The Study

Isaiah 53

He Knows What It Is Like

No One Understands

Almost everyone thinks this sentence at some point, usually alone and late at night: "No one knows what it is like. No one understands." It can come with parents divorcing, a death in the family, anxiety or depression, a breakup, being the only member at school, or a sin nobody else knows about.

You do not have to name yours to anyone. Just ponder it: when have you thought that sentence, and what do you do when you feel it?

Been There Is Not Enough

You would expect people who have been through the same hard thing to understand best. A 2015 study found the opposite: people who had lived through a hardship, like bullying or unemployment, judged someone who couldn't get through that same thing more harshly than people who had never faced it (Ruttan, McDonnell & Nordgren, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2015). Once we survive something, we remember it as more doable than it was: "I got through it, why can't you?" It is why "when I was your age…" so often makes a hard day worse.

So "been there" is not enough. But one Person has been there for all of it, every item on that list, and it made Him more merciful, not less. Isaiah saw Him seven hundred years before He came.

A Man of Sorrows

The Messiah would not look like one.

"He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2)

President Joseph Fielding Smith taught that nothing about the Savior's appearance would have made people single Him out; He looked like an ordinary mortal man (Doctrines of Salvation, 1:23). The voices the world listens to have reach, a look, a following. The one voice most worth hearing had none of that.

Then comes the heart of the chapter, a doctrinal mastery passage worth marking:

"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:3–5)

In Isaiah's Hebrew, griefs is literally sicknesses and sorrows is pains. Matthew quotes this very verse when Jesus heals the sick: "Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Matthew 8:17). Isaiah 53 is about sin, and about everything that hurts.

Look at the verbs: despised, rejected, stricken, smitten, afflicted, wounded, bruised. All of it was done to Him. Now count whose sake it was for. Our, we, us: ten times in three verses.

It Was for Me

Read Isaiah 53 alongside Alma 7:11–13, listing what the Savior experienced and what He can do for you. Alma says He took our pains and infirmities "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities" (Alma 7:12). Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explained the word: "To succor means 'to run to'" ("He Hath Filled the Hungry with Good Things," October 1997). He does not wait for you to get to Him. He runs.

Now reread Isaiah 53:3–6 quietly, putting your own name, or I and my, in place of our, we, and us. "He was wounded for my transgressions" may feel strange. Let it.

Elder David A. Bednar used the very sentence this lesson began with: "In a moment of weakness we may cry out, 'No one knows what it is like. No one understands.' But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He has felt and borne our individual burdens" ("Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease," April 2014). Because of that sacrifice, he taught, the Savior has perfect empathy and can succor, heal, and strengthen us beyond our own power.

So cross out "No one." He knows what it is like. He understands.

And a hard season is not a sign He has left. Sister Michelle D. Craig: "Troubles are part of the plan and do not mean you’ve been abandoned; they are part of what it means to be His" ("Wholehearted," October 2022). The short video He Will Give You Help is worth a quiet watch.

Questions Worth Sitting With, and One Thing to Try

  • Why would the Savior come without any of the things that make people listen?
  • What would change if you believed a hard week meant you belong to Him, not that He left?
  • Why is Jesus Christ the best person to turn to when you experience sorrow, grief, or pain?
  • When have you, or someone you know, felt His comfort in it?

He carried it all once, completely. You can bring it to Him every day, not only in a crisis. This week, let the first voice you turn to in the morning be His, and before you sleep, name one specific grief or pain to Him in prayer. Not "bless me." One real thing, by name, handed over. A voice becomes familiar through repetition; if you only hand Him something on the worst night of your life, His voice will feel like a stranger's. You do not have to feel understood first. Handing it over is the faith.

Carry the key phrase with you: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4).

From the Church’s manuals

This lesson is one teacher’s preparation. The Church’s manual is the place to start, and it has more than any one class can cover.

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