The Redeemer
Passages in which Jesus refers to His own death: —
Matthew ix. 15; xvi. 21; xvii. g, 12, 22, 23; xx. 17-19, 22, 23, 28 xxi. 39, 42; xxvi. 2, 12, 18, 24, 26, 28, 31, 38, 39, 42, 45.
Mark ii. 20; viii. 31; ix. 9, 12, 31, x. 32-34, 38, 39, 45; xii. 8, 10; xiv. 8, 21, 22-24, 36, 39, 41.
Luke v. 35; ix. 22, 31, 44; xii. 50; xiii. 32, 33; xvii. 25; xviii. 31-33; xx. 9-18; xxii. 14-22; xxiv. 7, 26, 46.
THE REDEEMER*
T T is well known that, after the death of our
A Lord, the later scenes of His career took
peculiar possession of the mind of the Church, and
* Weiss .- Z^ir&mdk deriHiisciem Titoj-^;t des koum Testaments
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1S97 Eas~: L* Pemsee de Jcsxs sur Sj Morf, 1S07. Fee die literature of the Atonement see the article in Hastings’ that in the apostolic writings His death and resurrection figure far more prominently than His miracles or His teaching. In fact, the apostolic theory of Christianity is built upon His death, resurrection and ascension. His death, especially, occupies a vast space in the apostolic field of vision: it is by His death that He is the Saviour of the world. Now, it is sometimes contended that in this respect there is a striking discrepancy between the teaching of the apostles and that of Christ Himself; because in the Synoptists there are not more than a couple of sayings of His about His death which are of capital importance; and He builds Christianity upon a totally different foundation. It is with the truth or falsehood of this contention that we have to occupy ourselves in the present lecture.
It must be confessed, that, at first sight, there does not seem to be much in common between the announcement of Jesus, that the object of His earthly mission was to set up the kingdom of God, and the statement of the apostles, that He came to die for the sin of the world. But in the last chapter we saw, that, while starting from the political hopes of His countrymen, Jesus, as soon as He began to speak what was distinctively His own language, employed “the kingdom of God” as a comprehensive term for the noblest blessings of life, such as repentance, forgiveness, the vision of God, communion with God and eternal life; and between this circle of ideas and the benefits associated by the apostles with the death of Christ the interval is not appreciable.
The impression that Jesus referred but little to His own death is due to a superficial reading of the Gospels. A closer acquaintance with them reveals the fact, that at no period of His ministry was the thought of His death foreign to Him, and that during the last year of His life it was an ever-present and absorbing preoccupation.*
In spite of the joy springing from His own enthusiasm and His early successes, His career was from the very commencement crossed by dark shadows. From the first the religious authorities were against Him, and it could not be long before He had forebodings of how far their malevolence might be carried. He reckoned Himself to be in the line of the prophets, and He knew too well what kind of fate they had encountered at the hands of Jerusalem. The premature end of His forerunner was a prophecy of what His own was likely to be.
* I have not anywhere else seen the extent of space which this subject occupied in the consciousness of Jesus so finely brought out as in the articles by Principal Fairbaim referred to above.
He never spared his would-be followers the knowledge, that their adherence to him would imply sacrifice — perhaps even the sacrifice of life itself — and He adopted as a kind of technical term for what they would have to endure for His sake the significant name of “the cross.” But, if even the disciples were to excite to this extent the hostility of the world, what could the Master expect .for Himself? He kept back as long as He could from the Twelve His anticipations of His own fate; but, when He did begin to speak, it was manifest that what He had to communicate had long been in His mind, craving for utterance.
It was not till they had confessed at Csesarea Philippi, that he was Christ, the Son of God, that He considered them mature and established enough to be able to bear the terrible secret; but “from that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” Having once broken the ice, He returned again and again to the subject. Thus: “And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart on the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles, to mock and to scourge and to crucify Him; and the third day He shall rise again.” As occasion offered, He added trait after trait, to sharpen the outline of the tragic picture; and all the Synoptists mark with the utmost care the steps of this gradual unveiling of the future.*
But, although He pressed the subject home so deliberately on the attention of the apostles, they were totally unable to receive it. The first time He broached it St. Peter “took Him and began to rebuke Him,”f as if He were losing His mental balance, through melancholy, and allowing Himself to say things which would be injurious to the cause — a reply which appeared to Jesus such an immediate suggestion of the spirit of evil that He turned on St. Peter with “Get thee behind Me, Satan.” Indeed, between all the disciples and their Master there sprang up at this time an alienation such as had never previously existed. They continued to dream of the thrones which they were about to ascend, and they disputed with one another which should be the
* See these series of texts in the different Gospels — Matt, xvi. 21; xvii. 22, 23; xx. 17-19; xxvi. 2, 21-24; Mark viii. 31; x. 32-34; Luke ix. 22, 44; xvii. 25; xviii. 31-33.
t Matt, xvi. 22.
greatest in the forthcoming kingdom, while clouds of disaster were accumulating on the horizon of His mind in darker and darker masses. Their minds were distracted with ominous suspicions, and He was tragically alone — “They were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them; and they were amazed, and as they followed, they were afraid.”* The misunderstanding on their side culminated in the treachery of Judas, and the loneliness on His in Gethsemane.
