The Suffering Jesus: Our Substitute and Shepherd

He had to bear your sin to be your shepherd. You and I are like sheep gone astray. And he says, and so did Isaiah, you're like straying sheep, but there was a shepherd who brought you back because he gave his life for you. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host Phil Johnson. It's been said, be kind to your enemies, you made them. Well, it's true that we sometimes do things that turn people into enemies, but what happens when you are hated for no good reason? How should you respond when, to whatever degree, you're persecuted and attacked simply because of your stand for Christ? Well, John MacArthur has been looking at how the Lord handled situations like those. And today John will show you how Christ guides and strengthens you during trials. It's part of his study, Through Suffering to Triumph.

And now here's John. I can't tell you what a rich and refreshing and pertinent study this has been, and how we have seen that God has called us as believers to a submissive role in society. And we've been learning, I think, rather explicitly what the Bible has to say about our duty as believers to live a kind of life that manifests Jesus Christ in the midst of an ungodly culture. In the process of Peter unfolding to us these elements of our Christian conduct, he has come to speak about Christ at the end of chapter 2 because Christ is the model which we are to follow.

We looked at that last time. We considered the suffering Jesus as our model or as our standard. We're going to go on from there to consider the Lord Jesus as Peter does, not only as our standard but as our substitute, then finally as our shepherd in verse 25. In three ways we look at the suffering of Christ. First of all, we've already noted that Peter looked at the suffering of Christ as the standard for how we ourselves suffer under unjust treatment. Christ suffered for you, he says in verse 21, leaving you an example or a pattern or a standard or a model for you to follow in his steps. Who committed no sin nor was any deceit found in his mouth and while being reviled he did not revile in return while suffering he uttered no threats but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously. Christ suffered for us on the cross to give us an example of how we also are to suffer patiently, enduringly in the midst of unjust treatment.

Christ was treated more unjustly than any creature will ever be treated because he was the only perfect person so all that came against him was utterly undeserved and hell as well as humanity masked its powers against him and so he suffered in a way that none of us will ever really know as to extent and in doing such suffering he was the perfect example of patient endurance though the suffering was more unjust than any other he nonetheless gives us the perfect model of patient endurance. He then becomes our standard, our pattern. He suffered to set an example. We will suffer unjustly as believers in an ungodly society.

We are to follow the pattern of Jesus Christ. But there is a greater way that he suffered for us. He suffered not only as our standard but he suffered as our substitute.

He suffered as our substitute. Notice verse 24. This is a great text, one that ought to be underlined in every Bible.

And he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness for by his wounds you were healed. That great verse speaks of Christ as our substitute. It speaks of Christ as the one who took our place. By the way, we noted last time that as Peter unfolds this closing section of chapter 2 he's thinking of Isaiah 53. And he will be alluding to Isaiah 53 verse 4 verse 5 and verse 11 here. Because in those verses in Isaiah 53 Isaiah writes about the substitutionary sin-bearing death of Christ. And here again I say is the heart of the Christian gospel.

The great doctrine of substitution. That is that Christ was our substitute in dying is basic to our faith. In fact, we could safely say that all other elements of salvation merely surround this great core truth. So the Apostle Paul sees Christ as substitute. In 2 Corinthians he says there what Peter says here. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And there he echoes Peter's words does Paul. Peter says it's substitution. Paul says it's substitution that is at the heart of the Christian gospel. Paul also says in Galatians 3 13 that Jesus was made a curse then these two words for us.

For us. To put it as simply as I can put it if Christ is not my substitute then I still occupy the place of a condemned sinner. If my sins and my guilt are not transferred to him and he does not take them then they remain with me. If he did not deal with my sins then I must deal with them. If he did not bear my penalty then I must bear it. There is no other possibility.

It is either him or me. Some have suggested by the way that it is immoral to teach the doctrine of substitution. Some theologians have suggested that. That it is immoral to teach that God in human flesh took on sin and bore my sin and your sin. But it is not immoral because you are not pushing something on God that he wouldn't want. You are not tainting his holiness. Not at all. The truth of the matter is that in the process of salvation, mark this, God is not transferring penalty from one man guilty to another man innocent.

No. He is bearing the sin himself. For Jesus was God in human flesh.

