Christ as the “Man of Sorrows” or “God’s Suffering Servant” of the cross was obviously alluded here in Isaiah 53. It was written about 700 hundred years before the cross of Calvary and the sufferer was never named or identified. Of course, we now know it was prophetic of Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord.

“³He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. ⁴ Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. ⁵ 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 (Heb. rapa, cured).

 ⁶ 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 (the sins) of us all.

 ⁷ He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. ⁸ 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. ⁹ And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:3-9 (KJV)

These truths were only dimly seen in the O.T, just as a “shadow” reveals little detail. The deep truths of “the cross,” those which Paul, “the Apostle to the Gentiles” (Rom 11:13), says are “the power of God unto salvation” were never clearly revealed in the Old Testament. Yet, they are clearly revealed as seen by the hindsight of the Pauline truths found in his thirteen epistles of Romans to Philemon.

Paul tells us the “things” of the Old Covenant are in fact ‘shadows,’ used to barely reveal the truths of Jesus’ sufferings and His cross-death for our sins in order to satisfy the righteous demand of our Holy God. In Bible study, these shadows are what are called “types,” a study device referred to as typology. In studying the types of the Old Testament, knowing Paul’s epistles first, we learn the essential meaning and importance of what the shadows signify with great clarity.

“Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: ¹⁷Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body (reality) is of Christ.” (Col. 2:16-17)

Paul sometimes refers to these types as “allegory,” which means “a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.” Most Bible students know well the story of Abraham and Sarah ultimately bearing Isaac as the child of promise, but only after erring; by Sarah suggesting that Abraham sire a son by Hagar, her handmaiden.

Paul here uses these actual happenings in the lives of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar to reveal that Israel later, as we are today, may be saved by faith in the Son of the “freewoman (Sarah),” Jesus Christ. Believers are not in the line of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the slave woman (bondwoman). Paul uses the life and offspring Abraham and Sarah vs Abraham and Hagar in allegory to teach us “promise” of “the Spirit” and eternal inheritance by “grace through faith” versus “the law.”

Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael

God’s Promise to Abram:

And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him. Genesis 12:7 (KJV)

¹⁵ For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. ¹⁶And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. Genesis 13:15-16 (KJV)

Sarah’s problem, and the result of her bright idea to “fix-it” for God:

¹ Now Sarai (Heb. dominative) Abram's wife bare him no children: and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. ² And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. ³ And Sarai Abram's wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. (Genesis 16:1-3 (KJV)

¹¹ And the angel of the LORD said unto her (Hagar), Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael (means, God hears); because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. ¹² And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren… ¹⁵ And Hagar bare Abram a son: and Abram called his son's name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. (Genesis 16:11-15 (KJV)

God Repeats His Promise

¹⁵ And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt NOT call her name Sarai (Heb, dominative), but Sarah shall her name be. ¹⁶ And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. ¹⁷ Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?

¹⁸ And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee! ¹⁹ And  God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac (meaning, laughter): and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

²⁰ And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. ²¹ But my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. ²² And he left off talking with him, and God went up from Abraham. (Genesis 17:15-22 (KJV)

the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did unto Sarah as he had spoken. ² For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. ³ And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac. (Genesis 21:1-3)

Paul Interprets this Story Here in Galatians, his epistle that explains the Conflict between Law and Grace

²³But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman (Sarah) was by promise. ²⁴ Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants (1. Law, 2. Grace); the one from the mount Sinai (the place of “the Law”), which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar (Hagar). ²⁵ For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to (relates to) Jerusalem which now is (still, in Paul’s time), and is in bondage with her children. (Galatians 4:23-25)

²⁸ Now we, brethren (we of “the body of Christ”), as Isaac was, are the children of ‘promise’ (the “promise of the Spirit through faith,” Gal 3:24) ²⁹ But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.

³⁰Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. ³¹ So then, brethren, we (of “the body of Christ”) are not children of the bondwoman, but of the FREE. (Galatians 4:28-31 (KJV)

I trust that the parenthesis I’ve added will help reveal the meaning of these verses. Paul here has used typology in the form of allegory to reveal these and other deep truths that he was first to receive, as were revealed to Him by Jesus from heaven (cf. Gal 1:12), which Peter later learned from Paul (cf. 2Pet. 3:15-16).

It is in these verses that we plainly see the foremost place of God’s “grace” operating by the believers “faith” in obtaining “the promise” of the words of God that brought us today the freedom of the Grace of living by faith in “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2a).

Thus, Paul also wrote; “… for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” (Romans 6:14b)