconsciouslythey wanderfar from the shepherd into moral and spiritual
perdition. Minor fascinations ensnare us until we forget or ignore the
fascinations ofour Lord. The sheepof God’s pastures stray awayin

thoughtless absorption, and become lost in the regions of wild beasts and
night. “When He hath found it He layeth it upon His shoulders.” He takes us
in our moral impotence, and carries us.
(1) Many estimable people are travelling on through life without a suspicionof
offence, doing what others do and judging as others judge—like sheep; and it
never occurs to them to ask if their world has room within it for the Cross, in
which they yet profess to believe. Actually they do not need it and they do not
understand it. WalterBagehot, in one place, speaks ofthose “gentlemenwho
revolt from what is coarse, are sickenedby what is gross, hate what is ugly.…
The law in their members does not waragainstthe law of their mind. They
live within the hedgerows ofpolished society, and they do not wish to go
beyond them into the greatdeep of human life.” And then, abruptly, he adds,
“These are the men whom it is hardest to make Christians.” Paulwent
everywhere, as he says, to Jew and Gentile, testifying the repentance which
brings men to God and the faith which casts them on the Lord Jesus Christ;
but what have some men to do with repentance or faith? They want to go on
as they are, for they have not realised, as this man did, the shame and scandal
of the selfishlife when once it is seenalongside of an existence more nobly
managed. It is still by seeing Jesus Christ in the mystery of His passionthat
men come to see themselves.
Oft when the Word is on me to deliver
Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare;
Desertor throng, the city or the river,
Melts in a lucid Paradise ofair,—

Only like souls I see the folk thereunder,
Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings,—
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder,
Sadly contented in a show of things;—
Then with a rush the intolerable craving
Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call,—
Oh to save these!to perish for their saving,
Die for their life, be offeredfor them all!1 [Note:F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.]
(2) The reason, we are told, why men do certain things and follow certain
paths is not folly but fate. That one man works out his salvation, and another
his damnation, is not the wisdom of one or the foolishness ofthe other, it is the
necessityofboth. It is the accidentof having brains and will, or not having
them. The theory which has heredity and the accumulationof heredity as one
of its essentiallevers, has takenpossessionof the popular mind and
imagination as never before perhaps in the history of thought. “It has fixed
attention on the law in its purely physical aspects, andhas made men feel

more keenly the difficulty of giving it a moral interpretation consistentwith
individual freedom.” This goes farto explain the change that has come over
the working classes during the last quarter of a century in the estimate of the
chances and possibilities of their lives.
In the little schooling that fell to my lot, I was fortunate for a few months to
come under the influence of a thoroughly high type of a man who recognised
his obligations as a teacherto all sides of our nature. Hardly a lessonpassed
which he did not use as an opportunity to rub in some phase of our duty to
God and ourselves. His unwearied insistence was that self-effort and utter
truthfulness, or the absence ofthese, always explain men and their
circumstances. About two years ago this goodman got togetherall his old
scholars who were above ground and within reach, and it was remarkable
how few gaps thirty years had made in the ranks of those who gladly, and
with every demonstration of genuine affection, met to do honour to their old
schoolmaster. I could not be present, but one of the company writing me after
said: “You would have been pleasedto see whata prosperous lot we looked,
almost without exception. Notone of us has failed to give some accountof
himself; while many have attained positions of considerable importance;
others have achieved comparative wealth.”1 [Note:Ambrose Shepherd, The
Gospeland SocialQuestions, p. 51.]
In the long run fame finds deserving man,
The lucky wight may prosper for a day,
And in goodtime true merit leads the van,
And vain pretence, unnoticed goes its way.

There is no Chance, no Destiny, no Fate,
But fortune smiles on those who work and wait
In the long run.2 [Note:E. W. Wilcox, Love Never Lost.]
3. We have an evidence which the prophet lacked, anevidence which is
outspread overnineteen hundred years, for, with reasonor without it, men
have everywhere been drawn to righteousness andto settled peace by the
contemplation of the Cross onwhich Jesus died. When they come to that place
the burden which has been pressing them hard falls away. The sin itself may
remain, the evil bias and the evil habit, but the hopelessnessofit has gone, and
the dread of God’s anger. Jesus, who soughtin all things to be one with His
brethren, emboldens us to seek in faith for oneness with Himself; and in virtue
of that mystical union our pardon is secured. As He associatedHimself with
us, so we associateourselves withHim both in His doing and in His suffering.
We make His confessionours, the homage due to the righteous will of God,
which we cannotrender of ourselves, we find in Him. We have no desire to
stand apart, living our lives out in ways of our own; we wish to be found in
Him, and judged only in relation to Him. Abundantly conscious ofweakness
and failure, we yet receive through this fellowship of life all the tokens of
God’s favour: light and peace, and powerto make progress. And thus we have
assurance through Christ of the forgiveness ofour sins. It is not for human
effort to restore the fallen dignities of life, as if man were the doer, and God,
at best, the observerand rewarder. God is the doer, and you and I receive. He
takes it as His business to make life simple, glad, and cleanonce more, and to
attain that end He is willing to go all lengths. “He so loved the world,” said
John, “that He gave His only begottenSon.”

A little girl of six years old was singing, “I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless
Lamb of God.” Her uncle was upstairs, sick. Little Annie crept up to his
bedside, and whispered, “Uncle, have you laid your sins on Jesus, the spotless
Lamb of God?” She went back to her play. But all that evening he was
praying to God to forgive him for Jesus’sake. Nextday Annie went up to the
sickroomand whispered with winning tenderness, “Uncle William, did you do
as I told you?” “Yes, I did, I did, and He has takenall my sins away.”1[Note:
W. Armstrong, Five-Minute Sermons to Children, p. 87.]
As the fond sheepthat idly strays,
With wanton play, through winding ways,
Which never hits the road of home,
O’er wilds of danger learns to roam,
Till, weariedout with idle fear,
And, passing there, and turning here,
He will, for rest, to covertrun,
And meet the wolfhe wish’d to shun;

Thus wretchedI, through wanton will,
Run blind and headlong on in ill:
’Twas thus from sin to sin I flew,
And thus I might have perish’d too:
But Mercydropp’d the likeness here,
And show’d, and sav’d me from my fear.1 [Note:Thomas Parnell.]
II
The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all
The evil that we do, going forth from us as deed, comes back upon us as guilt.
Flung up, as it were, into the heavens, it falls back againon the head of the
man that castit. And so the text speaks ofa recoilof the evil. “The Lord hath
made to fall upon” some one “the iniquity” that had been audaciouslycastup
in the face of the heavens, as in scorn. “If it were done when ’tis done, then
’twere well it were done quickly,” but seeing that it only begins when “’tis
done,” it is an awful thing to commit the smallestevil. The recoilof the gun
bruises blue the shoulder of the man that fires it; and all our evil deeds,
according to the old proverb about curses, “come home to roost.” There is
guilt, and there is habit, and there is the uneasy, or worse, the silent and

searedconscience;and there is the disturbance of the relation to God, and
there is the flight of peace from the heart, and there is the onward look that
says, “If there is a future it is a future of retribution, and every transgression
and disobedience shallhave its just recompense of reward.” Is not that a
burden for us to carry?—the weight of evil pressing upon us, in its
consequences, ofguilt, disturbance, irritated or paralysed conscience,and the
foreboding that if we get what we deserve we shall getbut a bitter weird.
“Breadeatenin secretis pleasant,” but it turns to gravelthat breaks the teeth
of the eater.
Now it needs nothing more than the strength and the wisdom and the patience
of the earthly shepherd to restore the straying sheep. But although my
Shepherd is God overall, He cannot leadme back by His patience and His
wisdom and His strength alone. Something more is required: something
momentous, inexplicable, poignant. He must put Himself into my place. He
must charge Himself with my sin. He must die my death. The Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all.
1. The Lord.—Who finds for me a rescuer? Who provides me with a Saviour?
It is the Lord. It is God the Father and God the Judge. It is He whose
commandments I have broken, and whose sentence I have incurred. Not,
however, without the fullest consentof Jesus, did God assignHim a task so
sorrowfuland a burden so heavy. The Shepherd’s delights were with the
foolish and wilful sheep, whom he could not bless without passing through the
furnace and the flood. Ah! there is no God like mine. God is Love—Godthe
Father and God the Son; and betweenthe affectionof these two I dare not
discriminate.1 [Note: A. Smellie, In the SecretPlace,p. 317.]
Remember that although the text speaks ofthat burden as being laid upon
Him by the Lord, we are not to suppose that, therefore, it was not assumed by
Him by His own loving volition. He bore our sins because He would. The Lord

laid them upon Him; therefore the sacrifice appointed by God is acceptedof
God; but He chose to suffer, and He willed to die, because He loved thee, and
me, and every soul of sinful men. There is the secretof the power of the
Gospel.2 [Note:A. Maclaren, Paul’s Prayers, p. 177.]
2. On Him.—The words, “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all”
are a foreshadowing ofthe death of Jesus. The man who uttered them was
thinking of life. He knew that many righteous had suffered for the
unrighteous. Probably he was patiently suffering for others. The whole
chapter is the heart-utterance of one who bears the sins of others, who feels
the guilt of his fellow-men. Human experience is revealed in these immortal,
soul-subduing words. They revealan eternal principle, and only Jesus
expressedit fully in His life and on the Cross.
There is nothing unreal in this idea of redemption; it brings the Cross into the
movement of the world. Vicarious suffering has been working for good from
the beginning. You are familiar with this thought. The Old Testamentis full of
substitution.
The weak sufferfor the strong in the lowergrades of life. In the struggle for
existence the weakestgive place to the strongest. This is always going on. The
best survive, and so the quality is raised. Now, does not this involve a kind of
suffering? That the many perish for the few to survive, seems so awful a
process.
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?