The point is this. Nobody is pushing substitutionary death off on God. God took it on himself.

It is not immoral. It is not an affront to a holy God to say that he bore sin. He did it by his own will. He wills that sin be punished and he wills to be the victim who bears its punishment.

The bottom line is this. Either Christ took my sins and bore them or I will. Either he paid the penalty for my sin or I will pay it in hell forever.

Now what does the text say? It begins with these words, and he himself bore our sins. He himself is emphatic and it means to emphasize that this is God in human flesh bearing our sins, not because somebody outside the Trinity pushed it on him, but because he chose it himself. He himself bore our sins. He did it alone. The emphatic personal pronoun indicates he did it alone, and it also indicates he did it voluntarily. Voluntarily and alone, God took on our sins. He came into the world to save his people from their sins, as John said of the Lamb of God in John 1 29. Peter is simply affirming that. Jesus willingly took on himself sin. He himself with no outside influences bore our sins. That's the key. Some people think Jesus died as a martyr.

You know that. They think that Jesus is just a great example of someone who died for murder, who lived for a good cause, and sets a great example of how to be so sold out to a cause that you're willing to die as a martyr. And admittedly, a martyr can be an example of suffering, but a martyr cannot be a substitute. A martyr cannot take away my sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Now, let me follow that up with some thoughts for a moment. What does it mean that he bore our sins specifically? I chased that around a little bit in the Old Testament because it comes from the Old Testament, and I wanted to have you understand it. It is not common in the New Testament to use that phrase, it is not common in the New Testament to use that phrase, Jesus bore our sins. It only appears here and in Hebrews 9 verse 28. But it appears frequently in the Old Testament, and if you understand how the Old Testament used it, you'll understand how Peter, before he was a New Testament saint who was an Old Testament saint, would have understood it. When you turn to the Old Testament, it becomes very clear what bearing sin means.

Let me tell you what it means. Israel, for example, it says bore her sins by wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. You remember when God brought Israel out of Egypt and brought them to the land of Canaan to Kadesh Barnea?

The spies went into the land for 40 days, they came back out of the land, and they told the people, don't go near that land, there are giants in there, we can't handle it, they'll destroy us. And God says, all right, for your unbelief and lack of trust in me, I will punish you by causing you to wander in this wilderness for how long? 40 years.

40 years. God punished them by making them wander in the desert for 40 years instead of going right into the promised land. So to bear sin meant to endure the penalty of sin, and that's a very important biblical distinction to make in order to clearly understand what Jesus did on the cross. He bore punishment. The wrath of God against sin was put on him instead of us.

That's precisely what it means. So Peter says, and let's go back to 1 Peter, and what does he mean? He says he bore our sins in his body.

What does that mean? Does that mean that he became a sinner? Well, Paul says he became sin for us, but that's a different issue. When he says he bore our sins, it means that he took on the punishment. He endured the penalty, and it wasn't just physical death, it was spiritual death. My God, my God, why have you, what, forsaken me? That is the cry that is the cry of spiritual death.

Spiritual death is separation from God. He bore that for us. Yes, our iniquity was placed on him. Yes, he carried in his body our sins, but that's not what Peter is talking about. What Peter is talking about is he took the punishment for that, thus satisfying a holy God. He bore our sins. What an absolutely thrilling truth, thrilling truth. Spurgeon, who has to be everybody's favorite preacher, loved the doctrine of substitution.

He absolutely loved it. If you've read it all extensively in Spurgeon, you come across it over and over and over again. And he knew it was at the core of Christianity.

Let me read you some of the things he said. These are taken from all different areas of his writing. He said, in one word, the great fact on which the Christians hope rests is substitution. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ for the sinner, Christ being made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him, Christ offering up a true and proper substitutionary sacrifice in the place of as many as the Father gave him who are recognized by their trusting in him, this is the cardinal fact of the Gospel.

What he is saying there is atonement is at the center, substitution is at the center. He says there is no doctrine that fires my soul with such delight as that of substitution. Substitution is the very marrow of the whole Bible. It is the soul of salvation. It is the essence of the Gospel.

We ought to saturate all our sermons with it for it is the lifeblood of a Gospel ministry. He says I am incapable of moving one inch away from the old faith, the Gospel of substitution, and one thing I do is preach it. He says if you put away the doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, you have disemboweled the Gospel and torn from it its very heart.

