Israel's Messiah the Christ of the New Testament
‘ ’ — he the ‘ Anointed One ’
—was a well-known name in Israel. To many it was no doubt but a sound or name, but to ‘ them that believed ’ it was precious; embodying as it did to them, and to their nation, all hope and joy; announcing to them the love which passeth know¬ ledge; and predicting a glory coming, such as eye had not seen nor ear heard.
Messiah was Israel’s hope; and His coming was the fulfilment of that hope. All that the prophets foretold of good was connected with Him, and waited for His arrival. He was ‘ the High Priest of the good things to come; ’ He was known for long ages by the name of the Coming One.
Many things forespoken concerning Him seemed inconsistent the one with the other: for He was to die, and yet be the living one; He was to be sorrowfill, yet anointed with the oil of gladness; He was to be without form or comeliness, yet also fairer than the children of men; He was to he laid as the burnt-offering on the altar, yet He was to sit upon a throne; He was to be poor, yet the riches of both heaven and earth were to be His; He was to be rejected of men, yet He was to be acknowledged as King and Lord; He was to be human, yet He was to be divine.
These apparent contradictions were difficult of reconciliation; and men oftentimes wondered as they compared what they saw in Jesus of Nazareth with what the prophets had spoken concerning the glory of Messiah. Men knew not how to solve, by human reasoning, the difficulties that were thus raised, or to answer to themselves the question as to the impossibilities of which His character, and person, and life seemed to be made up. The twice-repeated ‘ How can ’ of Nicodemus was a true index of the state of the Jewish mind in reference to Jesus of Nazareth. Men looked at Him but as the son of a carpenter, and they asked them¬ selves, Can all the great things predicted by the prophets be fulfilled in him? There were features of resemblance, no doubt, but so many of unlikeness that they stood in doubt; not reassuring themselves with the thought that all Messiah’s glories could not unfold at once, and that what men knew not now, they should know hereafter.
The ‘ How can ’ of Mcodemus has often operated thus in subsequent ages, and destroyed faith. Men turn away from difficulties, and imagine everything to be a contradiction of which they cannot discover the reconciliation. They take a false view as well as a false measure of difficulties, and of what they call ’ impossibilities/
The miracles of Jesus were meant to meet the * How can ’ of Nicodemus; and this was so far well expressed, when that half-believing disciple said to Him, ‘ We know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.’ These miracles were so remarkable, so peculiar, so numerous, and so like what the prophets had led Israel to expect of Messiah, that they at once raised the question with some, May not this be Messiah Himself? There are some things which seem to say, It cannot be He; but there are more, which distinctly say, It is He. ‘Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is J ehovah; we
The Christ of Cod.
have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation ’ (Isa. xxv. 9).
The way in which the Lord met the unbelief of Hicodemus is very peculiar, and asks our notice. ‘ Thou art a teacher come from God,’ said the Pharisee. A Teacher! And is that all? A teacher come from God! But is that all? Then thou art far from the kingdom, and canst not enter it. He who enters that kingdom must own my true and divine Messiahship. Hone can pass into that kingdom, but they who recognise in me the Messiah, the Christ of God. Thou must be born again; for only f he who believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born again.’ To call me teacher will avail nothing; you must acknowledge me as the Christ. Only they who do so are sons and heirs; and none save the sons and heirs can obtain the kingdom. ‘ As many as received Him (as the Christ), to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name; who were born (who received their sonship) not of
blood (not by natural descent), nor of the will of the flesh (not by any process of human generation), nor of the will of man (not by any human appointment or choice), but of God’ (John i. 12, 13): for ‘that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is horn of the Spirit is spirit’ (John iii. 6). Our reception of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah is that which constitutes our sonship, and secures our entrance into the kingdom of God.
Everything therefore depends on our having right thoughts of Christ. Many think that faith and unbelief are of no great importance, either for the better or the worse to us; and that our views of Messiah cannot be the turning-point of our ad¬ mission into or exclusion from the kingdom. In the divine estimate, a right faith, — that is, a ’ true creed, — is beyond all price, both as to its present effects in securing the divine favour now, and as to its final results in providing for us a right to the inheritance hereafter. It is no vain thing to believe aright, whatever men may say. The value which God sets upon our recognition of His Christ, in the fulness of that glory which belongs to Him, is to be measured by the infiniteness of the blessing attach¬ ing to all those who believe that ‘ Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ The completeness of our creed concerning Him and His work, as the Sent of God, the Only-begotten of the Father, is a thing of no minor importance. To add to or take from the words written in the Scriptures regarding Messiah, is to forfeit our portion in the kingdom, and our place in the Lamb’s book of life.