So careful of the type she seems,
So careless ofthe single life.
That is Tennyson’s note of despair, but he was truer to the spirit when he
said—
That nothing walks with aimless feet.
Out of the loss and suffering there is gain and progress. Let us go a step
higher.
The strong suffer for the weak.—The birds look after their young. Savage
beasts defend their offspring, and risk their lives in defence. When we come to
mankind, there is a greaterdemand made upon the love of the parents. We
come into existence dependent for years upon the help of others. The strong
cherish, guide, and support the weak. ProfessorDrummond has made this
beautifully clearin his Ascentof Man, showing how there has always been
going on a struggle not only for life, but for the life of others.
Then there is the highest kind of suffering. The innocent suffer for the guilty,
the just for the unjust; and this was fully revealedin the Cross. The evil that
men do lives after them, said Shakespeare.Very true, but that is not all. Evil
done afflicts the righteous now. It is they who feel the shame of wrong. The
pure among the impure, the gentle among the brutal, feel most the shame of
impurity and cruelty. Innocent children suffer through the sin of parents, and
parents for children. One may bear the disgrace of another. The natural
history of wrong who can trace? Christ was brought under the same law. “He

bore our sins in his own body on to the tree”; not simply “on the tree,” but
onward through life unto death. “The Divine can never be more Divine than
that.” If that Spirit was not Godin man, we may ceaseto speak or even to
dream of God.1 [Note:F. R. Swan, The Death of Jesus Christ, p. 15.]
The greatmystery of the idea of sacrifice, whichhas been manifestedas one
united and solemn instinct by all thoughtful and affectionate races since the
wide world became peopled, is founded on the secrettruths … that you cannot
save men from death but by facing it for them, nor from sin but by resisting it
for them. All the true goodand glory even of this world, not to speak of any
that is to come, must be bought with our toil and with our tears.2 [Note:J.
Ruskin, The Art of England, § 12.]
(1) Preachers have often spokenunwisely, of the offices of Christ, as if the
office were the greatmatter, and not the person who holds it; but the teaching
of experience is that offices of the higher sortcannot be dischargedat all
unless a man have some native bent towards the business. A king will never be
made such by his coronation, unless he have within him instincts of authority
and of order. A priest can never be made by any form of human education; he
must possessthe priestly nature, the greatly daring and loving heart, which
takes the concerns ofman on to itself, and pleads in regard to them in the very
face of God. And Jesus, Prophet, Priest, King, was born such. He could not be
content within Himself, but must go out to find the sorrows, burdens,
perplexities of men, which never seemedto Him alien or remote. As the world
is made some one must suffer under these, and He claimed that as His part.
All sicknessanddarkness and evil in the land were drawn togetherat His
advent, and He treatedthem as no intrusion but as belonging to the ministry
on which He had been sent. ForHis chosenbusiness was to bear the inflictions
which have come upon the world of men, acknowledging them as righteous,
and thus to bring hope and pardon to the hopeless.

(2) Too much attention has been paid to the physical sufferings of Christ.
Especiallyhas the phrase “shedding of blood” been too literally considered.
We need not be afraid of the word “blood,” if only we think of what it
symbolises. But, thoughtlesslyto use the term is not helpful to the soul. It is a
word having very sacredmeanings, and should be uttered with great
reverence and feeling. The more we dwell upon the terrible bodily agonyof
Christ, the less wonderful does the Cross become. Because by obscuring the
spirit of the Cross, we bring the death of Jesus too near the level of other
martyrs, who suffered the keenestoftorture and the most horrible forms of
death.
We have not to exalt Christ’s death by trying to show that He suffered more
bodily agony than any other martyr. That may be so, or it may not be so. On
one side we can compare Him with others who suffered, but on the other side
there is no comparisonwhatever. It was God, as man, who gave Himself. It
was man’s Head and representative who poured out His soul unto death. It
was not a death not foreshadowed, but a sacrifice that God in humanity was
preparing to give. The world waited for One who could atone for all, speak for
all, live for all. Moses couldnot, nor David, nor Isaiah, nor Hosea, norany
goodman; they had much of God in them, but needed redemption all the
same.
I know of no theory, says Maclaren, whichredeems the story of Gethsemane
and Calvary from the charge of being the history of a man whose courage
collapsedwhen it came to be tested, except that which sees in the agony
beneath the olives, in the bloody sweat, in the awful and pathetic words with
which He appealedto His friends: “My soul is compassedaboutwith sorrows
even unto death,” an element far more mysterious and awful than the mere
shrinking of humanity from death. Surely, surely, the Lord and the Master, in
the strength of whose name feeble women and tremulous virgins and little
children have gone to the pyre and the scaffoldand the lions, as to a feast, did
not exhibit all that agitation and tremor and shrinking, only because He was

afraid of the death that belongs to all men. Ask yourselves how reverence for
Jesus Christ will survive in the face of the story of His lasthours, unless, as we
listen to Him crying, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsakenme?” we
hear the cry of Him who before His shearers was dumb, but opened His
mouth at lastin that mysterious complaint in which filial obedience and utter
desolationare so strangely blended because “the Lord hath made to light on
Him the iniquity of us all?”
What a burdened conscience!It must have been the most burdened conscience
in the world. Yet this man was perfectly sinless. How can we accountfor the
anomaly? How canwe reconcile the burden with the blamelessness?Easily;
nothing can explain the burden but the blamelessness. Do you know what
sinlessnessis? It is perfect unselfishness. And do you know what perfect
unselfishness is? It is the breaking of the partition betweenmy life and other
lives. You have a large room, beautifully furnished, and a little anteroom,
separatedby a wall, and badly furnished. You break down the wall and make
them one room; and you have lostthe prestige of your furniture. The large
room has takenin the little one with all its imperfections; it has borne its sins.
If it were to become conscious, itwould be aware of blemishes within it not its
own. So was it with the Divine man. He broke the middle wallof partition
betweenHis room and your room. He destroyedthe barrier betweenthe large
and the small apartment; He made of twain one. He allowedyour mean
furniture to blend with His costly adornments. He felt your life to be a part of
His life. He was mesmerisedby love. He lookedatHis brother’s temptations,
and said, “They did it unto Me.” He bore in His own body the pain of other
bodies. It was not the sense of pity; it was the sense of identity—the identity of
love. It was His unselfishness that gave Him a universal conscience—“the
Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”1 [Note:G. Matheson, Searching
in the Silence, p. 146.]
3. Laid on Him the iniquity.—“The Lord hath made to light on Him the
iniquity of us all.” In the compass ofthree verses of this chapter, there are

sevendistinct, emphatic, and harmonious utterances, allbearing on the one
thought of the vicarious suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1) “He hath borne
our griefs”;(2) “And carried our sorrows”;(3) “He was wounded for our
transgressions”;(4) “He was bruised for our iniquities”; (5) “The
chastisementof our peace was upon Him”; (6) “And with His stripes we are
healed.” And they are all gathered togetherin the final word of this text—
“The Lord hath made to light on Him the iniquity of us all.” I venture to say
that if these words, in the variety of their metaphor and the fulness of their
description, do not teachthe Gospelthat Jesus Christ bore in His sufferings
the sins of the whole world, and bore them away, language has no meaning.
Nothing could be more emphatic, nothing more reiterated, full, and confident
than this sevenfoldpresentationof the greattruth that He lived and suffered
and died for us because He suffered and died insteadof us.1 [Note:A.
Maclaren.]
Whether we examine the first resurrectionannouncements of Christ, or His
words at one of the fundamental institutes of His religion, or His admonitory
appeals to His hearers, or His statement as to His mission, togetherwith the
dual proclamationof the Baptist and the prediction of the angel, the same fact
is presented to us: the sinless Christ is invariably associatedwith sin. In the
Epistles, not only is this fact conserved;there is an amazing advance upon it.
To cite the passagesin these early and inspired documents which bear upon
the mysterious relationship betweenChrist and sin, would be to transcribe
many sections ofSt. Paul’s letters. Suffice it to say that there are twelve
passagesin the Epistles which speak of Him as dying for sin. There are three
which describe Him as bearing our sins. There are two which sayHe was
“made sin” and “made a curse for us.” Twelve passagesascribe to the death of
Christ the removal and remissionof sins, togetherwith deliverance from their
penal consequences. He is said to be the cause of our justification in three; of
our redemption in nine; of our reconciliationto God in five; as a propitiation
in four; as a priest, six; as a representative, four; while the Scriptures which
representthe sufferings of Christ as sacrificialappear in the Epistles to the
Romans, the Ephesians, the Hebrews, and in the Apocalypse.