That the subject which occupied His thoughts in these solitary musings was His death admits of no doubt. It grew upon Him from day to day and from month to month. He had to master the mystery and penetrate its secret. Sometimes it rose upon Him as an overwhelming horror, at other times He saw beyond it and could almost welcome it. This double point of view is expressed in a characteristic saying of the period: “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” Many features of the approaching catastrophe — as, for example, that it was to take place through the treachery of an apostle, that it was to be at the hands of His own countrymen, that it was to interrupt His mission in
* Mark x, 32.
the midst of happy labour, that it was to bring ruin to His native land — were revolting, and could not be contemplated without torture; yet, on the other hand, He knew that the dark providence must conceal a divine purpose — a purpose all the more charged with concentrated and complicated good to both Himself and others, the darker was the shape in which it was enveloped. His enemies might kill Him, but He could say to them, “Did )-e never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected is become the headstone of the corner; this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes”?*
What was this prospect of ulterior good which enabled Jesus to triumph over the prospect of suffering? To discover this, we must scrutinise the sayings in which He most distinctly gives expression to His consciousness of what His death was to effect for mankind. Of these there are only two in the Synoptists; but they well deserve the most careful and exhaustive study we are able to bestow upon them. The one is the saying, “Even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many;” and the other is the formula with which He instituted the * Luke xx. 17.
last Supper, “This is the New Testament in My blood.”
The first of these sayings sprang out of one of the most characteristic incidents of the tragic period just described. Two of the Twelve came to Him requesting through their mother, Salome, that they might sit the one on His right hand and the other on His left in His kingdom. Nothing could show more nakedly how far apart from His were at that time the thoughts of His followers than the fact that these two, belonging to the very innermost circle, should have made such a request; and the indignation aroused by their conduct in the rest of the Twelve betrayed too clearly that they had only given expression to ambitions with which all were palpitating. Jesus did not, in His reply, deny that there was to be any earthly kingdom, but He showed them how diametrically opposite to His was their estimate of what it was to be like. Their thoughts were frankly those of the world — that to be a king was to lord it over numerous subjects, and that to be great was to be served by many slaves — but His conception was precisely the reverse — “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” Such was to be the rule in His kingdom; but the first to obey it was Himself, and He was to obey it to the uttermost —” For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.’’ Here was the key to His entire career: He had always found His happiness and His honour in serving others and doing them good; but the supreme illustration of the principle on which he conducted His life was still to come — His final service was to consist in giving His life a ransom for many.
This image of a ransom does not appeal to our minds as forcibly as it would to those of the disciples, because the experience of being ransomed, in the natural sense, is much rarer in modern than it was in ancient times.* In the British Isles at present there do not probably exist a hundred persons who have ever been ransomed, whereas in the ancient world there would be such wherever two or three were met together. War was never a rare experience to the countrymen of Jesus, and in war the process of ransoming was occurring continually, when prisoners were exchanged for prisoners, or captives were released on the payment by themselves or their relatives of a sum of money. Similarly, slavery
* My friend, Dr. John C. Gibson, of Swatow, has told me that it is very common at the present day in China; he has himself ransomed a man.
was a universal institution, and in connexion with it the process of ransoming was common, when, for a price paid, slaves received their liberty. The Jews had, besides, numerous forms of ransoming peculiar to their own laws and customs. For example, the firstborn male of every household was, in theory, liable to be a priest, but was redeemed by a payment of so many shekels to the actual priesthood, which belonged exclusively to a single tribe. A person whose ox had gored a man to death was in theory guilty of murder, but was released from the liability to expiate his guilt with his life by a payment to the relatives of the dead man.*
Such cases show clearly what ransoming was: it was the deliverance of a person from some misery or liability through the payment, either by himself or by another on his behalf, of a sum ol money or any other equivalent which the person in whose power he was might be willing to accept as a condition of his release. It was a triangular transaction, involving three parties — first the person to be ransomed, secondly the giver, and thirdly the receiver of the ransom.
