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Chapter 8: Jesus Christ

1. The Gospel Portrait

Some hold that it is inaccurate to speak of the gospel "portrait" of Jesus, because the gospels are not biographies or pen pictures of Christ. The detail of description and date in them is quite insufficient for that. It is curious that there is no conscious attempt to give the reader any clue to the physical appearance of the Lord, or any other of the personal features we should immediately question Peter or John about were one of them to return here in the flesh. The gospels are what their traditional name asserts: they are proclamation; they present the good news of the Kingdom of God. They are concerned to tell the story of salvation in Christ. Everything leads up to the great climax of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Nevertheless, we can speak of a portrait in a sense, for by reading the gospels, we are able to " form an idea of the kind of person Jesus was. In spite of the lack of personal details which modern journalism would emphasize, the person of Christ reaches our spirits more impressively than any individual whose photograph we can see in a newspaper.

In the gospels we learn of One who spoke as never man spoke, whom the common people heard gladly, who was never at a loss and who was possessed of an inner peace which no injury to the flesh or the spirit could shatter. He told inimitable stories framed out of common experiences, yet lucidly bearing in them profound spiritual meanings, stories so clear and vivid that they remember themselves. Jesus of Nazareth did the things other men do. He ate and drank and worked and slept. He could be hungry and tired; He had wit; He could weep. He did other things which men have not done, and used His extraordinary powers as other men assuredly would not have done. Human need found an instant response from Him. And simple faith always caught His attention, whether from Jew or from Gentile. He was a teacher. Inevitably, men found the word Rabbi rising to their lips in addressing Him. He was gentle and loving. He drew naturally to simple hearts who showed a gleam of good, even though they  were socially outcast. To the official representatives of religion, He was mostly searching and stern because of the terrible gulf between what they were in their hearts and the tremendous thing they stood for. Yet a seeking, honest word from one of them earned His immediate regard. He drew quite ordinary men about Him to prepare them to carry on His mission. One would scarcely use the word clever to describe, Him, but of the power of His mind there can be no question; in any discussion or debate He singled out the real issue clearly and unerringly. His thought was simple and clear like the daylight, and His seriousness was not heavy.

But all these things do not give us the Christ of the gospels. To know who Jesus of Nazareth was we must realize if we can how God was the centre of His life. He looked to God as His Father in a trust and love so complete that He could say "I and the Father are one." He was conscious that He was sent among men for a divine purpose, and that He had divine authority to accomplish it. He knew He was the Son of God. We cannot read the gospels as they stand and feel that they are telling us of a mere obscure Galilean. That is not the impression Jesus made on those who wrote of  Him, nor is it the impression He makes on us. He spoke and acted with power, with authority. There is about His life and teaching the stamp of something quite new. We do not feel that it is strange to say that history dates up to this Man and from Him. He Is the watershed in human affairs.

2. Christ’s Divinity

The assertion of the Church throughout the ages has been that Jesus is "Lord." The word used in the gospels, translated "Lord" in our versions, is the word used in the Old Testament to apply to God. When the earliest Christians spoke of Jesus as the Lord, they meant by that one word to convey that they thought of Him in terms reserved for God Himself. St Paul speaks of Him as being "equal with God." The Fourth Gospel, using the expression "the Word" to refer to Rim, says that the Word was with God and the Word was God. The miracles of Jesus caused many people to think that divine power was manifest in Him. The man born blind was driven to that conclusion. The fact that many extraordinary things occurred at His hands would certainly be in keeping with the primitive Christian estimate of Him. Perhaps more significant than the fact of His unusual powers is His use of them. He made no display of them, and was concerned lest their exercise should distract men from the real object of His mission.

The most striking thing, however, is not these powers, nor the fact that the Church consented in calling Him Lord, but Jesus' own consciousness of Himself. He knew Himself to be God's chosen One. If the experience of His baptism related in the gospels means anything, it means this. Other passages bear it out. The Fourth Gospel is full of it. In a positive, calm and trustful way it is set forth intimately to the disciples in the conversation prior to the trial and cruci- fixion. In a controversial manner it appears in the long section earlier in which there are many arguments with the Jews. The great point of these arguments is that Jesus is the Son of God. If it were said that this is the very point which John's gospel sets out to prove, and that therefore we must be careful, we could turn to Matthew 11: 27, where we read, "All has been handed over to me by my Father: and no one knows the Son except the Father-nor does anyone know y the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Moffatt). Particularly we could refer to Matthew 16: 13f, where Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and Jesus comments that Peter could not have seen that by himself - it is by God's revelation that he knows it. If it is not true that Jesus was in fact the divine Son of God then the disciples and the first Christians generally, including St Paul, must have been out of their senses and utterly deluded, and the Master Himself must have been either mad or an impostor. That view of Christ doesn't make sense, and it is hard to believe that so many people were all deluded.

From these considerations, we form the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth was God manifest in the flesh, and that by His birth the divine became incarnate in the human.

