Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep He was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent, so He opens not His mouth. In His humiliation justice was denied Him. Who can describe His generation? For His life is taken away from the earth” (Acts 8:32-33).
The Ethiopian knew he was reading about an unjust death. Reading a little further, he could learn that this death served as an “offering for guilt” (Isaiah 53:10). Previously, that term—the guilt offering—had only been used about sacrificed animals. Yet Isaiah applied it to a human life, sacrificed to remove our sins. Before Philip helped him, did the Ethiopian realize that this death benefited him personally? “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” (Isaiah 53:6). Did “all” include the Ethiopian? He soon learned from Philip that the death applied to him, removing his sins and giving him righteousness and peace with God (Isaiah 53:5, 6, 10, 11, 12). That much could be gleaned from Isaiah 53. But the sacrificial death would do even more. As the Scriptures unfold, we find that this death fulfills God’s promise to establish the “new” and “everlasting covenant” (Isaiah 55:3; 61:8; Jeremiah 31:31; 32:40; Hebrews 8:8; 9:15). In creating the New Covenant, this death makes a great change that helps us to understand how the Bible applies to us today.