Reflection on Isa 53:5
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”
Who does the prophet Isaiah talk about? He talks about the suffering of Jesus Christ as the expected Messiah. The prophet Isaiah heard and wrote his words in the period 740-700 BC. The Spirit of God revealed to him the mystery of Christ’s suffering for our sins. Verses 3 and 4 read: “He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows…” On the day of the Lord’s death, the apostles abandoned Him for fear and one of them, Judas, even betrayed Him. The Apostle Peter denied Him three times that morning. Jesus endured great suffering especially when being scourged to the point of severe bleeding, crowned with thorns, and on the Way of the Cross. This suffering came to a peak when He was hanging on the cross in humiliation and abandonment.
The prophet Isaiah continues: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” And verse 5, which we are going to recite for the next two weeks, reads: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.” Indeed, it was for our sins that Jesus’ hands and feet were wounded with nails and, finally, His heart pierced with a spear. It was for our transgressions and iniquities. It is said in the end that by His stripes – wounds – we are healed. Not only by the wounds inflicted at the crucifixion, but also by the wounds caused by the cruel scourging and the mocking and painful crowning with thorns.
There are two things to realise about this passage in Scripture. Firstly, Jesus endured this great suffering for each one of us, for our sins, for our transgressions against God and for our iniquities. And secondly, it is important to know that by His wounds we are healed of both our mental and physical sufferings. The blood from Christ’s wounds gives us the forgiveness of sins. The power of this blood also works through calling on the Holy Name. “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord (with faith) shall be saved.” The condition for salvation is purification from sin. What is needed on our part is faith in the power of the blood of the Son of God. In this blood is the forgiveness of sins, which gives us an assurance of salvation.
Another thing is our healing through the wounds of Christ. Similarly, it requires faith in the power of Christ’s name. We can pray for a physical miracle. This does not mean that we have to refuse effective drugs or necessary surgery. Doctors prescribe various medications or treatments, but God heals. There is an old medical joke: “The operation was successful, but the patient died.” How true the proverb: “Doctors treat, but God heals.”
As far as wounds of the soul are concerned, healing them depends almost entirely on the personal relationship with Christ and the willingness to respect His laws and commandments, which also stabilise mental health. How many mental illnesses there are today just because people have abandoned God’s commandments as well as the relationship to our Saviour, who both forgives sins and heals our souls.
The preaching of the full Gospel is connected with the necessity of respecting the First Commandment, because through occult practices such as various forms of divination, magic or spiritualism (including consultation with fortune-tellers or psychics) one comes under the sway of strange spiritual forces or, to be precise, demonic forces, so-called energies. Even though one breaks with these God-forbidden practices, they leave deep spiritual wounds in the soul which can only be healed by God through the wounds of Christ. He does so either at once or in stages. If one has radically renounced the occult in order to live a true Christian life, and yet the wounds remain unhealed to some extent, they become a useful cross to bear necessary for our humiliation and purification.
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