3. Christ’s Humanity

Jesus of Nazareth whom we meet with in the gospels is a credible figure. He is a human being. When it is daylight at the time it should be daylight, no one comments on it. Assuming without comment that Jesus is a real man like themselves, the evangelists do display interest in the highly significant, even striking, words and deeds of Jesus, so that if there is anything that could be called emphasis in the gospels, it is in this direction. At the same time, a comparison of the canonical gospels with some later spurious ones reveals their restraint in dealing even with the unique in Jesus. This fact makes us all the more ready to trust their quiet assumption of the complete humanity of our Lord.

Some of the outward marks of Jesus' humanity we have already mentioned in section 1. There are others we should not overlook, since at times Christians have failed to give full weight to the man in the God-man. For instance, Jesus' whole experience of God was in human mould - we recall Paul writing to the Philippians-in that He had faith in God. He depended on God. No doubt the relation between Jesus and God was a special one, but it was that relation in quite human terms, and to that extent we also are called to have faith. Then again, Jesus knew what it was to be tempted. If this part of the gospel narrative is not true, the figure of Jesus becomes unreal. If it is true, a conviction of Christ's capacity to help us and to save us grows on us. Right until Gethsemane He had to contend against evil. He was indeed tempted in all points, like as we are. Further, there were the limitations to His knowledge which we should expect in one truly human. He was, for example, a man of His own time and place, a Jew of Palestine in the first century. His learning is that of the Jewish schools, not the Greek; yet He reveals that He is different by the large way in which He uses this learning (compare Paul's usually crabbed rabbinical use of the Old Testament) and by the ease and swiftness with which He seizes on and expands things in it which belong to every man in every age. But He makes no claim to know the times or the seasons.

There is, however, one point in which Jesus of Nazareth is not as other men: no one convicted Him of sin. To establish that a person is sinless one has to prove a negative - an unsatisfactory proceeding. One cannot prove that a thing never happened. There is always room for doubt. Every possibility may not have been examined some little instance may have escaped notice. Jesus Himself certainly asked, "Which of you convicts me of sin?" (John 8: 48), and none except the Pharisees has ever felt it was in the least natural to associate Him with that feature of humanity. We do not argue the sinlessness of Jesus as a reason for accepting Him as the Son of God and the Saviour. It was because He was truly the beloved Son that He was sinless. But we point out that there was a level at which His humanity was different from ours. Through this difference He reveals something about our own nature as men which otherwise we could only dream of, namely, that the possibility exists that humanity can be what God intended it to be, completely obedient to Him. The full potentiality of the human is displayed by Christ. In Him we can see what it is to be a Man. He is the "second Adam," in whom the purpose of creation is realized perfectly, whereas the first Adam was imperfect through disobedience. Sometimes people puzzle about Jesus' inner mind, wondering how He could be both God and man. To know the truth of that directly we should need to have such a nature ourselves, and that is impossible. Whatever theory of the matter we may fancy, both His divinity and His humanity are real as Jesus meets us in the Scriptures. The last thing we could honestly say about Him is, that He appears in the New Testament as a monster, artificial, sensational, inhuman. The very humanness of Jesus makes His divinity credible. And a God who does this is a God who can save me. He meets me where I am.

4. The Incarnation of the Son of God

For the sake of clearness we have introduced separately the idea of the deity of Christ, and that of His humanity. But the separation is nevertheless artificial; and we must now consider the normal message of the Christian Church, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself; that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that we beheld His glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father. In the section on God as creator, we had occasion to consider the idea of miracle, the great act of God which speaks most clearly and intelligibly of Him. The Creation is His act, and speaks of Him; the Incarnation is His act and speaks of Him; the Resurrection is His act and also speaks of Him; and of these mighty acts, the central one, the one which enables us to grasp the others, is the Incarnation. In it, God has revealed Himself personally. He sent His own Son, which is another way of saying that when Christ was among men they beheld the glory of the Father. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." (Note, incidentally, that Christ never said "I am the Father.") These mighty acts are such that if one believes them, miracles should be no real stumbling block to him; but of course if one cannot believe in them, then one cannot believe in Christianity at all. The belief that Christ was God manifest in the flesh is fundamental to Christianity. Without this, it would lose its power and cease to be.

The reason is that by the Incarnation God came savingly into touch with man. The Incarnation meant the possibility of full revelation. The eternal God must be known as He is if men are to be lifted from the broken life of humanity to newness of life, yet He cannot be known unless men meet Him. How is the human to encounter the divine directly? As the sheer coming together of God and men on earth the thing is impossible. God does not walk in some garden on earth in His own person as the Father in His eternity and infinity and holiness. But God could assume human nature, and so through a Son He could disclose Himself to men such that they could know Him as love, and be restored to their true life. In the Incarnation this happened. We must observe that it was a revelation, because God took our nature; the position is not that a good man became God. In that event, there would have been no revelation, for revelation means that the dis- closure was from God's side. It was necessary then for Him to take our nature and not vice versa. This carries with it also the consequence that although it was our very own nature which God took, so that Jesus Christ was truly man, tempted like as we are, nevertheless, since it was God who took it, there was no sin in Jesus. For there is human nature and human nature. There is man as God created him and intended him, and there is man as he is, sinful, fallen, at enmity with God. It was not the latter but the former which God assumed in the Incarnation. Hence, in Jesus Christ we see what manhood could be, apart from sin.

