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Isaiah 53:1-5 Why Messiah Let himself be Marytred

It seems to be a law of social reality. When evil makes a martyr out of a famous or respected person then the popularity of that person only increases among the oppressed. This is especially true when the oppressed see their deliverer working and teaching on their behalf while the evil opposition keeps escalating its attacks.

Messiah knew that he would defeat evil in the end through his resurrection. Truly, nothing is more compelling than a deliverer who suffers for a good cause, and who in the end is able to cheat or defeat death for a just cause. For this reason Messiah was willing to suffer the escalations of evil, because he knew all men would be drawn to the truth, to himself, and to what he taught.

The message is Messiah's ransom, as Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53:1, "Who will have held faithful to our message?" In biblical usage a ransom refers to a cost laid down to overcome an evil outcome. So that the land will not become exhausted and die, it must be ransomed by letting it rest every seventh year. The cost is sacrificing a years income. (Lev. 25:24). If a man becomes poor and sells his property, then his kin may ransom it for him. If there is no ransomer, then he may ransom it himself if he financially recovers after he sold it, thus avoiding the evil fate of his property being lost for many years. And if he cannot do that, then the year of Jubilee will ransom his property for him or his heir. If a man sells a house in a walled city, this is potentially an evil decision, because a property in a defended city was a most valuable asset. If the decision turns out to be evil in the man's eyes, then he can ransom his sale up to a complete solar year after the sale, for the price he sold it. Generally speaking, and especially in figurative usage, a ransom refers to any cost suffered in order to overcome a bad or evil result. In this sense the Almighty ransomed Israel from slavery in Egypt. Someone may argue that there is no cost to an omnipotent being to effect a rescue, but I say they are looking at cost in the wrong way to say that, and that the Most High presents his own case as that of effecting a ransom from evil by bearing the costs involved. The cost of using power isn't just in measuring what one has an abundance of. When loyalty to the Most High vs. loyalty to the gods of Egypt is the prize at stake, things get more complicated than who has more power. The Most High has the cost of showing his love in best way possible. Israel was ransomed with a mighty hand, but using that hand comes with a spiritual and reputational risk, as well as at the cost of destroying Egypt.

Why do I say all of this? Because in explaining that Messiah effected a ransom for us, the enemies of the truth will seek to define "ransom" in a way that Scripture doesn't teach, or in a way to make it look at theologicaly ugly as possible, such as a formal ransom payment from God to the devil, or a formal ransom payment from the Son to the Father, as if either of these things were legal. In fact those trying to redefine a biblical ransom are trying to turn it into a straw man that is objectionable so that you will reject it and not really find out what it means. They want you to object to the legality of a legal payment that is ordinarility assumed not to be legal or just. The irony of it all is that they want to reject the ransom, and then replace it with a theology even uglier than their straw-man objection to ransom after they have redefined it as a payment to the devil.

When we allow the ransom, or redemption cost, to be defined the way Scripture defines it in context, we see that the common thread is a cost that must be expended in terms of any kind of loss that must be endured to avert an evil outcome, or to obtain the best outcome, or a better outcome. And the evil outcome that is exacting the cost to defeat it is not exacting the necessary cost legally or justly. The counterparty to the ransom is simply the evil circumstance brought on by sin.

So Isaiah says, "Who will have held faithful to our message?" Faithfulness to the message is more than just believing it, but Yeshua stated, "It is not so among you, but whoever may be wishing to become great among you will be your servant, and whoever may be wishing to be first among you will be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom in return for many" (Mat. 20:26-28). Therefore, Messiah became the suffering servant. And indeed, even Paul speaks of completing the sufferings of Messiah in Colossians 1:24. And he speaks of completing them on behalf of the Assembly, the body of Messiah, which is the remant of Israel. For this reason Messiah said the great "among you will be your slave," and by among you he meant the remnant of Israel. By so speaking Messiah is defining the meaning of his own ransom, the cost in terms of suffering he endured for the benefit of the faithful.

