ESOCS Devotional 25 December 2025 – Our Sins Upon Another
MEMORY VERSE: “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 of us all.” Isaiah 53:6 KJV
TEXT: ISAIAH 53:1-12
Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
9 And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 [r]He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
Read Other ESOCS Devotional Here
The Bible here gives us one of the most foundational doctrines of our Christian Faith: that ALL of us have sinned. This picture of mankind being like sheep is a common one in scripture. David famously said in Psalm 23:1, “The LORD is my shepherd …” Psalms repeatedly refers to God leading His people like sheep. Some of those are very comforting pictures; that we are like sheep and God is like a Shepherd to us. But the picture of us as sheep here in Isaiah 53:6 is not flattering. It says here that we are like sheep in that we have all gone astray. Getting lost and going astray is what sheep tend to do. They are infamous for not being the smartest animals, and for continually going “off course”.
Isaiah likens what we have done to what sheep do when they have no shepherd to lead and care for them. They go astray. They head in directions that turn out to be dangerous and harmful to them. Just like these straying sheep, we – the whole human race in Adam – have gone our own way and have turned away from the path of life and joy that God has told us to take.
Secondly, despite the wrong we have done, the Lord has taken away these iniquities that we have brought to pass by our wandering away from Him, and He has caused those iniquities and sins to fall upon ANOTHER PERSON instead. Even though we are in the wrong, and we deserve to pay for our own sins, God has mercifully designed a way by which our sins are paid for by ANOTHER.
God gave His own Son to bear our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24-25). Jesus, God’s own Son, took upon Himself our human nature that He might live the life of obedience we failed to live, and die the death for sin that we deserved to die. His life and death substituted for us, and by the payment of His life on the cross, our sins are removed, as we put our faith in Him (Romans 3:25-26). What a glorious Savior is our Lord Jesus Christ!
May we, like sheep, know the voice of our Shepherd and choose to stay close to Him all the days of our lives, not going astray, tempted by the empty, glittering, hollow trinkets of the world, but walk in His way, to His glory and our eternal benefit.
CHALLENGES
- How does the phrase, “all of us like sheep have gone astray,” describe your own life of sin and folly?
PRAYER POINT
- Thank you father for your saving grace, help us to remain in your fold till Jesus comes.
FURTHER READING: Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 2:1-6; Luke 2:1-21
ESOCS Devotional 25 December 2025
