“Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted.”

The Exaltation of the Suffering Servant

About seven-hundred years before the time of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah spoke of a servant of God who would be exalted, before whom kings would shut their mouths. But when we read the text of Isaiah 52 and 53, we see no ordinary exaltation. What do we see?

His appearance was marred beyond human semblance, his form beyond that of the children of mankind. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed him not. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement, he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living?

What kind of exaltation is this?

Friends, there can be only one answer to this question. It is an answer that the Apostle John knew very well and referenced frequently in his Gospel: ‘"And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die"’ (John 12:32-34).

In a word, this exaltation – so contrary to all expectations - is the exaltation of the cross of Jesus Christ. And it is fair to say that this type of exaltation was – and remains – a mystery and a great shock when we consider it.

Those of us who have walked the Stations of the Cross already this morning have heard of Christ’s suffering. We see it too in the book of Isaiah and in our Passion reading. How he was betrayed, arrested, beaten, spat upon, scourged, nailed to the cross, and finally crucified, dying slowly in agony, suffocating almost to death as his legs gave way under the pressure of his own weight, and eventually pierced in the side with a Roman spear, so that blood and water flowed from the wound.

What can we say to these things? How are we to make sense of them? The Song of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah helps us.

We see in this passage that the suffering of this servant was not without purpose. It was not just bad luck or a cosmic accident but it had an end in mind. We find it here, in the heart of the passage. We may even call this the very heart of the Bible itself.

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Isaiah 53:4-6

This passage tells us about ourselves: that we are full of grief and sorrow, that we are not at peace with God, and that we are in this condition because of our iniquity and transgression. The other way of putting this is to say that our sin has separated us from God who is the source of all life and goodness. We are far away from him and we need him, yet we cannot know him as he intended because we have rejected him through our sin and lawlessness.

The suffering of this servant, then, is for us, that this situation might be changed, that we might be brought to peace with God and reconciled with him. And the servant does this by carrying our sorrows, by being pierced for our transgressions, by being crushed for our iniquities, by having the iniquity of us all laid upon him by the LORD.

We see here a clear vision of the cross, and we understand that the suffering of Jesus was undertaken out of love for us. He was indeed pierced by the nails that fastened him to the cross. He was crushed under his own weight as he was crucified. He did not open his mouth when he was led away, but continued in silence as his sentence unfolded. His grave was made between two robbers, and he was buried in a rich man’s tomb. The Suffering Servant is Jesus. And the death that he died upon the cross was for us, so that our sins might be removed and so that we might forgiven by God and reconciled to him.

The Atonement

The theological term for this event is the atonement, when the sins of the world were atoned for by the sacrifice of Christ. In the New Testament and in later times, people have tried to make sense of this, to understand how it works and what exactly it means. There are various theories of the atonement that attempt to explain it. And you may be wondering about that yourself at this very moment. I would like to say two things in response.

I start with some wise words from CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity:

The point Lewis makes is a good one: not to get bogged down in the theories of how it works, but to focus on the cross itself, the act of redemption that happened there. ‘That is what has to be believed.’ We may not understand exactly how, but we trust that this is indeed the truth: Christ’s death for us has saved us if we will ask for God’s forgiveness and be reconciled to him.

But there is one further point that I would like to make. All through history, human beings have offered sacrifices to the gods or to God in the hope that the divine realm will look favourably upon them. We have this instinctive sense that giving something up – sacrificing it – for God is like an offering, we might say a gift, to him. The thing we go without is the thing that is offered to God.

The Mosaic Covenant – that is the Law given to Moses – told the priests and people of Israel to sacrifice many things – animals, crops, food. But we also know that none of these sacrifices were significant enough in themselves to remove the sin of the people. And this is why they would have to be renewed so often.

The Cross of Christ reveals a startling truth about all of this, which is that there is only one gift, one sacrifice, one offering, that can truly remove our sins from us. There is only one thing of the most surpassing value that can be offered to God for us, to redeem us. And that thing is the life of God himself in Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus, who was fully man and fully God, who lived a perfect, pure and spotless life, only his life was precious enough to accomplish our redemption.

The great medieval theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury, St Anselm, called the atonement a gift that surpasses every debt; that, in its infinitely precious worth, it is enough to satisfy the justice of God that all sins can be forgiven, cancelled, and washed away. Anselm said, "The life of this Man [Christ] is of such surpassing worth that it is sufficient to pay the debt for the sins of the whole world, and infinitely more."

Approaching with Confidence

So what is our response? We find something of it in our New Testament reading: ‘…since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us…’ (Hebrews 10:19).

We approach God now not needing to sacrifice anything further that we might be forgiven and know his love. We approach him on the basis that the sacrifice has already been made, the battle has been won. When Christ cried out upon the cross, “Tetelestai!”, “It is finished!”, he meant that his mission had been accomplished, the atonement had been made, the gift given, the debt paid, and forgiveness and eternal life purchased forever.

What is left for us to do now is simply to approach, on the basis of this grace in which we stand, entrusting ourselves to God, believing him that he will forgive us our sins on the basis of Jesus’ Cross. Not through our own righteousness, or our own goodness, or our own sacrifice, but because of him.

This is why this day can truly be called “Good Friday”, because, although the worst thing in the history of the world happened on this day, yet through the mercy and the providence and the power of God, the mystery was revealed, and it turned out that all of this was for the redemption of world.

Give thanks, friends. Venerate the cross with me. The glorious cross of Christ on which hung the salvation of the world.

Amen.