Isaiah 53:4-6

4Surely our griefs He Himself bore,

And our sorrows He carried;

Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten of God, and afflicted.

5But He was pierced through for our transgressions,

He was crushed for our iniquities;

The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,

And by His scourging we are healed.

6All of us like sheep have gone astray,

Each of us has turned to his own way;

But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all

To fall on Him.

Here begins in earnest the description of Christ's sacrfice. The first thing that we notice in these verses is that it is our sin that He died for. This passage makes it perfectly clear that He was without fault and that His death was not punishment for anything within Himself. Even so, when the onlookers saw Christ dying, many believed that it was well-deserved. After all, it is the crowd who killed Him. But He was not dying for His own sins, for He had none. Instead, He was pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

We must never forget this significant truth, for this is the core of our faith, the hope of our salvation. If Christ had been dying for His sins or as a result of some sin, it would mean that He was a false Messiah and not worthy to be followed and His atonement would have done nothing for us.

And our need for a Messiah is explained in verse 6, All of us like sheep have gone astray. Geoffrey W. Grogan, commentating on this writes: "Like sheep, our going astray is willful and purposeless." He also mentions that this image, that of the Good Shepherd is "probably a suggestion that this is an offense against love as well as holiness, for the Divine Shepherd is a tender loving image in the Bible."

And yet, though we all sinned against God's love as well as His holiness, it was an act of that same love in perfect accordance with God's holiness that secured for us our salvation.