The Servant
This is our last lesson of our module Through His People. In the past four lessons we’ve been thinking together about biblical theology, looking at four key figures through the OT, seeing how their role in God’s plans and purposes unfolds as the story develops, and ultimately how it all finds fulfilment in Jesus.
In this lesson we’re thinking about the servant. But before we get there, it’ll be helpful for us to do a quick run through of the Bible story, and recap some of what we’ve said over the course of this module.
A recap of the Bible story
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The creation account begins with תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, which, over the course of the chapter, God brings into a state of order—out of anti-fruitfulness to a state of being conducive for fruitfulness. He placed the humans there in this land teeming with life to “work and keep it” (Gen. 2:15), which we’ve said alludes to the Levitical duties in the temple. This implies that the humans played a sort of priestly role in God’s creation.
But we’ve also said that this was only half the story: Adam isn’t only portrayed as priest, but as priest-king, which goes hand in hand with the mandate the humans are given in Genesis 1: “God created humanity in his image: he created them in the image of God; he created them male and female” (Gen. 1:27)—and what does that mean? Chiefly, it means exercising dominion over creation, acting as God’s stewards over creation, not only partaking of the fruitfulness of the creation, but, in some sense, imitating God in bringing it about.
The commission God gave them, we’ve seen, was very important: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it’ ” (Gen. 1:28). This commission was passed on to Noah and then to Abraham. God made a promise and a covenant with Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great. Be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who dishonor you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3). God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, and that he, and in turn his descendants, would be a conduit of God’s blessing to the rest of the nations.
Exodus opens with Abraham’s family, now too numerous to count, being enslaved. But God remembers this covenant with Abraham, and on that basis he rescues his people out of Egypt (Ex. 2:24–25). In an act of new creation—a sort of de-creation of Egypt with the plagues and a new creation of the Israelites, being brought out of chaotic waters, which echoes back to the flood story, and further back to the תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ of Genesis 1:2—God rescued his people out of Egypt, and brought them to Mount Sinai, where he formally made his covenant with them. We read in Exodus 19:
4 You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (vv. 4–6).
In lesson 3 we thought together about the priests as mediators of God’s covenant presence among his people; here in Exodus 19, what seems to be implied is that through the entire nation of Israel, God’s intention was to mediate his covenant presence to the other nations. It’s now the nation of Israel who is to act as God’s representatives through whom he will extend his blessing to all nations—as one writer puts it: “The purpose of this covenant [made at Sinai] is that an obedient Israel may bring God’s creation blessing to the world.”
Unfortunately, “obedient” really isn’t the right word for Israel. While Moses is up the mountain receiving the law, the people are down the mountain breaking it, making a golden calf. When they set off again in the book of Numbers, they continually moan against Moses and God—“ ‘Oh, for some meat!’ they exclaimed. ‘We remember the fish we used to eat for free in Egypt. And we had all the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic we wanted. But now our appetites are gone. All we ever see is this manna!’ ” (Num. 11:4–6). The grass was greener on the other side—but not the side God was taking them to. They see that in Numbers 13, and when they heard the report in the next chapter,
1 the whole community began weeping aloud, and they cried all night. 2 Their voices rose in a great chorus of protest against Moses and Aaron. “If only we had died in Egypt, or even here in the wilderness!” they complained. 3 “Why is the Lord taking us to this country only to have us die in battle? Our wives and our little ones will be carried off as plunder! Wouldn’t it be better for us to return to Egypt?” 4 Then they plotted among themselves, “Let’s choose a new leader and go back to Egypt!” (Num. 14:1–4).
To them it was better to serve Egypt and their gods than it was to serve Yahweh. So God says, “Fine. None of you have to go in. I’ll give it to your kids.”
So, a generation later, on the border of the promised land, Moses implores them, “Guys, please will you do this right.”
4 Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deut. 6:4–9).
Do whatever it takes. Stay faithful to Yahweh as you go into the good land he has promised to give you.
