Message Six

The All-inclusive Christ
in His Four Stages according to
God’s New Testament Economy
(2)
In the Stage of His Crucifixion

Scripture Reading: Isa. 53:4-10a, 12b

1. “Surely He has borne our sicknesses, / And carried our sorrows; / Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, / Smitten of God and afflicted. / But He was wounded because of our transgressions; / He was crushed because of our iniquities; / The chastening for our peace was upon Him, / And by His stripes we have been healed”-Isa. 53:4-5:
   1. In the report of the prophets and the revelation of Jehovah (v. 1), Christ is revealed as the crucified Redeemer, who sacrificed Himself for our trespasses (our sin) to accomplish Jehovah’s eternal redemption (vv. 4-10a; Heb. 9:12) that the believers in Christ may be redeemed (forgiven of sins-Acts 10:43, justified-13:39, and reconciled to God-Rom. 5:10), resulting in the life union with Christ in His resurrection (Isa. 53:10b), the reality of which is the life-giving Spirit (John 11:25; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:11).
   2. Sicknesses and sorrows, like transgressions and iniquities (Isa. 53:5), come from sin; hence, they too need Christ’s redemption (Psa. 103:1-3):
      1. All healings accomplished on fallen people are a result of the Lord’s redemption; on the cross He took away our infirmities, bore our diseases, and accomplished full healing for us-Matt. 8:17.
      2. However, in this age the application of this divine healing power can be only a foretaste to us; in the coming age we will experience the full taste-Heb. 6:5.
   3. Christ bore our sicknesses at the time when He was judged by God on the cross, in the hour when God put all our iniquities on Him-Isa. 53:6b; 1 Pet. 2:24.
   4. Christ’s suffering of death healed our death so that we might live in His resurrection-v. 24.
   5. The experience of the children of Israel at Marah portrays that as we experience the cross of Christ and live a crucified life, Christ’s resurrection life becomes our healing power, and the Lord becomes our Healer-Exo. 15:22-26; 1 Pet. 2:24; Matt. 8:17; 9:12; Isa. 53:4-5; cf. 61:1:
      1. Just as Moses saw a vision of a tree and cast this tree into the bitter waters, we need to see a vision of the crucified and resurrected Christ as the tree of life and apply Him to our bitter situations and our bitter being-Exo. 15:25-26:
         1. First Peter 2:24 indicates that this tree signifies the cross of Christ, or the crucified Christ; the cross is the tree, and the One who died on the tree is our Healer-Exo. 15:25-26; cf. Gal. 3:13.
         2. This tree also signifies the resurrected Christ because the tree was cast into the bitter waters of Marah after the children of Israel had traveled three days in the wilderness-Exo. 15:22.
         3. The tree of life in Revelation 2:7 signifies the crucified (implied in the tree as a piece of wood-1 Pet. 2:24) and resurrected (implied in the life of God-John 11:25) Christ.
      2. The crucified and resurrected Christ is the tree of life, and this tree is Jehovah our Healer, the One who heals the bitterness of our circumstances and the bitterness of our being, turning this bitterness into the sweet waters of His inward presence-Rev. 2:7; Exo. 15:22-26; 1 Pet. 2:24-25.
   6. Through Christ’s healing death and life-dispensing resurrection, He became the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls-vv. 24-25; Isa. 53:6; John 21:15-17.
2. “We all like sheep have gone astray; / Each of us has turned to his own way, / And Jehovah has caused the iniquity of us all / To fall on Him”-Isa. 53:6:
   1. It was when God was judging Jesus on the cross that He caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him, making Jesus, in the eyes of God, the unique sinner at that moment-Matt. 27:45-46; Psa. 22:1.
   2. Christ’s death was not merely a murder (Acts 7:52), nor was it a martyrdom; rather, it was carried out by God Himself according to His law.
   3. Thus, Christ died a vicarious death as the Substitute for sinners (1 Pet. 3:18), a death that was legal according to God’s law and was recognized and approved by God according to the law.
   4. The flesh of the passover lamb, typifying the crucified Christ, was to be roasted with fire and was not to be eaten raw or boiled-Exo. 12:8-9:
      1. To be roasted with fire signifies Christ’s suffering under the holy fire of God’s judgment-Isa. 53:4, 10; Psa. 22:14-15; John 19:28.