I was once talking to a poor dying woman about the Crucifixion of our
BlessedLord. She was very ignorant and had led a bad life, and it was only
now during her last sicknessthat she seemedto realise that Christ had indeed
died for sinners—had indeed died for her! She saidto me: “I am trying to
understand it, but it seems so dreadful, that though I know it must be true,
still one half hopes it is not, for oh, how could we have done such a thing!”2
[Note:D. Baillie.]
1. There are two fundamental realities, marking the sacrificialritual of the
Old Testament, which indicate two fundamental doctrines, marking the
sacrifice ofChrist in the New Testament. These are, first, the position which
the objectsacrificedoccupiedwith regardto the worshipper; and, secondly,
the effects, limited but prospective, of the sacrifice thus offered.
(1) The position which the object sacrificedoccupiedwith regard to him who
offered it may be gatheredfrom a series of rigid and suggestive regulations.
These have to do with the nature and condition of the sacrifice. It was to be
offered willingly, but when selectedfrom herd or flock, as the best of its kind,
being vigorous in life and without blemish, it was brought to the door of the
tabernacle, and thenceforwardthe completionof the ceremonialwas the work
of the priest. Before the sacerdotaloffice was exercised, there was one rite
common to all the bleeding sacrifices. Godrequired of the worshipper that
“He shall put his hand upon the head of his offering.” Now, throughout Holy
Scripture, manual imposition is associatedwith the idea of transfer or
communication. The latter explains its use in blessing, in office, in the miracles
of Christ and of His followers. The former implies the conveyance of
something from him whose hands are imposed to the objectbeneath the
pressure. The ritual of the greatDay of Atonement tells us what that
something is: “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live
goat, and confess overhim all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all
their transgressionsin all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat.”

And as the need of the worshipper, whether individual or corporate, was
expiation—implying the sense of sin, of guilt, of estrangementfrom God, and
of penal liability—that need was in a measure supplied by the animal
sacrificed. To that animal was transferred, symbolically, the sin and the guilt
of the worshipper. The death of the animal declaredthe liability of him who
offered it, while the imposition of hands declaredthe symbolical transfer of
that to which death was due. In a word, the worship of the Hebrew economy
typifies the doctrine of expiation by sacrificialsubstitution.
(2) Next consider the effects which in Holy Scripture are attributed to the
vicarious offering of Christ. The Levitical sacrifices connectthe shedding of
blood with atonement. “The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it
to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul.” The principle expressedin these
words seems to be that of Life for Life. Life is takenthat law may be
magnified, and that life may be spared;that transgressionmay at once be
condemned and the transgressorcondoned, forgiven, pardoned. Ceremonial
remissionin the symbol corresponds to moral remissionthrough the Saviour.
Throughout the New Testament, and conspicuouslyin the Epistles, to the
sacrifice ofChrist is attributed the remissionof sin. “Godhath set forth Jesus
Christ a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness
for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance ofGod;” and
to the Ephesians, the greatApostle writes:“We have redemption through His
blood, the forgiveness ofsins, according to the riches of His grace.”1 [Note:
DeanLefroy.]
Nearly one hundred years ago, La Reveilliere Lepeaux, one of the five
directors who then constituted the government of France, appealedto
Talleyrand as to the forms of worship which might be necessaryand helpful to
Theophilanthropism. Talleyrand replied: “I have but a single observationto
make:Jesus Christ, to found His religion, suffered Himself to be crucified,
and He rose again. You should try to do as much.” The splendid irony of this

sentence is likely to escape us, in our sorrow at the imperfect account
Talleyrand gives of the mission of our Lord. He did not die to found His
religion. He died “the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God,” and He lived
and died to establishthe Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, until He comes
whose right it is. But Talleyrand’s memorable words revealthe greatnessand
the grandeur of our Lord’s work.
2. Where is the justice of it? If I am to trust my soulto this sacrifice, let me see
the meaning of it. I do not ask to understand it thoroughly and to the bottom,
but at leastit should not startle and assailmy moral instincts.
Well, is there not a spiritual law of imputation? Do not these two verses reveal
the same law, acting very differently, as the warm sun acts differently on
slimy marshes and on beds of roses—the law ofguilt and penalty stretching
awaybeyond the actualperpetrators of the crime, laying hold on others,
involving them in the same ruin?
(1) Looking first at the spread of guilt to other guilty persons, the very statute-
book can tell of crime spreading out far beyond the doers of the act. For
example, a murder has been perpetrated. The victim is in his grave. The deed
is over. But the accountis not closed:the guilt is spreading still; and whoever
knowingly shelters and helps the murderers, whoever tries to confuse the
scentalong which Justice is pursuing the fugitives, that man is an accessory
after the act;and if his deed canbe proved he will suffer for it.
(2) Certainly it is a greatleap from this to the falling of penalties upon an
innocent head; because here all sympathy with the crime is absent. But let us
return to our example. Let one of those same murderers be convictedand
awaithis doom. You canbear none of the penalty for his sin exactedby his
fellows;that is beyond mortal power. But is there not something quite as great

which you can do for him? Look at him, paralysedwith terror and helpless
rage, a pale, inert, sullen creature, strickento stone, and yet full of rebellion
againstboth God and man. Speak to him now about hell and the broken laws
of God; and he shivers, perhaps he bids you ceasefrom torturing him, but his
heart is still as hard as adamant. There is only one chance for him, and that is
that you should pity and suffer along with him; that you should understand all
the strange, aching numbness of his heart, painful beyond any pain; that your
eyes should grow dim and your voice be shaken—bywhat? by your share in
his agony, so that you must bearhis grief and carry his sorrows,which he
deserves so richly, and which you do not deserve at all. There are half-hours
of such pleading which leave a man physically aching as after a long day of
toil, and mentally exhausted as if he had been stunned by a blow. For that
heavy frost upon a guilty soul is its due moral penalty, and the only possible
way to uplift it is by taking share with it, by suffering for it, the just for the
unjust. The innocent helper does, quite as really as the guilty abettor, though
very differently, enter into the spirit of the culprit, and upon him comes a
share in the suffering from which he would fain snatch his brother. Or ask
any mother who has tenderly pleaded with a sullen rebellious child until the
little one melted, after long obstinacy, and was forgiven—ask herwhether this
pleading costher nothing. The shadow of it hangs overher all day.
(3) But no soonerdo you carry the process to this point than you become
aware that more is wanted, that the principle on which you have been acting
must have other and largerapplications, or else it exists in vain. For your own
heart has not fire enough to melt the heart of ice with which you acceptthe
chill of contact. Your best hope is to become a conductor, by which a stronger
compassionmay minister healing through His stripes. Try, then, this
experiment. Speak ofJesus, ofHis love, of those keenfleshly sufferings which
were the symbol, the outward and visible sign, the sacrament, of His wounded
heart. Do this, and the pettish child and the hardened criminal alike will be
made aware of the powers of the world to come. Theymay resist, being free
agents, but only by a greatand fatal effort. And what draws all men to Him is
that sublime and awful sorrow endured for us. Tell me only that He was a
sufferer, and His story is still pathetic; but merely as one old, old tragedy

among the many which afflict the world. Say even that He loved me; and I
may fail, though striving, to return His love. But tell me that He suffered for
my sake, becauseHe crossedthe fatal circle of my sins, and drew down, like
electricityflashing out in lightning, the bolt on His own head; tell me that He
intended this, and, for love of me, deliberately broke the bar which severs
man from man, made my penalty His own, took my stripes and the
chastisementof my peace, and, if I canbelieve it, I will adore Him.1 [Note:G.
A. Chadwick.]
Wherever there is love, true unselfish love, there is vicarious suffering. I
remember at one time being entertained by some friends of mine. Their home
was a palatial building amongstwonderful hills, below which wound a broad
and majestic river, and beyond the river a splendid city. The house was filled
with every evidence of wealthand culture and pleasure. We had spent the day
in various delights—in woods and gardens, with music and jest. At night-time,
when all the others had gone to restand the great house was still, and only the
candles lightened the gloomof the old panelled room in which we were, my
host and I sattogether. A greatchange had come over him. The cheerful smile
was put off like a mask. The easycarelesstalk was stilled. Sadlines marked
his mouth, and his head seemedsuddenly bowed with age. He told me of a
tragedy in that beautiful home—of the wayward child far away, whose sins
and sorrows herparents unceasinglymourned. Nothing could make up to the
father for the love of his daughter, and in the backgroundof his life he
suffered and wept. We all know what that means. The innocent everywhere
suffer for the guilty, the loving for the loveless.We form a web of humanity,
closelywoven, not a series of unknitted threads, and where guilt enters, a
quiver of pain passes throughthe race. It was thus that Jesus suffered. His
love, beyond the love of women, made Him susceptible to all the sorrow of the
world. As the lightning conductor draws the electric flash to itself, so in the
bosom of Christ the flashes and bolts of the world’s wickednessburied
themselves.1 [Note:N. H. Marshall, Atonement and Progress, p. 80.]