The Incarnation is the great action of God whereby He reveals Himself to man and thus brings the resources of heaven to bear on a situation which is otherwise hopeless. By himself, man cannot know God or love Him or serve Him aright. By himself, he cannot even know himself truly. Thus unless something is done from above but within humanity, mankind would be condemned to wander in darkness and confusion, in hatred and pride and sin. The Incarnation means that something was done, and that the action proceeded from the only quarter whence effective help could come-from God himself. It is the Lord of heaven and earth who came among us and knew all our weakness, save only that one thing, the will gone wrong; and what He brought us and gave us in our plight was nothing less than Himself, who is Love, to change us from ourselves.

 

5. The Revelation in Jesus Christ

Very briefly, we should underline the central place which Jesus Christ occupies in the economy of the Christian revelation. Christianity stands or falls by the unique event of Christmas. Something new happened. It was indeed a case of "Immanuel": God is with us. This coming down from above means something different. It is a visit from heaven in the deepest sense. And hence Christianity must speak of revelation. We have already considered the meaning of revelation, and stressed its difference from discovery.

t is now necessary to see that this unique thing, this revelation, centres in Christ, for it is He who is the revelation. His being, His existence, is the revelation, for "God was in Christ," as the Apostle says. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God... In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness has not overcome it... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth... No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared (i.e. explained, set forth, revealed) him.” "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." These passages from John's gospel can be paralleled from the first epistle of John: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us; (1 John 1: 1.2). "No one who disowns the Son can possess the Father: he who 1 confesses the Son possesses the Father as well." (1 John 2: 23.) St Paul says of Christ, "He is the likeness of the unseen God, born first, before all the creation... He is prior to all, and all coheres in Him. Also He is the head of the Body, that is of the church... it was in him that the divine fulness willed to settle without limit, and by Him to reconcile in His own person all on earth and all in heaven alike, in a peace made by the blood of His Cross." (Colossians 1: 15-20, Moffatt.) In Matthew's gospel we read, " All things are delivered unto me of my Father... neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." (11: 27.) The most direct statement that Jesus is the revelation of God is perhaps the simple words "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14: 9), which may be regarded as a text on which the rest of the gospel is a commentary. This is reinforced by such words as "I am the bread of life," "I am the way, the truth and the life." The revealed is God, the revealer is the Holy Spirit, the revelation is Jesus Christ. That is to say, it is through the Son that we know the Father. Also, the Holy Spirit who is the revealer (a point to be discussed later) is the Spirit who witnesses to f the Son. The Holy Spirit is that Spirit by whom we testify that Jesus is Lord. The Son is therefore the centre. Through Him we know God, through Him we have the forgiveness of our sins, through Him and in Him we have the grace of God and know ourselves "accepted in the beloved." And this because what the Divine Love really is became manifest in the life and teaching, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God, the Christ.

6. The Mediator

Christ is the revelation of God. He is also the Mediator between God and man. Revelation is necessary because God is the Creator and man is the creature. Only by coming to man Himself could the eternal God be known by man. But the gulf between God and man is not only that which distinguishes the Creator from the creature; it is also that which separates the sinner from the holy God. As God desires to reveal Himself to man, so also man needs a way to God. The need is caused by sin. With all his evil and self-centredness, man still knows that there is a God above, and that there is something wrong at the heart of things. He is aware that all is not well with himself. Even if it is not consciously realized as what the New Testament calls sin, there is still that in the men we know about us which makes them look for better things. But how to get at it? When the abiding dissatisfaction with things human bites deeply into a man's soul and he longs for a way out, the word that there is a living way to God is good news. Jesus Christ is the way.

But the difference between God and man from this point of view is so great that it cannot be ordinarily overcome. It is the difference between the God who loves more truly than any earthly father, and man who has ignored infinite love. It is a state of positive tension between God and man. Only one who was perfectly "at home" in both camps could hope to overcome it. The way must be by mediation. He who is the Way must be the Mediator between God and man. Now the conditions necessary for revelation are also the conditions necessary for overcoming the gulf caused by sin, for sin imposes difficulties on revelation. The revelation has to be made to sinful men, to the race which could crucify Christ. Thus in coming to mankind Christ had to endure the worst that human evil could do to Him if he was really to take our nature. The fact that He endured the Cross thus means that He is "at home" in the human camp at the point where the root of the trouble lies. Coming from God and meeting man radically at the Cross, and so identifying Himself with sinners, Christ was the One, the only one in all the universe, in whom God could reconcile man to Himself. To be the Revelation, He must be the Mediator; to be the Mediator, He must be the Revelation.

