Bible Commentaries
James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
Isaiah 53
THE MAN OF SORROWS
‘A Man of sorrows.’
Isaiah 53:3
I. His own personal life was a sorrowful one.—He was away from home, from His Father’s presence. He was a Stranger in a strange land. From His childhood He was full of thoughts which He could not utter, because, if uttered, they were not understood. He was a lonely Man. His sympathy with others by no means implied their sympathy with Him.
II. But His sorrows, like His labours, were for others.—(1) Jesus Christ sorrowed over bodily suffering; (2) He sorrowed over mental suffering; (3) He sorrowed over spiritual suffering.
III. He was a Man of sorrows also, and chiefly, in relation to sin.—(1) He had to see sin; (2) He had to bear sin.
IV. The subject teaches (1) that if it is as a Man of sorrows that Jesus Christ comes to us, it must be, first of all, as a memento of the fitness of sorrow to our condition as sinful men. (2) Again, only a Man of sorrows could be a Saviour for all men, and for the whole of life. (3) Sorrow, however deep, has its solaces and its compensations. (a) Whatever it be, it is of the nature of sorrow to bring a man nearer to truth, nearer to the reality, nearer therefore to hope. (b) Sorrow makes a man more useful. It gives him a new experience and a new sympathy.
—Dean Vaughan.
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