No one can say that Paul was paying the penalty of our sins, and so no one should claim that Messiah was paying a penalty either, other than a cost illegally demanded or taken by evil, in the service of overcoming evil. When sin is forgiven, the penalty is forgiven, and not paid. To claim that the innocent must die for the guilty to acheive forgiveness is the redefinition of forgiveness. It is something worthy of a cult.

Isaiah continues, "And the Arm of Yăhwҽӈ upon who will have been revealed? And he will have grown up as a tender plant at his face, and as a root from the dry earth. He has no form and no majesty that we may see in him, and no appearance that we should desire him."

The Arm of YHWH is Messiah, same as the HE in the next part of the text. The text is describing the Glory next to the Father, the right hand of the Glory, humbling himself to become a man, to become the suffering servant. The Arm of YHWH is the Word that was with the Almighty, the Word without beginning of days, from everlasting. The Arm of YHWH is the only kindred Almighty, of the same nature as the Almighty. No one is greater than the Most High, and the Word of the Most High shares his greatness, yet he humbled himself to the position of man. The greatest became the suffering servant, according to the words, "whoever will be great among you will be your servant." All things that belong to the Father also belong to the Son.

Isaiah continues, "being despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and being a knower of malignancy, and like one from whom faces are hidden, he is despised, and we will not have considered him. But our malignancies he will have carried. And our sorrows—he will have been laden with them. And we, we will have considered him being smitten, being struck by the Almĭghty, and being made to be afflicted."

In this world the innocent suffer from the sins of the guilty, not justly so, but because the sins of the guilty spill over and harm the innocent. And so here also, the sin of Israel has spilled over onto Messiah. The intrinsic cost of sin, the natural consequences of it, by cause and effect, are come to rest on Messiah also, because he humbled himself and entered the domain of sin. He experienced and became familiar with what Israel suffers from.

Messiah did not stay away from the risk of harm or even the risk of being misunderstood. The attacks of men on the innocent can become so vicious that people begin to think that such a curse comes from God and not from man's sin. People will think that if you are poor, and do not have money, then you are not favored by God. People will think if you have a disease or were born with a defect that you are to be despised and considered afflicted by God. The assumption that people suffer from evil because they are not blessed by the Most High is the same as judging all adversity as a judgement from God. It caused even the disciples to ask who sinned in the case of the man born blind, him or his parents?

Messiah said neither. Nor is it a case of bad "karma", also known as predestination, but "so that the works of the Almighty will have been displayed in him, we need to be working the works of him who sent me as long as it is day." John 9:3-4. In other words, the effects of evil can only be reversed if we put forth the self sacrifice to reverse them before evil overcomes everything and the night comes.

So it says, "And our sorrows—he will have been laden with them. And we, we will have considered him being smitten, being struck by the Almĭghty, and being made to be afflicted."

He was so concerned with our pain that he did not reject receiving it as we would receive suffering when it came his way also as a man. Predictably the devil set up Messiah, using authorities who were lovers of money. You know that the devil can corrupt any theology when he uses it as a lever against those who love it more than God. So the devil attacked Messiah, and then blamed shifted the whole thing onto God. So through the devil's new narrative on the meaning of Messiah's death, both the house of Judah and the House of Israel teach and generally believe that it was the Most High that struck Messiah down with divine judgment. But the prophet Isaiah begs us to reconsider.

It says "and we will have considered being smitten, being struck by the Almighty, and being made to be afflicted." The word considered in Hebrew here means to think something is so, or to esteem it so, or regard it as so. But just because we the people think something is so does not make it so. Isaiah is prophetically speaking in the name of the people when he uses the word "we." Isaiah speaks in the name of the people. For example see Isaiah 64:5. Also in Daniel 9, the prophet Daniel uses the collective "we" to refer to the people. You can be sure that in these usages whatever follows WE in terms of thought or deed is considered a sin. Therefore Judah and Israel sin against Messiah in allowing it to be thought that Messiah was smitten by God rather than their own sins. Both the Jews rejecting Messiah have erred this way, and the Christians rejecting his Torah. It is our sins that spill over and cause the innocent to suffer.