7. The Cross and the Atonement

What has to be said here really flows from points which have already been mentioned, though some aspects of the interpretation of the Cross will be discussed later. Jesus was crucified "under Pontius Pilate." The crucifixion actually happened. What did it mean? The important thing is to see what was actually happening on Calvary. From the point of view of the historian it was a minor execution in an outlying province of the Roman Empire. It occurred at such and such a time and place and was carried out by such and such people in a manner described. From the point of view of the disciples, at first it was a tragedy. One whom they loved and whom they expeeted to do great things had come to a shameful end. Later, however, they arrived at another viewpoint. They saw that this was the action of God. What happened on Calvary was significant beyond time and beyond the world.

As the action of God, the Cross becomes something different. It is the place where God meets man, the sinner, in Christ. Christ being who He is constitutes the Cross the means of salvation. It is not just that He suffered a great deal. He did, because crucifixion is a peculiarly fiendish and painful mode of execution. But that particular suffering is the summary and climax of the whole suffering which was His life ; for men. To love sinners at all was to suffer. The love of God reaching out to be with sinful men and patiently to win them back in self-giving reconciling love: this is suffering. The Cross shows how far it went: all the way. When we speak of "the Cross" in this way, using the definite article and a capital letter, it has become a symbol of the entire ministry of Jesus, the suffering servant of the Lord. (Isaiah 53.)

By his suffering and death Christ experienced the full measure of what sin could do; therefore, too, He experienced the full depth and power of the divine love, for He trusted God all through: "Father, all things are possible with thee; take this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt." (Mark 14: 36.) The more He suffered, the more weight He had to lean on the Father's love. He thus experienced how far God's love would go. He responded to it in complete love and obedience. On God's side the love which never fails; on Christ's side the trust which never wavers. By the completeness of his trust in God's love, whose depths He thus plumbed through suffering, Christ made a perfect response. And because He took our nature, in making it He did so for the whole of humanity. He included the human race in Himself. "With his stripes we are healed." For the first time, and once for all on the Cross the divine love was not spurned, but was returned in the perfection of Christ's consciousness of being God's own Son. He was "obedient" unto death, even the death of the Cross." (Phil. 2: 8.) If the Cross measures the depth of human sin, that Christ should hang on it for our sakes measures the height of divine love.

The Atonement

While we are speaking of the Cross it is necessary to think about the ways in which it has been interpreted. These interpretations are usually referred to as "theories" of the Atonement. The Atonement itself is the fact or event which is referred to by the classic words of Paul, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself." All Christians agree in saying that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world. They have not always been agreed in their statements of how He is our Saviour. The question is, what does Christ do to save us? No doubt most people in the Church would say at once: the answer to that is perfectly simple; He died on the Cross to save us. "There is a green hill far away... where the dear Lord was crucified, who died to save us all." This is the massive fact which has determined the Church's message from the beginning. Luke's account in the early chapters of Acts of what Peter preached testifies to the place of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the mind of the first generation of Christians. But though this answer may seem simple and inevitable, it is not sufficient. We have already seen in the second paragraph of this section that the suffering of the crucifixion was "the summary and climax of the whole suffering which was His life for men." This means that the Cross is not to be understood in isolation from the rest of the life of Christ. Jesus' ministry includes His suffering and death. His death was something He did. It was not an accident that happened to Him or a fate which overtook Him. Just as His teaching and preaching and healing were demonstrations of the presence and power of the Kingdom of God, so also this prevision and acceptance and going forward to the trial and crucifixion were positive acts consequent on His being the one whom God sent. God was in Christ, at the end, as all the way through.

Once we have seen that the ministry of Jesus includes His passion we are compelled to take the next step, which is to realize that the answer to the question, "What does Christ do to save us?" must be based on making the word "do" refer to the ministry from beginning to end. In other words, what Christ does for us is not confined to what happened on Calvary. In this sense the term "Cross" does not refer only to the wooden instrument of execution which the Roman soldiers used. Indeed, it does not really refer to that at all. It refers to something Jesus did. What He did was to suffer. This He did all along the line, in that He entered into real relations with sinful men. To enter into such relations indeed meant an encounter with men so real that the conflict between the way of the obedient Son and the ways of mankind could not be hidden. It was forced into the open by the very reality of Christ's dealings with the people He encountered, and such was the difference disclosed that it proved to be intolerable. Jesus had to die. The life which so manifested the grace of " God and signified His presence among men meant judgment. God was in Christ, and men did not find it comfortable. What Christ was and did meant that everything men did was shown up in the blazing light of God's love, and seen to be very evil. Those who plotted against Him knew that the judgment on them pronounced by His very existence among them as the suffering servant of the Lord was true. Therefore, they hated Him the more. "Jesus said to them, 'If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word... He who is of God hears the words of God; the reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God'." (John 8.) And so the putting forth of the gracious powers of the Kingdom led to the death of Jesus.

