“As by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Through his use of “the many,” Paul appears to be directly alluding to Isaiah 53:11–12, where we read of the Christ: “By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities…. He bore the sins of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.” Here we celebrate the “great exchange,” wherein God counted our sins and guilt to Christ and counted his righteousness to us. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The reigning God saves and satisfies believing sinners through Christ Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, and no Old Testament passage portrays more vividly this good news than Isaiah 52:13–53:12. It stands as the fourth and final “Servant-song” in Isaiah’s prophecies (compare Isaiah 42:1–9; 49:1–13; 50:4–11), which focus on Yahweh’s Servant-person, who would save many from among his servant-people and from among the rest of the nations. “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6; compare Acts 13:47; 26:23). In Isaiah 52:13–53:12, Yahweh and his prophet celebrate the Servant’s global exaltation and reward through his substitutionary suffering. My understanding of the passage’s structure is as follows:
The six lectures below walk through this great Old Testament highpoint, expositing each unit and highlighting how the New Testament authors saw this text as witnessing to Jesus’s tribulation unto triumph and our hope.
Lecture 1: Introduction and the Declaration of the Servant’s Exaltation (52:13) (Audio/PowerPoint)
Lecture 2: The Means of the Servant’s Exaltation (52:14–15) (Audio/PowerPoint)
Lecture 3: The Servant’s Divine-Human Nature and Homeliness (53:1–2) and Experience of Suffering (53:3) (Audio/PowerPoint)
Lecture 4: The Substitutionary Nature of the Servant’s Suffering (53:4–6) (Audio/PowerPoint)
Lecture 5: The Servant’s Humble Response to His Suffering (53:7) and the Human Perspective on His Suffering (53:8–9) (Audio/PowerPoint)
Lecture 6: The Divine Perspective on the Servant’s Suffering (53:10) and Yahweh’s Promise to Reward His Servant’s Substitutionary Suffering (53:11–12) (Audio/PowerPoint)
These six teachings are actually lectures 35–40 in a greater series: “Isaiah: Celebrating the Servant Savior.” For more on Isaiah in general, including extended seminary lecture notes on the whole book, see my “Lectures on Isaiah.”
