ABSTRACT
The chief task of Christian soteriology is to show how the bruising of the man Jesus, the servant of God, saves lost creatures and reconciles them to their creator. In the matter of salvation, Christian theology tries to show that this servant – marred, Isaiah tells us, beyond human semblance, without form or comeliness or beauty – is the one in and as whom God’s purpose for creatures triumphs over their wickedness. His oppression and affliction, his being put out of the land of the living, is in truth not his defeat at the hands of superior forces, but his own divine act in which he takes upon himself, and so takes away from us, the iniquity of us all. How can this be? How can his chastisement make us whole? How can others be healed by his stripes? Because, Isaiah tells us, it was the will of the Lord to bruise him; because God has put him to grief; because it is God who makes the servant’s soul an offering for sin. And just because this is so – just because he is smitten by God and afflicted – then the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand, and the servant himself shall prosper and be exalted. And not only this: the servant shall also see the fruit of the travail of his soul and be satisfied; he shall see his offspring.
