Picture this. You are in church and the pastor recites Isaiah 53:4-6, which reads:
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
The closer we get to Easter, it's easy to associate this passage with Christ's death and resurrection. However, you have to remember that the book of Isaiah is from the Old Testament, written hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
What is the most important takeaway from this passage and how does it apply to Easter? The NIV Theological Study Bible says it best.
"Everything that happened to the servant was in fact what should have happened to us (cf. Rom 4:25; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24–25). "We" thought he was being "punished by God" (v. 4), but we were wrong; it was our "punishment . . . on him" (v. 5). Not only did he take our punishment, but in taking it, he made us whole."
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