There still seems to be some debate about whether or not covenant lawsuit is the proper category into which we should place passages where the LORD contends with His people Israel and Judah. Perhaps part of the problem is that we are accustomed to think about justification in terms of the judicial system of Graeco-Roman courts. Surely, the proper setting for such ecclesiastical or cosmic events is the courts of the Church (or the Heavenly Court, or Zion’s Mount, before the Judge of all the Earth – Chapter 2:1-5, 3:14, 11:3-4, 16:5, 24:21-23) – it is in the Assembly of the LORD, before His gathered flock, where the LORD God presides as Judge.

I’ve been giving some sustained thought over the last few months to the texts and themes of the Prophecy of Isaiah, a scroll also well-beloved and regarded as the Bible’s “Fifth Gospel”.

As the threads have untangled slowly, and thematic blurring has turned to order, it has begun to strike me inceasingly that the Book is all about the “allegedly” New Testament Pauline doctrine of “Forensic Justification through Faith by Grace in Christ – Alone”.

I realize that that may seem a bit of a push to some: some of my readers might think it flies in the face of the progressiveness of revelation. Doubtless, in the Old Testament, such an error is always a risk. It would be proper therefore to concede, at least in principle, that forensic justification might not be just so transparent as we might anticipate in Romans or Galatians. Yet, as we progress, I think you’ll be surprised, that the 7th Century prophet has a little more to say on this truth (savingly vital to God’s whole church in every age) than you might think at first. At least, let me urge you, don’t write the possibility off before we start!

The Courtroom Drama – The Nature of Justification

There still seems to be some debate about whether or not covenant lawsuit is the proper category into which we should place passages where the LORD contends with His people Israel and Judah. Perhaps part of the problem is that we are accustomed to think about justification in terms of the judicial system of Graeco-Roman courts. Surely, the proper setting for such ecclesiastical or cosmic events is the courts of the Church (or the Heavenly Court, or Zion’s Mount, before the Judge of all the Earth – Chapter 2:1-5, 3:14, 11:3-4, 16:5, 24:21-23) – it is in the Assembly of the LORD, before His gathered flock, where the LORD God presides as Judge.

The book begins with the congregation summoned before its Covenant Head – there is no doubt in my mind that witnesses are called, evidence is presented, charges are filed and rebel-lawbreakers indicted:

Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: “Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged – Isaiah 1:2-4

In addition, we should noticed that that language of legal declaration seems prevalent enough throughout the course of Isaiah’s work. In 5:22-23 it seems that the legal profession are all to fond of getting drunk at late lunches, with the passing of brown paper bags in order to defraud cases and deprive the righteous of their day in court – in this case the ‘declaratory’ verb is used with the sense not of making but causing a righteous verdict to be pronounced (the hiphil factitive use):

Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right! – Isaiah 5:23

It is this same declarative sense which crops up again in 50:8-9 (I will mention this again a little further down the blog) – the expression ‘vindicator’ is a hiphil masculine participle of the verb ‘to be righteous’ employed as a noun to mean ‘the one who declares me righteous’: given an adversarial context, and the other church-court verb, added to a second verb ‘declare guilty’ which is more properly ‘condemn’ – it seems hard not to believe that it was this Old Testament text that contributed in no small part to Paul’s own exposition of non-condemnation in light of forensic justification. If this assumption is correct, or approximates to the mark, the thought of the Spirit in Paul appears to be this: if God vindicates the flint-faced, obedient, servant, then all united to Him through faith, are most certainly justified!

He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord GOD helps me; who will declare me guilty? Behold, all of them will wear out like a garment; the moth will eat them up – Isaiah 50:8-9

Like the would-be accusers of the John 8 woman caught in adultery, when asked to produce evidence, faced with the finger of Christ, they all melt away into the crowd – there is no inherent sin to pin on God’s beared-plucked servant Christ! He suffers this mistreatment for imputed human guilt!

The Legal Breach – The Necessity of Justification

If the book opens with the indictment of the people of God by Yahweh, four particular charges permeate the book, polluting and corrupting their corporate and personal life – idolatry, immorality, iniquity (merely symptoms of their core condition of pride-generated covenant infidelity – chapters 1-3). There is a frank admission that they have fallen short of the Holy One’s righteous standards, are polluted like a leper (or bruised and battered, head to foot, like one that has been justly chastened), and, in their present state are less like should-be Zion and more akin to overthrown Sodom and Gomorrah – daring scarlet and crimson sinners.

Their hopeless situation is pictured in various ways throughout the book – God’s chosen servant Israel is utterly unfit for purpose of living before nations and radiating light. If this can be traced back to a lack of knowledge of the truth, the root cause is pride of heart, which has become stubborn and hardened. The nation is depicted as spiritually disabled – a blind, deaf, lame servant who is in need of saving help.

Climactic confession pours forth in the well-known Gospel text – how many down the ages have, by the power of the Spirit, been convict by its truth:

You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved? We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities. But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O LORD, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people – Isaiah 64:5-9

If a leper is not in view, the point seems to be – as the prophet recognized from the start – when a sinner comes before God, He is spiritually, morally and ceremonially unfit to stand in His superlatively holy presence:

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” – Isaiah 6:5

The Righteous Robe – The Nature of Justifying Righteousness

There can be little doubt at all the righteousness of God’s people, the reconstituted Israel, both spiritual seed of Messiah and drawn from native Jews and Gentiles, does not come from themselves but is alien and divine. In addition to the texts which speak of Israel’s undoubted, well-attested and self-confessed, historic, natural, sinful, moral plight, there are a few specific instances in which the prophet proves this fact. At the end of the 46th chapter the prophet draws the explicit contrast:

“Listen to me, you stubborn of heart, you who are far from righteousness: I bring near my righteousness; it is not far off, and my salvation will not delay; I will put salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory” – Isaiah 46:12-13

What follows is a rather remarkable passage, in which explicit instruction is given to seek a righteousness outside self which is located in the LORD: this divine righteousness, once again, is made synonymous with salvation, and clearly equated with redemption in a second, slave-freeing, exodus:

“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed. Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool, but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.” Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor, when he sets himself to destroy? And where is the wrath of the oppressor? He who is bowed down shall speedily be released; he shall not die and go down to the pit, neither shall his bread be lacking. I am the LORD your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar– the LORD of hosts is his name” – Isaiah 51:1-15

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