The original documents from which everything that is certain about the life of Jesus Christ is to be learned, are not only brief, but are the best known books in the world. Yet upon them as a foundation there has arisen an immense literature, erudite and varied, in which it is possible to read of Jesus in as many different characters as there are minds of the writers. He was an apocalyptic visionary, a social reformer, a melancholy philosopher, a man of common sense and driving energy, a deluded fanatic, a superman, a moralist, all these and more, if all the writers are to be believed who have added their word to the story of the gospels. There have even been those who have said that he never was at all.
There are books in this vast field of literature which are valuable and instructive. There are writers whose particular knowledge and researches or points of view can illustrate the finer points of the gospel records, or supply background to the figure of Jesus, and whose industry in the comparison of text with text can serve to place events in clearer sequence.But it can never be too plainly said that there is nothing in the whole range of literature, sacred or profane, ancient or modern, that can take the place of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Is there any need to emphasize to readers of the Testimony the importance of a knowledge of Jesus Christ ? To know him is not merely to know a fellow man, nor even only a friend of sterling worth, it is to know the expression in human life of the eternal goodness. “God was in Christ.” We do not know much about the possible contacts and subtle influences that can be between human minds, and far less about those between the human mind and the divine. For this reason we have hardly any clear appreciation of what that phrase may mean. We accept it in faith, realising that we see the glory of the Father less in the spangled heavens than in the face of Jesus Christ, and hear the voice of God, not as the Psalmist did in the fury of thunder that made the hinds to calve and stripped the forest bare, but in the sweet counsels of one who spake as never man spake.
If our acquaintance with the gospels is limited to a steady routine of regular reading, it is possible for the very familiarity of the text to dull its meaning. The gospels need careful reading because the order of events is sometimes far from clear, there are difficulties and apparent incongruities. Sometimes there does not seem to be one man Christ Jesus, but several. There is the Prophet of Galilee, full of health and joyfulness, healing and doing good, a friend of publicans and sinners. There is the scourge of the Pharisees, a stern prophet commanding his disciples to forsake all and follow him, hating father and mother and their own souls also. There is the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
There is the mystical teacher speaking of himself as bread from heaven and discoursing on living water and an indwelling eternal life.Yet while we realise the validity of these different aspects of Christ,s character, the conviction remains that his character was simple and consistent, not swayed as our characters are swayed, by fluctuating moods, but balanced in a complete sanity that came from a perfect view of men and things and a consciousness of his life,s purpose.
The difficulty is to see him whole and in proper perspective, and it is solved only by an intelligent study of the gospels, reverent and yet critical, placing events in their proper sequence and their proper significance.
The ministry of Jesus begins with his baptism by John and the temptation in the wilderness. John the Baptist had grown to manhood in the deserts, and in that grim setting all Israel had flocked to hear a message which accorded with the stern majesty of his surroundings. He was no courtier clothed in soft raiment, nor a reed fluttering in the wind, but a prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah. And after his contact with John, Jesus retreated to the same stern solitude of the desert.
One of the significant facts concerning the temptation is that from it Jesus returned to the country of his childhood, to beautiful Galilee, to the homes of simple happy people. The spirit and power of Elijah belonged to the desert, but the spirit in Jesus, nearer to God than the older prophet was, belonged to his fellow men. Spirit and power had once led Elijah to Horeb, the mount of God, but the message of God even then came not in earthquake or wind or fire, but in the still small voice of accusing conscience, “What doest thou here?” and it led him back to human habitations.
The Son of man had not come to condemn but to save, not to destroy but to heal, to bind up the broken hearted and to proclaim liberty. What more natural than that his own land and his own kin should early hear the message of joy? There were unpleasant incidents, especially in his home town and among his own kin, and the reason is not hard to find. His message was to call men, as we might say, out of themselves; and it was resisted most in those who could not see him except as his own familiar self, the carpenter of Nazareth they had known before, not realizing how far his own spirit had risen above himself.
Apart from these unpleasant incidents among kinsfolk and friends, the ministry proceeded with thronging crowds, marveling at his gracious words, with a feast in Levi,s house amid the simple joys of simple people, with the widow,s son restored to his mother and the daughter of Jairus to her sorrowing parents.
In the temptation one other great decision was taken which explains much in the later ministry of Jesus. “If thou wilt worship me” said the tempter, “all shall be thine.” Who can say how far he had at that time realised his Messiah-ship? It is certain that with his poise and calm strength, nothing humanly possible would have been beyond him. If he had but served self and gone the way of earthly conquerors he could have ruled the world, founded a dynasty and left his name a memorial to all generations.