I jotted down two times more quotes than I read you from Spurgeon. He said I pray God that every stone of this tabernacle may tumble to its ruin and every timber be shivered to atoms before they should stand on this platform a man to preach who denies the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ or who even keeps it in the background for this is our watchword. You know that. Jesus was our substitute. He not only became sin for us but he bore the punishment for us.

How? Back to verse 24. In his own body on the cross through crucifixion. He had to die on the cross. He had to be lifted up. He had to be crucified.

That was the plan. He had to even be hanged as Paul says to fulfill the curse of one who is hanged on a tree. He had to be crucified on wood. In his own body he felt the potent punishment of God as he hung on the cross. By the way the word cross there is literally the word wood. He himself bore our sins in his own body on the wood.

The wood. Why did he do that? Verse 24 says in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Oh what a great statement. He did it in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

Did you hear that? It didn't say he did it that we might go to heaven. It didn't say he did it in order that it didn't say he did it in order that we might have peace. It didn't say he did it in order that we might experience love.

He didn't do it for that reason primarily. He did it would you please note that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. He did it to transform us from sinners into saints. He did it to change us. He did it to regenerate us. He bore the punishment in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. So the purpose of Christ's substitutionary death is not just the forgiveness of sin, not just the removal of guilt, not just a change in our standing or our position. Please note that. It's not just forensic. It's not just some declared change.

It's a real one. He took our place in order to transform us that we might die to sin. By the way the word die here is a unique word in the New Testament, not the normal word for die. In fact it's the only time it's ever used. It means to be away from, to be missing or to depart or to cease existing. In fact the particle is used in classical Greek to refer to the dead as the dearly departed. What he is saying is that the purpose of the substitutionary work of Christ is that we might depart from sin.

That's what he's saying. That we might depart from sin and that we might live to righteousness. That we might enter into a new life pattern. Peter here is on the same track as Paul in Romans 6. Having been crucified with Christ we die to sin and rise to walk in newness of life.

It's a real change. That great passage in Romans 6 is at the heart of everything in the Christian's life. If you haven't studied that carefully, oh how much you should study that. Every Christian should master that material. We have been crucified with Christ in which we have died to sin.

How? We've paid the penalty. That's one part of it. But not only that, we have departed from sin. And Peter goes beyond what Paul intends in Romans 6. Paul is saying we have in paying the penalty of sin through the death of Christ we have died to sin in terms that we have paid the penalty in Christ and so sin has no claim on us. Peter says further we are saved to depart from sin. Now Paul talks about that when he talks about living according to that new life.

But Peter uses the word that means to depart from. So beloved, Christ died for you in order that you might depart from sin and live to righteousness, to change your life pattern, to convert you, to regenerate you, to make you a new person from sinner to saint. And then he alludes to Isaiah 53 5 when he says by his wounds you were healed. The word wounds, mollops, you know what it means? Scars from flogging is exactly what it means.

Bruises, welts, scars from whipping. By his scars, by his pain, by his bearing punishment, we were healed. It's not unfair to say that even the whipping of Jesus, that even the whipping of Jesus, the flogging that tore his back was part of the punishment of God, which he bore for sin and they became the means of our spiritual healing. He's not talking about physical healing here. Primarily he's talking about spiritual healing. He's talking about transformation from death to life, from sin to righteousness.

He took our place to make that a reality. In Matthew 8 16, you remember Jesus was casting out demons and healing everybody who was ill in order that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled saying he himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases. And people say, you see, you see, he took our infirmities, he carried away our diseases when he healed those people.

That's right. And he was showing as an example to those people what all of us will experience in the glory to come, healing from physical disease. But physical disease isn't the issue in this text. There is physical healing in the atonement promised, not yet realized. Beloved, listen, if there was physical healing in the atonement given now, no Christian would ever what? Be sick or what? Or die.

How obvious is that? But he did promise healing in the atonement in the future. In the future. Finally, Peter says he is not only our standard and substitute, he's our shepherd. He's our shepherd.

I love this. Verse 25. See, the Lord had to do that because you were continually straying like sheep. You see, if the Lord hadn't provided a sacrifice, he never could have brought you into his fold. If the Lord hadn't provided a substitute, he never could have saved you. Peter is still thinking of Isaiah 53 6.