Israel has no one to blame for Messiah's suffering other than its own sins. And when it happened, all the Most High is saying is look at what your sins have done to me. Please think about repenting from them and receiving forgiveness and cleansing from me. Even we as humans appeal to the same argument when trying to dissuade someone from an evil course. Look at what your misdeeds are doing to those around you.

That is the divine argument also, and we should not reinterpret it as if God is the one harming Messiah because some say he needs an innocent victim to punish in our place before he forgives. This is an idea that the institutional Church now inserts into everything it can. But actually, God's way of stating he is getting harmed by our sins, is to allow himself to be visibly harmed in the service of doing good for Israel. The words written in Isaiah beg for no other interpretation than the one I have given.

So now it states in vs. 5: "But he is being made to be wounded from our transgressions, being made to be bruised from our iniquities. The instruction of our wellness is upon him. And in his stripes will have been healing for us."

Please note that in Hebrew it says, "from our transgessions," and "from our iniquities." This may also be put "because of." This is why vs. 5 is a contrast to vs. 4. in which we thought he was smitten by God, but no, in vs. 5 he was smitten from our sins! The mistaken thought of the people in vs. 4 is corrected in vs. 5. It is our sins that smote Yeshua, and not the Most High. It is what happens when a perfectly innocent person enters a sinful world. He is harmed in everyway by the sins of those around him.

Yet the vast majority of translations persist in telling us that he was smitten "for our transgressions," and "for our inquities." And then into that little word "for" a whole theology of God punishing an innocent man for the guilty is erected. But that is not the obvious sense of MIN in Hebrew. The sense is FROM or because of. Please erase that word FOR from these texts. Erase it in your mind and cross it out in the text, and write FROM in the margin of your bibles.

It was the sin of Israel that killed Messiah, because he was teaching that he forgives sins, and that it is necessary to pledge faithfulness to him in order to receive cleansing from sin. That's the message that sin hates. Sin loves darkness and does not come into the light. And if a man will not allow Messiah to separate him from his sin, then his sin will remain on him when he judges the world.

Isaiah next says, "The instruction of our wellness is upon him." It is going to take a while to correct and unpack this statement, because it is everywhere taught to be a key proof text of PSA, penal substitutionary atonement. But it is not so much as a proof text when we realize that a key word is mistranslated in every single popular translation. And that word is MUSAR. It is translated as "punishment" or "chastisement." If we read the text with the versions "the punishment of our peace was upon him," and we interpret punishment to mean a judicial punishment to satisfy the wrath of God by an innocent substitute, which is how people are now bound to take punishment to mean, then, of course, we would be facing a penal susbstition text.

But I should demonstrate that even if we retained the sense "punishment," we need not load all that theology into the word. Unjust punishments happen all the time. Could it be that God allowed an unjust punishment to come to him so that we would see the injustice we were doing to God and thereby make peace with him by repenting our sins? Could it be that he unjustly suffered what we should suffer when unrepentant. Could it be that the punishment he unjustly suffered represents the punishment that he forgave us? Yes, all of this is a possible interpretation if we toss out the ideas of judicial substition and wrath satisfaction.

But the word MUSAR need not mean anything more than an instruction or admonishment, or a warning. In fact, MUSAR is translated as "instruction" in the King James Version. The word occurs 50x in Scripture. It is translated "instruction" in Psalm 50:17; Proverbs 1:2, 1:3, 1:7, 1:8, 4:1, 4:13, 5:12, 5:23, 6:23, 8:10, 8:33, 10:17, 12:1, 13:1, 13:18, 15:5, 15:32, 15:33, 16:22, 19:20, 19:27, 23:12, 23:23, 24:32; Jeremiah 17:23, 32:33, 35:13; Ezekiel 5:15; and Zephaniah 3:7. That's about 30 of 50 times. I only say about because I did not do a double checked exacting and verified method of counting the cases.

