It is with the Servant, and the theology of the whole of Isaiah 40-55, that we find the explanation for the otherwise bizarre idea of one person standing in for the many (which, as Dr John says, we might otherwise find incomprehensible and deeply offensive). The sense which penal substitution makes it does not make, in the last analysis, within the narrative of feudal systems of honour and shame. It certainly does not make the sense it makes within the world of some arbitrary lawcourt. It makes the sense it makes within the biblical world, the Old Testament world, within which the creator God, faced with a world in rebellion, chose Israel - Abraham and his family - as the means of putting everything right, and, when Israel itself had rebelled, promised to set that right as well and so to complete the purpose of putting humans right and thus setting the whole created order back the right way up. And the long-promised way by which this purpose would be achieved was, as hints and guesses in the Psalms and prophets indicate, that Israel’s representative, the anointed king, would be the one through whom this would be accomplished. Like David facing Goliath, he would stand alone to do for his people what they could not do for themselves. It is because Jesus, as Israel’s representative Messiah, was therefore the representative of the whole human race, that he could appropriately become its substitute. That is how Paul’s logic works. ‘One died for all, therefore all died,’ he wrote in 2 Corinthians 5.14; and thus, seven verses later, ‘God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,’ he concluded seven verses later, ‘so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (5.21). And it is within that argument that we find the still deeper truth, which is again rooted in the dark hints and guesses of the Old Testament: that the Messiah through whom all this would be accomplished would be the very embodiment of YHWH himself. ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Corinthians 5.19).

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The Rt. Rev. Dr. Thomas Wright, Bishop of Durham, the entirety of which is at Fulcrum.

The notion of Christ as a young warrior entering the battle on our behalf is one that occurs frequently in Old and Middle English literature. One well-known example of it is in the fourteenth century poem called The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman by William Langland. Here is how the poet visualizes Jesus coming to Jerusalem and the Cross:

A man came riding along barefoot on an ass, unarmed and without spurs. He looked like the Good Samaritan — or was it Piers the Ploughman? He was young and lusty, like a squire coming to be dubbed knight and receive his golden spurs and cut-away shoes. Then Faith, who was standing at a window, cried out, “See! The Son of David!” — like a herald proclaiming a knight who comes to the tournament… .

So I asked Faith the meaning of all this stir. “Who was going to joust in Jerusalem?”

“Jesus,” he said, “to win back Piers’ fruit, which the Devil has claimed.”

“Is Piers in this city?” I asked.

He looked at me keenly and answered, “Jesus, out of chivalry, will joust in Piers’ coat-of-arms, and wear His Helmet and mail, Human Nature; He will ride in Piers’ doublet, that no one here may know Him as Almighty God. For whatever blows He receives, they cannot wound Him in his Divine Nature.”

This is a picture of Christ’s work on the Cross. It has warrant in the promise in Eden of the One who would bruise the head of the serpent and himself be wounded. What is going on in the Cross is close quarters combat. Piers the Ploughman writes about it in his commonplace book. And Piers the Ploughman is reading it.