Character Of Christ

Character Of Christ

CHARACTER OF CHRIST

Introduction: (a) Aim. (b) Sources: (1) their trustworthiness; (2) their sufficiency. (c) Theological value of a study of the character of Christ.

i.Formative influences.

1.Parentage.

2.Home.

3.Education.

4.The years of silence.

ii.The Vocation of Christ, the determining principle of His character.

1.His Designation of His vocation.

2.His Dedication to His vocation.

3.His Confirmation in His vocation.

iii.Characteristics of Christ.

1.Spiritual-mindedness: (1) His knowledge; (2) His teaching; (3) effect of His presence.

2.Love to God: (1) obedience, (2) trust.

3.Love to men.

iv.Social relations, and virtues manifested therein.

1.Family.

2.Friends: (1) His dependence upon them; (2) His self-communications to them; (3) their response to Him.

3.Mankind: (1) lowliness; (2) considerateness; (3) compassion; (4) forbearance and forgiveness.

v.Virtues of His vocation.

1.Faithfulness.

2.Courage.

3.Patience.

4.Calmness.

5.Self-sacrifice.

Concluding Estimate.

1.His absolute goodness.

2.His sinlessness: (1) testimony of those who knew Him.; (2) His own self-knowledge and self-witness.

Literature.

Introduction.(a) The aim of this article is to make a purely ethical study of the character of Christ. In such a study there must be no dogmatic presuppositions regarding the constitution of His person, whether favourable or hostile to the statements of Nicene orthodoxy. There must be no abstract separation of His humanity from His Divinity, and no attempt to relegate certain acts or phases to one side and others to the other side. We must proceed in the case of Jesus Christ as we do in that of the great men who have forced succeeding ages to the task of understanding them, though it may well be that in the end we shall be constrained to set Him, with reasoned conviction, in a class apart, high above the greatest of men.

(b) The sources for such a study are, of course, the four Gospels. It is obviously impossible to appeal to the Epistles, save for any reminiscences they may contain of the historic Christ. Their conceptions of the risen Christ cannot come here into view. In thus restricting ourselves to the earthly life of Christ, we are not excluding any view which faith might take of His present existence. If Christ be alive now, He must be the same, morally, as He was when on earth. There is no other Christ than the Christ of the Gospels.

As soon as we turn to the Gospels, we are met by various critical problems. The solution of these must be sought in the various works which are devoted to their discussion. For the study in which we are to be engaged two positions are essential, which may be stated here as assumptions, though they are in reality conclusions of the study itself. (1) The first is the trustworthiness of the Gospels as portraitures of Christ. Grant the ordinary critical results, that the Gospels were written late in the 1st cent., that contemporary I ideas and experiences have influenced their authors or editors, that in some cases the Evangelists have misunderstood or misreported their Master; yet the fact remains, that the character of Christ, as presented in these documents, was not, and could not have been, an invention or a fiction, a product of progressive meditation, or a creation of enthusiastic feeling. Do justice to the portrait of Christ, let its harmony and its uniqueness, its profound naturalness and its transcendent loveliness, make their due impression, and the conclusion presses, that the Christ of the Gospels is not a construction but a memory, an actual Figure, once beheld by eyes of flesh, and now discerned through a medium upon which contemporary influences have had no distorting effect, and which, accordingly, permits Him to be known as He was.

It may be said that, while these remarks are true of the Synoptic Gospels, they cannot fairly he applied to the Fourth Gospel. A distinction, however, must be observed. The Synoptic Gospels are mainly ethical in their aim and method. Ontological and theological conclusions are certainly suggested; but they are not explicitly stated. In the Fourth Gospel these results are avowed in the Prologue, referred to again and again in the body of the work, and summarized in the conclusion. While thus frankly theological, however, it presents its doctrinal positions as the result of an ethical study, which it also gives. With the correctness of these doctrinal inferences we are not concerned. Our sole interest lies in the portrait of Christ; and with respect to it two things are certain: it is in complete harmony with that given by the Synoptists, it is another picture of the same person; and it can be regarded, as little as that of the Synoptists, as an invention or fiction. For our present purpose, accordingly, which is ethical and not theological, we shall use the materials presented in the Fourth Gospel, for a study of the character of Christ, with the same freedom and confidence with which we turn to the Synoptic narratives.