What does Christ do to save us? The answer is that He came and He comes, as the One He is. He is sent from God as the divine Son, the beloved, in whom God is well pleased, that He might bring to us the grace of God. He comes as the One who wills to be gracious. "Go in peace. Thy sins be forgiven thee." "He who is forgiven little, loves little." He offers forgiveness, and the way of forgiveness. Men are to forgive not merely seven times, but seventy times seven. There is no limit to it. The second mile, the shirt given as well as the coat-this interest in and concern for the other in his need, this offer of companionship, neighbourliness, this putting of oneself at the other's disposal-why this is the very action of God. God wills to have us as His friends-nay, His children. He will take us up. He will receive us and admit us to Himself. There is no barrier on His side. He desires it. But when we look upon Him we find that to be with Him is demanding. His very presence searches out our pretences and pride. To be with Him is to realize how very unsatisfactory we are. Yet on His side He does not say no. In spite of this barrier which is put up on our side, He reaches out His hand to us and calls us. He cares about us sufficiently to put up with what is bad in us - not condoning it, but enduring it, suffering it. He offers forgiveness first. He comes to meet us, reconciling us to Himself first, and then dealing with our sins.

All this is demonstrated and set forth in the actual life lived among men by Jesus Christ. Those who responded to His appeal to come to Him were changed. They entered into the Kingdom. They became heirs of eternal life. The whole dimension of their existence was transformed. They "entered into life." This we refer to by saying that they were saved. To be reconciled to God is to be saved. It is to become a citizen of the heavenly city while still in this world. It is to taste by faith the life of the world to come. And all this comes about by simply responding to Christ. He says, "Follow me." Whoever does follow Him, and thus opens mind and heart to Him, by so doing accepts the judgment of God contained in His gracious invitation with its proffered forgiveness. It is the readiness to accept the judgment implied in forgiveness, in a word, it is the readiness to have any dealings with a gracious God, a God who forgives, which makes the reconciliation possible. On the other hand, it is the living "in, with, and under" such grace which creates the new man in Christ. Christ saves us by relating us to Himself and keeping us beside Him.

Yet we have not stated this properly even yet. Not only must we beware of thinking of the Atonement as a kind of transaction carried through on that first Good Friday, as if on that day for the first time the heavenly ledgers were balanced. We must also keep firmly in mind that what Christ does, God does. If we are "saved,” it is God who has saved us. He is the one with whom we have to do. To refer once again to Paul's great sentence, we must realize the importance of the first word in the text, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself." Therefore, the Atonement is something which God does. It is something which belongs to His character. He saved Israel by His mighty acts. This redemption, this rescue, this deliverance amid evil and destruction is characteristic of Him. He is celebrated in Hebrew story as the God who delivered Israel by a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm. The saving activity of God did not occur first in the time of Jesus. God did not develop and grow into a God who saved. He never was anything else. This means that God is the eternal Saviour. As Brunner says, "The Atonement is not history... It is super-history, it lies in the dimension which no historian knows in so far as he is a mere historian." (The Mediator, p. 504.) "There was a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted on the green hill outside Jerusalem." (Dinsmore, quoted by D. M. Baillie in God Was in Christ, p. 194.)

So we conclude that atonement is the mighty eternal action of God become incarnate in Christ, who by His life and death revealed its nature and actually mediated it to men by living it out among them and inviting them to receive it by committing themselves to Him and following Him. He was the friend of sinners, and because He was their friend they could receive Him. " And as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God."

8. The Resurrection

The end of the crucifixion was the death of Jesus. Again, we have to consider the point of view. It was not merely the death of one more Palestinian Jew. The average death-rate of Jews in Palestine may have been twenty a week, or fifty, it does not matter. This death could not be entered in the statistics and so finally disposed of. This was the more than shameful, more than tragic death of the Son of God. This was catastrophic. The unique One, the Revelation, the Mediator, literally the only one in all eternity dies miserably by the hand of the Roman executioner; a life and a mission come to an ignominious end; one who bore the sin of the world is treated thus; He who was nearest the Father, "My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," is executed as a criminal by rough soldiers who hadn't the vaguest suspicion of what they were really engaged in: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Here, obviously, we appear to have entered the region of the absurd. Reason cannot function in this realm. The Son of God, executed by men! God's purpose defeated! Sheer goodness and grace become ridiculous! This is the place where We cannot think things out logically. Here we are in contact with the mystery of God's will, and we must wait on Him if we are to take it in. Christ, the revelation, God manifest in the flesh, dead and buried! Is it not a contradiction in terms?

