2. Now here we have the great truth of a suffering Messiah, a suffering Eedeemer, brought out in all its fulness as we have it nowhere else in the Old Testament. The details are so striking that we cannot wonder that again and again this passage is quoted in the New Testament, as having its fulfil- ment in Christ. Our Lord Himself sanctions the application when He declares, "For I say unto you, that this that is written must yet be accomplished in Me. And He was reckoned among the transgressors." And Philip's answer to the eunuch was this, " Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus." No passage in the Old Testament teaches so unequivocally the doctrine of vicarious atonement. True, the whole sacrificial system of Israel prefigures it, for the sacrificer brings the victim in acknowledgment that he is sinful, and that his own life is
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forfeit. In the twenty-second Psalm we have the Messiah t forsaken of God, persecuted, reviled, spat upon, pierced, f done to death, and reaping the great reward of His sufferings in the glory that should follow ; but here, and here alone, in ■ the whole of the Old Testament, we have a person, Himself of spotless innocence, entering into the whole fellowship of human suffering, led as a lamb --kr the slaughter, wounded for our transgressions, having the chastisement of our peace upon Him, bearing our iniquity laid upon Him by the law, making intercession for the transgressors, and receiving as His recom- pense that He should see His seed, that the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in His hand, that He should divide the portion with the great and the spoil with the strong. I do not wonder, as we read the prophecy with all its minuteness of detail, and as we look down on the ages and search in vain for any figure but One in all history in whom its lineaments can be traced, that in his great defence of Christianity Paley should have based his whole argument from prophecy on this single chapter which he transcribes at length ; or that Luther should have said that there is not in all the Old Testament a clearer prophecy both of the sufferings and of the resurrection of Christ.
3. In the text sin is spoken of as a disease. It is a disease, however, which is, humanly speaking, incurable. The only cure is a vicarious one. So we have —
1. Sin as a disease.
2. An incurable disease.
3. Cured vicariously.
I.
Sin as a Disease.
There would be no need to talk about healing if sin had not been regarded by God as a disease. It is a great deal more than a disease, it is a wilful crime ; but still it is also a disease. It is often very difficult to separate the part in a crime which disease of the mind may have, and that portion which is distinctly wilful. We need not make this separation ourselves. If we were 20
3o6 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
to do so in order to excuse ourselves, that would only be increas- ing the evil ; and if we do it for any other reason, we are so apt to be partial, that I am afraid we should ultimately make some kind of palliation for our sin which would not bear the test of the day of judgment. It is only because of God's sovereignty, and His infinite grace, and His strong resolve to have mercy upon men, that, in this instance. He wills to look upon sin as a disease. He does not conceal from Himself, or from us, that it is a great and grievous fault ; He calls it a trespass, a transgression, iniquity, and other terms that set forth its true character. Never in Scripture do we find any excuse for sin, or lessening of its hein- ousness ; but in order that He might have mercy upon us, and deal graciously with us, the Lord is pleased to regard it as a disease, and then to come and treat us as a physician treats his patients, that He may cure us of the evil.
1. Sin is a disease, first, because it is not an essential part of man as he loas created. It is something abnormal, it was not in human nature at the first. " God made man upright." Our first parent, as he came fresh from the hand of his Maker, was without taint or speck of sin ; he had a healthy body inhabited by a healthy soul. There was about him no tendency to evil, he was created pure and perfect ; and sin does not enter into the con- stitution of man, per se, as God made it. It is a something which has come into us from outside. Satan came with his temptation, and sin entered into us, and death by sin. Therefore, let no man, in any sense whatever, attribute sin to God as the Creator. Let him look upon sin as being a something extraneous to a man, something which ought never to have had a lociis standi within our nature at all, a something that is disturbing and destructive, a poisoned dart that is sticking in our flesh, abiding in our nature, and that has to be extracted by Divine and sovereign grace.