As regards the first of these parties, in the case of the ransom of Christ, the most important question
* Num. xviii. 15; Exod. xxi. 30.
is, what they are ransomed from. What is the nature of the misery or liability in which they are involved, and from which they require to be delivered?
Our Lord seems to have had in His mind a passage in the forty-ninth psalm.* This psalm is one of those, of which there are several in the Psalter, dealing with the mystery of life, especially as this is exhibited in the inequalities of the human lot. For the purpose of lightening the burden of this mystery, it sets forth, with rare poetic power, the things which wealth cannot do; and the chief of these is, that it cannot keep off the approach of death —
“None of them can by any means redeem his brother, Nor give to God a ransom for him: (For the redemption of their soul is costly, And must be let alone forever:) That he should still live alway, That he should not see corruption,”
On account of this reference it has been argued that the evil from which Christ redeems us is death, or the fear of death. But, in point of fact, He does not redeem from physical death.
There is another saying of Jesus, also apparently occasioned by the same passage of the same psalm, by which we are led nearer to His meaning. It is the well-known question,” What shall a man give in
* Especially w. 7, 8, 9, 15. I quote from the Revised Version.
exchange for his soul? “As “soul” is the same as “life,” Jesus may seem in this saying simply to be supplementing the statement of the psalm, that none can redeem his brother’s life from death, with the further reflexion, that no man can redeem his own; but it is proved by the connexion that He means more. Between the date of the psalm and the date of our Lord’s utterance, the whole conception of death, and of what ensues after death, had deepened; and this deeper note enters into our Lord’s words. The connexion in which the verse occurs is this: “And when He had called the people unto Him, with His disciples also, He said unto them, Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me; for whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it; for what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever, therefore, shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His Father, with the holy angels.” Here we are among a far more solemn order of ideas than that of the psalm. The death contemplated is not that of the body but of the soul, and the danger is that of an unfavourable verdict at the final judgment. That from which Christ ransoms may be called the fear of death, but, if so, it is the fear of death eternal; and the only method of taking this away is to take away sin, which lends to death its terror. From this no man can ransom himself, neither can any man ransom his brother, but the Son of man came to give His life a ransom for many.
Turning now to Him who pays the ransom, we observe that Jesus describes the payment of this ransom as the culminating purpose of his whole life — He “came” to minister and to give His life a ransom. In the circumstances in which this was spoken the reference could only be to a violent death — in fact, to the shedding of His blood. But it is to be observed that He does not here say, as He does elsewhere, that they would take His life, but that He would give it. His death was to be His own voluntary act. Service extorted by force is not greatness, but slavery. It was not as a slave that Jesus lived, and it was not as a slave that He died. No doubt wicked men took his life, as they had previously taken His ease, comfort and honour; but He put so much magnanimity, at every crisis, into the surrender that the sacrifice was His own act, and He remained master of His fate. When He was nailed to the tree, He was not a mere martyr suffering what others inflicted on Him, but He was paying a ransom.
The dignity of the act is, however, chiefly brought out in the claim that He gave His life “for many.” When prisoners were bartered at the conclusion of a war, the exchange was not always simply man for man. An officer was of more value than a common soldier, and several soldiers might be redeemed by the surrender of one officer. For a woman of high rank or extraordinary beauty a still greater number of prisoners might be exchanged; and by the giving up of a king’s son many might be redeemed. So the sense of His own unique dignity and His peculiar relation to God is implied in the statement that His life would redeem the lives of many. St. Paul expresses the truth still more boldly when he says that Jesus gave His life a ransom “for all “; * but the two phrases come to the same thing; because the “many” spoken of by Jesus really include “all” who are willing to avail themselves of the opportunity.
The third party to the transaction is the one to whom the ransom is paid. It is obvious that in any
* i Tim, ii. 6.
transaction deserving the name of ransom this third party was in some respects the most important of all. He held the prisoner in custody, and, while others might offer a ransom, it was his to say whether or not he would accept of any, and whether he was satisfied with the terms proposed. In spite of these considerations, there are interpreters of this great saying of our Lord who ignore this aspect of the truth altogether, holding that only two things are essential in the case — namely, the misery of those who need to be redeemed and the price paid by the Redeemer. Everyone, however, can judge for himself whether or not this satisfies the conditions of the metaphor. For a situation in which only the two things just mentioned — misery and deliverance — require to be considered, there are many other metaphors which might have been employed; but this one, of a ransom, naturally suggests something more. And that Jesus was thinking of something more seems to me to be especially implied in the words “lor many.” In whose eyes is it that Jesus believes His life will be regarded as an equivalent for the lives of many? Not His own merely — in that case His claim would be a vainglorious boast — r but primarily God’s. Unforgiven sinners may no doubt be said to condemn themselves to death and to descend to their doom with the force of natural law; yet they are in the hands of a just and holy God, and their doom is His sentence. It was to avert this and to turn it into a sentence of acquittal that Jesus gave His life.