(2) The second assumption follows naturally upon the first, and maintains the sufficiency of the Gospels for knowledge of Christ. It is obvious that they do not aim at extensive completeness. They are not chronicles; nor are they biographies in the modern sense. A shorthand report of the sayings of Jesus, a minute record of His life, during even the short period covered by the narratives, would have swelled their brief outlines to portentous volumes. It is certain that they do aim at intensive or central completeness. We do not need to know everything about a man in order to know him. For the purpose of character study, much that is interesting, that affectionate curiosity would like to know, is needless and irrelevant. The materials of our study must be, and need only be, such words and deeds as express the whole man, and are the organic utterance and outcome of his very self. This is one aspect of the uniqueness of the Gospels, one element in the proof that they are memorials, not inventions, that the Christ they represent is a unity. There is not the faintest trace of artificiality, of an ingenious synthesis of heterogeneous elements. No portrait painter, no artist in words, ever invented a figure of such perfect harmony. There are many things about Christ which we should like to know; but such things have been told as enable us to know Christ. From the Gospels we learn enough to know what manner of man He was. And if He be alive now, and able to influence persons now living on this earth, it is certain that His communications will be simply the unfolding and the application of the character which was expressed in such words and deeds as the Gospels record.

(c) The relation of a purely ethical study of the character of Christ to the theological consideration of His person is obvious. The one presents the problem with which the other deals. However high we may place Christ as a moral teacher, or even as the founder of a religion, nevertheless, if His moral type remain the same as that recognizable in other pure and lofty souls, if His moral achievement is generically the same as theirs, there can be no problem of His person. Christology is not merely an impossibility, it is a huge irrelevancy. Only if a study of the character of Christ raise from within the question of His relation to men on the one side and to God on the other, can there be a theological problem of the constitution of His person. Only in that case are the Christological elements in the NT warranted, and the long controversies of subsequent theological development justified. If the Divinity of Christ is not to be a dead dogma, soon to be abandoned by the minds which it perplexes and the religious instincts which it depresses; if it is to be a living conviction, sustaining faith and unifying thought, it must not be treated as though it hung, gaunt and naked, in a metaphysical vacuum; it must be regarded and expounded in its organic connexion with the character of which it is the necessary presupposition, and from which it derives its intellectual cogency. The only pathway to faith is that trodden by the first disciples. Belief in the Godhead of Christ, if it is to be more than a mere theologoumenon, must be rooted in acquaintance with Him; and that acquaintance is informed and enriched, made close, luminous, and full, through the medium of the portraiture in which the character of Christ is disclosed to our reverent gaze.

i. Formative influences.In the making of men, three factors are to be distinguishedinfluences operating from without, the reaction of personality, and the agency of the Divine Spirit. It would be a mistake, in the case of Christ, to concentrate attention wholly upon the second of these, as though He were a mere apparition in the moral universe, standing in no vital or intelligible relation to His visible or invisible surroundings. The other factors are amply recognized in the Gospel narrative. The first of them alone comes into view in our present study. The operations of the Spirit of God belong to the theological interpretation of the character of Christ, and can be understood only from the point of view of a definite conception of His person, to which our present effort is introductory. We approach our subject, accordingly, by briefly indicating the influences which operated on the youth of Jesus.

1. Parentage.Pre-natal influence, whose mode of operation is beneath observation, is an undoubted fact. Parentage affords the conditions, physical and psychological, under which that recapitulation of the ancestral past, which gives to human character its richest and most interesting elements, takes place in the individual. If we conclude (anticipating our judgment) that in Jesus there is reproduced and perfected the highest type of OT spiritual life, the conditio sine qua non of this most lovely product is to be found in His parentage. This thought does not even suggest a supernatural birth. The question of the Virgin-birth is part of the wider and profounder problem, which we are not now facing, whether His person is to be regarded as an evolution from beneath or an incarnation from above, the entrance of God, at the crisis of human need, for the redemption and perfecting of men. It remains true, however, that whether we assume or deny the Virgin-birth, it is to His mother we are directed in our view of His parentage. The idea of her sinlessness is certainly not even suggested in any record of her life; it is merely the logical result of the blunder of making the sinlessness of Jesus depend on physical conditions. Yet it is beyond all doubt that she belonged to the inner circle of those who, in Israel, best preserved the spiritual heritage of the race; and it is beyond cavil that of this deeply exercised generation of waiting souls she was herself a choice and lovely representative. With a fitness which suggests, in its tenderly human and deeply religious quality, a Divine selection, she filled the office of living personal medium, through which the stream of spiritual energy, which flows through the whole history of Israel, poured in upon her Son, to well up within His soul in the finest features and characteristics of the national religion. In part, at least, we understand Jesus through His mother. Most assuredly, He was more than a Hebrew; but He was a Hebrew born. What He came to be is determined, in His case as in others, by the dark and mystic tabernacle wherein His physical frame was formed, by the bosom whereon He lay, and the life-force whereby His own was nourished. Preparation is thus made in birth for a character which shall be true to the national type, and, at the same time, deeply and broadly human.