He must have just read it before the Spirit inspired him in this text. Isaiah 53 6 says all of us like sheep have what? Gone astray. Each one of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has laid on him what? The iniquity of us all.

What does that mean? He bore the punishment for it all. And because of that, you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. He had to bear your sins. He had to bear your sin to be your shepherd. You and I are like sheep gone astray.

And he says, and so did Isaiah. You're like straying sheep. But there was a shepherd who brought you back because he gave his life for you.

When he says you were continually straying like sheep, he's talking about their unsaved condition in the past. But now because of God's provision in Christ, you have turned toward is what the verb means. You have turned toward, that refers to repentant faith. That was the prodigal who turned toward the Father. Would you please notice you have turned toward not a system, not a theology, not a religion, but a person. I love this. You have turned toward the shepherd and guardian of your souls, literally your lives.

And it has the whole person. Your shepherd and guardian. Who's that? Who's the good shepherd? The Lord Jesus Christ. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and he's titled our current series, Through Suffering to Triumph. Now, John, we've been hearing through this whole series that if you're a Christian, you can expect persecution. As Paul told Timothy, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. So persecution is unavoidable, and God gives us examples to learn from it, and he gives us a strength to endure persecution when it comes. But it's still understandable that people would not want to face persecution, or we hope it won't be too severe, but is that the wrong way to think?

Yeah, that's a wrong way to think, but there are other wrong ways to think. On the opposite end, you don't want to generate persecution. You don't want to be abusive.

You don't want to be rude and crude and judgmental. You're going to go back to the reality that Ephesians 4 says, speak the truth in love. So doing that, you would assume that if somebody persecutes you, it's not because you offended them, it's because the word of God offended them, but that offense is necessary. So without wanting to be offensive, the truth offends, and because the truth itself offends, I think we need to wrap that truth in love and compassion and tenderness in the same ways that Christ did in dealing with people. So that when persecution comes, it's persecution for righteousness sake, for the truth, and not because you've been obnoxious or overbearing with someone. Persecution should be the product, honestly, of a godly life and a virtuous, godly proclamation of the truth.

And it's going to ebb and flow. There are times when you're going to be persecuted and there are some times when you get a bit of a respite from that. But it seems to me, collectively, persecution is ramping up in the world around us.

I don't know how that's going to unfold in the future. It's tough on some people in the world right now. People are being killed for the faith. They're being arrested for the faith.

And that seems to be coming pretty fast. I mean, in COVID, we had pastors put in jail for keeping their churches open. So persecution is coming. We have a new study guide and we're excited about the study guides.

We've been reproducing them from the past because they were so helpful to people. The new study guide is titled How to Handle Persecution. And it pairs very well with our current series from 1 Peter on dealing with suffering. That's because the book of Acts parallels the themes of suffering, especially the persecution experienced by the first century church. So we have this in the study guide, How to Handle Persecution. It's the seventh volume in our relaunch series of study guides. Great for individual study or small group work, Sunday school class, anything like that.

Affordably priced. And by the way, you cannot get these in a bookstore. They're exclusively available through grace to you. The title again, How to Handle Persecution.

That's right, friend. If you haven't already, you will face a trial beyond what you think you can bear. But God has given you the spiritual resources that you need to endure it with joy and peace.

Make sure you know how to use those resources. Order How to Handle Persecution when you contact us today. Call us at 800-55-GRACE or order the How to Handle Persecution study guide at GTY.org.

That's our website. We also have study guides for other series, including Spiritual Boot Camp, The Believer's Armor, and Complete in Christ. You can get all of those resources and the newest study guide titled How to Handle Persecution. If you call us, 800-55-GRACE or go to our website, GTY.org. Also, I encourage you to download the Grace to You app. It gives you access to all of John's sermons, 3500 total, wherever you take your iPhone or Android device. With the app, you can also read our blog featuring articles from John and from the Grace to You staff, in which we discuss issues that are vital to the church today. And if you're curious about what John is currently preaching at his home church, you can download his latest messages as well. Again, download the Grace to You app today.

Just go to GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for praying for this ministry. We need that. And be here tomorrow when John shows you how to find hope even in the darkest times. Don't miss the next half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.