The text I quoted, from Isa. 53, says where it (the "punishment") came from.

When I read those verses, I see "smitten of God." Sin might bring its own punishment, but not in the case of our sinless Substitute.

The text says that "we" considered him stricken by God, "but" he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

If sin brings its own punishment, and Christ became sin for us, why would that not apply to Him?

The following is from a sermon preached by George Fifield in 1897 at the General Conference. The whole sermon is beautiful. It's hard to know where to stop it. I'd be happy to present the rest. I decided to stop at a point where it looked like he was not directly discussing Isa. 53.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." The other translation reads: "Surely he bore our griefs, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through by our sins; he was crushed by our misdeeds. The chastisement of our peace lay upon him, and in his wounds there became healing for us. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." Another translation: "The Lord let all our misdeeds come upon him." Verse eight: "He was taken from prison and from judgment; and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people was he stricken." The other translation: "From distress and judgment was he taken; and in his generation who thought that he should be plucked out of the land of the living for the misdeeds of my people, punishment to them." Tenth verse: "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Translation: "It pleased the Lord to let him be crushed; he hath made him sick; when his soul hath given a trespass offering, he shall see seed and live long." The thought is clearly enough expressed in the Authorized Version, but since we are liable sometimes to receive the wrong thought, the translation helps us to see it more clearly.

The third verse states and vividly contrasts the true and the false idea of Christ's mission, and of his work, and of the atonement. One is what was, and the other is what we thought was; one is truth, the other is falsehood; one is Christianity, the other is paganism. We would do well to study every thought in that text. "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; he was pierced through by our misdeeds, and God permitted it because in his stripes there was healing for us. But we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. Whose griefs? Whose sorrows? - Ours. The grief and the sorrow that crushed the heart of Christ, and took him from among the living, so that he died of a broken heart, was no strange, new grief or sorrow. It was not something unlike what we have to bear; it was not God arbitrarily putting upon him our sins, and thus punishing our sins in him to deliver us. He took no position arbitrarily that we do not have to suffer. It was our griefs and our sorrows that pierced him through. He took our sinful natures, and our sinful flesh, at the point of weakness to which we had brought it, submitting himself to all the conditions of the race, and placing himself where we are to fight the conflict that we have to fight, the fight of faith. And he did this by the same power to which we have access. By the Spirit of God he cast out devils; through the eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot; and the Spirit of God rested upon him, and made him of quick understanding in the things of God. It was our sins that he took; our temptations.

It is my experience that in nine cases out of ten, when men consider those temptations in the fourth chapter of Matthew, which are typical of all his temptations, they fail to recognize their likeness to our own. They make him tempted in all points like as we are not, rather than like as we are. Picture to yourselves the wonderful experience that Christ had at his baptism, when he entered upon his mission, when the Spirit of God descended upon him with power, and the voice was heard, saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It would seem that after such an experience as that, it would surely be all smooth sailing. But out there in the wilderness, when the Saviour was in apparent weakness and hunger, the devil pressed him, saying, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Have we not had this experience? How many of us can look back to the time when we were baptized, when we heard God saying to us, This is my beloved son, this is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased; and we thought we would have smooth sailing, but soon found ourselves out in some wilderness of temptation, conscious of our weakness, and the devil came along and said, You are a pretty servant of God.

Again the devil took him up into a high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth, and said: "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." The circumstances were such as to make it plain that the design of the devil was to lead him to bow down and support a god of force, instead of making him the king of the world. He would have him be untrue to his mission. And so he would have us, by some false method, to think that we may make a great many more dollars, and to see how much of the world we can get. When he failed with Christ on these two points, he pressed him farther to get him to presume upon the mercy of God. Just so he would tempt us to presume upon the mercy of God.

He took our sorrows, our griefs, all the conflicts of our lives upon him, and was tempted in all points as we are. He took the injustices of our lives upon him too. It is a fact that you and I have to suffer for many things for which we are not at fault. All my suffering is not the result of my sin. Some of it is; but just as long as sin exists, injustice exists. As long as men sin, men will be sinned against. Just so you and I will have to suffer for the sins of others; and so God, to show that he knew and realized all that, let him that was perfectly innocent, take the injustice and sin of us all. O brethren and sisters, he did not bear some other grief or some other sorrow, but he bore our griefs and our sorrows. He was pierced through by them, and the Lord permitted it, because there was healing in it for us; not that he might appease God, or reconcile him unto us. Every passage of Scripture that refers to the reconciliation or atonement, or to the propitiation, always represents God as the one who makes this atonement, reconciliation, or propitiation, in Christ; we are always the ones atoned for, the ones to be reconciled. For us it was done, in order that, as Peter says, he might bring us to God.

