4. Paul, however, by no means confines the prophecy of the Servant of the Lord to Jesus the Messiah. In a way which has been too much overlooked by students of the subject, Paul revives and reinforces the collective interpretation of the Servant. He claims the Servant's duties and experience for himself, his fellow-labourers in the gospel, and all believers.
In Antioch of Pisidia, Paul and Barnabas said of themselves to the Jews: _For so hath the Lord_ commanded us saying, _I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation to the ends of the earth._[174] Again, in the eighth of Romans, Paul takes the Servant's confident words, and speaks them of all God's true people. _He is near that justifieth me, who is he that condemneth me?_ cried the Servant in our prophecy, and Paul echoes for all believers: _It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth?_[175] And again, in his second letter to Timothy, he says, speaking of that pastor's work, _For the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle towards all_; words which were borrowed from, or suggested by, Isa. xlii. 1-3.[176] In these instances, as well as in his constant use of the terms _slave_, _servant_, _minister_, with their cognates, Paul fulfils the intention of Jesus, who so continually, by example, parable, and direct commission, enforced the life of His people as a Service to the Lord.
5. Such, then, is the New Testament reflection of the Prophecy of the Servant of the Lord, both as People and Person. Like all physical reflections, this moral one may be said, on the whole, to stand reverse to its original. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. the Servant is People first, Person second. But in the New Testament--except for a faint and scarcely articulate application to Israel in the beginning of the gospels--the Servant is Person first and People afterwards. The Divine Ideal which our prophet saw narrowing down from the Nation to an Individual, was owned and realised by Christ. But in Him it was not exhausted. With added warmth and light, with a new power of expansion, it passed through Him to fire the hearts and enlist the wills of an infinitely greater people than the Israel for whom it was originally designed. With this witness, then, of history to the prophecies of the Servant, our way in expounding and applying them is clear. Jesus Christ is their perfect fulfilment and illustration. But we who are His Church are to find in them our ideal and duty,--our duty to God and to the world. In this, as in so many other matters, the unfulfilled prophecy of Israel is the conscience of Christianity.