Isaiah 53:4-5 vs. “How Deep the Father's Love for Us”

Stuart Townend · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageIsaiah 53:4-5 chapter ↗ 2 more proofs on Isaiah 53 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumMy First Love · 1996

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting: no verse reference inside the song, no scripture framing, nothing presented as a quotation
Keeps the substitution the passage states, that the wounds are for someone else's sin and the benefit falls to the people who did not bear them
The second stanza puts the singer among the mockers, which is close to what Isaiah's speakers do in verse 4 when they confess they had misread the suffering as deserved
Treats the cross as something the Father gave rather than something that merely happened, which is the direction the chapter goes when it calls the crushing the LORD's will
Names its own limit. The last stanza says outright that it cannot explain why the singer should gain from this, and then stops instead of filling the gap

⚠ Cautions

The passage is plural throughout and the song is mostly singular. Isaiah 53's confession is made by a group about itself; two of the song's three stanzas are a private meditation
The Father turning away is not in Isaiah 53, and no verse narrates it. It is an inference from Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 22:1, and it is contested. Sing it as a reading, not as a report
No reference is given anywhere in the song, so nothing in it prompts a listener to go and check any of it
The song stops at the wound. Isaiah 53 does not, and verses 10 to 12 give an outcome the hymn has no room for

Verse Proof

Isaiah 53:4-5

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”

Isaiah 52:13 to 53:12 is one unit about a servant of the LORD, and these two verses sit at its centre. The striking thing is who is talking. The speakers are a group, and they open by admitting they had read the servant's suffering as God's judgment on him for his own sake. Verses 4 and 5 are the correction: the suffering was theirs to bear, and he bore it instead. Every pronoun for the people is plural. Four times "our," twice "we," once "us," and not one singular in the two verses. The same unit goes on to say the crushing was the LORD's own will and that the servant bore the sin of many, and it ends with him seeing his offspring and dividing spoils.

What the song says, described not quoted

Three stanzas, no chorus, and God is spoken about rather than spoken to. There is no second-person address anywhere in it. The first stanza measures the Father's love by what giving the Son cost him, calls that cost a pain of loss, describes the Father turning his face from the sight, and says the wounds that disfigure the one God chose are what bring many into glory. The second puts the singer in front of the cross and has him own the sin that held Christ there, and hear his own voice among the mockers. The third declines to boast in anything the singer has, boasts in Christ's death and resurrection instead, asks why he should gain from a reward he did nothing to earn, says plainly that he cannot answer that, and rests on the wounds having paid the ransom. No verse is cited anywhere in the song and nothing is framed as a quotation.

What the song and the passage genuinely share is the substitution. Wounds borne for someone else's sin, and the benefit landing on the people who did not bear them. The song's third stanza carries that sentence, and the song's own page on Townend's site routes it through 1 Peter 2:24, which quotes Isaiah 53:5 word for word inside itself. Isaiah 53 is not on that page's reference list at all, which is worth noticing rather than holding against the song. Two things in the song's picture are not in Isaiah 53. The Father's pain, and the Father turning away. The reference list names Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 22:1, and that is where the image comes from: not from a narration of what the Father did, but from a reading of what the Son cried. The grammar moves too. Isaiah's speakers are a "we" from first word to last, while the song opens with one plural line and spends its remaining two stanzas in the first person singular.

· Not a quote: The song cites nothing and presents nothing as a quotation. So the word-for-word standard does not apply. What it shares with Isaiah 53:4-5 is the substitution itself. The picture it adds of the Father turning away comes from the other passages the songwriter's own page names rather than from Isaiah.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Isaiah 53 gives a claim you can check. The song gives a scene, and scenes are what memory keeps.

Why it matters

This hymn is how a great many people picture the crucifixion, and pictures are what get kept. Isaiah 53:4-5 gives a claim rather than a scene: wounds borne for other people's sin, with healing on the far side of them. The song gives a scene, and the scene holds one element the passage does not, which is publicly disputed and comes from a reading of Christ's cry rather than from any verse that reports the Father's face. Nothing in the song asks you to take it as scripture. The work left over is knowing which parts you could look up and which parts you could not.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What this one plants, sung week after week, is a way of looking rather than a way of speaking. God is never addressed in it. The whole hymn is a person standing in front of the cross and saying what he sees. The dwelling tag is mixed because two of the three stanzas are built on "I" and "my," but the first person here keeps pointing away from itself: the sin is owned in order to say whose death answered it, and the third stanza's entire business is declining to boast. What repetition drills in is that the wounds were for someone else's sin, that the singer belongs among the people who needed that, and that he cannot account for why he benefits. The last of those is rare in a song and worth keeping. Alongside it, repetition will also plant the image of the Father turning away, which is the part that is not in this passage. If you sing this often, read Isaiah 53 to the end often, where the servant sees his offspring and divides spoils. The song stops at the wound. The chapter does not.

Helpful comparison

The reference list on the songwriter's own page is a useful map, because it shows how many texts a three-stanza hymn is standing on. Twelve references are listed, drawn from the Psalms, the four gospels and four epistles. Only one of them, 1 Peter 2:24, contains Isaiah 53:5, and it contains it as a marked quotation of Isaiah rather than as its own sentence. So the line in the song closest to this passage reaches it at one remove, through an apostle quoting the prophet. That is a normal and honest way for a hymn to be built. It is also the reason a listener cannot work backwards from the song to a chapter. There is no single chapter to work back to.

On the Father turning away: both Matthew 27:46 and Psalm 22:1 are listed on the song's own page, and the inference from them is contested in public. Some teachers preach it as written; others hold that Psalm 22:24 says the opposite.

Sources

Stuart Townend — How Deep the Father's Love For Us (Live), We Are Worship · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed author_name "Integrity Worship", the channel of the publisher that administers the song)
Stuart Townend — How deep the Father's love · (the songwriter's own song page: copyright 1995 Thankyou Music, administered by Capitol CMG outside the UK and Europe and by Integrity Music within them; the lyric; and the twelve-reference list, which includes Matthew 27:46, Psalm 22:1 and 1 Peter 2:24 and does not include Isaiah 53)
Hymnology Archive — How Deep the Father's Love for Us · (written 1995; first recorded on My First Love from Stoneleigh International Bible Week, released 4 October 1996; first printed in The Best of Stoneleigh, Kingsway 1996; Townend's own account of writing it, and the Isaiah 53:5 connection to the second stanza)
Cross Rhythms — My First Love: Live Worship From Stoneleigh International Bible Week 1996 · (the album's label and release date, Kingsway KMCD959, 4 October 1996)
The Berean Test — Stuart Townend, How Deep the Father's Love for Us · (Chris Mellon, 4 March 2020: a 9/10 review that recommends the song and objects to the turning-away line, citing Psalm 22:24 and disputing the use of Habakkuk 1:13)
Compelling Truth — Is it true that "The Father turned His face away" on the cross? · (states that scripture never says the Father literally turned his face away, and sets Matthew 27:46 and Isaiah 53:10 against Psalm 22:24)
Open the Bible — The Day God Turned His Face Away · (Colin Smith, 1 May 2011: the other side of the same question, preached from Matthew 27:46 with Isaiah 53:5-6)

Corrections

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