The age professes to be going in quest of faith.
‘ What are we to believe? ’ is the question that is universally put. Yet, with all this, men attach no value to a right faith, nor will admit that God cares more for the man that believes one thing than for him who believes another. Sentimental earnestness, whether philosophical or religious, is the modern substitute for a right creed; and men are allowed to play fast and loose with truth, without being supposed to incur any risk for eternity, any injury to their present spiritual condition, or any displeasure from God Himself.
How this is precisely the state in which we should expect to find matters had there been no revelation, and had God left man to grope his way darkly to truth without any help, either external or internal, from above. Without a Bible, men would be tossed hither and thither in their opinions; and would naturally be unwilling to be trammelled by a creed; for any such creed would be but the creed of a man. Beligious truth could not exist, though religious speculation might be rife. There could be no responsibility attaching to belief, no sin in unbelief, and no danger in error; for these three things must arise out of an authoritative revelation from Him who alone can proclaim truth as a certainty, and error as a malignant evil.
The poetry, the philosophy, the science of modern times, seem all to have deliberately gone back to some pre-revelation era, and to have taken their stand upon simple paganism, in so far as religious truth is concerned. f An infant crying for the light ’ is the accurate symbol of such teachers, furnished by themselves, and indicating that the true light had never come; and that for six thousand years God had cruelly kept His creatures in the dark in all things most worth the knowing, — that is, the things pertaining to Himself. ‘ The Christ that is to be ’ is the modern watchword of expectation, and the hope given out by these men of mind, who, believing that the Christ of past ages has proved a failure, have become expectants of another Messiah, who will embody in himself all philosophy, and poetry, and science; just as the still hoped-for Messiah of Israel is to embody all the ambitious dreams of carnal and unbelieving Judaism. Whether this coming Christ of philosophy will reveal Him who is said to be the ‘ unknown and unknowable/
The Christ of Cod.
they do not tell ns; for what they seem to desire is not a revelation of Godhead, hut a revelation of humanity, and an incarnation of the intellect: so that, if there still remains in the human spirit any longing after Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being, that longing must remain unresponded to, and must content itself with re-erecting the old Athenian altar ‘ to the unknown God.’ That which modern intellect hopes and sighs for is not a Christ in whom God becometh man, but a Christ in whom man becometh God.
The coming Christ of philosophy will simply impersonate man’s ideal of the good and true: for no water can rise higher than its source. He will put an end to the supernatural and miraculous, for which the Christ of Bethlehem was so especially the witness. He will be the exhibition of natural goodness, natural knowledge, natural benevolence, natural liberty, natural morality, in opposition to all that is superhuman and divine. He will be broad enough, and wide enough, and liberal enough to embrace all religions except one; — the religion of the sin-bearing cross; and, following in the steps of Boman paganism (whose Pantheon opened its gates to every god but to Jehovah and His incarnate Son), will supremely tolerate every religion of earth, save that of Him whom we are still allowed to own and worship as our God and Lord, Jesus the Christ, who died and rose again. Hay, and he will go back to the double lure by which man was first led into apostasy, and pledge himself to fulfil to man the promise which has hitherto so signally failed, ‘ Ye shall he as gods, knowing good and evil; ’ and, ‘ Ye shall not surely die.’ The deification of man, and his consequent security against all evil from without or from above, and specially against all penalty for self-will and disobedience, will form the sum of the ‘ great swelling words ’ with which he whom philosophers call the * Christ that is to he,’ but whom Scripture calls ‘ the Antichrist,’ will persuade men to how down before him, and own him as prophet, priest, and king.
The truth which God has embodied in f the Christ ’ is not only different in kind from that which is wrapt up in the physical creation, but it differs in the consequences of our receiving or rejecting it. Its lofty nature makes it differ; its supreme importance makes it differ; its more direct bearing on the character and worship of God makes it differ; its effects upon our present spiritual wellbeing make it differ.