4. The iniquity of us all.—Whose iniquity is it? It is that of us all—all of us,
poor self-destroyedsheep, if only we look to Jesus for ourselves. I vex myself
sometimes by questioning whether I can possibly be among the electwhom
God has chosen. But did I ever hear of a case in which. His sovereigntyhas
hampered His love? Did I ever know of a seekerwho came to the Saviour and
was refused, because Godhad not ordained him to everlasting life? The one
thing which keeps me from the Shepherd is my unbelief; it never is the Divine
decree. I am one of us all, and Christ has room for me.2 [Note: A. Smellie.]
1. The work of Christ is potentially as universal as the sin to which it is
addressed. In this our Lord stands separatedfrom every one, who, possessed
of an inspiration, sought to aid, to enlighten, to elevate his fellows. One man
addresses his best energies to abolish slavery; another to mitigate the
humbling pressure of poverty; another to the dispersionof the fogs of
ignorance, superstition, prejudice; anotherto the alleviation of disease and to
the advancementof the public health. These are beneficent enterprises, but
they are partial, transient, and mainly material. Christ compassesthe
infinities. He walks amid the immensities of the spiritual, the permanent, the
universal, the eternal. These are factors in a conceptionwhich never dawned
upon the loftiestintellectual day. They were as natural to Christ as His
sinlessness.
Our text begins and ends with the word “all.” Now, whateachof us has got to
do is to go in at the one “all,” and to come out at the other. I must go in at the
“all” of condemnation, by acknowledgingthat I have gone astraylike a lost
sheep. And I must come out at the “all” of justification, by believing that the
Lord has made my iniquity to light on the head of Jesus Christ.
I lay my sins on Jesus,

The spotless Lamb of God;
He bears them all, and frees us
From the accursedload.
2. “He hath made to meet upon him the iniquity of us all.” Yes! and yet it is
possible for a man included in the “all” to have to staggeralong through life
under his burden, and to carry it with him when he goes hence. “Be not
deceived, God is not mocked,” says the foremostpreacherof the doctrine that
Christ’s death takes awaysin. “Whatsoevera man soweththat shall he also
reap. Every man shall bear his own burden.” So your sins, takenawayas they
are by the sacrifice ofJesus Christ, may yet cling to you and crush you. There
is only one way by which the possibilities open to all men by the death of Jesus
Christ may become the actualexperience of every man, or of any man—and
that is, the simple laying of his burden, by his own act of quiet trust, upon the
shoulders of Him that is mighty to save.
Sympathise with a murderer, feel as you would fain have him feelthe misery
of his condition, and, as the subtle fibres of a strange communion draw you
together, as he responds, he begins to feel the softergrief, the contrition which
already, in a sense, youfeel for him. Your spirit passes into him. But this is
only on the condition that he responds. Even so, to have the benefit of Christ’s
suffering we must consentto enter into His spirit, and to die with Him, that we
may also live with Him. As many as are baptized into Christ Jesus are
baptized into His death. He is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and
sanctification, and redemption, when we surrender to His influences.1 [Note:
G. A. Chadwick.]

Lord, dost Thou look on me, and will not I
Launch out my heart to Heavento look on Thee?
Here if one loved me, I should turn to see,
And often think on him and often sigh,
And by a tender friendship make reply
To love gratuitous poured forth on me,
And nurse a hope of happy days to be,
And mean “until we meet” in eachgood-bye.
Lord, Thou dost look and love is in Thine Eyes,
Thy heart is set upon me day and night,
Thou stoopestlow to set me far above:
O Lord, that I may love Thee make me wise;

That I may see and love Thee grant me sight;
And give me love that I may give Thee love.1 [Note:Christina G. Rossetti.]
Our Sin-bearer
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
Departure And Distance FromGod
Isaiah53:6
W. Clarkson
These words, though very pictorial and poetical, indicate with great clearness
the cardinal truths of religion and even of Christianity, and they express for
us the thought and feeling common to all devout spirits. We see in them -
I. THE HOME WHENCE WE HAVE DEPARTED. It is not stated, but it is
clearly implied, that the fold or home whence we have gone astray is.
1. That of God, our Creator, our Father, our Divine Friend; it is that where he
dwells, where he rules, where he sheds the sunshine of his presence and
favour.
2. It is that of righteousness;of gratitude, of love, of reverence, ofobedience,
of submission.
3. It is that of peace;of spiritual order, rest, joy.

II. THE DIFFERENT PATHS WE HAVE PURSUED. "We have turned
every one to his own way." Sinful error takes many directions. Sometimes it
wanders into unbelief and denial; sometimes into rebelliousness ofspirit,
disdainful rejectionof Divine claim; at other times into a sinful indulgence, in
one or other of its various forms; or again into a guilty negligence and
unconcern, or a criminal procrastinationof sacredduty; or yet againinto a
hollow and worthless formalism, which has the show of piety without the
substance of it. But in these various paths of sin there is one thing which is
common to all, viz. the setting up of the human will againstthe will of God.
Every one of us has gone his own way. We have "followedthe devices and
desires of our ownhearts." We have determinately set our own inclination
againstthe will of God. And herein we have -
III. THE GUILT WHICH WE HAVE ALL INCURRED. "All we... have gone
astray." Some men have wanderedfarther awayfrom God than others; some
have gone in an opposite direction to that of others; but all men have guiltily
preferred their own way to the home and the fold of God. All have forsaken
and disregardedand grievedhim. And thus all have sinned; all, without
exception; not only those who have fallen into gross and most shameful
enormities, but they also who have kept to the proprieties of outward
behaviour, and have observedthe decencies andrequirements of the religious
life t - all have withheld from God what is his due, and reservedto themselves
what was not theirs to keep.
IV. THE PROVISION GOD HAS MADE FOR OUR RETURN. "The Lord
hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." This does not signify that Jesus Christ
bore the penalty due to all human sin - a part of that penalty it was absolutely
impossible that the Innocent One should beat: It means that the redemptive
work he wrought, and wrought by his submission to sorrow and death, avails
for every child of man who will acceptit; it means that in Christ is forgiveness
of sin, acceptance withGod, entrance into life eternal to every one who
humbly but heartily receives him as Saviour and Lord. - C.

Biblical Illustrator
All we like sheephave gone astray.
Isaiah53:6
Astray from the fold
T. de W. Talmage, D.D.
I. The first part of my text is AN INDICTMENT. "Allwe like sheep have gone
astray." Says some one, "Can't you drop the first word?" And some one rises
and looks offand says, "There is a man who is a blasphemer, he is astray.
Yonder is a man who is impure, he is astray. Yonder is a man who is
fraudulent, he is astray." Look at home, for the first word of the text takes
you and me as well as the rest.
1. I have studied the habits of sheep, and I know they lose their way sometimes
by trying to get other pasture. There are many of you who have been looking
for better pasture. You have wandered on and on. You tried business
successes,you tried worldly associations, youtried the club-house. You said
that the Church was a short commons, and you wanted to find the rank grass
on the bank of distant streams, and to lie down under greatoaks onthe other

side of the hills. Have you found the anticipated pasture that was to be so
superior?
2. I have noticedalso that the sheepgetastray by being frightened with dogs.
Oh, man, that is the way you got astray. You said, "Where is God, that He
allows an honestman to go down, and thieves to prosper?" You were dogged
by creditors; and some of you went into misanthropy, and some of you took to
strong drink, and some of you fled from all Christian associations;and in that
way the sheep gotastray.
II. But the last part of my text OPENS A DOOR WIDE ENOUGHTO LET
US ALL OUT, and wide enough to let all heaven in. "The Lord hath laid on
Him the iniquity of us all." Says some one, "Thatis not generous. Let every
one bear his own burden." And there is something in that. If I owe a debt, and
I have money to pay it, and I come to you and ask you, to cancel my
obligations, you will be right in saying to me, "Payyour own debts." If I am
walking along the streetwith you, and we are both hale and hearty, and I
want you to carry me, you are right in saying, "Walk on your own feet." But
suppose you and I were in a regiment together, and I was fearfully wounded
in the battle, and I fell unconscious atyour feet with gunshot fractures and
dislocations, five bullets having struck me at once — you would say to your
comrades, "Here, this man is helpless. Let us carry him to the ambulance; let
us take him out to the hospital. Would It have been mean to let you carry me
then. You certainly would not have been so unkind as not to carry me. Now,
that is Christ to the soul If we could pay our spiritual obligations we might go
up to God and say, "Lord, there is so much debt, and here I have the menus
with which to cancelit. Now cross it all out." But the fact is we are pierced
through and through with the sabres of sin. We have gone down under the hot
fire, and we are helpless and undone. We will die on the field unless some help
comes to us. God sends His ambulance, yea, He dispatches His only Son to
carry us out, and bind up our gashes,and take us home. Is there any man who
is under the delusion that he can carry his own sins? You cannot. You might
as well try to transport a boulder of the sea, or carry on one shoulder the
Alleghanies, and on the other shoulder Mount Washington. Then let us shift
the burden.