And under Joshua’s leadership, they got off to a pretty good start. But the book of Judges tells us how the wheels came off, and the book ends with a civil war. The judges came to an end and the kingship is established in Samuel, which is what we looked at in the previous lesson. But we saw that, while the kingdom reached a high point under David, the man after God’s own heart, it didn’t take long for the wheels to come off once more, and they were carted off into exile.
It’s in exile that Second Isaiah was written. Second Isaiah is just what we call the second major part of Isaiah, chs. 40–55, as opposed to First Isaiah, chs. 1–39. First Isaiah, we saw in the previous lesson, introduced us to the messiah, the king from the line of David. Second Isaiah introduces us to somebody else: the servant. So we’re going to spend some time in Second Isaiah to see what this servant figure is about.
The servant in Isaiah
Background to Second Isaiah
Under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon stormed Jerusalem at the end of 2 Kings, destroyed the temple, and whatever was left that he wanted in Jerusalem, he took back to Babylon. Following him were some weaker kings, and in the end the throne was usurped by Nabonidus.
Nabonidus was a bit of a controversial fellow. Perhaps most controversial about him, was that “[h]e established Sin, the moon god, as the new chief deity of the Babylonian pantheon, exalting him over Marduk, who ever since the establishment of the Babylonian monarchy had been regarded as the undisputed king of the gods.” This seriously ticked off the priests of Marduk.
In the meantime, Persia was making a comeback. Cyrus, himself a usurper, led some rebellions, reclaiming Ecbatana, his capital city, and began to gain power. “Babylon alone now stood between Cyrus and complete control of the entire region”—and in 540 BC, that’s where he turned his gaze. Except that when he got there, he didn’t actually have to fight for it. The priests of Marduk just gave it to him. They opened the city gates and just let him have it.
There are at least two things we should know about Cyrus’ reign for our purposes. The first is his strategy. We said in the previous lesson that it was one thing to conquer another country; it was quite another to keep control over it once you’d done so. Assyria kept control by brute force and fear tactics. Babylon kept control by plundering the place—they would take the elite of society, along with any treasure and resources, and bring it all over to Babylon. Whoever was left, then, wouldn’t be much of a threat. Cyrus’ strategy was different again: he saw himself as the great liberator. He kept control essentially by trying to make friends with everyone. And that’s more or less what we see in Second Isaiah.
But that also explains the second thing we should know about Cyrus: in taking Babylon, he reestablished worship of Marduk, which he also used to his own advantage. Archaeologists have actually found what we know as the Cyrus Cylinder from when Cyrus took Babylon from Nabonidus. In it we read:
When I entered Babylon in a peaceful manner, I took up my lordly reign in the royal palace amidst rejoicing and happiness. Marduk, the great lord, caused the magnanimous people of Babylon to me, and I daily attended to his worship. My vast army moved about Babylon in peace; I did not permit anyone to frighten the people of Sumer and Akkad. I sought the welfare of the city of Babylon and all its sacred centers. As for the citizens of Babylon, upon whom he imposed corvée which was not the god’s will and not befitting them, I relieved their weariness and freed them from their service. Marduk, the great lord, rejoiced over my good deeds. He sent gracious blessings upon me, Cyrus, the king who worships him, and upon Cambyses, the son who is my offspring, and upon all my army, and in peace, before him, we move about.
That’s the situation Second Isaiah is speaking into. Israel, you’ll remember, were in exile in Babylon, so they were right there in the thick of all this.
Second Isaiah is basically about God rescuing and restoring his people. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:1–2). But we learn that the way that God is bringing that about is through Cyrus:
2 Who has stirred up one from the east,
calling him in righteousness to his service?
He hands nations over to him
and subdues kings before him.
He turns them to dust with his sword,
to windblown chaff with his bow.
3 He pursues them and moves on unscathed,
by a path his feet have not traveled before.
4 Who has done this and carried it through,
calling forth the generations from the beginning?
I, the Lord—with the first of them
and with the last—I am he (Isa. 41:2–3).
