Vicarious Suffering - Reflections on Isaiah 52:13-53:12, Good Friday, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Thursday, January 29, 2026

         I have participated in, or led, many Good Friday services that challenged my basic perceptions of what that day was about. What exactly were we celebrating when I was asked to pound a nail into a piece of two-by-four, thereby, I guess, accepting the fact that I helped to murder Jesus on the cross? It was notable that in Mel Gibson’s infamous film, “The Passion of the Christ,” it was his own hand that nailed his actor Jesus to the cross in the grisly scene that climaxed a distinctly gory take on the Jesus story. My own nail-pounding experience was accompanied by that 1640 Johann Heerman tune, “Ah, Holy Jesus,” that includes the words, as translated by Robert S. Bridges in 1899, “I it was denied thee; I crucified thee.” (See #289 in the United Methodist Hymnal, 1989.) That vs.2 admission of my guilt is followed in vs.3 with the following: “Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep offered; the slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered. For our atonement, while we nothing heeded, God interceded.” Vs. 4 adds: “thy death of anguish and thy bitter passion, for my salvation.” That is a clear statement of vicarious suffering; Jesus died for my sins—I assume that the “slave” who sinned in vs.3 is I, and by extension, you.

         Vicarious suffering is one of the oldest and most notable doctrines of Christianity, and its root has often been found in Is.52-53, the fourth of Isaiah’s four Servant Songs that explore the choice of a servant of God who acts as God’s agent in a world in need of redemption, of a return to a world characterized by shalom, unity and wholeness in God. In these Isaianic words, regularly used on Good Friday, the servant of God, whomever that servant is thought to be, suffers not in anticipation of, but instead of, the suffering of others. That is to say, I need not suffer, because the servant has already suffered for me. Is.53:4-6 makes that plain in famous poetry:

“Therefore, he has carried our diseases,

         and borne our frailties;

But we thought he was struck down,

         attacked by God, afflicted.

Instead, he was wounded for our disobedience,

         crushed for our iniquities;

The punishment that made us whole was laid on him;

         his bruising healed us.

All of us like sheep have gone astray,

         each of us following our own way,

But YHWH has touched him with the iniquity of all of us.”

“ Jesus paid it all,” sings the well-known gospel hymn, and Good Friday’s announcement of his vicarious suffering for us is the essence of the event we have come together to celebrate. There is little doubt that many services of worship this night will in word and action make that doctrinal idea central for the evening.

         I admit that all of this makes me distinctly uncomfortable. Is it really helpful for me to embrace a claim that the suffering of Jesus on that Roman cross was in same way to atone for my evil actions, that his suffering was done in order that I may not suffer, or that I may find a reconciliation with God that I have in some way severed by my own misguided and sinful behaviors? In short, did Jesus really die for my sins, as it has been stated for many centuries? In Is.52-53 it may well be concluded that what the prophet is saying is that the servant of God, Israel in some form or another, has suffered in the exile as part of God’s plan to redeem all the nations. If that is a possible reading, then the early Christians extended that Israelite suffering to now mean Jesus’s suffering, and like Isaiah, imagined that that suffering was for the whole world. But, is that the only way that the issue may be construed?

         Le me suggest another way to frame it. It appears to me to be the question of God’s supposed need for some sort of propitiation for human evil (Israelite misdeeds, according to Isaiah) and decides, as a result of that evil, to punish a servant as a sacrificial offering to win the Israelite’s way back to God. Instead of everyone suffering, God chooses one to take the brunt of the divine anger. I find that equally horrifying, making God out to be some sort of sadist, picking one to die for all. Though that seems to be Isaiah’s intent here, and an intent picked up in early Christianity, I find the book of Job’s way of dealing with human evil and suffering rather more satisfying. I am sorry that the early Christians did not look to Job when they were casting about for Hebrew Bible understandings of these questions.

         Rather than making a simple claim of “one dies for all,” why could they not have followed the author of Job, who instead of attempting to “solve” the question of suffering, decided to live in the ambiguity and the mystery of God. That writer finally did not blame human sin in order to protect the power and justice of God (Job’s friends), nor did he in the end doubt God’s justice to protect some human notion of integrity (Job). Job ended his tale willing to live with unanswered questions, deciding to work toward a relationship with God rather than seeking for solutions to the intellectual dilemmas of suffering. 

         Could it be on Good Friday, we are witnessing not some sort of divine transaction whereby Jesus “saves us from our sin,” but instead watching Jesus with complete openness and obedience dying for what he knows and trusts to be the truth about God, and thereby offers to us a model for our own living and dying? The death of Jesus is surely then “for us,” but not for a way to buy back the favor of God, or to “save us from our sin,” but to demonstrate the way of justice and righteousness for all of us to emulate. Jesus’ death is thus our model of dying and living the way of justice and love for all. That is why Good Friday is called “good,” for on this night we see finally what it means to move toward the beloved community, led by the gift of the dying Jesus.