The only way to do this is by destroying sin in us. He took our sins upon him in order that he might bring us to God. It was that he might break down the high middle wall of partition between human hearts and God, between Jew and Gentile, between God and man; that he might make us one with him, and one with one another, thus making the at-one-ment, or the atonement. In Christ Jesus we who were sometimes afar off were made nigh by the blood of Christ, so that we are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth into an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." This is as near to the Lord as we can get. This is the at-one-ment; this is why he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, that he might do that for us by breaking down all those things which separate hearts from hearts, both human and divine. Notwithstanding this, we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. That was what we thought about it. We said, God is doing all this; God is killing him, punishing him, to satisfy his wrath, in order to let us off. That is the pagan conception of sacrifice. The Christian idea of sacrifice is this. Let us note the contrast. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That is the Christian idea. Yes, sir. Indifference keeps, hatred keeps, selfishness keeps, or gives, if at all, but grudgingly, counting the cost, and figuring on some larger return at some future time. But love, and love only, sacrifices, gives freely, gives itself, gives without counting the cost; gives because it is love. That is sacrifice, whether it is the sacrifice of bulls and goats, or of him who is the Lamb of God. It is the sacrifice that is revealed throughout the entire Bible. But the pagan idea of sacrifice is just the opposite. It is that some god is always offended, always angry, and his wrath must be propitiated in some way.

If it is an ordinary case, the blood of bulls and goats will suffice; but if it is an extraordinary case, the blood of some innocent virgin or child must flow; and when the god smells the blood, his wrath is appeased. We talk of pagan immortality, pagan Sunday, pagan idolatry, etc.; but it seems to me that the lowest thought is that men have brought this pagan idea of sacrifice right into the Bible, and applied it to the sacrifice of the cross. So the Methodist Discipline uses these words: "Christ died to reconcile the Father unto us;" that is, to propitiate God so that we could be forgiven - paganism straight out. Why, brethren and sisters, it is the application of the pagan conception of sacrifice to the sacrifice upon the cross, so that that wonderful manifestation of divine love, which God intended should cause all men, all beings in the universe, to wonder and adore, has been turned around and made a manifestation of wrath to be propitiated in order to save man. I am glad that we are losing sight of this manner of viewing the subject, where we do not say that Christ died to reconcile the Father unto us. Brethren, there is sometimes such a thing as to give up the expression of a thing, and think we have thus gotten rid of it, when a good deal of it still lingers and clouds our consciousness of the love of God, and the beauty of his truth, so that we cannot present a clear gospel to hungry souls that are waiting to know about God. I pray that God will let the sunlight of his truth shine into my heart, and into all of our hearts. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows that he might bring us to him; but we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. That is what we thought; that is what we esteemed; not what was, but what we thought was. Now, every text in the Bible that speaks of reconciliation, makes God the one who makes the reconciliation, - God in Christ. Every text in the Bible that speaks of the atonement, when we get it right, makes God the one who makes the atonement in Christ; not Christ simply, but God in Christ; just as God in Christ creates, redeems, reconciles, he makes the atonement. And every time the atonement, reconciliation, or propitiation are mentioned, it leads us right back to the character of God.

This is off the topic for this thread. I'll read it, but I won't comment on it here. Is there a thread where you're currently discussing this?

"The Meaning of His death" would be a good place. I bumped it for you.

I believe all those quotes, Arnold.

Ellen White references "the death of the cross" 101 times in the Spirit of Prophecy. Not ONCE does she connect it in any of those 101 times to the 2nd Death.

The Bible is clear as to the definition of the 2nd Death...it doesn't fit the death Jesus died at all.

Sure she does. Look at DA 764, where it talks about the destruction of the wicked. Bear in mind that the purpose of the chapter "It Is finished" is to discuss what was accomplished by Christ's death. DA 764 discusses how Christ's death made clear how the wicked are destroyed.

Tammy, I'm curious as to how you would answer this as well.



It seems to me that the logic of Scripture (EGW too) is that Christ experienced death (the real thing, not what He called "sleep") so that we would not have to.

Tom,

No, I have to disagree. Christ experienced death as we all will have to unless we live to the end, that of the grave. Now the eternal death is the one from the lake of fire which those who reject Christ's gift of eternal life will experience as the 'second death'. Thats what eternal death is, and Christ did not have to experience it in order to save us from the wages of sin, only the death of the grave or those that 'sleep' which he did go through at the tomb.

Then he ascended after the resurection to go through the process in the heavenly tabernacle to put that sin on the true perpetrator, which is Satan, who then will meet the eternal death of the lake of fire. I am not a theologian so its rough, but thats my understanding in a nutshell, and I have not seen anything said or posted that leads me to change that.....

Rick