It is when we think in this way that we can see the close connection between the Incarnation and the Cross and the Resurrection. The answer to the absurd position of the previous paragraph is the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. The same loving power which sent Him to reveal the Father vindicated His mission by the Resurrection. That is to say, Christmas, Good Friday and Easter are festivals of three phases of the one action of God whereby He reveals Himself as love and mercy to those who receive His gift with penitent hearts. If we have been able to realize the unique significance of Christ's being in the world at all we should be prepared for the Resurrection. And for the same reason we should see that Christ's victory over sin and death was not delayed till the first day of the week when the tomb was discovered to be empty. It was won when He was led away into a desert place to be tempted; it continued to be won, actively and unceasingly, as He lived His days amid believers and unbelievers, Pharisees ;' and Gentiles, high and low; it was won in Gethsemane, and the victory was maintained on the Cross. The Resurrection was not itself the victory, but belonged to it.

Like the Creation and the Incarnation, the Resurrection is uncongenial to the modern mind. The sceptical person demands a rigorous historical proof that Jesus rose from the dead, the power of scepticism being such that in other fields of enquiry even photographs will not convince where conviction is unwelcome. The proof that can be offered has no effect on the sort of mind that is determined not to believe. But to those who are prepared quietly to reflect on the facts some things may be mentioned which deserve attention. One is the testimony of St Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament. He seems to have been quite convinced that Jesus appeared to His followers after His death. He was in a position to discuss the whole thing thoroughly with Peter. The gospel writers all have accounts of the Resurrection which, while not agreeing in every detail, bear a testimony difficult to account for if it is not substantially true. The New Testament records show that it was the message of the Resurrection which created a stir and caused men to believe. The existence of the Church to-day corresponds with what is reported to have happened. Yet while all these points find their natural place and seem right when considered by a believer, they will never seem so to the unbeliever. For the Resurrection is not merely an event whose reality and significance can be determined by purely historical tests. That there were happenings, and witnesses of those happenings, is the best explanation of the evidence we have. To this extent there is historical proof - if ever historical matters can be proven absolutely. But the detailed nature of the happenings can no longer be historically determined. Moreover, their full significance transcends history. When the eternal comes into the human story, there must needs be things which appear differently to faith and to unbelief.

9. The Ascension

The Resurrection, which sealed Christ's victory over sin and death, meant the conclusion of His life on earth and so was naturally followed by His absence from the disciples as a bodily presence. He ascended to the Father: "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God." (John 20: 17.) The religious interest is not in "ascend" but in "unto my Father." Christ sits at God's right hand, where He makes intercession for us. The intimate relationship of the Son with the Father, together with the work He accomplished for sinners, make it natural to believe that with God He is still the Mediator on our behalf. It is impossible to conceive concretely what the intercourse of the Father with the Son consists in. Our human powers stop short here and imagination falters. But that the Mediator is with God implies that His active sympathy with His followers is part of the divine fellowship of Christ with God. "Those who were once purchased at so dear a price are never forgotten." It is of tremendous value to us who are on our pilgrimage here on earth to know that in our warfare we have the companionship of One who, having redeemed us on earth, now from the heart of God Himself aids us and links us with God.

The fact of the ascending into the sky is not strongly featured in the gospels. It is explicitly mentioned only in Acts 1, where the religious images and figures of the Old Testament seem to have been freely used by the writer. In Luke 24: 51 the R.S.V. reads: “While he blessed them, he parted from them." In the next text of this passage there is no reference to any cloud. The first Christians believe that the body of Jesus had been raised and glorified at the Resurrection, and had become a "spiritual body." In this form Jesus was seen by the apostles after the Resurrection a number of times. Each time He disappeared from their sight. As Dr. J. H. Bernard says, "the only difference between the Ascension and the previous withdrawals was that the Ascension was the last of them."

10. The Second Coming

In Mark 13, especially in verse 26, and in corresponding passages in other gospels, we have the statement that "they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory." From 1 Thessalonians 4: 15 and 1 Corinthians 15: 51f, we learn that the advent is expected in the writer's lifetime. It will be preceded by various troubles and y by the appearance of Anti-christ (2 Thessalonians 2). The order of events appears to be this: the descent of Jesus from above with His angels, the sounding of the trumpet which summons the dead, the catching up of living Christians who will be changed suddenly to meet Jesus in the air, the judgment of the living and the dead, the final establishment of the Kingdom which will overcome Satan, and the eternal reign of God.

How are we to understand these references? Some read them literally and even go so far as to fix dates, using the Book of Daniel to assist them. Needless to say, such efforts to work out a timetable for God are utterly wrong-headed and doomed to failure from the outset. Surely a sense of humour is lacking! There have been various attempts to determine what the Advent is. Some have held it to be the Resurrection, some the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2), some the fall of Jerusalem. Others again have held that successive comings of Christ may be seen on the crises of history, as, for example, the fall of the Roman Empire. A different interpretation holds that passages like Mark 13 are a characteristic type of Hebrew prophetic writing and are to be understood as expressing in dramatic picture form the religious hopes of the writers, and are not to be taken literally as history written before the event. We who live in this matter-of-fact mechanical and technological age must realize that there are other ways of communicating spiritual truths besides the ones we prefer. Pictures and myths may say to those who are used to them the same fundamental things as our scientific and historical words of to-day.