(T. de W. Talmage, D.D.)
Salvationfor the straying sheep
A. G. Brown.
I. LOOK AT THE SHEEP THAT HAVE GONE ASTRAY. The text implies
they were once in the fold. You cannot go astrayexcept you have been in the
right place first.
II. EACH SHEEP WALKS ITS OWN PATH. There is almost an infinite
variety in sinning. Some go along a path of licentiousness;others the money-
making road; others the gamester's path; others take the Christless morality
road.
III. WHAT IS GOD'S WAY OF SALVATION? "The Lord laid on Him," etc.
Who is that "Him"? The One describedin the previous verses. Let Christ be
the objectof your trust, and you shall be saved.
(A. G. Brown.)
Our misery and its remedy
I. OUR MISERYBY SIN.
1. Our sin is chargedupon us collectivelyin common: we have all gone astray.
2. Distributively. "Every one to his own way." We all agree in turning aside
from the right way of pleasing and enjoying of God; and we disagree, as each
one hath a by-path of his own, some running after this lust, some after that,
and so are not only divided from God, but divided from one another, while
every one maketh his will his law.
II. OUR REMEDYBY CHRIST. "The Lord hath laid," etc.
( T. Manton, D.D.)

Departing from God
This departing from Godand His ways is fitly representedby the straying of
sheep. In the generalit implieth —
1. That we are brutish in our sin and defectionfrom God: it could not be
expressedbut by a comparisonfetchedfrom the beasts.
2. Proneness to err. No creature is more prone to wander and lose his way
than a sheepwithout a shepherd.
3. Our inability to return, or to bring ourselves into the right wayagain.
4. Our readiness to follow evil example. Sheeprun one after another, and one
stragglerdrawethawaythe whole flock. Austin saith, "I could wander by
myself, and could not return by myself." And God saith as much (Hosea 13:9).
5. The danger of straying sheep, which when out of the pasture are often in
harm's way, and exposedto a thousand dangers (Jeremiah50:6, 7).
( T. Manton, D.D.)
We have turned every one to his own way
Every man to his own way
Though there be one path to heaven, yet there are severalways of sinning and
going to hell. The reasons how this cometh to pass are —
1. Becauseofthe activeness ofman's spirit. It is always a-devising wickedness.
2. It happeneth through diversity of constitution.
3. It happeneth from their business and occasionsin the world. Many men are
engagedto ways of sin because they suit bestwith their employments, the sin
of their calling, as vainglory in a minister.
4. Custom and education.
5. Company example.

( T. Manton, D.D.)
His own way
This is the sin of men in their natural condition, that they turn to their own
way. The phrase implieth these two things —
1. A defector want of Divine guidance.
2. A rejectionof the ways of God when made knownto us.
( T. Manton, D.D.)
Caiaphas:Cephas:Jesus
W.E.Rawstorne,M.A.
The forms of human sinfulness are as numerous and varied as are men's
natural inclinations: but near the cross may be found a representative of
every one of these. Three figures will demand our attention — Caiaphas, the
high priest, with his surroundings; and then, amidst the obscurity of the
twilight scene, and the crowd of spectators,we must single out the figure of
Simon, then at the moment of his deepestshame. And then, turning our eyes
awayfrom these subordinates, we must fix them lastly on Jesus of Nazareth
Himself.
I. CAIAPHAS is the president of the High EcclesiasticalCourt then
assembled, and no judge ever could produce higher credentials than he. The
Gospels allacknowledgehim, without the slightestapparent doubt, as the
legitimate successorofAaron. He is descendantof a priestly dynasty some
1,500 years old, whose origin was confessedlyDivine. Besides, the highest
powerof all had ownedhis legitimate position, by giving to him the spirit of
unconscious prophecy. Now the priesthood of Aaron, which he bore, had
never been a bloodthirsty one. There are, I think, only two examples of that
priesthood shedding blood. One of these was the stroke ofthe spearof
Phinehas — an act of wild justice, suited to the times, which receivedpraise

and blessing from above;and the other, the just punishment by Jehoiada of
Athaliah, who had murdered all the royal family but one. Whateverother
faults they may have had, the priests, the sons of Aaron, had never erred
before on the side of intolerance and cruelty. And Caiaphas himself was no
fanatic. Like all the family to which he belonged, he was a Sadducee. He had
the views of a politician rather than of an ecclesiatic;and, having coolly
judged, severalweeks before, thatthe proceedings ofJesus of Nazarethwere
politically dangerous, he had determined that it would be wellto put Him out
of the way. But, in the council that surrounded him, there were many, and
perhaps a majority, of strong religious belief and feelings. So, for their sakes,
he affecteda horror which he could hardly have felt himself. The high priest
askedHim, "Art Thou the Christ, the Sonof the Blessed?"AndJesus said, "I
am; and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven." Then the high priest rent his clothes — the
original word in St. Mark seems to imply that one of these was the seamless
tunic of the high priest — in sign of a horror, which canhardly have been
otherwise than hypocritical in a coolman of the world like him, and said,
"What need we any further witnesses. Ye have heard the blasphemy. What
think ye?" And then the question being thus put, they all — the whole council,
all the scribes, all the elders, all the chief priests, the whole representative
body of the universal Church of God — condemned Him to be guilty of death.
What a lessonfor us arises outof this fact, that our Lord's death was wholly a
sin of the religious world under the guidance of their Divinely-appointed
leaders. And in that religious world we may distinguish all the chief tendencies
both of that time and of all times — the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the
liberal and the orthodox, the men with the minimum of belief in the
supernatural, and those with the maximum of that belief, the traditionists and
the anti-traditionists — in fact, the High Church, and the BroadChurch, and
the Low. The lessonis for our times. In those days authority and tradition
utterly failed those who relied upon them, while the light within the heart
lighted those who possessedit to the cross and to the glory of the Lord of
Truth.
II. Let us turn our eyes awaynow from Caiaphas and the splendid array
around him to the lower end of the courtyard near the door, where the lower

classesare collected. All these are within sight of the proceedings atthe upper
end of the hall, which no doubt is well lighted. Perhaps they are also near
enough to hear. Amongst them is one whose speechbetrays him to be a
Galilean. We know his name (though those around him do not) to be SIMON,
SON OF JONAS, who has also the surname Cephas. He is thrice recognized
as a followerof the accused, andthrice denies the charge. Thenthe cock crows
at early morning, and the Masterturns on him with a glance whichhe feels to
single him out, even in the darkness and the crowd;and he goes outat the
door, weeping bitterly. This strange character, so made up of contradictions
as to have been pronounced by that Being who knew him best, at one moment
a "rock," andat the next a Satan, full of boldness and full of cowardice, the
first to confess and the first to deny; this picture of the weaknessofall human
strength, of the frailty of all earthly goodness, is now at the very depths of his
weakness andshame. He stands there a sinner who has just committed a sin
— a very mean and cowardly sin. Yet there is an eye upon him, searching for
him, busied with him. We who have betrayed Him and denied Him, the Lord
hath turned and lookedon. He is seeking,let Him find.
III. We see JESUS in the midst of all this crowd of representative sinners,
amongstwhom a little honestsearchwill soonenable eachof us to detect
himself. Betrayed by covetous Judas, forsakenby unwatchful, unprayerful,
and therefore easilytempted disciples, denied by self-confident, self-willed
Simon, condemned by worldly-minded, unscrupulous Caiaphas, condemned
againby timid time-serving Pilate, persecutedto the death by sanctimonious,
theologically-hating Scribes and Pharisees,shoutedat by a rude, ignorant
multitude, tortured in cruel sport by barbarous soldiers — what species of
human sin is absent there? Let us considerthe exceeding beauty of the figure
presentedto us, and also how that figure is produced. Compare for one
moment any characterin a work of fiction. These, too, are beautiful, but how
is their beauty produced? By word-painting of the most exquisite kind. But in
the narratives of the Gospels there is no word-painting at all, exceptperhaps a
little in St. John. It is not the narratives that are sublime, but the Being who
becomes knownto us through their simple inartificial language. And now the
end of this should be, that every one of us should bring the matter as closelyas

possible home. It was all done for me; it was I that createdthe necessity. Let
Him, in eachof us, see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied.
(W.E.Rawstorne,M.A.)
The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all
Sin laid on Jesus
1. The verse opens with a confessionof sin common to all the persons intended
in the verse.
2. The confessionis also specialand particular.
3. This confessionis very unreserved. There is not a single syllable by wayof
excuse;there is not a word to detract from the force of the confession.
4. It is, moreover, singularly thoughtful, for thoughtless persons do not use a
metaphor so appropriate as the text: "All we like sheephave gone astray." I
hear no dolorous wailings attending this confessionof sin; for the next
sentence makes it almosta song. "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of
us all." It is the most grievous sentence ofthe three; but it is the most
charming and the most full of comfort. Strange is it that where misery was
concentratedmercy reigned, and where sorrow reachedher climax there it is
that a wearysoul finds sweetestrest. The Saviour bruised is the healing of
bruised hearts.
I. EXPOSITION.
1. It may be well to give the marginal translation of the text, "Jehovahhath
made to meet on Him the iniquity of us all." The first thought that demands
notice is the meeting of sin. Sin I may compare to the rays of some evil sun.
Sin was scatteredthroughout this world as abundantly as light, and Christ is
made to suffer the full effectof the baleful rays which stream from the sun of
sin. God as it were holds up a burning-glass, and concentrates allthe scattered
rays in a focus upon Christ. Take the text in our own version, "The Lord hath
laid on Him the iniquity of us all;" put upon Him as a burden is laid upon a

