Isaiah’s prophecy about the coming Savior gives us further details on the nature of Christ’s atonement. From this, we can draw implications for whom His atonement was made. In his essay “Stricken for the Transgression of My People,” J. Alec Motyer expounds on the various requirements for a proper penal substitute. His more literal translation of Isaiah 53:5 reads, “He was wounded because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities.”1 Further, he renders 53:8, “He was cut down from the land of the living because of the rebellion of my people to whom the blow belonged.”2 Thus, Jesus was not merely punished because of sin, in that God punished him merely due to His displeasure with sin; there is a direct correlation between the punishment that Jesus suffered and the sins committed by God’s people. Jesus is being punished for the sins that His people committed as a substitute in their place, receiving the punishment that their sins deserved.
For Jesus’ people to reap any benefits from Him being punished for their sins, this substitutionary sacrifice must be acceptable to God. Motyer renders 53:6, “Yahweh caused to meet on him the iniquity of us all.”3 From this, not only does God accept Jesus’ sacrifice, He is the one who is the initiator. It is God who causes the sin debt of His people to be transferred to Christ, who is then punished for those sins. In 53:10, Motyer translates, “Yahweh…was delighted to crush him.”4 He clarifies this, stating that “delight” does not indicate that God took sadistic pleasure in punishing his son, but that Christ’s sacrifice is so perfect in its salvific effects for sinners that even that act of punishing his Son in our place pleased Him in its efficacy.5 God, in His love for those he wished to redeem, finds pleasure in this act that fulfills the requirements of justice, redeeming a people for Himself. Although God could have required the Israelites, and all mankind, to bear the guilt of their sin, in his mercy, He provides a substitute to bear their sin away so that they may be guiltless.
In his discussion of 53:4-6, Motyer makes a profound observation about the state of sinners who are the recipients of God’s grace. In verse 4, it describes Christ’s death, yet the observers do not understand the significance of it. Instead, they believe God has cursed Christ. Without any smooth transition, in verses 5 and 6, the recipients realize how Christ was their penal substitute and how their spiritual death has now been replaced with spiritual life.6 The implication of this shows how the atonement is solely a work of God saving those whom he chooses to save. Motyer writes, “There is no reference to personal decision, commitment, or faith. It is totally a story of needy sinners in the hand of God. … The atonement itself…is the cause for any conversion.”7 This verse is one of the many biblical evidences that personal commitment and faith are the fruits of conversion, not the cause of conversion, which was secured through Christ’s punishment in the place of those whom He saves, and only those whom He saves. Ephesians teaches that in our former state “we were dead in our trespasses,” but we are “made…alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5a ESV). When we are dead, we are incapable of the faith and repentance that God requires of us. God must make us alive and give us a new heart if we are to be capable of these fruits. If it is Christ’s atonement that produces this fruit in a person’s life, then He necessarily must have only died for those with that fruit.