2. Home.Of all the characters who have risen to eminence from the lowliest surroundings, Jesus Christ is the most remarkable. What attracts attention to His home, however, is not the contrast between His early circumstances and His later attainments, but the harmony between the setting of His childhoods years and the noblest of His manhoods virtues and achievements. The chief quality of His home was its pure humanity. None but the simplest elements of human life are here. The home at Nazareth is as far removed from luxury and artificiality on the one hand, as it is from squalor or depravity on the other. The inward features of the home correspond with its outward conditions. The father and mother belong to what we know as the special secdplot of Christianity. They were poor in spirit; they waited for the consolation of Israel. Lofty aspirations, prayers and songs inspired and moulded by OT conceptions and forms, conversation enriched by the ideas of the profoundest thinkers on religion whom the world has ever known, lives instinct with pure and passionate devotion to God: amid such benign and holy influences the plastic soul of Jesus grew to its maturity. Such a home provides a perfect environment for One whose personal secret is His communion with God, whose message is Gods fellowship with men.

Without mere fancifulness we can conceive what the childhood of Jesus really wascontented, happy, trustful. Certain features of His manhood, His freedom from extremes of feeling, His openness of mind, His wide and deep charity, find the conditions of their growth in His childhoods home, with its thorough naturalness and its nearness to central truth regarding God and man.

The words which record that Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men (Luk 2:52), describe a perfectly normal human growth, a development without breach or strain or crisis, conducted by the Spirit of God, toward the realization of the Divine ideal of humanity. It is impossible to reconcile them with an abstract conception of His Godhead; impossible also to reconcile them with an equally abstract conception of His mere humanity (whatever that may be). But it is certain they present a unique fact, which must have full weight given to it in any estimate of the character and the person of Christ. It might be suggested, indeed, that the complete normality of His growth may have been imperilled by communications made to Him by His mother regarding the mystery of His birth or the greatness of His vocation. Such communications, however, were not made before His twelfth year. Marys words in the temple (Luk 2:48) make that certain. Even on the supposition that certain communications were made at a later date, they may have aided Him in the discovery of His relation to God and His mission to men; but the thoughts they may have awakened in His mind would not then act injuriously upon the growth of a perfectly proportioned human character. The greatness which was coining upon Him was leading Him nearer to men, not farther away from them. We must always look for what is unique in Christ within and not beyond His normal human character.

3. Education.Hellenic or Roman culture might be brilliant, but it was narrow, limited to the conditions of life in a Greek city, or to the uses of a ruling race. Its faults are plain; intellectual pride, superficial cleverness, abundance of ideas together with dearth of ideals. Conceive now the training of a Hebrew boy. Ignorant of much that a Greek lad knew, he was thoroughly instructed in the books of the OT. These constituted a national literature, which, on any fair comparison, vastly excels the utmost that the Hellenic spirit could produce, in its power to quicken and direct the activities of the soul, to deepen it, and to enrich it with noblest conceptions of human life and destiny. Such a literature is the most splendid instrument of education the world has ever seen; and such was the education even of a carpenters son in an obscure village. No doubt even a system so excellent might be perverted; but always in education the result is determined not by the perfection of the instrument, but by the reaction of the pupil. From school Jesus might have gone on to be a Rabbi of the common dogmatic and narrow type. If He did not, if His thought is wide, His insight deep, His spirit noble and gentle; if He moves on the plane of the greatest prophets of the OT, and sees beyond their highest vision; we must trace this result to His education, and to the response made to it by His quick and intelligent sympathy. It is because He is moulded by the influences of the OT that His character is at once more spiritual and more universal than it would have been, had He been steeped to the lips in Hellenic culture. The measure of His acquaintance with the apocalyptic literature which many of His contemporaries were studying, cannot accurately be determined. But we shall make a profound mistake, if we imagine that we can explain His teaching or understand Himself by any such reference. We can come within sight of Him only by retracing the steps of His own education, and approaching Him from the point of view of the OT. The groundwork of His character and the spring of His thinking are to be found in the OT. What He came to be or to reveal, beyond that stage of moral and religious attainment, stands in organic connexion with it. Other educational influences must be remembered and their power duly estimated: the historic scenes which were within His view, with the splendid and tragic memories they were fitted to awaken; the highways of the worlds business which were visible from the hills behind which Nazareth lay; the pleasant country which was spread all around His home. Such aspects of His character as His intense patriotism, His wide humanitarian sympathies, and His feeling for nature, find their antecedents in the physical surroundings of His early years.