man's back all the burdens of all His people; put upon His head as the high
priest of old laid upon the scapegoatallthe sin of the beloved ones that he
might bear them in his own person. The two translations are perfectly
consistent;all sins are made to meet, and then having met togetherand been
tied up in one crushing load the whole burden is laid upon Him.
2. The secondthought is that sin was made to meet upon the suffering person
of the innocent Substitute.
3. It has been asked, Was it just that sin should thus be laid upon Christ? We
believe it was rightly so.(1)Becauseit was the act of Him who must do right.
"The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all."(2) Remember, moreover,
that Jesus Christ voluntarily took this sin upon Himself.(3) There was a
relationship betweenour Lord and His people, which is too often forgotten,
but which rendered it natural that He should bear the sin of His people. Why
does the text speak of our sinning like sheep? I think it is because it would call
to our recollectionthat Christ is our Shepherd. It is not that Christ took upon
Himself the sins of strangers. Them always was a union of a most mysterious
and intimate kind betweenthose who sinned and the Christ who suffered.(4)
This plan of salvationis preciselysimilar to the method of our ruin. The fall
which made me a sinner was wholly accomplishedlong before I was born by
the first Adam, and the salvationby which I am delivered was finished long
before I saw the light by the secondAdam on my behalf.
4. Lying upon Christ brought, upon Him all the consequencesconnectedwith
it. God cannotlook where there is sin with any pleasure, and though as far as
Jesus is personally concerned, He is the Father's belovedSon in whom He is
well pleased;yet when He saw sin laid upon His Son, He made that Son cry,
"My God! My God! why hast Thou forsakenMe?'
5. Think of the result of all this. Sin meets on Christ and Christ is punished
with sin, and what then? Sin is put away.
6. The "us" here intended.
II. APPLICATION. There is a countless company whose sins the Lord Jesus
bore; did He bear yours? Do you wish to have an answer? Letme read this

verse to you and see if you can join in it. If there be in you a penitential
confessionwhichleads you to acknowledgethatyou have erred and strayed
like a lostsheep; if there be in you a personal sense ofsin which makes you
feel that you have turned to your own way, and if now you can trust in Jesus,
then a secondquestion is not wanted; the Lord hath laid on Him your
iniquity.
III. CONTEMPLATION. I will give you four things to think of.
1. The astounding mass of sin that must have been laid on Christ.
2. The amazing love of Jesus whichbrought Him to do all this.
3. The matchless security which this plan of salvationoffers.
4. What, then, are she claims of Jesus Christ upon you and me?
( C. H. Spurgeon.)
Going astray as sheep
1. The sheep is a creature exceedinglyquick-witted upon the one matter of
going astray.
2. The sheep goes astray, it is said, all the more frequently when it is most
dangerous for it to do so;propensities to stray seemto be developedin the
very proportion in which they ought to be subdued. Whereas in our own land
a sheep? might wander with some safety, it wanders less than it will do in the
Oriental plains, where for it to go astrayis to run risks from leopards and
wolves.
3. The sheep goes astrayungratefully. It owes everything to the shepherd, and
yet forsakesthe hand that feeds it and heals its diseases.
4. The sheep goes astrayrepeatedly. If restoredto-day it may not stray to-day
if it cannot, but it will to-morrow if it can.
5. The sheep wanders further and further, from bad to worse. It is not content
with the distance it has reached, it will go yet greaterlengths;there is To limit

to its wandering except its weakness. Seeye not your own selves as in a
mirror!
( C. H. Spurgeon.)
Sin meeting on Jesus
S. H. Tyng, D.D.
I. THE MEETING-PLACE OF SIN IS THE CROSS OF CHRIST. In the
margin these words are rendered, "The Lord hath made to meet on Him the
iniquity of us all." The Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Persian, and Egyptian tongues
were spokenabout that cross. The inscription was in different languages that
all might read. This is the representationof the world now looking upon the
Crucified. His embrace encircledthe race of man.
1. The cross was the focus of sins.
2. The burdens of sin here meet.
3. Here the responsibilities of the sinner are assumedby one competent to
discharge them.
4. The sufferings of the sinner are gatheredin the agonies ofthe cross.
II. THE MEETING-PLACE OF SIN IS THE MERCY-SEAT OF SINNERS.
Conclusion:
1. The imperative claim Christ has upon the soul.
2. If you will not consentthat your iniquities shall meet on Christ, bear them
you must yourself.
(S. H. Tyng, D.D.)
The nature and power of the atonement
W. J. Knox-Little, M.A.

1. It has been suggestedthat there was injustice in the sacrifice ofOne who
had never sinned in the place of sinners, and that it involved the idea that God
liked suffering for its own sake. This statementis one-sided: it forgets mercy,
it shuts its eyes to the truth that the powerof any sacrifice is in its voluntary
and representative character. Factsmust be respected, and what is the fact
which is before us all? Pain and sorrow!
2. The vicarious sacrifice ofCalvary is the work of the Three Persons ofthe
Trinity. Men speak as if the Sondevised the plan of His own death to save
man from the Father's wrath. It was the work of the whole Three Persons in
the Godhead. If the justice of the Divine life demanded the atonement, the
mercy of the Divine love devisedthe means of pardon and the sacrifice on
Calvary.
3. There is yet another thought which illuminates the gloom. We know the
powerof sin which, like some mysterious shape, some wild and wandering
shadow in a forest, stands or flits about the portals of the opening life of man.
Nature brings us within its reach, our own will places us in its iron grasp, it
paralyzes the spiritual power, it chills our desires for better things; we cannot
rise up as once we could when we are lying under the weight of unforgiven sin.
This sense ofthe awfulness of sin illuminates the powerof the atonement, for
the sacrifice ofthe Son of God must at leastbe commensurate in its awfulness
with what we know of human sin.
4. If the awfulness of sin and the majesty of God bring home the sense ofwhat
vicarious sacrifice is, and we are able in its power to raise our hearts to God
and to feel renewedlife and holier aspirations, how about the past? Florence
rose and wept over the grave of Dante, but Florence could not then undo the
edict which banished the man, and Dante's ashes restbeside the pinewoods
and the Adrian Sea, and Florence is undone. And for eachof you there was a
day when you told your first lie, a day when you acted your first pretence, a
day when you did your first act of dishonesty, when you first degraded
yourself with some burning vice and destroyedthe innocencywhich God had
given you. In your better moments you look back to such a day, and you feel
as if you were standing by an open grave, as you remember the hard words,
the unkind looks, the want of sympathy, to him or her who lies beneath. The

past is gone beyond recall. How will you meet it? With scorn? Will you turn
awayand drown its memories in pleasure? You cannot. You have a spirit
born for eternity. But there is one other way. Christ on the Cross bore man's
sin in all its intensity, gave Himself as a sacrifice, and purchased for the race
complete forgiveness. No sorrow is so deep but He canassuageit, no memory
so black but He cancleanse it.
(W. J. Knox-Little, M.A.)
The universal burden and its bearer
A. Maclaren, D.D.
It is of prime importance to mark that the only office which the prophet
describes the Servant as filling is the function of suffering. He is neither
Teachernor Conqueror nor Lawgiver nor, here, King; he is only a Sufferer.
That is what the Saviour of the world has to be, first of all. The rabbis have a
legend, far wiserthan most of their follies, which tells how Messias is to be
found sitting amongstthe lepers at the gate of the city. The fable has in it the
deep truth that He who saves the world must suffer with, and for, the world
He saves.
I. CONSIDERTHE UNIVERSAL BURDEN. Ofcourse the speakers in my
text are primarily the penitent Jewishnation, who at last have learned how
much at first they had misunderstood the Servantof the Lord. But the "we"
and the "all" may very fairly be widened out so as to include the whole world,
and every individual of the race, and iniquity is the universal burden of us all.
I believe that almost all of the mistakenand unworthy conceptions of
Christianity which have afflicted and do afflict the world are directly
traceable to this — the failure to apprehend the radical fact affecting men's
condition that they are all sinful, and therefore separatedfrom God. The evil
that we do, going forth from us as deed, comes back upon us as guilt. And so,
we are all staggering under this burden. The creatures that live at the bottom
of the doleful sea, fathoms deeperthan plummet has ever sounded, have to
bear a pressure upon their frames all inconceivable by the men that walk

upon the surface of the earth. And the deepera man goes in the dark oceanof
wrongdoing and wrongbeing, the heavier the weightof the compressed
atmosphere above him, crushing him in. And, yet, like those creatures that
crawlon the slime, miles down in the dreary sea, where no light has come,
they know not the weight that rests upon them, and never have dreamed of
how blessedit is to walk in the lighter air with the sun shining above them.
There are some of you, grovelling down at the bottom of the ocean, to whom
the liberty and illumination, the lightness and ligntsomeness ofthe pure life
which is possible, would seemmiraculous. If these things be at all true, then it
seems to me that the fact of universal sinfulness, with all its necessary,
natural, and inevitable consequences,must be the all-important fact about a
man. What we think about sin will settle all our religious ideas.
II. LOOK AT THE ONE BEARER OF THE BURDEN. "The Lord has made
to light upon Him the iniquity ,of us all."
III. MARK THE MEN THAT ARE FREED FROM THE BURDEN. "Us all.
And yet it is possible for a man included in the "all" to have to staggeralong
through life under his burden, and to carry it with him when he goes hence.
"Be not deceived, God is not mocked," says the foremostpreacher of the
doctrine that Christ's death takes awaysin. "Whatsoevera man soweth, that
shall he also reap. Every man shall bear his own burden." So your sins, taken
awayas they are by the sacrifice ofJesus Christ, may yet cling to you and
crush you. There is only one way by which the possibilities open to all men by
the death of Jesus Christ may become the actual .experience ofevery man, or
of any man — and that is, the simple laying your burden, by your own act of
quiet trust, upon the shoulders of Him that is mighty to save.
(A. Maclaren, D.D.)
God's fofgiving love in Christ
Life of R. W. Dale.
Rev. G. Barber, assistantto Dr. Dale of Birmingham says:I remember going
to him on one occasionin great distress;I wantedto preachon "Christ died