It is true the death of Christ has a profound and manifold effect on the mind of man. The tranquillity with which He met a death of unparalleled atrocity has set an example fitted to soothe the feelings of all who in the last agony remember Him, and to deliver them from the fear of death; * His faith, that death was not the end of existence but only a stage of transition to a higher form of life, breathes into our hearts also the assurance that death is the gateway of life; f and the sight of what sin inflicted
* This is Wendt’s explanation.
t “Est kann nicht gemeint sein, dass dieselben von dem Tode als dem Schicksal aller geschaffenen Wesen ausgenommen werden sollen; denn die Unterwerfung unter dieses Geschickfordert Jesus ira bestimmten Falle gerade als die Probe der Anhanglichkeit an ihn (8: 35). Also ist die Meinung die, dass indem audi die Genossen der Gemeinde Jesu dem Tode verfallen, sein freiwilliges von dem bestimmten Zvveck geleitetes und zugleich unverschuldetes Sterben ihnen zum Schutze dagegen dient, dass sie im Tode die voile Vernichtungund Zvvecklosigkeiterfahren; vielmehr soil ihnen jene Leistung Jesu dazu dienen, dass sie aus dem bisher geltenden gSttlichen Verhangniss der endgiltigen Lebensvemichtung erlost werden, dass sie eine andere Beurtheilung des Todes geuinnen, als unter dem Alten Testament moglich war, und dass sie den Tod nicht mehr furchten.” — Kitschl, Rechtfertigung und Verstihnimg, II. 87, 88.
on the Holiest and the Noblest is fitted to arouse in the mind a revulsion from sin and a passion of indignation against it. But by far the most important effect of the death of Christ was its effect on the mind of God.* To define precisely what this was may be impossible, and theologians may have made great mistakes in attempting to define it; yet we are safe in saying that it altered the relation of God to sinners. It did not make Him love them, for this He had always done; indeed, it was His immemorial love which gave Christ to His mission; but it removed an obstacle to the free outflow of the divine love. It effected this by annihilating sin; and this is what is implied in the idea of ransom.
I am very desirous not to put anything into this saying which does not belong to it; but I find it hard to believe that in the “many” here mentioned there is not an echo of the phrases of the last two verses of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, “He bare the sin of many,” and, “By His knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many.” So, “to give His life a ransom” sounds uncommonly like a
* Nine-tenths of the modern books on the Atonement are occupied with its effects on the mind of man, but nine-tenths of the Bible statements are concerned with its effects on the mind of God. All modern writers are aware that Jesus came to make good men better, but comparatively few have any idea that He came to make bad men good. Yet this is the Gospel.
reminiscence of the words in the same chapter, “Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin.” If this be correct, Jesus must have thought of Himself as the Servant of the Lord, about whose substitution for sinners such wonderful things are said by Isaiah; and, in that case, we need not have any doubt what is intended when we are told that after His resurrection, He expounded unto the disciples in all the Scriptures “the things concerning Himself.”* At all events the earliest Christian preaching applied Isaiah’s picture of the Man of Sorrows to Jesus, and it did so expressly because the subject of the prophetic picture took away the sin of others by the sacrifice of Himself.f It is beyond question that this was the faith of the Church immediately after our Lord’s departure. St. Paul mentions as the very first article of the common tradition of Christianity, that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures;” J so that the doctrine was no invention of his. He made it his own, indeed, by the intense conviction with which he grasped it and the thoroughness with which he expounded it; but it was equally the doctrine of St. Peter, St. John and the author ot the Epistle to the Hebrews.
I am sticking rigidly, in this course of lectures, to
* Luke xxiv. 27. t Acts viii. 32-35.