A view held by some believing interpreters of our own time is that the Advent of Christ implies the end of the age, that is, the frontier of history, the line of demarcation between the order of this world and the eternal order. But the end is not some future event which can be dated in history. It is the overcoming of the power of this world and the introduction of the power of the age to come. This is the inauguration of the Kingdom of God which has already taken place by virtue of the Incarnation. The New Age has dawned in Christ, who is the revelation from heaven. Eternal life is a present reality, and there could be no more stupendous event than that God has already sent His Son. Hence those who are in Christ are His eternally, and are already risen with Him. The Day of the Lord has dawned, not in the sense that it belongs to a date in the past, but in the sense that the powers of this world, sin and death, have already been vanquished by the power through which God raised Christ from the dead. Christ has come, once and for all.

11. The Judgement

The point of view expressed in the previous paragraph does not, of course, exclude the idea of the consummation or perfecting of God's Kingdom. The Day of the Lord has dawned in that God has acted decisively in Christ with regard to the powers of this world, but its full realization is not yet. It is still "to come." We recall the two aspects of the Kingdom of God: that which is now, and that which is to come. "To come" includes both the idea that it is in the future and the idea that it transcends time. The fulfilment of God's holy purpose with men will mean the "end" of history-but in the nature of the case, the end of history cannot itself be within history or be a piece of history. (In the same way creation is on the frontier of history.

Having realized that a final perfecting of all things is an essential feature of the Christian faith, and does not depend on any single passage of Scripture, but is both implicit and explicit as one of its basic truths, we ask ourselves what it signifies for Christians and for unbelievers. This matter is usually referred to as the Judgment. At the ultimate consummation of God's purpose, when all things are summed up in Christ (Ephesians 1: 10), what will happen to those who are not Christians? Paul speaks of us all appearing before the judg- ment seat of Christ and being judged according to the substance of our works (2 Corinthians 5: 10; 1 Corinthians 3: 13-15). It is necessary to think out clearly what is involved in the conception of a judgment.

First, it may be noted that the Judgment is usually thought of in connection with the second advent of Christ. Sometimes God is spoken of as the Judge, and sometimes Christ. It is important to recognize that it is not possible to set out a clear and unmistakable programme of events from any given or supposed date of the appearing of Christ in the clouds. Scripture is not consistent on that point. It would be surprising if it were, seeing that its object is to record the revelation of God rather than to supply a scheme of future events. Jesus said "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." (Mark 13: 32.) "It is not for you to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power." (Acts 1: 7.)

Second, this conclusion does not require us to ignore the idea of judgment altogether. Quite the contrary, for judgment is a part of the truth of divine love. God loves His children with a steadfast love. He does not change. The certainty of His favour towards those who put their trust in Him is absolute. It is rooted in the very being of God Himself. It is the solidest thing there is. It follows from this that to flout or despise His loving will must be a matter of corresponding seriousness. God's will is not such that He compels us against our will, but His will is a will, nevertheless; and to be found opposed to it is serious in the way that the depth of God's love is serious. This is what is involved in the idea of a final judgment, and therefore in spite of the fact that the Bible has no really clear teaching on its details or processes, we cannot ignore it.

Third, we must briefly review the ways in which the results of the Judgment have been conceived. The main result is that the faithful in Christ inherit the kingdom prepared for them: they enter into the joy of their Lord: they glorify God and enjoy Him for ever: they live in the presence of God, than which there is no more blessed or keener mode of existence. Those, on the other hand, who have spurned God's love in Christ, or who have continued in their own self-centred way, the disobedient and rebellious, will be excluded from God's presence. As to what this latter must mean opinions have varied. The view implied in many passages in the Bible is that such " persons are condemned to eternal punishment. This means that their punishment has the same infinite quality as the bliss of heaven, only on the negative side. This has long been official teaching in the Church. It raises the question, how- ever, whether it does not involve a radical contradiction. How can the invincible purpose of God, who is love, be said to be realized as long as one soul has not in the end responded to it? The existence of any conscious beings in a condition of eternal punishment is in itself a proof of divine failure. But failure of God's purpose is unthinkable; therefore we must conceive of some condition other than life on earth in which what has not yet been accomplished in the souls of the wicked during this earthly life may be perfected. There is nothing essentially un-Christian in the thought of a period or state of further probation after death. Those who think along these lines, therefore, hold that ultimately all men will be saved and be found in the eternal home of the Father's loving presence. This view is known as Universalism. Many scholars hold that St Paul teaches it.