To these cases we may add some texts where more recent translations render MUSAR as "instruction," namely the NAS, Job 36:10 and Zephaniah 3:2.

Next I will explain the word "wellness" or it could be "peace." Peace between God and man is meant. We can also use the term reconciliation. This occurs when a person repents from their sin and the Most High forgives the sin. Then peace is made. It's that simple. The word peace in Hebrew also implies wellness, or healing. This is explained as cleansing or purging from sin.

Knowing that the devil would attack him through evil men, the Messiah let himself be martyred, and his Father guided events so that the prophesies would be exactly fulfilled. They were going to do it anyway, and they were doing it to him in the spirit already. The Father just made sure they did it in the way he wanted so that he could make the most of it prophetically, and instructionally.

At the end Moses and Elijah, the two witnesses, will let themselves be martyred in a similar fashion, and they will lie dead. And after three days and a half they will come to life again.

The guilt offering is a sacrificial instruction after repentance and forgiveness. With the guilt offering the person is officially proclaimed to be purged from sin. Even if the spiritual aspect of the purging takes place after the offering is made, the offering is still declaring the cleansing of the person. The sin is symbolically laid on the offering by laying on of hands. The sin is carried away by the offering that suffers from it, showing the cost of sin. The life of the blood represents the divine life that purges us from sin.

Therefore, what Satan through men did to Messiah afforded the Most High the opportunity to designate Messiah's death a guilt offering, that is, the same sort of instruction concerning our forgiveness and cleansing that would be taught by the Levitical offerings for sin. He was able to present Messiah's death as an instruction concerning all our transgressions, which figuratively killed him, and he bears the cost of it this way, and also the cost to cleanse it, rising from the dead also, to be able to continue to bear the cost in the Spirit of cleansing us from sin.

So "The instruction of our wellness is upon him," not an instruction in wrath appeasement, but an instruction in the cost of sin and the cost of cleansing it, a cost taken from the innocent. This is so that we will not think it of no account to repeat our sin.

At the end of vs. 5 he says, "And in his stripes will have been healing for us." This text is stated in the same sense as Isaiah 52:15. By being lifted up Messiah will draw all nations to himself, and they will repent and pledge loyalty to him, and so he will be able to sprinkle them, to purge and cleanse them from their sins. We may also render the text "And THROUGH his stripes will have been healing for us." This only signifies a causal connection between Messiah's suffering, and his ability to reach out to the nations. Good causually comes from Messiah's suffering. This is because God knows showing his suffering in the flesh this way will have the needed effect on hearts ready to receive the truth.

Surely we can think of examples of good coming from evil. Years ago I began to teach some truths revealed to me, but then I was evilly attacked by Satan through the injustice of those who said they followed Torah. Now I look back and see that Yeshua wanted me to have a better education before I started teaching. There was much I had to learn first before risking being a success at it. So healing for me happened out of evil. So likewise, out of the evil done to Messiah healing results. I remembered then the words of Messiah, which he said that those who attack us are really attacking him, the one in whose name we preach. Sadly, those who attacked me ended up converting to Judaism. The lesson of the cross is that our sin attacks Messiah, and he urges us to be parted from our sin so he can bear it away and cleanse it, so that our sin will not remain on us when he returns in judgment.

There is no need to suppose that a causual connection between the evil stripes Messiah received and a good outcome for us is a legal argument for sin being imputed to Messiah and then him legally paying the judicial penalty of unrepentant sinners. There is no need to suppose this any more than anything else that is bad might be at the same time put to use to gain some good.

Isaiah 53 teaches the pure waters of the true good news, and this is obvious after we discard the traditional filters of the institutional church and correct their mistranslations which are perfectly obvious to anyone who reads the Hebrew and thinks about it in this regard.