At this point we pause to note an incident which enables us, as efficiently as a score of haphazard reminiscences would have done, to discern the fruition of His lifes preparation, so far as it had gone. Here it is well to remind ourselves of the reverence which is due to all childhood in our endeavour to analyse its utterances. How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? (Luk 2:49).* [Note: . Our argument is not affected whether we adopt the above rendering (AV and RVm), or that of RV, in my Fathers house.] No platitudes as to moral paternity, no pedantic references to the Trinity, help us to understand this wondering question. The words have no doctrinal meaning. They ought not to be used as proof of a dogma. Did Mary ask her Son what He meant? If she had asked, could He have made her understand? The words, however, while thus far removed from ontological problems, do reveal most surely what manner of child He must have been who uttered them. He must have lived till that hour in a fellowship with God which had known no interruption, which had been so deep and holy and tender, that Marys word, applied to an earthly parent, provides its secret. Thy father and I, said His mother; and He replied, surely not in any self-conscious, didactic mood, but in glad and confident adoption of her word, my Fathers business. It is certain that one who uttered this phrase out of the fulness of a childs unreflective experience, had never passed through the agonies of a violated conscience. His experience is not the abnormal type to be seen in St. Paul, Augustine, Luther, Bunyan, but the profoundly normal type of the human relation to God, as God designed it to be. Operating upon Him, through parentage and home and education, operating within Him in ways beneath consciousness and beyond observation, the Divine Spirit had led Him into, and enabled Him to abide within, a continuous, loving fellowship with God, of which the earthly relationship of father and son is the reflexion and the symbol. It is certain that Jesus never knew any inward dislocation of spirit, never passed through agonies of conviction, or emerged into the rapture of an experience which overwhelmed the judgment with surges of emotion. His character is not created by the healing of some deep breach of soul. It bears none of the marks of manufacture. It is a steadfast growth, the uninterrupted unfolding of the wealth of ethical meaning that lay, from the beginning, within His soul. From the village street He passes to the temple courts, to find Himself there at home, and to occupy Himself with His Fathers concerns. From the temple He returns to His village home, without surprise and without disappointment, still to be in His Fathers presence, and to be about His Fathers business. He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was subject unto them (Luk 2:51).

4. The years of silence.For eighteen years we lose sight of Jesus. When they are past, not His physical frame only but His moral stature also has reached its fulness. The years themselves, apart from the incidents which must have filled them, are the most potent of the formative influences which are our guide to the understanding of Jesus. There are certain deeply marked features of His character, which are the imprint upon Him of the passage of these silent years.

(1) Quietness and confidence.In His manhood there is no restlessness as of one who is uncertain of his goal, none of the strained eagerness of one who is still in pursuit of undiscovered truth. Platos image of the aviary in no way resembles the mind of Jesus. No distinction is to be found in Him between possessing and having. He possesses, or rather is possessed by, fundamental and universal principles. His life and teaching are their exposition and illustration. We may debate their validity, but we cannot dispute the absolute certainty with which He grasped them. Eighteen years of silence had breathed their restfulness into Him, and conferred on Him the precious gifts of a quiet mind and an assured heart.

(2) Foresight.Jesus had no magical acquaintance with future events. Yet it is most noteworthy that He moved amid the circumstances of His life with no hesitating step. It is not merely that, as a religious man, He knows that God has a plan for Him, and will submit to it, whatever it brings Him, however grievous or disappointing; but also that He knew what the plan was. He was in the secret of His Father. In His speaking and acting there is no trace of hesitation or doubt. He never acts on a mere balance of judgment, never wastes a moment on conjecture, not one moment on regret. He acts with instant perception of what is wanted, and goes forward with confident step and calm foreseeing eye. He marvels (twice it is recorded of Him, Mat 8:10, Mar 6:6); but it is the wonder which is at once the parent and the child of knowledge, not the stupid astonishment of mere ignorance. Events which threatened destruction to Himself and His mission were met by Him with solemn recognition as the issue of a purpose which He served with full intelligence. Such calm wisdom, such quiet faithfulness, such undisturbed peace, had a history; and it lies in these eighteen years of silent waiting.

