[ p. 16 ]
THE immediate effect of the Baptist’s preaching was to stir the whole nation with excited expectancy. In the temple, in the synagogues, in the market places, all were fired with fervent anticipation. The Messianic idea, always in the air, had become the most vital fact of the moment. All Palestine was soon engaged in serious self-examination. This was John’s purpose. His appeal was nation-wide, “to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for him.” Now Israel’s sense of racial solidarity was extreme; not only might the sins of a father affect his children, but the sin of a single unknown individual might defile a whole community. [1] It did not follow, therefore, that everyone who submitted to John’s baptism had committed the sins which John denounced; he might have been entirely free from such failings, but his membership in the guilty nation was enough to demand what we might call a “race penitence.” So when Jesus of Nazareth received the rite we must guard ourselves against assuming that he must have been conscious of personal shortcomings; the untroubled certainty with [ p. 17 ] which he spoke of God and righteousness is proof of the contrary.
Of Jesus’ life before he came to John we know next to nothing; between his birth and his baptism the records give us but one glimpse of him. This glimpse has, however, a high value of its own. At the age of twelve Joseph and the child’s mother took him with them on a visit to Jerusalem, and “as they were returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind.” An anxious search followed, until he was finally discovered in the temple, listening to the sages expound the Law. His mother reproved him gently, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” The reply is wonderfully characteristic of boyhood, which cannot understand how everyone does not know what the boy takes for granted. “Why—why did you have to search for me? Did you not know that I would be in my Father’s house?” Even at the age of twelve there was present the unshakable consciousness of God’s Fatherhood, which was to dominate the teaching of Jesus in later years.
During the life at Nazareth there must have been present, likewise, the instinctive certainty about God’s will, the intuitive understanding of the true nature of righteousness. As a result there must have existed an ever profounder discontent with the teaching of the official expounders of Judaism, an ever growing indignation at their narrowness and self-satisfaction. Particularly hateful would have been the shallow nationalism of those who saw in the overthrow of the Romans [ p. 18 ] all that was needed to establish the Kingdom of God —with the consequent perpetual fanning of a hatred of Israel’s enemies, and the justifying of this hatred as by God’s command. Israel was in no condition so to plume itself. God’s approaching judgment on the world was accepted everywhere; good—but how would Israel fare in this judgment? In the Baptist’s message, therefore, Jesus heard his own thoughts echoed. John was indeed a prophet; to his revelation every Jew must submit. Accordingly, with the rest of the nation, Jesus offered himself for baptism in the river Jordan; and as he was baptized God’s call came to him.
The story of this call is given us in a record of inner experiences, clothed in simple, concrete figures that make them clear to the simplest intelligence. Of course it is a dramatic recital, not a literal account. “Half the difficulties in the New Testament would vanish if men would only consent to translate Oriental poetry into bald, matter-of-fact, Western prose.” We must bear this warning constantly in mind, and must not seek to interpret details in too rigid a fashion. But Jesus—the account can come only from him—leaves us in no doubt as to the essentials of the happenings.
“Straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending into [2] him.” There was a blinding vision and a sudden realization of an inrush of power. “And a voice out of the heavens, ‘Thou art my beloved Son, [ p. 19 ] in thee I am well pleased.’ ” Or, to translate more literally, “Thou art my Son, the Beloved; on thee have I set my choice.” Three phrases for the same thing— “Thou art Messiah.”
A sense of the difference between himself and other men had always been with Jesus; now he knew how great that difference was. He was chosen not alone to teach God’s will, but to bring God’s will to its consummation; not only to proclaim the coming of God’s final Kingdom, but to found this Kingdom and to reign in it as its King.
So serious and solemn a revelation demanded solitude. “Straightway the Spirit driveth him forth into the wilderness.” Jesus had to be alone. He must bend himself to the task of interpreting the message he had received, and the further messages he knew God would give him; he must think, and think hard, till he could be sure of God’s purpose; think, and think hard, lest the spell of his recent experience pass away; concentrate on his task with purpose so intent as to transcend all ordinary interruptions, and even make him oblivious of the need of sleep and food. His period of solitude lasted, we are told, “forty days”— of course a round number; to an Oriental in practice the next number larger than “ten” is “forty.”
