Marring Of A Servant (part 3 of 4)

The point has often been made that it was the uniqueness of the claims of those labeled as “Christians,” which was that Jesus---the One Who had been crucified at their hands---was the resurrected and presently living Lord of all things, that caused Rome, which was itself a culture and society open to any and all gods as long as they were content to stand alongside the divine Caesar, to persecute those who believed in Jesus and confessed Him as King---to “gird herself to fight Him (Jesus) to the death.” 

The world’s powers will rarely brook any challenge.  In that world, it would simply not do to have the absolute power and god-ness of the King of Rome to have his position that demanded absolute allegiance challenged by a man who had been executed as a state criminal by being put to death on a Roman cross.  The Caesar, and Rome itself, could not have its honor challenged, nor would it share its honor, with a purported King and His purported kingdom that had already been publicly shamed to the highest degree.

Considering this from the post-Christ perspective of the suffering servant, it is noted that Isaiah goes on to write that “Kings will be shocked by his exaltation” (52:15c).  This naturally follows from his statement that the servant “will succeed!  He will be elevated, lifted high, and greatly exalted” (52:13).  Owing to the shaming that Jesus had experienced, exaltation, success, and elevation would not naturally spring to mind. 

When one consider Jesus’ exaltation, it is quite natural think of Paul’s statement in Romans that Jesus “was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power… by the Resurrection from the dead” (1:4)  As if it was not startling and shocking enough that a man was claimed to have been raised from the dead, with countless lives completely transformed and re-oriented around what were referred to as “many convincing proofs,” as Jesus was recorded to have “presented Himself alive” (Acts 1:3), but as it relates to the shock of kings, the declaration of Jesus as “the Son-of-God-in-power,” which flew in the face of the Caesar’s claim to be and recognition as the son of god, this exaltation and declaration was earth-shattering.  With this talk of kings being shocked at the servant’s exaltation, Isaiah might very well be alluding to a popular Psalm, in which the Lord “strikes down kings in the day He unleashes His anger” (Psalm 110:5b). 

Jesus’ exaltation as King of kings could quite easily be understood as a striking down of kings.  This would not necessarily mean that they were struck down to death, but that they were struck down from their self-determined loftiness, divine self-understanding, and worshipful self-centeredness.  Not only would such self-determinations have been true of the Caesar in the days of Jesus, but it would have been true of those that were understood to the world’s rulers in Isaiah’s day as well, as powerful kings afforded themselves god-like status, expecting and receiving unquestioned allegiance and worship from those that they ruled. 

In consideration of the unleashing of the Lord’s anger, as spoken of in the previously quoted Psalm, one could  take a look into the effect of Jesus’ death and Resurrection and determine that the enemy against whom the Lord’s anger was truly released, especially when viewed in the light of the great Resurrection passage of the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, was death.  Because death was the chosen weapon of kings and rulers, and because they held the power of death over the heads of their subjects, would they not be summarily stunned (shocked!) at the defeat of death that was reported to have been achieved at the exaltation of the servant that seemed to have been defeated by death itself? 

Though those that followed Jesus would certainly succumb to death, and though when thrown to the lions or burned, they certainly did not appear to have defeated death, the way in which so many embraced death or did not fear death as they looked forward to the world of the new creation and the resurrection of the righteous dead, served as an indication that death held no power over them.  They were willing to be marred as was the servant.