Charles Spurgeon Commentary Matthew 8:17

"that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying: Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases." — Matthew 8:17 (ASV)

His deeds of healing proved His living sympathy with people. Becoming human, He considered human infirmities to be His own infirmities. He looked on people’s ills as if they were His own and did not delay a moment to remove them.

Moreover, the cure cost Him much in His physical body, which was loaded with the burden of human woe. Power, as it went out from Him, drained His physical strength; thus, while His strength went out to people, their weaknesses seemed to come back upon Himself. He bowed His back beneath our burden and thus raised it from those shoulders which had been crushed to the earth by it.

O Lord, let me never forget what a brother You are, and how surely Your help for us proves that You do truly share our griefs!

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses (Matthew 8:17).

It does not look like a fulfillment, except upon the wondrous principle of the power of substitution. Jesus takes the sickness, and therefore he removes it from us. He heals our infirmities because he took them upon Himself.

Is it so, do you think, that every miracle of healing that Christ performed took something out of him? We remember that when the woman with the issue of blood was cured by touching his garment, Jesus said, I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. Was it so that he suffered while he was thus relieving the suffering? It was the joy of his heart to bless mankind; but every blessing that he gave was very costly to him. I think that truth lies embedded in the Evangelist's declaration.

That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

That is a singular quotation, and it teaches us that Christ has power to heal because he himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. Am I not to understand, from the connection here, that Jesus Christ's power is to be seen in his sufferings, in his humiliation, and especially in his wounds, and in his death? He would have had no power to meet our maladies if he had not himself been encompassed by infirmities for our sake. O blessed Master, you do teach us where power lies; not in grandeur, but in self-sacrifice; not in personal glory, but in personal humiliation.