In any case, however, the period was long enough to produce physical exhaustion, and outraged nature always takes her revenge. A body strung to the highest pitch of mental exaltation will invariably reassert [ p. 20 ] itself. As hunger’s claims become insistent, spiritual ecstasy will wane. Then perplexities grow into doubts, and doubts grow into temptations; temptations that often arise out of the very ecstasy that has preceded them. In Jesus’ case this was eminently true; the sharpness of his temptations lay in the fact that they were based in popular and attractive conceptions of what the Messiah should do.
The first temptation was the direct result of the hunger Jesus felt. Everyone held that the Messiah had arbitrary command over the powers of nature and that he might work any miracle he pleased. Why then, should not Jesus, as Messiah, use this gift to relieve his own distress? “If thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread.” Why not? Why submit to discomfort when a miracle would give immediate relief ? Why not be sensible and take the easiest way? Jesus’ reply, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” gave the answer. God, who cares for the birds and the flowers in the orderly course of His government, cares all the more for them. Discomfort and pain, too, have their place in His plan and they are not to be evaded recklessly: to ask for a miracle merely to make ourselves more comfortable is to impeach God’s wisdom. Everyone has felt the same temptation to shirk hardship; those who yield to it make up the cowards, the weaklings, the drug addicts of this world.
Then Jesus viewed the kingdoms of the world and [ p. 21 ] their glory as from a mountain top. Since he was Messiah, all these things might be his own. Was it not the common view that Israel was to conquer the world under the Messiah’s surpassing generalship? So was not his best plan to unfurl the flag of revolt and summon the nation to battle ? He had always detested such petty nationalism, to be sure, but was there room for pure idealism in this hard world of realities? Can anything be effected without some compromise of strict principle? “Why not half a loaf, rather than no bread?” Again, this is a temptation everyone has felt. Jesus’ reply was curt and unambiguous: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” Any lowering of the moral standard is, in essence, a worshiping of Satan.
Finally, [3] Jesus asked himself if he were really Messiah at all. Could he trust the call that God had given him, even though it came as the climax of a long series of experiences? Why not put the new conviction to a test? If he threw himself from the pinnacle of the temple, he could resolve all doubts. If he were not Messiah he would be destroyed, but he would be relieved of a fatal responsibility. Or else God’s angels would bear him up, confirm his claim to his own mind and attest it beyond cavil to the nation; then he could go forward unhesitatingly. Probably every soul which has ever received a vocation to a trying work has been tempted in some similar way to demand a miracle that will remove hesitation. But it is enough if our [ p. 22 ] duty be made morally clear to us: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”
The same temptations recurred all through Jesus’ life—when Peter sought to hold him back on his last journey to Jerusalem; when the Pharisees asked him for a sign; when the taunting watchers on Calvary told him that if he would come down from the cross they would believe. These are temptations that in some form or other come to us all, but especially to every man who knows himself to be endowed with great gifts and understands that he should use them for God, yet feels himself constantly lured from the heights and asking whether he cannot seek an easier road and walk a smoother path.
As the result of the temptations Jesus saw clearly what sort of Messiah he must not be; not the king the crowd expected; not one who would stoop to popular conceptions and modify his own convictions; not one who would use force, even in a great crisis. To be sure, there were possibilities in the idea of Messiahship that may not yet have been cleared up, difficulties for whose solution he must trust to the future. But Jesus came out of the wilderness, sure that he must follow the path of truth and light, no matter where it led and no matter at what cost. God never meant to make life easy; he meant to make men great. God wants men of tremendous persistence and unflinching determination to live true to the best—men who will always do what truth and honor demand and close [ p. 23 ] the ear against any suggestion of compromise with divine principles and purposes.
So Jesus put resolutely away from him all thought of self-glorification. He began his work with a proclamation of God’s will; about himself he refused to talk.