[ p. 248 ]
AS WE have traced the story of Jesus’ life and teaching, we find an amazing thing. Never has there been a record of human friendship quite like the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. His was a great and wonderful life, which led them on and on, always extending just beyond their understanding, their thoughts about their Master never quite keeping level with their experience of him. They follow him with ever-increasing amazement. They see one who is human like themselves, bound by the strictest human limitations, subject to human infirmities; yet one the mystery of whose person they can never escape. He seems anxious that they should consider this mystery. “Who do men say that I am ?” “Who do you say that I am?”
What an astonishing thing that the question should still be asked! What other world leader ever concentrated thought in this way on his own person? What other religion stands or falls by the answer to such a question? What other teacher makes the question so insistent that it compels serious thought in all future centuries?
While the earlier Gospels unconsciously show how [ p. 249 ] little the disciples were able to understand, they leave no doubt as to the greatness of the Figure they were called upon to understand. Jesus heals the sick, raises the dead, has authority over the powers of nature. He asks men to forsake father and mother, wife and children, rather than fail to follow him. A man who excused himself from immediate discipleship, is told to “let the dead bury their dead.” Another who would first go and bid farewell to his family is warned against putting his hand to the plough, only to turn back. Those who follow must deny themselves and take up the cross with Jesus.
He is the Son of Man who teaches with such authority that, though heaven and earth shall pass away, his words will never pass away. All things have been delivered to him by the Father. No man knows the Father, but he to whom the Son will reveal Him. He will give his life “a ransom for many.” He comes “to seek and to save.” He concentrates all the mystery of his divine consciousness in a sacramental act, and gives his body and blood as the food of the soul. He “goes as it is written of him,” but goes willingly as one whose blood is “shed for many for the remission of sins.” He calls to himself all who labor and are heavy laden and promises to give them rest. He “has power on earth to forgive sins.” He will come again “in clouds, with great power and glory.” Fie will be seen then “sitting on the right hand of power.” His “fan is in his hand,” as he comes in judgment. He is “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed.”
[ p. 250 ]
Most startling of all, of course, is his claim to be the judge of men. “The Father judges no man by Himself. He gives over all judgment to the Son.” He gives him this authority to pronounce judgment, “because he is the Son of Man,” tempted as we are and touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but the Son is given authority also, that “all men may honor me as they honor the Father.”
These last words are found in St. John, but Mark’s primitive Gospel makes it plain that Jesus is to come again in glory to judge the world, and Matthew’s Gospel gives the grounds on which the judgment will be based:
“The Son of Man shall come in glory, and all the holy angels with him… Then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory… Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. For I was anhungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee anhungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? [ p. 251 ]
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Surely, there is no difference between the Lord of whom the earlier Gospels tell us, and the Lord of whom the Apostle Paul speaks, or the Lord of whom the Apostle John writes. Everywhere he is seen as doing marvelous works, acting with power, speaking with authority, entering upon a work in full assurance that his authority is of heaven, conscious that his death will be a blessing, sure that it will issue in victory, declaring as he vanishes from their sight that his presence will be with them to the end of time, always human and yet never anything but divine.
The marvel is, that no one dreams of calling Jesus an impostor. Some, it is true, have made him a fiery enthusiast; some, a fanatic expecting the speedy end of all things; some, an unworldly idealist with intuitive faith in a heavenly Father. But, like the accusers at his trial, these witnesses do not “agree together.” Each omits what is inconsistent with his own theory. One after another, their portraits are discarded. None shows the many-sided character of Christ. The world has never been able to escape the mystery of his person. He has never been satisfactorily explained in terms of humanity. “Do not speak like that,” Charles Lamb is reported to have said, when some one had spoken flippantly of Jesus; “do not speak like that. If Shakespeare [ p. 252 ] came into this room, we should all spring to our feet; but, if Jesus Christ came, we should fall on our knees.”
The perpetual miracle is that we find in Jesus everything he claimed for himself. The miracle is even greater: We find the God of Jesus in the life of Jesus. He is himself all that he said he was, and all that he declared God to be. If we were to think long and carefully of all we wish to find in God, and then describe all the hungry heart desires, the description could hardly be other than what Jesus Christ was in his earthly life.
We cannot understand how the first preaching of Christianity proved so wonderfully effective, unless we realize that the early disciples lived in the warmth and glow of an experience the thrill of which never left them. We need to remind ourselves (whether we have fully accepted their view or not) that these men, to whom we go to gain our first impressions of Jesus Christ, lived in an atmosphere of reverence, devotion, amazement, and awe. They felt something of “holy fear” as they looked back at their friendship with their Friend and Master. Their remembrance of those days of friendly intercourse gave them a sense of the mystery, the beauty, and the glory of the experience they were trying to pass on to others. They lived as men who suddenly found themselves transplanted into another world. They felt that they had been in vivid contact with the divine. It so showed itself in their speech that others also felt the glory of it. Looking [ p. 253 ] back to the days when the Lord Jesus had companied with them, they seemed to say: “Now—now, at last, we understand what it all meant.”
What did it mean? Nothing less than this, that when they listened to his words they were hearing one who spoke, and had a right to speak, as the Voice of God; when they looked at him they were seeing God; when they touched him (wonder of wonders) they had actually touched God. They had gazed upon and their unworthy hands had handled the Word of Life. They had seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.