What does it mean that "by His stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5)?

from the old testament

• Isaiah 52:13–53:12 is a prophetic passage about a Servant who would heal God’s people. It is written in the past tense, as if the future event had already happened. The King James Version translates the end of Isaiah 53:5 as, “by his stripes we are healed.” The word translated as “stripes” is a rare Hebrew word, which likely means “wounds” (e.g., Isaiah 1:6). However, because it clearly refers to Jesus’ death, the KJV interpreted the wounds as “stripes” (see the New Testament for the explanation of the type of Jesus’ wounds). Most other translations use “wounds,” though the NASB also used the more interpretive “scourging,” also referring to Jesus’ specific type of wound.
• Regardless of the translation, the point is that the Servant would receive life-threatening wounds and do so in place of His sheep. This passage uses a play-on-words metaphor, describing the Servant’s real wounds as healing the sheep's spiritual wounds. We know those wounds are spiritual because the context of Isaiah 53:5 is the Servant being “pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5a) and “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6b).
• This is substitutionary atonement language whereby a sacrifice is killed to satisfy God’s wrath against a sinner. It mimics the idea found in Israel’s sacrificial system, where an animal was killed for a person (Leviticus 17:11), except that it expanded it: a human life being sacrificed for the sin of other humans was unique.
• Israel knew that their sacrifices didn’t permanently give them peace with God, and yet this Servant sacrifice would (Isaiah 53:5b). The animal sacrifices didn’t make one righteous, yet the Servant’s sacrifice would (Isaiah 53:11b). In short, Isaiah 53 was explaining how God was planning to deal permanently with His people’s sin.
• Understanding the sacrificial background is important for guarding against the false teaching that salvation brings physical healing. It does not. It brings something more important: eternal life.

from the new testament

• Peter connected the Isaiah 53 passage with Jesus, quoting from it saying, “[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). Notice that the healing here is also spiritual and connected with Jesus’ “death on a tree” (a reference to the cross).
• Before His death, Jesus was scourged (Matthew 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1). It was intended to inflict maximum pain on a prisoner, with each hit digging into and tearing the flesh. When the KJV translated Isaiah 53:5 as “stripes,” it referred to the specific type of wound Jesus received before His death.
• Isaiah 53 was not saying that the whip brought spiritual healing by itself, but that the wounds graphically represented Jesus’ bloody death. Paul would later remark that “God put forward [Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood” (Romans 3:25a), which echoed Isaiah’s language that “it was the will of the LORD to crush him” (Isaiah 53:10a). A propitiation is a blood sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath. God was pleased to crush Jesus because doing so brought salvation to the world.
• Jesus had to die to pay sin’s penalty, because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Sin’s penalty is death, so, despite being perfect (Hebrews 4:15), God counted Jesus as if He had sinned (2 Corinthians 5:21). Then, on the cross, He poured out the wrath sinners deserved on Jesus. Paul would later note that since “we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:9). Through Jesus’ bloody death, those who repent and believe in Him (e.g., Romans 10:9–10), have been saved by His death and are now saved from God’s future wrath against sinful humanity.

implications for today

Isaiah wrote this 700–750 years before Jesus came. Yet, it was written in the past tense, a proclamation to be made in the future about God’s sacrifice for humanity’s sin. When Jesus came, though eternally the Son of God (John 1:1), He added on human nature (Philippians 2:6–7) to become exactly like us, but without sin (Hebrews 4:15). God will not allow sin to remain unpunished, which is why everyone dies now (Romans 6:23) and why the unrepentant will die for eternity (Revelation 20:15). Jesus lived a perfect life and didn’t have to die. Yet, God sent Him for that purpose.

Death is painful, and Jesus was under enormous physical and emotional stress. We should not make light of that. But when Isaiah prophesied healing by His stripes, he was referring poetically to what Jesus’ death accomplished. Jesus died because His Father placed our sin on Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). As Jesus died, God poured out His wrath against His Son, punishing Him for sins He didn’t commit. At that moment, Jesus experienced something He had never known: God’s fierce anger (Matthew 27:46).

Yet, though it meant crushing His only Son, it pleased God (Isaiah 53:10). Why? Because God loved humanity so much (John 3:16), He willingly sacrificed His own Son to provide a way of escape from His wrath.

In death, Jesus bore God’s wrath aimed at sinners, but it’s only credited to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus. If you haven’t yet, please consider your future now. God has delayed judgment (2 Peter 3:9), but once you die, your eternity is sealed. Since Jesus’ death is only applied to those who repented while alive, there is a day when God will pour His full wrath out on the rest of humanity. Please turn today!