The Perfect Offering

It was the Lord’s “pleasure” to make Jesus sick, or “to make Him sickness by bruising Him.” Jesus was bruised unto sickness, physically. His body was crushed, marred, mutilated—whatever word you want to use. He became total sickness on the cross.

“When You [God] make His [Jesus’] soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.” (Isaiah 53:10)

Where the English says “an offering for sin,” the Hebrew uses only one word, asham, which means “guilt,” “sin,” or “sin offering.” In the language of the Old Testament, the same word was used for both guilt and guilt offering. Why? Because under the Levitical law, when the sacrificial animal was brought as a sin offering, the man whose sin was being atoned for laid his hands on the head of the animal and confessed his sin over that animal, thereby symbolically transferring his sin to the animal. In that way, the sin offering became sin with the man’s sin. Then, the animal was dealt with; instead of the man being killed, the animal was.

All this, of course, is representative of the death of Christ. The writer of Hebrews said it was not possible for the blood of bulls or goats to take away sins (see Hebrews 10:4). The sacrificial system was just a picture leading up to the transaction that was fulfilled on the cross. But here, speaking about the actual event, the Scripture says that God made the soul of Jesus to be sin. That is the real meaning of “make His soul an offering for sin.” The apostle Paul confirmed this point when he quoted Isaiah 53:10 in this passage:

“For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21)