And again a few chapters later:
24 This is what the Lord says—
your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb:
I am the Lord,
the Maker of all things,
who stretches out the heavens,
who spreads out the earth by myself, …
28 who says of Cyrus, “He is my shepherd
and will accomplish all that I please;
he will say of Jerusalem, ‘Let it be rebuilt,’
and of the temple, ‘Let its foundations be laid’ ” (Isa. 44:24, 28)
All the way through, Isaiah wants to make clear that it’s Yahweh bringing this about—not Marduk.
Marduk was born; Yahweh always was (Isa. 43:10). It wasn’t Marduk who created the heavenly host; it was Yahweh (40:26). Marduk had a personal advisor; Yahweh is wise enough that he doesn’t need one (40:13–14). Marduk isn’t in control; Yahweh is. Marduk isn’t king over all; Yahweh is. Yahweh is the one bringing all this about, working to redeem and restore his people, and what we learn is that he’s going to do that through his servant.
But while Cyrus has an important role to play, Cyrus is not that servant; rather, he “has a mission to God’s servant (45:4).” But if Cyrus isn’t the servant, then who is?
Naming the servant
Perhaps you might think of the words from Isaiah 53 and think the answer’s obvious:
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:4–5).
And a little further down:
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities (v. 11).
It’s one of the passages we whip out around Easter—surely the servant in Isaiah is Jesus. Or, at the very least, the servant in Second Isaiah is the messiah in First Isaiah.
And sure, when we compare the language used to describe the servant with that used to describe the messiah, we see some parallels. The servant is, according to John Oswalt, “an individual, almost certainly the Messiah, who will be the ideal Israel.”
The problem with this is that it doesn’t fit so nicely with some other passages in Second Isaiah:
8 you, Israel, my servant,
Jacob, whom I have chosen,
the descendants of Abraham, my friend,
9 I took you from the ends of the earth,
from its farthest corners I called you.
I said, “You are my servant”;
I have chosen you and have not rejected you (41:8–9).
Here the servant isn’t an individual; the servant is the nation of Israel, who we should probably assume is still being spoken about in the next chapter:
1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
and he will bring justice to the nations.
2 He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
3 A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
4 he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his teaching the islands will put their hope” (42:1–4).
Brevard Childs puts it quite forcefully: “For anyone who takes the larger literary context seriously, there can be no avoiding the obvious implication that in some way Israel is the servant who is named in 42:1. No one else is named.”
Perhaps it could still be the messiah in view. We saw something like that in last week’s lesson: could it not be the messiah who is representing Israel? Perhaps. But if so, I think we’ll have a hard time with other parts of ch. 42:
18 Hear, you deaf;
look, you blind, and see!
19 Who is blind but my servant,
and deaf like the messenger I send?
Who is blind like the one in covenant with me,
blind like the servant of the Lord?
20 You have seen many things, but you pay no attention;
your ears are open, but you do not listen (vv. 18–20).
I don’t know about you, but I’m not inclined to think about Jesus in that way.
While the servant and the messiah do seem to share some of the same characteristics, these on their own aren’t enough for us to say that they are the same figure. As one scholar puts it: “both the servant and the Davidic ruler are empowered by God’s Spirit and share a common royal task of bringing forth justice because they are both agents of the same king”—namely Yahweh.
The point, rather, is that high hopes were placed in what Israel were supposed to be—Isaiah 42:6–7:
6 I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness;
I will take you by the hand and keep you;
I will give you as a covenant for the people,
a light for the nations,
7 to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness.
The people of Israel were meant to be the conduit of God’s blessing to the nations—think Genesis 12: through Abraham’s family, the whole world would enjoy God’s blessing; think Exodus 19: the Israelites were to be a kingdom of priests. Isaiah puts it a bit differently and says “a covenant to the people” (v. 6), but the idea is the same—as one scholar explains: “the one commissioned does not form a covenant, but rather embodies a covenantal relationship with the nations.” It was through Israel that the nations would come to know God and enter into covenant relationship with him.