X 1 Cor. xv. 3.
the exposition of the words of Jesus Himself, without adding or subtracting; and yet there are points at which we cannot escape the question, whether the best guide to the meaning of His words be not the central beliefs of His first followers. When the first Christians knew that their Lord was risen and glorified, they knew also that their conception of His death, as the mere act of wicked men and as the termination of His career and His cause, was mistaken. They had still, however, to find an explanation of the mystery, and they found it in the belief that His death was a sacrifice by which He expiated the sin of the world. This was a conception of incomparable originality and grandeur, revolutionising the whole doctrine of both man and God. Is it likely that it was an invention of theirs? *
* This is powerfully put by Principal Fairbairn: — “We have to consider both the apostles and the theory. It was a belief of stupendous originality; they were persons of no intellectual attainments and of small inventive faculty. So far as the Gospels enable us to judge, they were curiously deficient in imagination and of timid understanding. They were remarkable for their inability to draw obvious conclusions, to transcend the commonplace, and comprehend the unfamiliar, or to find a rational reason for the extraordinary. Such men might dream dreams and see visions, but to invent an absolutely novel intellectual conception as to their Master’s person and death — a conception that changed man’s view of God, of sin, of humanity, of history, in a word, of all things human and divine — was surely a feat beyond them.” — Expositor, 1896, p. 282.
Is it not far more likely, that this was the way which Jesus Himself found of solving the dark problem of His death and of seeing beyond it into regions of illimitable hope; and that He found it because it was true?
The other great saying of Jesus on this subject is the one emitted at the Last Supper. It is given by St. Paul, in the account of the scene which, he says, he “received of the Lord,” in the following form, “This cup is the new testament in My blood “; St. Mark’s form is, “This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many “; and St. Matthew’s, “This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” These different accounts have of late been not so much tested as tortured for the purpose of bringing out discrepancies and eliciting a meaning free from distinct theological colouring; but at least these three are substantially identical; that of St. Luke being less definite.* Whatever St. Paul may mean
* Since 1891 a controversy on the Lord’s Supper, which has swelled to extraordinary dimensions, has been going on in Germany. It was begun by Harnack, who published an essay on “Bread and Water the Eucharistic Elements according to Justin,” in which he contended that the institution was originally so understood that its blessing was not legally confined to bread and wine, but only to eating and drinking, that is, a by saying that he “received” the account which he gives “from the Lord,” he may at least be trusted to have satisfied himself that his report was accurate. It is contended that the theological colouring of the phrases is due to him; but may the influence not have acted in the opposite direction? The apostle quotes the words of his Master remarkably seldom; but there is no reason to suppose that he was either ignorant of them or indifferent to them; and a saying of Christ’s like this, embodied in the most distinctive rite of His religion, was one likely to receive the keenest attention from such a mind. If the meaning of the death of Christ is a leading element of St. Paul’s theology, it may very well be, that we are here at the fountain-head from which this element of his doctrine was derived.
It is nothing less than a calamity to the Englishsimple meal. This was opposed by Th. Zahn and Jiilicher, the latter of whom, however, gave the controversy a new start by raising the question whether Jesus was really the Author of the institution, or whether He merely, in a moment of genial inspiration, conjured up the beautiful situation, without any ulterior design. The subsequent contributions to the controversy have come from Spitta, Haupt, Brandt, Grafe and many more; and every conceivable phase of the subject has been brought into view. An ample account of the whole will be found in the work of Schaefer cited at the head of this chapter, and brief accounts in The Expositor for July and August, 1898, by the Rev. G. W. Stewart, and in the second number of Saint Andrew by Professor Menzies.
speaking world that this saying of our Lord, heard at every celebration of the communion, is marred by a serious mistranslation — Jesus being made to say, “This is the blood of the new testament,” when what He did say was, “This is the blood of the new covenant.”* It is the same mistake which makes us, to our loss, call the two halves of the Bible the Old and the New Testaments — names which have scarcely any meaning — instead of the Old and the New Covenants — names which are full of meaning.
A covenant is a transaction between two parties, each of which gives something to the other and receives something in return. This exchange is the essence of a covenant; and covenants are of all degrees of dignity according to the value of the objects exchanged. The most ordinary bargain, in which the buyer hands a coin across the counter and the seller an article of merchandise, is a covenant; but the word is generally reserved for transactions of greater moment, such as leagues or alliances between nations. The most solemn covenant between human beings is marriage; and the solemnity consists in this, that, whereas in other covenants the parties exchange things more or less valuable, in marriage they give themselves. This
* The Revised Version corrects this.
instance flashes light on the religious use of the term; for, as in marriage man and woman, so in religion God and man give themselves to each other. This is the essence of religion, and the word ‘’ religion “itself, though of uncertain derivation, signifies in all probability nothing else. This, at all events, is the signification of the word” covenant ‘’ in Scripture, where it is often explained by the words of Jehovah, “I will be their God and they shall be My people.” It is a remarkable fact that in the Old Testament the word “religion” never occurs. Its absence can only be due to the fact that other equivalents are employed in place of it: and of these the commonest is “covenant,” which occurs about three hundred times. This shows how near to the very heart of Biblical thought Jesus was when He called the Last Supper a covenant, indicating that the essence of this ordinance is the same as that of all religion — God giving Himself to man and man giving himself to God.
