What insight do Matthew 18:10-14 and 1 Peter 2:18-25 give you into Isaiah's statement "by his wounds we are healed"?
Matthew 18:14 (NLT) says, “it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.” Jesus’s wounds on the cross caused our wounds to be healed because of the Father’s desire to save us. The passage in 1 Peter states again that Jesus, who did not sin and did not deserve to be punished, carried our sins to the cross and bore our punishment in order to heal us through his wounds.
What insight do those passages give you into Isaiah's statement "we all like sheep have gone astray"?
The passage in Matthew 18 talks about one sheep out of a flock of 100 that wanders away, and the diligence of the shepherd to track down that one sheep and bring it back to the flock. In our humanness and sinfulness, we often go astray just as this one sheep. Through God’s sacrifice of His Son on the cross, he has pursued and rescued us just as the shepherd did for the one straying sheep in this passage. 1 Peter 2:25 (NLT) says, “Once you were like sheep who wandered away.” Again, in our sinfulness, we as humans sometimes stray, and it is through Christ’s sacrifice that we are able to turn back to our Shepherd.
In John 20:19-29, Jesus showed the disciples his hands and his side so they would believe that He was the risen Messiah, crucified and pierced, who was now alive and walking among them.
In light of Isaiah 53:5, the marks on his hands and side are significant because they represent how he was pierced for our sins and how these marks, His wounds, healed us and saved us from death.
