Now in this world of revolt against God, an otherwise unknown prophet had been given the inner vision to see that in no other way could the guilty be restored to God except through the obedient suffering of the righteous.  He expressed it in words familiar to us all, “…he was wounded for our transgressions…and with his stripes we are healed. …. by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous; …he poured out his soul to death, and was numbered (reckoned) with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (RSV, Isaiah 53:5,11,12, our emphasis).

For only the righteous, whose own obedience was absolute, could bring the guilty back to God; and only the righteous who willingly suffered out of love for them could kindle in them the love and the penitence without which their hearts would remain untouched.

The prophet himself had envisaged that the faithful remnant of Israel would fulfil that role of the Suffering Servant, but what he had seen as an ideal was not actually realised until Jesus consciously embodied it to the full in his own Person.  As he said on Maundy Thursday night before he left the Upper Room for Gethsemane, “…I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was reckoned with transgressors’; for what is written about me has its fulfilment” (RSV, Luke 22:37).