Another unhappy result of the mistranslation above referred to is, that it obliterates the reference in this communion formula to one of the most remarkable predictions of the Old Testament — that in which Jeremiah says:” Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new convenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of
Judah: not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.“* When our Lord, lifting the cup in the upper room, said, “This is the new covenant,” His meaning was, that this prediction of Jeremiah was fulfilled.
If it be remembered, that in the Old Testament the word “covenant” is equivalent to “religion,” it will be felt how daring was the prediction of Jeremiah — nothing less than the abolition of the religion under which he himself lived and the substitution of a new one in its place — and the same reflexion brings out the fundamental character of
* Jer. xxxi. 31-34.
the statement of Jesus; for He was designating Himself as the founder of a new religion. Of course the new was not to be wholly new — neither Jeremiah nor Jesus intended this. The Deity was not to be changed; for Jehovah was the one living and true God; and there were to be innumerable other points of connexion. Still the changes were to be great enough to justify the designation of the principal rite of Christianity as a new covenant.
The points of difference are indicated by Jeremiah with singular precision. First, the law was to be written on the heart. In the old religion the law was written on stone. It was external. It was the commandment of a distant Deity, imposed from without on the human will. Therefore, it was a yoke, harsh and hard to bear. But a law written on the heart is a light burden and an easy yoke. It is obedience to the will of One who is loved; and love makes duty easy. But how was love to be evoked more fully under the new covenant than the old? It could only be by a fuller revelation of the nature of God. This, therefore, is the next member of the promise — “They shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” At first sight, this seems to refer to the universality of the knowledge of God; and it might be supposed to be a prediction of the extension of the knowledge of God to all men, Gentile as well as Jew, which was, indeed, to be one of the prominent features of the new religion. But it refers rather to the thoroughness of the new knowledge than to its universal diffusion. It is not a prediction that there will be no need of religious education, but that there will be no need of urgency in pressing it on the unresponsive, because God will appear in an aspect so attractive as to draw the hearts of small and great. In short, He will be revealed as the God of love. The love of God would, however, reveal itself specially in one way — in a much more thorough removal of sin than was possible through the sacrifices of the old covenant. And, therefore, the prophet gives this as the climax of the promise, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.”*
* “Observandum, ilia tria apud prophetam proponi inverso ordine. Naturalis autem ordo hie est, quod primo omnium Deus electis remittit peccata propter satisfactionem Christi, deinde donat eis Spiritum Sanctum, qui primum illuminat mentes eorum cognitione gratise Dei per satisfactionem Christi acquisitse, deinde vero renovat voluntatem ad studium gratitudinis pro beneficio liberationis seu redemption is per Christum. Etsi enim remissionem peccatorum postremo loco commemorat, tamen illam prascedentibus annectit per conjunctionem causalem.” — Piscator, quoted by Smeaton, Our Lord’s Doctrine of the Atonement.
This brings us to the most mysterious phrase in our Lord’s saying — “the blood of the covenant.”
If our Lord’s words about the new covenant carry us irresistibly back to Jeremiah, the words of Jeremiah carry us back as irresistibly far beyond his day; for, if there is to be a new covenant, there must have been an old one, and we naturally ask when and where the old one was made. As to this we are left in no doubt; because in the very opening of his prediction, the prophet introduces Jehovah as saying, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” So that it was at the era of the Exodus that the first covenant was made.
The scene is given in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus; and there is no more fundamental passage in the entire Old Testament; though, perhaps, its details are not stamped as distinctly as its importance would render natural on the memory of even careful students of the Bible.*
* “And He said unto Moses, Come up unto the Lord, thou, and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off: and Moses alone shall come near unto the Lord; but they shall not come near; neither shall the people go up with him. And Moses came and told the people
What is popularly remembered about the Exodus is the deliverance at the Red Sea or the giving of the law at Sinai; but both of these were only preliminaries to the making of the covenant. The formation of this union between Jehovah and His people was the real purpose for which the enslaved nation was delivered from bondage; and the law was only the enumeration of the conditions laid down by Jehovah with a view to this transaction. In the passage quoted from Jeremiah Jehovah says, “I was an husband unto them “; and this is looked
all the words of the Lord, and all the judgements: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do.
“And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the mount, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord hath spoken will we do, and be obedient And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.
“Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: and they beheld God, and did eat and drink.” — Exodus xxiv. i-l I (R.V).
upon as the occasion when this relationship, so fundamental and so familiar to all the prophets, was formed.