All these necessarily imply a certain amount of responsibility in dealing with this higher truth, and a certain amount of danger in defacing, or disparaging, or rejecting it. But there is one special point of difference which is worthy of gravest notice. The rejection of physical truth does not carry with it positive penalty or direct retribution; the rejection of spiritual truth does. This, no doubt, is denied by many, and the two kinds of truth are affirmed to be precisely on the same footing as to penalty; though by some it may be admitted that there is greater loss or injury in refusing the spiritual than in refusing the physical.
Now we admit that this loss or injury arising from ignorance or disbelief of spiritual truth is a real and permanent evil in itself; for to be without the knowledge of the true God (whether from ignorance or rejection) is to be without that which fills the soul, and imparts gladness, and sustains or comforts in weariness and sorrow. Scripture everywhere attests this; and to become ‘ acquainted with God ’ is to become possessed of f good to ‘ delight ourselves in God ’ is to get the desires of our heart. The true knowledge of the true God is like sunshine to the soul.
But then this is not all, and it is at this point that one of the great controversies of the present day arises. Does the wilful exclusion of this knowledge carry with it positive and divine penalties? Is it to be visited hereafter with the dis¬ pleasure of God as guilt, which the righteous Judge must deal with at a judgment-seat, and to which He must apportion a retribution according to the greatness of its enormity?
If we are to accept even the conclusions of reason, we must say that, seeing there is such a great difference between the two kinds of truth, there must be a greater responsibility connected with the treatment of the one than of the other; that there is the likelihood of our being far more seriously injured by our rejection of the one than of the other; and that the fact of there being no positive or statutory penalty annexed to the disbelief of the physical, does by no means lead to the conclusion that there can be no such punishment connected with the disbelief of the spiritual. The far loftier character of the spiritual truth, its far higher importance, its bearing upon the character and honour of God as well as upon the government of the whole universe, its influence for good or ill
The Christ of God. to millions of God’s creatures, — these considerations would rather incline us to believe (apart from revelation) that some special notice must he taken of such a rejection, in the shape of judicial condemnation, and the infliction of a penalty corresponding to the evil done and the crime committed.
Yet such a conclusion would not have been demonstration. It opens the way for this, by showing its likelihood and its propriety. But it is to the Scriptures themselves that we must go to learn what God thinks of the evil of impugning any part of that truth which He has embodied in the Christ, and revealed for our acceptance. These teach us in all their parts what value God attaches to His truth, — to the whole of His truth, — and what stress He lays upon our reception of it as the means of blessing to ourselves and of honour to Him as the God of truth; and what displeasure lies on all who turn the truth of God into a lie, or who refuse to recognise it as divine. ‘ He that believeth on Him is not condemned; but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God ’ (John iii. 18).
Here, then, is the turning-point, and here is the verdict of the Judge. Here is the line which separates faith from unbelief, on the one side of which there is life, and on the other death. ‘ He that believeth hath life; and he that believeth not shall not see life’ (John iii. 36). To get quit of the condemnation by denying the Book in which it is written, as some are trying to do, is only to add guilt to guilt, — the guilt of reject¬ ing the whole to the guilt of rejecting each part separately; the crime of flinging away the casket to the crime of trampling on the gem.
Into the question of what the Book reveals concerning future punishment for the rejection of the Christ, we do not here enter. Scripture has spoken plainly, and reveals to us the infliction on the un¬ believer of that which it calls ‘ the wrath of God; ’ the bearing of which by the sinner calls forth ‘ the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth,’ in opposition to the f songs and everlasting joy ’ of him who has accepted the divine testimony to the Christ of God. Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man in the place of woe (Luke xvi. 22, 23), may be thought to be but figures in a parable; yet they are figures which express but too plainly and too
awfully the coming consolation and the coming The Christ of Cod.
sorrow. * He that is unjust, let him he unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him he filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him he righteous still; and he that is holy, let him he holy still’ (Rev. xxii. 11).
