Previous article:What Do You Think About God?

Posted on Apr 30, 2026 by Mike LeDuke

Isaiah 53 is one of the most famous passages about Jesus. The beginning of the chapter reads as follows:

Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:1–3).

Do you hear Jesus in those words? Particularly poignant is the description that he is a “man of sorrows” and people “hide their faces” from him. We can hear the cross in this. And thus, when they read the next verse, many continue to think about the cross:

“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted”(Isaiah 53:4).

To these people, Isaiah 53:4 tells the story of how Jesus took our sins on himself; he became personally guilty for those sins and was therefore “smitten by God” for them. He suffered the punishment of sins instead of us.

While penal substitutionary atonement may make sense at first, on deeper inspection, it doesn’t hold up, either to logic or to the biblical text.

First of all, if Jesus suffered the consequences of our personal sins, then why do we still die? The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23).

Secondly, since he became guilty for all of our sins before we even committed them, we can theoretically live however we want, since our sins will simply be placed upon Jesus.

Third, why do we even need forgiveness? If Jesus paid the price for our sins — our debt has been paid, and therefore doesn’t need to be forgiven.

Most importantly, however, this idea doesn’t stand up to biblical scrutiny. Though this passage might sound like Jesus took our place, part of the problem is actually translation. The word for “griefs” really means “sicknesses,” not sins. And the word for “sorrows” indeed means sorrow or suffering.

In other words, Jesus didn’t literally become guilty for our sins. Instead, he took our suffering away!

When we come to the New Testament, that’s exactly how we see this verse used: “That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took our illnesses and bore our diseases’” (Matthew 8:16–17).

Jesus didn’t die to be responsible for our sins. He died to take away our suffering by turning us away from our sins. But how? That’s what we’ll explore in our next post.

— Jason Hensley PhD.