      2. To be eaten raw signifies not to believe in Christ’s redemption but to regard Him merely as an example of human life to be imitated.
      3. To be eaten boiled signifies regarding His death on the cross not as death for redemption but as the suffering of human persecution for martyrdom.
   5. Just as the flesh of the passover lamb was to be eaten for life supply, so we need to eat Christ for our life supply-Exo. 12:8-10; John 6:53, 55-57; cf. Deut. 15:19-20:
      1. To solve the problem of the fall of man and to accomplish God’s original intention, both life and redemption are needed.
      2. God’s judicial redemption through the blood of Christ is the procedure to reach God’s goal of dispensing Christ as life into us for our organic salvation-Rom. 5:10.
3. “He was oppressed, and it was He who was afflicted, / Yet He did not open His mouth; / Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter / And like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers, / So He did not open His mouth. / By oppression and by judgment He was taken away; / And as for His generation, who among them had the thought / That He was cut off out of the land of the living / For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due?”-Isa. 53:7-8:
   1. In His vicarious death for sinners, Christ was oppressed, afflicted, and led to the slaughter like a lamb and sheared before the shearers like a sheep, with no reaction-Acts 8:32; Matt. 27:12-14.
   2. Christ was oppressed by the hypocritical Jewish leaders (26:57, 59, 65-68) and then judged by the unjust Roman officials (Luke 23:1-12; John 18:33-38; 19:1-16); by these two things He was taken away and crucified.
   3. No one among Christ’s generation understood that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of the prophet’s people, the Jews, to whom the stroke was due.
4. “And they assigned His grave with the wicked, / But with a rich man in His death, / Although He had done no violence, / Nor was there any deceit in His mouth”-Isa. 53:9:
   1. Those who crucified Christ planned to bury Him with the two transgressors, the wicked ones (Luke 23:32-33), but eventually God in His sovereignty caused Christ to be buried in a rich man’s tomb (Matt. 27:57-60).
   2. The word for “death” in Isaiah 53:9 is plural in Hebrew, deaths, signifying “a violent death, the very pain of which makes it like dying again and again” (Keil and Delitzsch).
5. “But Jehovah was pleased to crush Him, to afflict Him with grief. / When He makes Himself an offering for sin”-v. 10a:
   1. Because Christ was crushed for our iniquities, Satan can be crushed under our feet (Rom. 16:20), and because He was afflicted with grief, we can be filled with His joy (John 16:20-22).
   2. Christ bore our sin in its totality, dying on the cross to be the reality of the sin offering and the trespass offering-1:29; cf. Heb. 10:5-10; 1 John 1:7-9; Lev. 4-5.
   3. Christ’s precious blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins is also the blood of the covenant; because of the blood of Jesus, we have boldness for entering the Holy of Holies, where we can enjoy God, behold His beauty, and receive His infusion-Matt. 26:28; Heb. 10:19-20; cf. Lev. 16:11-16; Psa. 27:4.
   4. Christ came into the death waters, was wounded by us and for our transgressions, and secretes His life into us to make us precious pearls for the building of God’s eternal expression-Isa. 53:5; Rev. 21:21; John 19:34.
6. “He poured out His life unto death / And was numbered with the transgressors, / Yet He alone bore the sin of many / And interceded for the transgressors”-Isa. 53:12b:
   1. Man, God, and Christ all had a part in Christ’s crucifixion; man did the murdering, the killing (Acts 7:52), but God carried out the legal judgment to kill Christ as a legal Substitute so that Christ might die a vicarious death for sinners (Isa. 53:6b, 10a).
   2. Moreover, Christ Himself was willing to be such an offering; He made Himself that offering (v. 10b), and He poured out His life for that purpose (John 10:17-18; Heb. 9:14).
   3. When Christ was crucified on the cross, He was numbered with the transgressors, and He interceded for the transgressors-Luke 23:32-34a; cf. Heb. 7:25:
      1. He interceded for them regarding the evil of the transgressors, the result of their ignorance, a trespass that He prayed would be forgiven by God.
      2. Stephen prayed for his persecutors in the same way that his Lord, whom he loved and lived, had prayed for His-Acts 7:60.