Objection: The Healing Part of Isaiah 53 Does Not Refer to the Atonement

One objector wrote that only the part of Isaiah 53 dealing with salvation from sin refers to the Atonement.  In his opinion, the healing part of Isaiah 53 does not refer to the Atonement.  His alleged proofs were that the prophecy about healing was fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry, not His atonement, and that we still experience sorrow today.  Therefore (supposedly), because we experience sorrow, we have not yet entered into the full redemption that Isaiah promised us.

Even a casual reading of the complete chapter (Isaiah 53) should prove to you that the subject of the entire chapter is what the Messiah would do for us when He atoned for our sins.  I don’t know any scholar who would deny that there are multiple references throughout the chapter that refer to how the Messiah would die and what that would accomplish.  It is bad Bible scholarship to cut out the phrase about healing and claim that it must be talking about something completely different from what the rest of Isaiah 53 discusses.

There is a separate reply to the objection about Isaiah’s prophecy of healing being fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry before His crucifixion.  There is a related objection about Jesus bearing our griefs instead of our sicknesses.  The reply to that objection conclusively proves that Isaiah was talking about sicknesses, not only emotional sorrows as we think of them.  Yes, we experience sorrow, but that wasn’t what Isaiah was talking about, as Matthew proves by his quote of the verse in question.  (Those who like to delve into the Hebrew will find even more conclusive proof in the aforementioned objection reply.)

Once you see this, another point disproves this particular objection.  The Hebrew word for borne in Isaiah 53:4, referring to what Jesus did with sickness, is the same Hebrew word nasa used for bare in Isaiah 53:12.  An easy way to remember this word is that NASA in the U.S. sends up rockets that take things away from the earth.  That is not how this Hebrew word was derived, of course, but there is a similarity in meaning.  In both cases, Jesus Christ bore something to take it away from us.  In Isaiah 53:4, He has surely borne our sicknesses.  In Isaiah 53:12, he bare the sin of many.  It’s the same Hebrew word.  How can anyone claim that it means one thing in verse 4 and another thing in verse 12?  Did Jesus bear our sins to redeem us from them?  Yes!  Did he bear our sicknesses to redeem us from them?  Yes!  We cannot make the same word mean one thing in verse 4 and another thing in verse 12 just because we don’t want to believe that healing was provided in the Atonement.

It is through His “bearing of the sin of many” that we are made righteous and holy before God.  (We are not sinners saved by grace.  We are righteous and holy new creations in Christ.  The old sin nature has passed away completely.  You have only your unregenerate flesh to deal with, not a dead spirit.)  It is through His stripes that we are healed.  Note that stripes refers to the physical damage done to Christ’s body, NOT to the actual whipping itself.  We are not healed by His whipping any more than we are saved by the wood on the cross where He hung.  We are saved by His bearing of our sins in His own body on the tree, and healed by His bearing of our physical torments.  Both of these blessed thoughts are conveyed in 1 Peter 2:24.  By His stripes (bruising), you were healed.

It makes no sense to try to compartmentalize the great Atonement chapter of the Bible and say that only part of it applies to us.  The very people who fuss about us taking things supposedly out of context are the very ones ripping apart this chapter into at least two pieces.  The wounds and the sin-bearing are tied together.  Surely He has borne our sicknesses, and carried our pains, yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.  But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and with His stripes, we are healed.  It pleased the Lord to bruise Him.

Note the use of the word yet, which ties together Isaiah 53:4.  He bore our sicknesses and carried our pains, yet we considered Him smitten of God.  In other words, we saw His physical suffering, but He was bearing our sicknesses and pains – the ones that we deserved to endure as part of the penalty for our sins.

So, we see that Jesus was bruised for our iniquities, and by His bruise we are healed.  If that doesn’t prove that healing was part of the atonement that Jesus made for our iniquities, I don’t know what does.  (In an effort to continue to be scholarly, let me point out that the two Hebrew words for bruised and bruise are not the same word; one refers to the breaking or bruising; the other to the physical bruise mark.  The word used for bruised implies more than the simple giving of a black-and-blue, but a more general breaking of something that causes it to crumble.  This is consistent with Jesus’ statement that His body was broken for you.)  Either you can believe both or you can believe neither, but I can’t see how any unbiased person could conclude that the bruising for our iniquities is distinct from the bruising that healed us.