There are those, however, who, while seeing the difficulty about eternal punishment and feeling that God could not be Himself and yet contemplate the torments of the damned, are not so impressed by the argument that God's purpose will have failed if all are not ultimately saved. They consider that proper weight must be given to the fact that the decision for or against God is real, since it requires a free and responsible act on the part of men. What they do in response to God's call involves their whole being, and is no light casual decision. Since the whole man is in the decision and is thus constituted by it, the consequences will scarcely be avoidable. If a branch remains in the tree it grows and bears fruit. If it is cut off it gradually withers and dies. God cannot force Himself upon us or compel us to be members of the company of heaven on the basis of an artificial status. He must win us, and we must cleave to Him of our own insight and desire. Therefore, those whom He does not win, but who resist Him to the end, cannot enter into eternal life. Eternal life depends on our being "in Christ"; if we are not in Christ then we must be outside of Him, excluded from the Kingdom of God. Faith in Christ is the condition of immortality.

This view is thus known as Conditional Immortality. It has the merit of emphasizing what the Bible emphasizes: the reality and seriousness of moral choice and the fact that our salvation is rooted and grounded in Christ. Sometimes narrow- minded people press this view rather crudely, and it must be admitted that it is nothing like so ancient a view as Universalism, which appeared in the early centuries of Christianity, whereas Conditionalism was scarcely known until about the sixteenth century, and has not been widely held except from the nineteenth century onwards. It is true that it has more Biblical earnestness about it than Universalism, but it goes beyond the essential message of the Bible in drawing conclusions which are the results of human speculation and not the mind of God as it has been revealed to us. God has revealed that the way to eternal life is by Jesus Christ. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." But it has not been revealed to us precisely what God will in fact do with those who do not believe in Him during their earthly life. What we do know is that now is the day of salvation, and that to neglect it will have consequences beyond this life of ours in time.

ADDENDA

 

(a) Jesus’ Birth of a Virgin

Was the physical birth of Jesus different from normal human birth in that His mother received no human seed? There are two questions here: could such a thing happen; did it happen?

As far as the first question is concerned, while it is not easy for the twentieth century person to bring himself to accept miracles of any kind, and while he cannot help reflecting that pagan religions also have their wonder-births, gods taking the form of men, it is not logically necessary to conclude that Jesus' birth of a virgin was impossible. We have already seen (chapter 7, section 5) that if God be as the Bible represents Him we cannot set limits to what He can or will do. It is not irrational to think that there may be other things than the ones we are used to in ordinary life. On general grounds, therefore, we should say that Jesus could have been "born of the virgin Mary."

Have we any reason to say that He was so born? This is a question of evidence. It is to be observed that the New Testament practically ignores the birth of Jesus. The earliest gospel says nothing about it, nor does the latest. St Paul docs not mention it. We are left with the introductory parts of St Matthew and St Luke. The evidence is therefore inconclusive. What are we to think, then? It should be clear that Jesus' being the Son of God does not depend on the manner of His conception. God could use the ordinary means and still realize His purpose. It is who He was, and not how He came into the world, which makes Jesus the Saviour. Yet we should not be surprised if a virgin did conceive. That the Incarnation should take place at all is a stupendous enough thing, much greater than any strangeness in the manner of Christ's becoming flesh.

In this matter let every man be persuaded in his own mind. Leading Protestant teachers have differed on the point. Earth believes that Jesus was born of a virgin; Brunner does not. The late Principal John Dickie believed the same thing, but wrote on the same page (323) of his The Organism of Christian Truth: "There is no scriptural warrant for the position that the Virgin Birth is a Christian fundamental in the sense that Christian faith is impossible apart from acceptance of it. If St Paul, for example, know of the Virgin Birth he cannot have at all stressed it. If on the other hand he was unaware of it, his case is sufficient proof that it is possible to hold the full Christian doctrine of our Lord's unique Sonship without reference to it." The late Principal Denney took the same position: "The gospel rested on the apostolic testimony to Jesus, and the testimony did not reach so far back as His birth. .We cannot go wrong if we limit the fundamental confession of faith to the character in which Jesus presented Himself and was afterwards by His apostles presented to the world, without introducing into it, as essential conditions or presuppositions of faith, matters of fact which originally had no such significance." (Jesus and the Gospel, page 405.)

(b) The Millennium

In the Book of Revelation, chapter 20, we read that Satan will be bound for a thousand years, during which there will be peace and joy. The word millennium is Latin for a thousand years. This passage in Revelation is the only Scriptural authority for an idea which arose in the early Church and attained great popularity, namely, that there was going to be a wonderful period of prosperity and happiness in the future, and that it would last a thousand years. The question was, w hen would it begin? The scheme was worked out that the end of the world would be preceded by the showing up of Anti-Christ (who is really Satan, or the Adversary), after which Christ would appear and destroy Anti-Christ, thus inaugurating the thousand years' peace. This would complete the time picture of the world, since the millennium was the seventh and last period of one thousand years. The preceding six millennia corresponded to the six days of creation, and the sixth thousand would end with the return of Christ. Needless to say, this artificial theory of history makes no appeal to-day. As Jesus warned us, we do not know the times or the seasons.