Did God PUNISH Jesus?
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if Jesus was punished with that punishment then sinners can’t be punished for them.
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if Jesus was punished that way for every human sinner then no sinner could be lost—universalism would be true.
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if every sinner isn’t saved then Jesus died for only some sinners—limited atonement would be true and Jesus didn’t die for the whole world.
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if Jesus was punished that way he would have been lost eternally.
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if God punishedJesus he was punishing a man he knew to be utterly innocent and utterly righteous—that’s immoral and God himself forbids it (Deuteronomy 24:16).
The trouble with believing that God punished Jesus with the punishment that sinners were due to get for their sins is that if sin is punishedout of existence there is no “forgiveness” only punitive justice. Imagine punishing a criminal to the nth degree for his crimes and then saying, “We forgive you now.”
To use Isaiah 53:5 to prove God punished Jesus for the sins of others misses the point. In Amos 4 God punished the guilty via drought, famine, pestilence and invasion to bring them back to him but the punishment he brought on them fell on the innocent babies and the devoted righteous people. We’re not to conclude that God punished innocent babies and his devoted servants. If some apostates became repentant they could confess that the punishment that brought them to their senses and to peace had fallen on the innocent and righteous. But they wouldn’t have said God punished the innocent and the righteous.
The difference between the “suffering servant” in Isaiah 53 and the innocent and faithful ones of Amos 4 (and elsewhere) is that the righteous sufferer of Isaiah 53 was their redeemer as well as one of their own.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.