The problem is that Israel didn’t do that. Ironically,
While God’s servant is to open eyes of the blind, the reality is that Israel is in no condition to fulfil this task. … [T]hough they should set free those in “prison” (byt kl’; 42:7), they are in “prison” (byt kl’; 42:22), as they remain unresponsive to God even after experiencing his judgment, presumably through exile.”
In chs. 40–48, the servant is Israel. But in ch. 49, there’s a shift. In ch. 49 we meet somebody else—also the servant of the Lord, but we get the sense that something is different.
5 And now the Lord says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord
and my God has been my strength—
6 he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant,
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:5–6).
Notice how, in some sense, the commission is the same: “I will also make you a light to the nations” (v. 6; cf. 42:6). In v. 3 the servant is again identified with Israel in some way. But whereas earlier the nation of Israel was consistently in view, here the servant is given a mission to Israel, which would imply that they aren’t the same. Oswalt, I think, explains this part really well: “This Servant is going to function as Israel. … He will be for Israel, and the world, what Israel could not be. Faced with Israel’s failure, God does not wipe out the nation; he simply devises another way in which Israel’s servanthood could be worked out: through the ideal Israel.”
Again, this is seen as redemption and restoration. It calls to mind the Exodus. In Isaiah 52 “the Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (v. 10); in Exodus 15, “The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation” (v. 2); and a little further down: “The nations will fear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. … By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone—until your people pass by, Lord, until the people you bought pass by” (vv. 14, 16).
The Lord will bear his arm—how?—through his servant: “Who has believed our message, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa. 53:1)—and look who is introduced in the next verses in answer to the question:
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand (Isa. 53:2–10).
Don’t lose sight of the context: Second Isaiah is about God restoring his people. But in Isaiah 53 we learn that the way he’s going to do that is through the suffering of his servant. This servant will be a “guilt offering” (v. 10), calling to mind the Levitical system: “He must bring his guilt offering for the sin he has committed to the Lord: a female lamb or goat from the flock as a sin offering. In this way the priest will make atonement on his behalf for his sin” (Lev. 5:6). A guilt offering could take a variety of forms, and didn’t always involve sacrifice; this example from Leviticus 5 is just one example. But it gives a flavor for what the guilt offering was about—as one scholar explains:
At the core of the ʾāšām [guilt offering] was that idea the guilt had been incurred, so reparations needed to be made either towards the injured party or, most often, towards God. Removing guilt through blood would bring about forgiveness (Lev. 19:22) and atonement (Lev. 5:6, 16–17; 7:7; 14:21; 19:22), resulting in a restored standing with God amid the holy community.
That’s what seems to be going on with the servant. In a really unexpected turn of events—maybe not so unexpected for us because we usually read this passage around Easter with Jesus’ sacrifice on our minds, but try to get in the head of the original readers who didn’t know that—a sacrifice was made for God’s people to be restored. “The suffering of the servant … takes away the guilt of the ‘many’ exiles (53:11, 12) and ‘many nations’ (52:15) so that there can be ‘peace’ (53:5) between them and God.”
So what we have in Second Isaiah is a picture of Israel as God’s servant who was meant to be a light to the nations and a covenant to the people. The problem is that Israel is just as blind as the nations were. But even so, God declares to Israel that he’s going to restore them. He’s going to establish his kingdom once more, and he’ll do that through his servant—this time an individual figure, who will be all that Israel was supposed to be in Israel’s place.
The question that was left hanging in the air was, who is this servant? Now that we’ve spent some time thinking about who the servant is in Isaiah, we’re in a position to see how Jesus can be the answer to that question.
The servant in the Gospels
The scene is set in Mark’s gospel by Second Isaiah: it’s “the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the messiah, the son of God—as it’s written in Isaiah the prophet: … ‘A voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him!” ’ ” (Mar. 1:1–3). Here, we noticed in our previous lesson, Mark is calling to mind Isaiah 40, which, having now spent a whole lot of time in Second Isaiah, we have a clearer picture of. It’s written to God’s people, who are waiting on him to establish his kingdom, which is what he is announcing he’s about to do.
