May 1, 2025 - Isaiah 50:8 - "The Son Justified by the Father"

Isaiah 50:8

"He is near that justifieth me who will contend with me? Let us stand together: who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me."

This verse, spoken prophetically by the Servant of the LORD, finds its ultimate fulfillment in the LORDJesus Christ. It reveals the unshakable confidence of Christ in His Father who justified Him—not by pardoning sin in Him, for He knew no sin, but by declaring His perfect righteousness as the Representative of His people. As the spotless Surety, Christ stood in the place of sinners, and having fulfilled all righteousness, He was vindicated by God in His resurrection. No adversary could lay a charge against Him; therefore, none can lay a charge against those He redeemed. His triumph is the triumph of sovereign grace, for in Him God's elect are justified with the same certainty.

When wicked and evil men condemned Christ to die, no one stood with Him. Even His disciples were scattered from Him. Yet with confidence He could say, “He is near that justifieth me.” The word "justifieth" here is not used in the common Scriptural sense of a sinner being justified before God, but in the proper judicial sense—that He would be declared righteous, He who knew no sin, though tempted in all things. “For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The Father would vindicate His character and show Him to be perfect before His law and justice.

All the testimonies of God the Father were in His favor: by the voice which spoke from Heaven at His baptism; by the miracles which He performed, showing that He was commissioned and approved by God; by the fact that even Pilate was constrained to declare Him innocent; and by the wonders that attended His crucifixion, demonstrating that He was the righteous Man—even in the view of the Roman centurion, who "glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man" (Luke 23:47). Ultimately, He was raised from the dead, taken up into Heaven, and placed at the right hand of the Father—thus showing that His whole work was approved by God the Father and furnishing the most ample vindication of His character from all the accusations of His foes.

In all His suffering as the Substitute for His people, the LORD Jesus did not open His mouth to defend Himself; rather, He willingly and patiently submitted Himself to God the Father, Who would justify Him through His sacrificial death for His own: “Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). Peter declared that although they had taken Him and crucified Him with wicked hands, it was all according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God: “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). Therefore, even as the LORD Jesus suffered and cried, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” His confidence remained: “He is near that justifieth me!”

It is the Father Who sent Him into the world. It was the Father Who purposed to save a great number of sinners by a just payment for their sins. It was the Father Who raised Christ from the dead, having done all that was required for Him to be just and to justify — "To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Romans 3:26). By His death, the Son satisfied every just demand of the Father. He laid down His life willingly and sacrificially in the place of those sinners the Father gave Him to save. He came in the flesh as God’s Substitute, to completely satisfy HIS law and justice on their behalf.

There is no other way that God has ever granted pardon to sinners and declared them righteous except through the death and imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus at the cross. God must grant us repentance from thinking it can be in any other way. If Christ was justified as the Effectual Substitute—having finished the work and being raised from the dead—then it must be that His people were justified in Him at the same time, and therefore can, by the Spirit of God, say: “He is near that justifieth me” (Isaiah 50:8).