for our sins,' and I thought that if I could only show how, through the death of
Christ, it was made possible for God to forgive sin, many whom I knew might
be led to believe. He replied: Give up troubling, my friend, about how it was
possible for God to forgive sin, and go straight and tell the people that God
does forgive sin, and tell them straight that Christ died for their sins. It is the
fact the people want most to know, and not your theory, nor mine, as to how it
was or is possible."
(Life of R. W. Dale.)
Peace in the true knowledge ofJesus
R. J. Campbell, M.A.
I was sent for to see a lady — a stranger— who was dying in Brighton. I
found her to be a personof means and education, but quite ignorant of the
salient facts of the Christian faith. To her, Jesus was simply a greatmoral
teacher, standing in line with other religious masters. Of Christianity, as the
religion of redemption, she had no knowledge.Her life story had been a sad
one, stained deeply by both sorrow and sin. "Oh," she sighed, "that it were
possible for some great, strong friend to take my conscienceas though it were
his own, that I might have a little peace!" I learned more from that sentence
concerning the mystery of redemption than up to that moment I had ever
thought of. Here was a soul who knew and stated the need of just such a
salvationas we are bidden to proclaim. She asked, without knowing that there
was any answer, for the Saviour who was made sin for us, who could take
man's conscienceas though it were His own and leave in its place His peace.
The sense ofguilt had awakenedwith power in this poor dying woman. To
have told her that the MostHigh could forgive her sins would have carried no
comfort to her heart. The only possible relief for her was to hear of Him on
whom the Lord hath laid the iniquity of us all
(R. J. Campbell, M.A.)

STUDYLIGHT RESOURCES
Adam Clarke Commentary
The Iniquity of us all - For‫ןוע‬ avon, "iniquity," the ancient interpreters read
dnA .inihcnalB .SM ni etagluV ehtos dna ;larulp",seitiuqini" ,htonova ‫עונות‬
the Lord hath ‫וב‬ ‫עיגפה‬ hiphgia bo, causedto meet in him the iniquities of us
all. He was the subject on which all the rays collectedon the focalpoint fell.
These fiery rays, which should have fallen on all mankind, diverged from
Divine justice to the east, west, north, and south, were deflectedfrom them,
and convergedin him. So the Lord hath causedto meet in him the punishment
due to the iniquities of All.
Albert Barnes'Notes onthe Whole Bible
All we, like sheep, have gone astray - This is the penitent confessionofthose
for whom he suffered. It is an acknowledgmentthat they were going astray
from God; and the reasonwhy the Redeemersufferedwas, that the race had
wandered away, and that Yahweh had laid on him the iniquity of all. Calvin
says, ‹In order that he might more deeply impress on the minds of people the
benefits derived from the death of Christ, he shows how necessarywas that
healing of which he had just made mention. There is here an elegant
antithesis. For in ourselves we were scattered;in Christ we are collected
together;by nature we wander, and are driven headlong toward destruction;
in Christ we find the wayby which we are led to the gate of life.‘ The
condition of the race without a Redeemeris here elegantlycomparedto a
flock without a shepherd, which wanders where it chooses, andwhich is
exposedto all dangers. This image is not unfrequently used to denote
estrangementfrom God 1 Peter2:25: ‹For ye were as sheep going astray, but
are now returned to the Shepherd and Bishopof your souls.‘Compare
Numbers 27:17; 1 Kings 22:17; Psalm119:176;Ezekiel34:5; Zechariah 10:2;
Matthew 9:36. Nothing could more strikingly representthe condition of

human beings. They had wanderedfrom God. They were following their own
paths, and pursuing their own pleasures. Theywere without a protector, and
they were exposedon every hand to danger.
We have turned every one to his own way - We had all gone in the path which
we chose. We were like sheepwhich have no shepherd, and which wander
where they please, with no one to collect, defend, or guide them. One would
wander in one direction, and another in another; and, of course, solitaryand
unprotected. they would be exposedto the more danger. So it was, and is, with
man. The bond which should have united him to the GreatShepherd, the
Creator, has been broken. We have become lonely wanderers, where eachone
pursues his own interest, forms his own plans, and seeks to gratify his own
pleasures, regardlessofthe interest of the whole. If we had not sinned, there
would have been a common bond to unite us to God, and to eachother. But
now we, as a race, have become dissocial, selfish, following our own pleasures,
and eachone living to gratify his Own passions. Whata true and graphic
description of man! How has it been illustrated in all the selfishschemes and
purposes of the race!And how is it still illustrated every day in the plans and
actions of mortals!
And the Lord hath laid on him - Lowth renders this, ‹Yahweh hath made to
light on him the iniquity of us all.‘ Jerome (the Vulgate) renders it, Posuit
Dominns in eo - ‹The Lord placedon him the iniquity of us all.‘ The
Septuagint renders it. Κύριος παρέδωκεν αὐτὸνταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ἡμῶν Kurios
paredōkenauton tais hamartiais hēmōn - ‹The Lord gave him for our sins.‘
The Chaldee renders it, ‹From the presence of the Lord there was a
willingness (‫אעור‬ ra‛ăvâ' ) to forgive the sins of all of us on accountof him.‘
The Syriac has the same word as the Hebrew. The word used here (‫פגע‬ pâga‛)
means, properly, to strike upon or against, to impinge on anyone or anything,
as the Greek πηγνύω pēgnuō It is used in a hostile sense, to denote an act of
rushing upon a foe (1 Samuel 22:17;to kill, to slay Judges 8:21;Judges 15:12;
2 Samuel 1:15. It also means to light upon, to meet with anyone Genesis 28:11;
Genesis 32:2. Hence, also to make peace with anyone; to strike a league or
compactIsaiah 64:4. It is rendered, in our English version, ‹reachethto‘
Joshua 19:11, Joshua 19:22, Joshua 19:26-27, Joshua 19:34;‹came,‘Joshua
16:7; ‹met‘ and ‹meet‘ Genesis 32:1;Exodus 23:4; Numbers 35:19;Joshua

2:16; Joshua 18:10;Rth 2:22 ; 1 Samuel 10:5; Isaiah64:5; Amos 5:19; ‹fail‘
Judges 8:21; 1 Samuel 22:17;2 Samuel 1:15; 1 Kings 2:29; ‹entreat‘ Genesis
18:8; Rth 1:16 ; Jeremiah15:11;‹make intercession‘Isaiah59:16;Isaiah
53:12;Jeremiah 7:16; Jeremiah27:18; Jeremiah36:25; ‹he that comes
between‘Job 36:22;and ‹occur‘ 1 Kings 5:4. The radical idea seems to be that
of meeting, occurring, encountering; and it means here, as Lowth has
rendered it, that they were causedto meet on him, or perhaps more properly,
that Yahweh causedthem to rush upon him, so as to overwhelm him in
calamity, as one is overcome or overwhelmedin battle. The sense is, that he
was not overcome by his own sins, but that he encounteredours, as if they had
been made to rush to meet him and to prostrate him. That is, he suffered in
our stead;and whateverhe was calledto endure was in consequenceofthe
fact that he had takenthe place of sinners; and having taken their place, he
met or encounteredthe sufferings which were the proper expressions ofGod‘s
displeasure, and sunk under the mighty burden of the world‘s atonement.
The iniquity of us all - (See the notes at Isaiah 53:5). This cannotmean that he
became a sinner, or was guilty in the sight of God, for Godalways regarded
him as an innocent being. It canonly mean that he suffered as if he had been a
sinner; or, that he suffered that which, if he had been a sinner, would have
been a proper expressionof the evil of sin. It may be remarkedhere:
1. That it is impossible to find strongerlanguage to denote the fact that his
sufferings were intended to make expiation for sin. Of what martyr could it be
said that Yahweh had causedto meet on him the sins of the world?
2. This language is that which naturally expressesthe idea that he suffered for
all people. It is universal in its nature, and naturally conveys the idea that
there was no limitation in respectto the number of those for whom he died.
The Biblical Illustrator
Isaiah53:6