And how does Isaiah say God is going to do that? Through his servant, who we are introduced to a few verses later:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Mar. 1:9–11).
We noticed how this could be calling to mind Psalm 2 and 2 Samuel 7—this isn’t so much Jesus’ baptism as it is his anointing. What we didn’t think about is how this is also calling to mind Isaiah 42: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations” (v. 1).
Except that the way that Jesus is going to do that isn’t quite how anyone expected him to.
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. 31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him (Mar. 8:27–32).
Peter was expecting something more “Son of Man”—something more messianic, victorious, kick-butt, restore-God’s-kingdom. Instead, quite unexpectedly, Jesus is going the way of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
The same idea comes up again later: “even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mar. 10:45). Again, it’s the Son of Man in view. Again, I think the disciples would have expected power and greatness and God establishing his kingdom in glory. But again, the picture we have is of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, God’s servant who gives his life for the many.
In summary, God is establishing his kingdom, and he’s doing so through his servant. But this servant is going to do that, to everyone’s surprise, by suffering and dying.
The servant in Romans
We also find this story of the servant quietly in the background Paul’s argument in the first part of his letter to the Romans.
In lesson 1 we spent a bit of time thinking about Romans 1: how Paul talks about the problem of sin as an inversion of the way God ordered his creation, choosing to worship the creation rather than the Creator. Ch. 1, we said, probably mainly had Gentiles in mind, but in ch. 2, Paul turns to the Jews to say that actually they aren’t any better off—God doesn’t show favoritism (Rom. 2:1–16).
17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? (Rom. 2:17–21)
Think again of the servant in the first part of Second Isaiah: supposed to be a light to the nations, but they were blind themselves. Paul, in fact goes a step further to say effectively that it’s one thing to have the covenant; but if they don’t keep the covenant, they aren’t really God’s people:
28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God (Rom. 2:28–29).
But if that’s the case, what does that say about God? God made a promise to Abraham that through him and his descendants the nations would be blessed (Gen. 12:1–3). They were meant to be the conduit of God’s blessing; it was through them that the nations would come to know God. That’s where Paul turns next: “What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar” (Rom. 3:3–4). As N. T. Wright puts it, “God has not given up on his plan to bring light to the world through Israel.” The question, given Israel’s unfaithfulness, his how.
That’s what Paul is building up to in the last third of Romans 3:
21 But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been made known—though it has been testified to by the law and the prophets— 22 namely, a righteousness through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, 24 being declared righteous freely by his grace through redemption in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God set forth as an atoning sacrifice through his faithfulness, by his blood as proof of his righteousness through the passing over of sins done before 26 in his forbearance, to be a demonstration of his righteousness in the present time, so as to be righteous and the one who declares them righteous because of the faithfulness of Christ (Rom. 3:21–26).
In Jesus, God’s righteousness has been put on display—God’s saving righteousness, where he’s redeeming and restoring his people, and establishing his kingdom. And he’s doing that through his faithful servant, or, as Paul puts it in Romans 5:19, “through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” Though Israel was faithless, God will remain faithful to his covenant to deal with Adam’s sin and to bless the world through them, and in 3:22 we find out how: “Jesus, as Messiah, has drawn together the identity and vocation of Israel upon himself.”
And notice how this servant does it: “God set [Jesus] forth as an atoning sacrifice through his faithfulness, by his blood” (Rom. 3:25), which surely calls to mind the way the servant suffered and made atonement for God’s people.
But don’t lose sight of the movement here: Jesus does do away with sin here, but he does so as a new Israel, in continuity with the promises made to Abraham—that Israel would be a conduit of God’s blessing, and in the language of Isaiah, a light to the nations and a covenant to the people. “The main thing Paul wants to say in this paragraph is that God has done, in and through Jesus, what he promised and purposed all along.” Or, put differently, In Christ, God is doing what he’s always been doing, in a much fuller way.