That which is to fall upon the sinner must be something like that which fell on the Substitute, and from which the Substitute came to deliver us, by hearing it for us; that something which made His soul exceeding sorrowful, and caused Him to cry out, ‘ My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? ’ That something was the wrath of Cod. What that wrath is, eternity will reveal. It is something real, like what Christ endured; not a mere negation; not showing itself in placing its objects beyond the possibility of sensation, as must be the case if the theory of annihilation be true. That the Son of God should be incarnate and should suffer anguish to prevent us from being annihilated, seems very unlikely, to say the least of it; and that this should be all the curse from which He came to redeem us (Gal. iii. 13) by His cross, seems to be trifling with penalty and righteousness. Assuredly punishment has no such negative meaning among men; and the inflictions of law are a mockery, if they mean merely rendering the guilty victims insensible to either pain or pleasure. Sorrow cannot be the wages of sin, if the sentence of the Judge upon the sinner be, ‘ Thou shalt sorrow no more; ’ and if the recompense of the wicked is to be expressed in the same words as the reward of the righteous, ‘ The days of thy mourning shall be ended.’ To say to the sinner, Thou shalt rejoice no more, may look like penalty, as being the deprivation of the possibility of happiness; but then that sentence that cuts off all joy cuts off all sorrow too; so that to all alike the words will equally apply, * Thou shalt weep no more! ’
All that is implied in condemnation for a rejected Christ, I do not undertake to discuss; but it must mean more than wiping away all tears from the unbeliever’s eyes.
That God should lay such a burden (the burden of our guilt) upon His Son, implied that there was something very awful in store for sinners. If that something was the mere extinction of being, it is difficult to see what the Son of God really bore, or for what He made atonement. Did God’s displeasure against the sinning object exhaust itself in depriving him of existence, — in reducing him to nothing? If this is all that is symbolized in the fire of the altar, or implied in that which Scripture calls ‘ wrath ’ and ‘ the curse,’ the whole institution of sacrifice is unmeaning, and the cross a mockery, — nay, a useless piece of cruelty to One whose innocence deserved far other treatment. Nay, the cross is not only ‘ made of none effect,’ but is really the greatest injustice that was ever perpetrated on earth; an injustice enough in itself to dissolve all law, to make void all equity and fairness, to subvert every idea of divine goodness and love, to efface all distinctions between right and wrong, between the innocent and the guilty. That God should not spare His Son, and yet spare all His rejectors and all impenitents from all the pain flowing from their misdeeds, by extinguishing them for ever, seems an unrighteousness amounting to an impossibility.
If it is thought that all offenders should go free, and that the highest kind of criminals (despisers of God and His law) do not deserve punishment at all, let it be said so, and we shall know how to meet the statement; but that men should admit punishment to be a right thing, without which the world would go to wreck, and good be confounded with evil, and yet that the Judge’s sentence against the very worst will only be, ‘ Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting non-suffering ’ would be setting up a throne of iniquity such as no earthly government could tolerate.
If the Christ of God be truly God’s beloved Son, worthy of honour and love from all creaturehood, are those who refuse Him this love and honour to incur no guilt, and to suffer no penalty? Is the highest crime in the universe, — treason against the King of kings and Lord of lords, — to be passed by, or rather rewarded, by consigning the traitor to such a state of eternal unconsciousness that no punishment can be possible; that his earthly miseries shall be ended; and that his own conscience shall never be able to upbraid him for the lifelong crime which he persisted in committing, but which he can afford to laugh at, inasmuch as it merely involved his losing an existence which had become not worth the keep¬ ing, and of which, in mercy, the Judge, as a reward for his wickedness, is to deprive him for ever!
All this may be benevolence, or good-nature, or dislike of inflicting pain, or indifference to evil; but it is not law, it is not righteousness; and the carrying out of it will turn not this world merely, but the universe, upside down, — making the order and happiness of creation an everlasting impossibility; destroying all sense of security to the saved, because proceeding on no principle of rectitude toward the lost.
Besides, it would be a poor exhibition even of philanthropy; for it might justly be said, If divine benevolence can go so far, why can it not go a little further? If it can set aside the infliction of punishment, why should it not abolish or prevent all present suffering as well as all future; nay, why should it not confer happiness? If it finds no law against the former, can it find any law against the latter? Partial philanthropy like this is both weak and unjust. It makes void both law and love. It is unfair alike to the lost and the saved.
This playing fast and loose with law and penalty, with evil and good, with sorrow and joy, is evidently the invention of men, who, fearing the consequences of their own misdeeds, try to persuade themselves that, if the worst comes to the worst, and they are condemned at last, God will extinguish their existence rather than see them suffer. This weak and vacillating philanthropy receives no countenance from the long stern ages of human suffering; and of it there is certainly no indication in the cross of Christ.