(2) Her iniquity is pardoned (Isa 40.2).

At the heart of Isaiah’s salvation song is Isaiah 53, where Israel’s Husband appears in a new role — as the Suffering Servant who sums up Israel in himself and takes her sins upon himself.  Her chastisement will fall upon him, and by his stripes she will be healed (Isaiah 53.5). This sounds simple, but it isn’t. In one of the most misunderstood passages of the New Testament, Paul spells out how God saves his people.

In Romans 7.1-4, Paul explains that a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.  But if he dies, she is free to marry another. She is guilty of adultery if she is joined to another while her husband lives, but not after he dies. Unfortunately for Israel, she is guilty of adultery, for she repeatedly joined herself to other gods (Jer 3.13-14, 20-21).

So Israel’s predicament is a gordian knot. She needs out of her marriage covenant, not because it is a raw deal, but because she is incapable of being a faithful wife, and she just keeps racking up guilt (Rom 7.14). But she cannot get out of her marriage covenant except by the death of her husband, and her husband is God. And even if she could be released from her marriage covenant, she is still under a death sentence for her adultery.

Paul gives us the solution to the gordian knot: “My brethren, you have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another — to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.” (Rom 7.4.) Many Christians misread Paul to say that the law has died. It is not the law that has died, but the first husband. Who was the first husband? Christ preincarnate (Jer 2.2; 31.32; Heb 12.25-26). The first husband and the Suffering Servant are one and the same. Christ enters into his wife’s humanity, takes her guilt upon himself, and dies under her sentence (Isa 53.4-6;Eph 5.25). In a single heroic act he pays her sin debt and frees her from the marriage oath which condemns her (Rom 7.4). Why, so she can be unmarried? No, so she can be married to a new husband (Rom 7.4; Eph 5.31-32). Who is this new husband? Christ incarnate, resurrected, and ascended — the new glorified man (Rom 7.4).

But doesn’t this put Israel back where she started? Not at all. For now she has a new spirit and a new heart — she has her Husband’s Spirit in her heart and his words in her mouth, so that she might by his Spirit fulfill the law of her new marriage (Isa 59.21; Jer 31.33; Eze 11.19; 36.26; Rom 8.3-4). That is how Christ saves us.  That is what it means to be saved. Never has there been such a Husband and Savior. And because of him, never has there been such a Bride (Eph 3.10; Rev 21.9-27).