All we like sheephave gone astray
Astray from the fold
I.
The first part of my text is AN INDICTMENT. “All we like sheephave gone
astray.” Says some one, “Can’t you drop the first word?” And some one rises
and looks offand says, “There is a man who is a blasphemer, he is astray.
Yonder is a man who is impure, he is astray. Yonder is a man who is
fraudulent, he is astray.” Look at home, for the first word of the text takes
you and me as well as the rest.
1. I have studied the habits of sheep, and I know they lose their way sometimes
by trying to get other pasture. There are many of you who have been looking
for better pasture. You have wandered on and on. You tried business
successes,you tried worldly associations, youtried the club-house. You said
that the Church was a short commons, and you wanted to find the rank grass
on the bank of distant streams, and to lie down under greatoaks onthe other
side of the hills. Have you found the anticipated pasture that was to be so
superior?
2. I have noticedalso that the sheepgetastray by being frightened with dogs.
Oh, man, that is the way you got astray. You said, “Where is God, that He
allows an honestman to go down, and thieves to prosper?” You were dogged
by creditors; and some of you went into misanthropy, and some of you took to
strong drink, and some of you fled from all Christian associations;and in that
way the sheep gotastray.
II. But the last part of my text OPENS A DOOR WIDE ENOUGHTO LET
US ALL OUT, and wide enough to let all heaven in. “The Lord hath laid on
Him the iniquity of us all.” Says some one, “Thatis not generous. Let every
one bear his own burden.” And there is something in that. If I owe a debt, and
I have money to pay it, and I come to you and ask you, to cancelmy

obligations, you will be right in saying to me, “Payyour own debts.” If I am
walking along the streetwith you, and we are both hale and hearty, and I
want you to carry me, you are right in saying, “Walk on your own feet.” But
suppose you and I were in a regiment together, and I was fearfully wounded
in the battle, and I fell unconscious atyour feet with gunshot fractures and
dislocations, five bullets having struck me at once--youwould sayto your
comrades, “Here, this man is helpless. Let us carry him to the ambulance; let
us take him out to the hospital. Would It have been mean to let you carry me
then. You certainly would not have been so unkind as not to carry me. Now,
that is Christ to the soul If we could pay our spiritual obligations we might go
up to God and say, “Lord, there is so much debt, and here I have the menus
with which to cancelit. Now cross it all out.” But the fact is we are pierced
through and through with the sabres of sin. We have gone down under the hot
fire, and we are helpless and undone. We will die on the field unless some help
comes to us. God sends His ambulance, yea, He dispatches His only Son to
carry us out, and bind up our gashes,and take us home. Is there any man who
is under the delusion that he can carry his own sins? You cannot. You might
as well try to transport a boulder of the sea, or carry on one shoulder the
Alleghanies, and on the other shoulder Mount Washington. Then let us shift
the burden. (T. de W. Talmage, D.D.)
Salvationfor the straying sheep
I. LOOK AT THE SHEEP THAT HAVE GONE ASTRAY. The text implies
they were once in the fold. You cannot go astrayexcept you have been in the
right place first.
II. EACH SHEEP WALKS ITS OWN PATH. There is almost an infinite
variety in sinning. Some go along a path of licentiousness;others the money-
making road; others the gamester’s path; others take the Christless morality
road.

III. WHAT IS GOD’S WAY OF SALVATION? “The Lord laid on Him,” etc.
Who is that “Him”? The One described in the previous verses. Let Christ be
the objectof your trust, and you shall be saved. (A. G. Brown.)
Our misery and its remedy
I. OUR MISERYBY SIN.
1. Our sin is chargedupon us collectivelyin common: we have all gone astray.
2. Distributively. “Every one to his own way.” We all agree in turning aside
from the right way of pleasing and enjoying of God; and we disagree, as each
one hath a by-path of his own, some running after this lust, some after that,
and so are not only divided from God, but divided from one another, while
every one maketh his will his law.
II. OUR REMEDYBY CHRIST. “The Lord hath laid,” etc. (T. Manton,
D.D.)
Departing from God
This departing from Godand His ways is fitly representedby the straying of
sheep. In the generalit implieth--
1. That we are brutish in our sin and defectionfrom God: it could not be
expressedbut by a comparisonfetchedfrom the beasts.
2. Proneness to err. No creature is more prone to wander and lose his way
than a sheepwithout a shepherd.
3. Our inability to return, or to bring ourselves into the right wayagain.
4. Our readiness to follow evil example. Sheeprun one after another, and one
stragglerdrawethawaythe whole flock. Austin saith, “I could wander by
myself, and could not return by myself.” And God saith as much Hosea 13:9).

5. The danger of straying sheep, which when out of the pasture are often in
harm’s way, and exposedto a thousand dangers (Jeremiah50:6-7). (T.
Manton, D.D.)
We have turned every one to his own way
Every man to his own way
Though there be one path to heaven, yet there are severalways of sinning and
going to hell. The reasons how this cometh to pass are--
1. Becauseofthe activeness ofman’s spirit. It is always a-devising wickedness.
2. It happeneth through diversity of constitution.
3. It happeneth from their business and occasionsin the world. Many men are
engagedto ways of sin because they suit bestwith their employments, the sin
of their calling, as vainglory in a minister.
4. Custom and education.
5. Company example. (T. Manton, D.D.)
His own way
This is the sin of men in their natural condition, that they turn to their own
way. The phrase implieth these two things--
1. A defector want of Divine guidance.
2. A rejectionof the ways of God when made knownto us. (T. Manton, D.D.)
Caiaphas:Cephas:Jesus
The forms of human sinfulness are as numerous and varied as are men’s
natural inclinations: but near the cross may be found a representative of
every one of these. Three figures will demand our attention--Caiaphas, the
high priest, with his surroundings; and then, amidst the obscurity of the
twilight scene, and the crowd of spectators,we must single out the figure of
Simon, then at the moment of his deepestshame. And then, turning our eyes

awayfrom these subordinates, we must fix them lastly on Jesus of Nazareth
Himself.
I. CAIAPHAS is the president of the High EcclesiasticalCourt then
assembled, and no judge ever could produce higher credentials than he. The
Gospels allacknowledgehim, without the slightestapparent doubt, as the
legitimate successorofAaron. He is descendantof a priestly dynasty some
1,500 years old, whose origin was confessedlyDivine. Besides, the highest
powerof all had ownedhis legitimate position, by giving to him the spirit of
unconscious prophecy. Now the priesthood of Aaron, which he bore, had
never been a bloodthirsty one. There are, I think, only two examples of that
priesthood shedding blood. One of these was the stroke ofthe spearof
Phinehas--anact of wild justice, suited to the times, which receivedpraise and
blessing from above; and the other, the just punishment by Jehoiada of
Athaliah, who had murdered all the royal family but one. Whateverother
faults they may have had, the priests, the sons of Aaron, had never erred
before on the side of intolerance and cruelty. And Caiaphas himself was no
fanatic. Like all the family to which he belonged, he was a Sadducee. He had
the views of a politician rather than of an ecclesiatic;and, having coolly
judged, severalweeks before, thatthe proceedings ofJesus of Nazarethwere
politically dangerous, he had determined that it would be wellto put Him out
of the way. But, in the council that surrounded him, there were many, and
perhaps a majority, of strong religious belief and feelings. So, for their sakes,
he affecteda horror which he could hardly have felt himself. The high priest
askedHim, “Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”AndJesus said, “I
am; and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest rent his clothes--the
original word in St. Mark seems to imply that one of these was the seamless
tunic of the high priest--in sign of a horror, which can hardly have been
otherwise than hypocritical in a coolman of the world like him, and said,
“What need we any further witnesses. Ye have heard the blasphemy. What
think ye?” And then the question being thus put, they all--the whole council,
all the scribes, all the elders, all the chief priests, the whole representative
body of the universal Church of God--condemned Him to be guilty of death.

What a lessonfor us arises outof this fact, that our Lord’s death was wholly a
sin of the religious world under the guidance of their Divinely-appointed
leaders. And in that religious world we may distinguish all the chief tendencies
both of that time and of all times--the Sadducees andthe Pharisees,the liberal
and the orthodox, the men with the minimum of belief in the supernatural,
and those with the maximum of that belief, the traditionists and the anti-
traditionists--in fact, the High Church, and the Broad Church, and the Low.
The lessonis for our times. In those days authority and tradition utterly failed
those who relied upon them, while the light within the heart lighted those who
possessedit to the cross and to the glory of the Lord of Truth.
II. Let us turn our eyes awaynow from Caiaphas and the splendid array
around him to the lower end of the courtyard near the door, where the lower
classesare collected. All these are within sight of the proceedings atthe upper
end of the hall, which no doubt is well lighted. Perhaps they are also near
enough to hear. Amongst them is one whose speechbetrays him to be a
Galilean. We know his name (though those around him do not) to be SIMON,
SON OF JONAS, who has also the surname Cephas. He is thrice recognized
as a followerof the accused, andthrice denies the charge. Thenthe cock crows
at early morning, and the Masterturns on him with a glance whichhe feels to
single him out, even in the darkness and the crowd;and he goes outat the
door, weeping bitterly. This strange character, so made up of contradictions
as to have been pronounced by that Being who knew him best, at one moment
a “rock,” andat the next a Satan, full of boldness and full of cowardice, the
first to confess and the first to deny; this picture of the weaknessofall human
strength, of the frailty of all earthly goodness, is now at the very depths of his
weakness andshame. He stands there a sinner who has just committed a sin--
a very mean and cowardlysin. Yet there is an eye upon him, searching for
him, busied with him. We who have betrayed Him and denied Him, the Lord
hath turned and lookedon. He is seeking,let Him find.

Jesus was our sin bearer

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