Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, Part 11.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

In our study of the atonement, we've been looking at some of the principal motifs in the New Testament that characterize

the atonement wrought by Christ.

The first of these, you remember, was sacrifice.

The second is Isaiah's righteous servant of the Lord.

And today we want to bring to a close that section before we turn to the third motif.

We've seen that in Isaiah chapter 52, 12, to the end of chapter 53, there appears this enigmatic

figure called the servant of the Lord who suffers innocently and unjustly

the punishment for Israel's sins in the place of the people. Now when we turn to the New Testament,

we find that Christian New Testament authors

consistently interpret Jesus to be this sin-bearing servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53.

For example, 1. Peter chapter 2 and verse 24 says,

He 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, echoing clearly the language of Isaiah 53.

In light of Isaiah 53, texts like 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 3,

which say that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures

become pregnant with meaning.

Taken in isolation, a text like this, Christ died for our sins, is ambiguous in what it means

to die for sins.

But read in the light of Isaiah 53, it takes on deep meaning. It says that Christ,

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