In examining more closely the details of the grand historical picture unfolded in Exodus, we must fix attention specially on the part played in it by blood; for therein is to be found the key to the phrase of Jesus, “the blood of the new covenant.”
As a preliminary observation it may be remarked, that blood has always played a prominent part in the formation of covenants.* When those who are remembered in our own history by the name of the Covenanters signed the solemn league, in the Greyfriars Church at Edinburgh, by which they were banded together, numbers of them opened a vein and subscribed the document with their own blood instead of with ink. What led them to do so was the natural conviction or instinct of man, that his blood is his life: they meant to say,
* “An absolute merging of two personalities into one, in this union of friendship, has been sought, among primitive peoples everywhere, by the intermingling of the blood of the two, through its mutual drinking or its inter-transfusion; with the thought that blended blood is blended life. Traces of this custom are found in the traditions and practices of the aborigines of different portions of Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, and the Islands of the Sea. Nor is there any quarter of the globe where traces of this rite, in one form or another, are not to be found to-day.” — Trumbull: Friendship, p. 70.
that they would stand to what they had done with their life. This principle, which is at the root of all the solemn statements of Scripture about blood, is put into words in the Mosaic law: “The life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar, to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”* In Homer, at the making of an agreement between the rival armies beneath the walls of Troy, king Agamemnon recites the terms of the compact, and then the story proceeds as follows: —
“He said and pierced the victims; ebbing life Forsook them soon; they panted, gasped and died. Then, pouring from the beaker to the cups, They filled them, won hipped the immortal gods In either host, and thus the people prayed: All glorious Jove, and, ye, the powers of heaven, Whoso shall violate this contract first, So be their blood, their children’s and their own, Poured out, as this libation, on the ground.” t
Here the blood to be shed in case of unfaithfulness is compared to the wine which accompanied the offering; but in Livy, the Roman historian, we find the more original idea, that the shedding of the victim’s blood was the symbol of what was to be done with the life of the violator of the compact. He mentions, that at the ratifying of a treaty the
* Lev. xvii. n. f Iliad, III. 292 ff.
priest used to pray as follows: — “Hear, O Jupiter, that the Roman people will not under any circumstances first swerve from this treaty; and, if they do, then strike them on that day as I here strike this animal.”* In terms extremely similar Jeremiah mentions that, when a treaty was formed, the sacrifices were divided into two halves, between which the contracting parties walked, offering, as they did so, the prayer that the same fate as had befallen the victims might be the lot of the one that broke the covenant first. The idea at the root of all these customs is the same; but in the making of the covenant between Jehovah and Israel at Sinai it received a still more graphic and pointed application.
Early one morning, after the giving of the Law, the people were assembled, by the divine command, round a conspicuous plateau, on which was erected an altar, with twelve standing stones round about it. The altar suggested the divine presence, and, of course, the twelve stones stood for the twelve tribes; so that the objects before their eyes reminded the people that they were standing in the presence of Jehovah, with whom they were about to enter into covenant. The union did not, however, take place forthwith; because the people were not yet fit to be united to the Most Holy. On this account victims were sacrificed; the work being done by the hands of chosen young men, because as yet there were no priests. The young men typified the fresh strength of the community; for the act in which they were engaged had to be performed with their whole soul. The blood, thus shed, was caught in basons and divided into two parts. The one half was thereupon sprinkled on the altar. That is to say, it was given to God, as an acknowledgment that their life had been forfeited to Him. This was a symbolical confession, that, as the blood of the victims had been shed, their own life might, in strict justice, have been taken. When, thus, by sacrifice and by the confession which it symbolized, they were purged from sin, they were fit for union with God; and, accordingly, at this point the law was recited, which Moses had written in a book, and the people, having heard it, responded, “All that Jehovah hath said will we do and be obedient.” That is, they accepted and subscribed the conditions of union. Then, the other half of the blood, which had meantime been kept in readiness for the purpose, was sprinkled upon the people — whether on their persons, or on the stones surrounding the altar, which represented them, is not made clear. In either case the meaning was, that the life which they had given away to God, as lost and forfeited on account of sin, was, now that sin had been removed, given back to them purified and reinvigorated, to serve as the force with which they should pursue a new career of obedience and fellowship.
Such, as nearly as we can make it out — though, in trying to reproduce experiences so ancient, it is easy to stumble — were the thoughts and emotions of this remarkable occasion; and they bring out the force and meaning of the blood of the new covenant. When, in the communion, we approach God, seeking union and alliance with Him, we have to pause; for we are not fit to come so close to the Most Holy. We have to turn our eyes to the cross of Christ and fix them on Him. And, as we do so, we feel, as they felt that day, when they saw the blood of the sacrificial victims poured on the altar, that, in strict justice, we ought to be in His place: we deserve to die, because we have forfeited our life through sin, The moment, however, we make this confession from the heart, we are freely and fully forgiven, and are ready for union with God. And, as the other half of the blood was sprinkled on the people, to signify that their lost life was restored, so is our life given back, potentiated with the virtue necessary for communion, holiness and usefulness.