The decision once made, however, remained unto death his unalterable will. “Worship God.” God is good, how good only Jesus himself can tell us, and to do good is the only way to offer acceptable worship. It was not, therefore, for him “to wade through slaughter to a throne And shut the gates of mercy on mankind:”
Even at the end, when he claimed that his petition would bring to his aid twelve legions of angels, he refrained himself and kept unbroken the early resolution.
So it was rather in peace and gentleness that the early ministry opened, with an atmosphere of idyllic simplicity. He chose twelve men to be with him, young men full of enthusiasm, unsophisticated men, surprisingly child-like in many ways. They were not expert in theology, and, as afterwards appears, their conception of the Kingdom of God was far lower than his, yet they showed the one essential of discipleship in that they responded to the thrill of his personality, and knowing him, were content to call him Master and Lord.
They remained with him as the opposition increased, and they were with him at Caesarea when the turning point of the ministry was reached. “Whom do men say that I am ? ” asked Jesus. Was he John the Baptist, one of the old prophets, Elijah?
“Thou art the Christ, the son of the Blessed.”
And from that time he began to speak of himself in this new role, yet combining with teaching of his Messiahship, new and bewildering words about impending sufferings and ignominious death. Between Jesus and the disciples a barrier of misunderstanding seems slowly to have risen. They were so far from his spirit that they disputed their relative merits for high office in the new order of things, and could speak of calling down the fiery vengeance of heaven upon an inhospitable village. They knew not what spirit they were of. It was small wonder, for what manner of Messiah was this, who had spoken of the acceptable day of the Lord and forgotten the vengeance of God, who passively awaited the judgment of his foes instead of going forth conquering and to conquer ?
They still followed with him, but as they approached the city of Jerusalem they were bewildered and afraid, afraid not only because of the consequences to themselves if the kingdom should fail, but also because of a foreboding of disaster conveyed by his references to the coming tragedy and the manner of his bearing as he steadfastly set his face to go forward.
Arrived at Jerusalem, there was one small demonstration for his Messiahship. He had ridden into the city, not as conquerors would do, with horses and chariots, but on a donkey, like any son of the people. Yet some were there who acclaimed him,
“Hosanna to the Son of David,”
and the crowd was ready, as crowds are always ready, to join in the shouting and general excitement.
The outward kingdom came no nearer than that.The disciples, countrymen as they were, gazed with awe at the great buildings of the metropolis, and called for his admiration, too, only to be met with sorrowful prediction of disaster, when not one stone should be left upon another. There is little more to tell, and that little is the best known story in the world. A few hours of untold mental stress, the mockery of a trial that was unjust and illegal, buffetings and a crown of thorns, and then one cross between two others by the roadside beneath a stormy sky.
Before the final tragedy there had been one brief hour when, the traitor having left to do his dreadful work, Jesus found relief among the disciples, still held by the power of his personality despite their bewilderment and disappointment, and to them he spoke, not from the storm of his emotions, but from the deep calm of his oneness with the Father. He who, above all men, must have desired human sympathy, who might have asked for comfort and kindness, did not ask, but gave, saying,
“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
He did not ask, but gave. He came to minister, to give gifts to men. The heart of his mission is implicit in the saying that the gospel writers have overlooked, but which Paul has recorded, how he said
“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
He ministered, served, and from disciples he calls for service in the self-same spirit, not self-assertion but surrender, not self-expression but the expression of the mind of the Master. One of the few occasions upon which he is recorded as speaking contemptuously of any, was when he spoke of the kings of the Gentiles who exercise lordship, and who, exercising authority, are for that called benefactors.
At the turning point of the ministry he gave this sober, vital warning to the disciples, and it remains the heart of the gospel.
“Whosoever will save his life (soul) shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life (soul) for my sake shall save it.”
The present tragedy is that we are so little by comparison with him that we hardly begin to know what the call means, and our poor tawdry little selves seem of such immense value and importance.Our ambitions, pleasures, self expression, our natural or spiritual pride, all that centres in self instead of in service, all lusts of the flesh, whether coarse and disgusting or refined and respectable, these are the things that make up the life that he willingly poured out unto death, and which he calls for us to pour out to him, if we are big enough in spirit to rise to his call.
In the grey dawn when the sabbath was past, as the city turned to its work again, they found the empty tomb, and during the next few days learned the greatest lesson they or we can ever learn.
The life of surrender to the will of God, the life of giving rather than receiving, of service and the forgetting of self, when a man denies himself and carries a cross through life, leads not to failure but to fulfillment and to God. That is the message of Christ, in life, in death, and in resurrection.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay