To a Jew, and to almost all races when St. Paul wrote, the idea of an expiatory sacrifice for sin seemed natural and obvious. But for the special Christian doctrine of expiation the basis is to be found in the memorable chapter liii of the 'later Isaiah.' That great prophet of the captivity is assuring Israel of their restoration to their own land. This restoration is to follow on the due punishment of her sins--'She hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sins.' And the restored people is to be, before all else, a righteous people--'all righteous'--a people of God's favour, because they are living according to God. But there is so much sin still remaining in them as to make it necessary that the new life of the recovered people should be based on a great act of {144} propitiation. The Righteous Servant of Jehovah, who is, at starting, the idealized people itself, but who comes to be represented as an individual acting for the people while repudiated by them, offers his life a willing sacrifice for their sins. The chastisement of their iniquities falls on him, and he accepts the burden, and is obedient unto death. Dying he makes his soul a guilt offering: and, living through death exalted and powerful, he becomes an intercessor accepted with God, the head of a new seed whom he 'justifies' before God by the intimate knowledge of God's mind and character which in his voluntary humiliation he has won. This wonderful prophetic picture represents a vast advance in moral teaching on what had gone before. It is not only that the self-sacrifice of a perfect human will is substituted for the animal victims to which the enlightened conscience of God's people already refused to allow any real efficacy; but also that the idea of propitiation is put in a context where it is made plain that it can only be the prelude to a state of actual righteousness in those who are to be justified by it. It occurs as part of the answer to the question, not--How is Israel to escape punishment? but, How is Israel to {145} become the really righteous nation, living in the likeness of God?