Wendt, while admitting that the reference in our Lord’s words, “in My blood” is to this scene at Sinai, denies that the sacrifice offered on that occasion had any reference to sin. But how does this harmonize with the description in Exodus of the sacrificial feast with which the making of the covenant wound up? Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel — that is, a large and dignified delegation representing the whole people — went up to the knoll where the altar stood, and there they did eat and drink. No doubt their food was the flesh of the sacrifices, the blood of which had been disposed of as we have seen; but the peculiarity of the feast was that it was a feast with God. Not that He partook of their food: no such crude idea is hinted at: but in some mysterious way they were made overwhelmingly certain of His nearness. It is said, “They saw the God of Israel, and there was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the very heaven for clearness.” As they ate, the cloud opened above them, and the view upward became clear — up to the blue sky. But it was more than sky — a deeper, yet more pellucid blue than mortal eye had ever beheld — a pavement of sapphire, like the very heaven for clearness; and above it, using it as the footstool of His throne, a Presence ineffable made itself felt, not visible to the bodily eye, yet thrilling the soul with the consciousness of its proximity. “And,” it is added, “on the nobles of Israel He laid not His hand.” This is the word which shows the heart of the whole transaction.* That no man can see God and live, is a principle of the Old Testament throughout; yet here the divine presence was so shrouded in love and reconciliation that, instead of producing annihilating horror, it communicated only peace and delight. The picture is highly symbolical; but its intention is not difficult to trace. It describes the experience of consciences at peace with God through the blood of atonement, and of patriots rejoicing in the new career on which their nation had been launched through the reception of a new, purified and consecrated life.f
* “The sacrifice, being an offering to Jehovah, was piacular, atoning for and consecrating the people on their entering upon their new relation to Jehovah.” — Professor A. B. Davidson, D.D., article “Covenant,” in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, 1898.
f The above exposition is the result of long pondering on a scene the importance of which I discovered for myself; but it agrees closely with that given by Kurtz in his History of the Old Covenant and his Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament.
Thus I have endeavoured to analyze the words of our Lord on this great subject; and, although they are fewer in number than might have been anticipated, yet, if we weigh instead of counting them, we cannot complain that He has said too little. He speaks like Himself — not in abstract terms and doctrinal propositions, but in metaphors and images borrowed from life and history. But His figures of speech are the imaginative equivalents of the doctrines of the apostles and the dogmas of the Church.* Perhaps, indeed, the Church might have remembered with advantage the proportion
* Compare the weighty words of Kahler: Der sogenanntekistorische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus, p. 94: “Wir fassen die Summe unseres Glaubens, die Summe der neutestamentlichen Offenbarung gem in das Wort zusammen: ‘Gott ist Liebe.’ Wann hat man das bekennen gelernt? Nicht durch die Predigt welche vom Berge am See erscholl und von den Boten durch die Stadte Israels getragen wurde, durch die Predigt vom Reiche Gottes, soviel in ihr auch davon enthalten sei; jenes dunkle Bildwort sollte erst durch Christi Thun und Erleben seine voile Deutung erhalten. ‘Darum preiset Gott seine Liebe gegen uns, dass Christus fur uns gestorben ist’ (Rom. v. 8, vgl. viii. 32-39), erinnert Paulus. Und woher Johannes jene Erkenntnis gewonnen, sagt er sehr deutlich: ‘Darinnenstehet die Liebe: nicht dass wir Gott geliebet haben, sondern dass er uns geliebet hat und gesandt seinen Sohn zur Silhne fur unsre Sunden. Daran haben wir erkannt die Liebe, dass er sein Leben fur uns gelassen hat (1 Joh. iv. 10; iii. 16.).’” The whole book is a defence of the thesis that not the Jesus of the Gospels, but the Christ of the whole Bible is the true object of faith.
observed by her Master in the teaching of this side of the truth; for there has sometimes been a disposition to speak as if the death of Christ were the whole of Christianity, to the neglect of His life — His earthly life, which is our example, and His present mystic life in believers through His Spirit.
On the other hand we shall not estimate correctly the place which Jesus intended such subjects as sin, repentance and justification to hold in our thoughts, unless we bear in mind the place He has given in Christian worship to the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both of which are intended to keep these solemn facts continually before the consciousness of His people.