Saturday, March 7, 2020

John Murray on Isaiah 53:11 and the Knowledge of the Servant Justifying Believers



He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. (Isa 53:11)

Commenting on Isa 53:11 and how it is the Servant’s knowledge, not believers’ knowledge concerning the Servant, that, in Isa 53:11, is the means of the Servant justifying many, John Murray wrote:

V . . . There are numerous respects in which knowledge may be viewed as an essential part of the equipment of the righteous Servant in the expiatory accomplishment which is the burden of this passage. It could be the knowledge of his commission the knowledge of its implications as they bore upon the discharge of the precise action denoted by the verb “justify” which immediately follows. It could be the knowledge of the purpose to be served by his undertaking and of the successful issue of his accomplishment. Or the understanding by which he was able to carry out his commission could be reflected on. From whatever angle the task assigned to him and perfected by him as the Servant of the Lord may be viewed, knowledge is an indispensable ingredient of the obedience which his servanthood entailed. For obedience without knowledge would have none of the virtue which attaches itself to his unique and transcendent fulfilment of the Lord’s will. To be obedience of that quality it had to be obedience of intelligent will. If the justification in view is that which falls within the application of redemption, then knowledge would likewise be requisite to that continued activity on the part of the Servant. His own knowledge can therefore be conceived of as not only relevant to the Servant’s justifying action but also as indispensable to its discharge, whether the action is that of his once-for-all expiatory accomplishment or that of his continued work as the exalted Lord.

VI. We may not overlook the fact that in this prophecy elsewhere and more particularly in this same passage distinct emphasis is placed upon the knowledge which the Messiah possesses. In Isa. 11:2 our attention is drawn to the act that the spirit of knowledge rests upon him as well as the spirit of wisdom and understanding. In 50:4 are we not justified in applying to the Servant the words: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned that I may know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary”? In 52:13, when we are introduced to the Servant in his specifically expiatory undertaking, there is express mention of the Servant’s wisdom and understanding. “Behold my servant shall deal prudently”. To quote Edward J. Young, “In its primary signification, it merely means to act with the understanding or intelligence. Since, however, such intelligent action usually results in success, the verb comes also include the idea of effective action. Thus, we are to understand that the Servant will act so wisely that abundant fruition will crown His efforts” (Isaiah Fifty-Three, Grand Rapids, 1953, p. 10). Surely it is appropriate that knowledge should likewise be associated with his justifying action in such a way as to condition its exercise and insure its effectiveness. Furthermore, in 53:3 the expression rendered “acquainted with grief” (וידוע חלי) means literally that he is “known of grief” and reflects upon the extent to which he experienced grief; it accentuated the depth of his knowledge and grief. He was thoroughly conversant with it and grief was, as it were, at home with him. That there should be this reflection upon the Servant’s experience in this passage indicates one way in which his experiential knowledge bore upon his expiatory work or how his expiatory undertaking made necessary this experiential acquaintance with grief. Is not the fact that he was “known” of temptation and that he learned obedience by the thing which he suffered integral to the accomplishment of expiation and to the fellow feeling with our infirmities in virtue of which he continues to be a merciful and faithful high priest? And, finally, in the immediate context there is reflection upon psychological activities of the Servant as a result of the travail of his soul—“he shall see, he will be satisfied.”

Hence we may conclude that the emphasis in the passage as a whole upon the experiences of soul involved in the work of the Servant would make it signally appropriate that the state of experiential cognition involved in these experiences and resulting from them should be brought into effective operation in his justifying activity, indeed that it should be causally active in the justification of the many. And this we must reckon with whether the justifying action contemplated is the once-for-all expiation of sin or the continued activity in actual justification. The latter cannot be conceived of apart from the knowledge that belongs to him in the capacity in which he exercises this prerogative. Furthermore, we must make allowance for the pregnant meaning so frequently associated with knowledge in the usage of the Old Testament . . . This concept in such cases is not barely cognitive; it has its emotive and volitive ingredients. And there is no reason why we should not find that notion in this instance as expressing the cognitive, emotive, and volitive activity which lies back of and is brought to bear upon the Servant’s justifying action, the knowledge of loving interest and decision. It may be the counterpart in the Old Testament of Heb. 10:10, “By which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all”. When viewed in the light of all these considerations there does not appear to be any good reason for the summary dismissal of the subjective interpretation, the Servant’s own knowledge in all the reaches of its reference as it applies to the work of the Servant as the sin-bearer, as the trespass-offering, and as the high priest offering himself. (John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition and Notes, Volume 1 Chapters 1 to 8 [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1959], 379-81)