Wesley Corpus

When we speak of this and of the satisfaction of Christ, we speak of the inmost mystery of the Christian faith. Therefore all the inventions of men ought now to be kept at the utmost distance; nor can anything certain be established without the express authority of Scripture. And herein is offered first to our consideration the only-begotten Son of God, as the Head of the redeemed, the righteous Servant of God, who by the knowledge of Himself ' shall justify many’ (Isa. liii. 10). Him God hath constituted the ‘surety of that better covenant’ (Heb. vii. 22) -- the covenant of grace. And how clearly is His execution of this office described in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah! where the Prophet describes Him as ‘bearing our griefs,’ or sins, ‘and carrying our sorrows’ (verse 4). ‘All we,’ says he, ‘like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all’ (verse 6). All mankind have forsaken God, and placed their own will upon His throne; and so were liable to the highest punishment, when the Mediator voluntarily interposed Himself between them and the just Judge. And the incomprehensible love of God, that He might spare them, ‘spared not His own Son.’ This is shown in those words: ‘The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ It was on this account that ‘He was oppressed and afflicted, and brought as a lamb to the slaughter’ (verse 7); while God ‘made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Cor. v. 21). This is expressed in the 9th and 10th verses: ‘He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him’ when He ‘made His soul an offering for sin.’ How exactly do His own words agree with these - ‘I am the good shepherd, and I lay down My life for the sheep’! (John x. 14-15.) For them ‘was He taken from prison and from judgment, and cut off out of the land of the living’ (Isa. liii. 8).