Isaiah 53.4
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
I don’t know how much Isaiah would have understood about God’s perfect servant becoming the one who would bear the pain and suffering of his people’s sins. But we have the benefit of the Gospel story in the New Testament, which tells us that God’s own son would be the substitute who would take the punishment we deserve, and die such an ignominious and horrible death, so that we could have everlasting life.
In chapter 8 verse 17 of his gospel, Matthew applies this verse in a rather unexpected way, to the healing miracles which Jesus did. The truth is that all human suffering is ultimately the result of human sin, and Jesus looked with such deep compassion on those who were suffering, because he knew that illness was part of the same problem as all other evil. His motive, his heart of love, was the same, whether healing the sick, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the paralysed, the infected, the mentally ill, day after day, or taking on himself the sin of the world on the cross, once for all
Lord help us to recognise that the physical and mental needs of those around us are not separate from their need of salvation.
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