For, in order to remove our condemnation, it was not sufficient to endure any kind of death. To satisfy our ransom, it was necessary to select a mode of death in which he might deliver us, both by giving himself up to condemnations and undertaking our expiation. Had he been cut off by assassins, or slain in a seditious tumult, there could have been no kind of satisfaction in such a death. But when he is placed as a criminal at the bar, where witnesses are brought to give evidence against him, and the mouth of the judge condemns him to die, we see him sustaining the character of an offender and evil-doer. 

   Here we must attend to two points, which had both been foretold by the prophets, and tend admirably to comfort and confirm our faith. When we read that Christ was led away from the judgment seat to execution, and was crucified between thieves, we have a fulfillment of the prophecy, which is quoted by the Evangelist, “He was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12; Mark 15:28). Why was it so? That he might bear the character of a sinner, not of a just or innocent person, inasmuch as he met death on account not of innocence, but of sin. On the other hand, when we read that he was acquitted by the same lips that condemned him (for Pilate was forced once and gain to bear public testimony to his innocence), let us call to mind what is aid by another prophet, “I restored that which I took not away” (Psalm 69:4).     

   Thus, we perceive Christ representing the character of a sinner and a criminal, while, at the same time, his innocence shines forth and it becomes manifest that he suffers for another’s and not for his own crime…

   Wherefore, in order to accomplish a full expiation, he made his soul a propitiatory victim for sin (as the prophet says, Isaiah 53:3, 5, 10), on which the guilt and penalty being in a manner laid, ceases to be imputed to us.

God The Redeemer (Book 2 of the Institutes) - John Calvin