As we look at the path of suffering, it seems wise to meditate upon the ultimate path of suffering trodden by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

My familiarity with Isaiah 53 makes me forget that these are some of the most controversial verses in all of the Hebrew scriptures. Yes, controversial and contentious because the picture of Messiah that emerges here is so unexpected and so shocking to the natural human mind. Let me outline three of these shocks.

First, there is violence in Isaiah 53. The Servant of Jehovah comes as One who is stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted. He is pierced for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities until finally He is cut off from the land of the living. The vocabulary of violence is unexpected, unbelievable and utterly shocking.

The ancient church did not anticipate this portrait of violence in the Messiah. They expected the arrival of the Prince of Peace who would bring an end to violence. They believed that He would stop injustice and oppression, and trusted that the government would be upon His shoulders in an age of peace and prosperity. But here comes the Messiah of Isaiah 53, and He comes not as the victor over violence but as the victim of violence. He does not come to end oppression and injustice but to experience oppression and injustice.

This prophetic insight was too shocking for most at the time of Jesus. Therefore they concluded that Isaiah 53 could not refer to Messiah, and they looked at Jesus of Nazareth as you and I looked at Him in our natural condition. Seeing no beauty in Him, they concluded that He was stricken by God, afflicted by Him. In this way, we all turned our faces away from Him.

The second shock that we meet in these verses is the vicariousness of the Servant’s death. The Old Testament church was familiar with the idea of sacrifice, even with the notion of substitutionary sacrifice. They saw it in the ritual of the temple in Jerusalem; they saw it on the Day of Atonement; and they saw it when they brought their own sacrifices, placed their hands upon the heads of the animals to be slaughtered and saw their sins transferred to the sacrificed animals. But it was quite clear to them that human sacrifice was strictly forbidden and was an abomination before Jehovah.

But what do we see in Isaiah 53? The Suffering Servant comes and makes His life a guilt offering for the sins of His people. This was unbelievable! The Holy One of Israel: how could He permit this? How could the Son of God, how could the Messiah of Israel, be a guilt offering with His own life? It was simply unthinkable.

Third, the voluntariness of the Servant’s death is shocking. According to verse 7, He was oppressed and afflicted yet did not open His mouth. No objection or protest to the voices of false accusations and condemnation. Willingly He walks the Via Dolorosa and finally arrives at Golgotha to be crucified. The violence, the vicariousness and the voluntariness of Jesus’ death are too shocking even to the religious mind.

How do Christians overcome these shocks? Let’s begin with the voluntariness of His death. As human beings, we know that we have no authority to take our own lives or the lives of others. Life does not belong to us; the breath that is upon our nostrils is the breath of the living God. He is its Giver, and He alone can remove it. But God’s life is His own. As the Savior Himself says in John 10:18: “No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded.” Thus, because Jesus is God, the voluntariness of Messiah’s death is not as shocking as it otherwise might be. With the loss of one shock comes the loss of the others also.

In his classic book The Cost of Discipleship, the German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Forgiveness is a form of suffering. This is why sorry is the hardest word for us to say.

This is also why we find it so hard to forgive those who have wronged us. If this should be the experience of finite sinful human beings, what must it be for the eternal and infinitely Holy God to forgive sin? How could He forgive the sin of His people unless He Himself experienced the suffering and the violence that comes with the forgiveness of sin? Forgiveness is a form of suffering.”

In these ways then, the prophecy of Isaiah 53 with all its shocking details becomes the gospel to us who are being saved. But what does this mean for us?

First, the path of Christian discipleship is the path of Christian suffering. During the Protestant Reformation in Europe, there was debate concerning the marks of a true church of Jesus Christ. It was commonly accepted that the faithful preaching and reception of the Word of God is a mark of a true church, as is the true administration of the sacraments and the faithful exercise of biblical discipline. But in one of his preparatory papers for the Augsburg Confession, the magisterial German reformer Martin Luther wrote that suffering is the badge of the Christian. Luther was right; it is impossible to be a Christian without suffering for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Or, as the Savior Himself put it, a servant is not greater than his master.

Second, the Christian ministry is preeminently a path of suffering. As servants of Jesus Christ, we are called to pray for His church and to proclaim His gospel. But we are chiefly called to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ and His church. When the call came to St. Paul in Damascus through Ananias, it was in these words: “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” Later, Paul himself declared that his life passion was to “know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). Brothers and sisters, suffering is the primary calling of the Christian minister and his family. Like the apostles in Acts 5:41, we need grace to be able to rejoice that we have been counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.

This suffering in the ministry is inescapable because, according to 1 Corinthians 13, true love is always suffering love. If we love our people, we will suffer for them and we shall suffer with them. As Paul writes elsewhere, “Death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Cor. 4:12). Death is at work in us because life is at work in our churches and beyond. The only way life can be at work in our people is when death is at work in us.

This has been my own burden in the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland and I hope it is meaningful to you too. We often encourage men to come into the Christian ministry; we tell them of the romance and glory of preaching. But should we also not tell them that the Christian ministry is supremely a path of suffering?

Thirdly, the path of suffering is itself the pathway to glory. The road to Calvary is the road to the New Jerusalem. The high road to Zion must run through Golgotha. Isaiah 53 reminds us that the Lord Jesus Christ will see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. The cross always precedes the crown. In this life you and I are being sanctified by our suffering. In the world that is to come, you and I shall be glorified with Him. Until then, when the day shall break and the shadows flee away, we “run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:1-2).

—By David Karoon

David Karoon is pastor of Stornoway Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland and teaches New Testament language, literature and theology at the Scottish Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.