The Suffering Savior — Isaiah's Servant Songs

1929

The Suffering Savior

TEXT: ISAIAH 53:1-12

BY WM. E. GILROY, D. D.

The problem of suffering is one of the deepest problems of life. Sooner or later it affects every individual, but it also becomes emphasized in the community and national life and in the experience of humanity as a whole.

Why do the righteous suffer? Why are communities thru some catastrophe swept away, often without warning? Why do nations rise and fall, with what seems like historic disaster taking place upon a large scale?

These were the questions that were early faced by the religious leaders in Israel and that became particularly emphasized at the time out of which the prophecies that we are studying arose. The Kingdom of Israel had been destroyed and the Kingdom of Judah had suffered temporary overthrow with the exile of its people to Babylon. Where were the promises that were cherished by Israel, that in the seed of Abraham all the nations of the earth should be blessed. How could these promises be fulfilled with the children of Abraham dispersed and scattered and their national life disrupted and broken?

A WRONG SOLUTION

The first solution proposed for this problem was that suffering is simply the result of conduct, that the good prosper while those who have done wrong bear the brunt of their own wrong doing. But such a philosophy of life could not long survive the tests of reality. Thoughtful men saw that this explanation did not accord with the real facts. The sacred writer saw the wicked flourishing and "spreading himself like a green bay tree," while, on the other hand, he saw people of earnest and saintly character suffering acutely. It was this problem that was faced in the book of Job.

Even, however, when a better view of the matter had arisen in personal experiences, there was still a tendency to explain all larger events and provinces, and national experiences of welfare and of calamity, upon this basis. It is, in fact, a philosophy from which it seems difficult for the world to get far away. When some community is seriously stricken by catastrophe today, there is a tendency for many people to regard it as "a judgment of God."

Jesus protested against this view of things in his reference to those upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell. He refused to believe that those who were killed in that disaster were sinners above all others in Israel and were on that account singled out for punishment.

Possibly one of the reasons why this philosophy that relates sufferings to punishments and penalties is so persistent is found in the fact that in a crude, rough way there is some truth in that philosophy. Sin does bring results of pain and penalty to individuals and to nations. But the mistake is in trying to make a philosophy that is partially true an explanation of all the facts.

The prophets, whose writings we are studying, were faced with this situation, that at a time when Israel was in exile and suffering there was probably a more earnest and genuine interest in religion than there had been for years. Out of all this situation they developed the idea which was later strongly fulfilled in the life and work of Jesus, that there is such a thing as people suffering for others and that the good who suffer are often in that suffering fulfilling the highest purposes of God.

Here is this noble and moving picture in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah of a suffering servant whose life seems the reverse of all that man might wish his life to be. He is despised and rejected by his fellow men. He is a man of sorrows, contemned even by those whom he is seeking to serve. Yet all this suffering is borne for others. His life, in spite of its woes, is tuned to unselfishness and service, and in his very sufferings he is fulfilling the mission of a savior of his fellow men.

VARIOUS INTERPRETATIONS

Some scholars claim that this suffering servant, here described, typifies the people of Israel in their experiences of trial and bitterness fulfilling under God's purpose the mission that they had long supposed that they were to fulfill thru ease, prosperity, and comfort. Others see in this suffering servant the personification not of the whole of Israel, but of the faithful remnant of the people, while still others have seen in this suffering servant an individual, an early prototype of Jesus of Nazareth.

We who view the prophecies from the vantage ground of the New Testament and the story of the earthly life of Jesus can see that in him these conceptions found their true fulfillment. It was in the spirit of this suffering servant that he came and lived and died. It is in him that we see the good suffering with and for the guilty, and that we behold the regenerative power of the cross.

—The Lima News, Lima, Ohio, April 27, 1929, p. 4.

My review (2007): This is a really good article. Very clear and concise, steps through the subject in a thoughtful, reasonable way. The author had a great style.