(3) Serenity and self-possession.He was haunted by misconception, beset by malice, harassed by malignity. Yet He preserved an austere reserve, which permitted no rash action, no unguarded speech. He met His enemies with a silence which was no dumb resentment, but was on some occasions a most moving appeal, on others a most solemn judgment. No man can be thus silent who is driven ignorantly toward an unknown destiny. The silence of Jesus is proof that His life lay within both His purview and His command. Only in solitude and obscurity can such qualities be developed. Eighteen silent years are not too much to make a soul like that of Jesus Christ, strong, deep, calm, and wise. Not dogmatic prejudice, but respect for the unity of Christs character, and for the self-evidencing truth of the portrait presented in the Gospels, condemns, as an outrage upon all psychological probability, the practice of packing into the three recorded years alternations of thought and purpose, and tracing supposed distinctions between the hopes with which He began His career and the convictions which were forced upon Him toward its close. Naturalism of this sort is simply unnatural and foolish. There is nothing too great to be the outcome of years so sublimely silent. What He is to be was then formed within His soul. What He has to say was then laid up for utterance. What He has to do and endure was then foreseen and then accepted.

ii. The Vocation of Christ.The unity of Christs character stands out impressively in the Gospel portrait. The allowances we make, and the averages we strike, in estimating the conduct of other men, are not needed in His case. Woven of the strands of common life, it is yet without seam throughout. When we seek to explain this unity, it is not enough to refer to the will of Christ, as though it were a power operating in an ethical vacuum. His is the normal human will, which realizes its freedom by identifying itself with some all-determining principle. When we ask, further, what this principle is, which thus determines His will and unifies His life, we shall be in error if we regard it as an absolutely new idea, to be ascribed to His inventive genius. He is not with complete appropriateness to be designated a religious genius. He has nothing to reveal which is new, if by that epithet we mean to indicate a conception which has no organic relations with the past. Jesus, as believer, thinker, preacher, starts from the OT. His originality consists in perfectly understanding it, in carrying out into concrete reality its ruling conceptions. When, therefore, we seek for the determining principle of the life and character of Christ, we must turn to the OT. From childhood to manhood He lived the life of the ideal Israel, in communion with God and consecration to His service. What is unique in Him is not some idea, derived we know not whence, but His actual adoption of the purpose of God toward Israel as the purpose of His own life. When we endeavour to enter sympathetically into the experience of the Prophetic authors of the OT, and when we compare with their writings the character and career of Jesus, we are led to the conclusion: First, that the core of the OT religion is Gods redeeming purpose toward Israel; and, second, that the vocation of Christ, as understood and accepted by Himself, was to fulfil that purpose. In the nature of the case we cannot have from Jesus a narrative of the experiences which culminated in this great resolve, or an abstract statement of His ideas upon the topic of redemption. Yet, as we follow the occasions of His life, we overhear pregnant sayings, and we observe significant incidents, which corroborate and illustrate the impression which His whole career makes upon us. These we may thus arrange

1. His Designation of His vocation.When we inquire how Jesus designated His lifes aim, we are met early in the narrative with one general, yet most definite statement. He is addressing an audience composed of His own disciples, together with a wider range of auditors for whom also His words are meant. We have, indeed, no verbatim report of what is usually called the Sermon on the Mount. Its theme, however, is unmistakable. It is the Kingdom of God as it exists at the stage which, in the person of the Speaker, it has now reached. Plainly, the Kingdom, as Jesus proclaims it, is a new thing. Its righteousness is new. Its blessings are new. At once the question arises, and was thrown at the Preacher with bitter controversial animus, How does this new Kingdom stand related to that which had endured through the centuries of Israels history, which was now indeed obscured by political oppression, but which was destined one day to receive a glorious vindication? How do its new views of God and man and duty compare with the venerable system of law, of which the Scribes and Pharisees were the acknowledged defenders?

Then Jesus pronounces words which place Him in the central stream of the Divine purpose, and designate Him as its goal and its complete realization: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil (Mat 5:17). It is noteworthy that to the Law Jesus adds the Prophets, thus emphasizing that element of the OT religion which the legalists of His day were most apt to neglect. He grasps the OT as a spiritual whole, and this totality of Divine meaning He declares it to be His vocation to fulfil. He has come into the world to carry forward all that had been signified by Law and Prophets to an end foreseen, or at least felt, by OT believers, but not attained in their experience. In Him the OT religion is at once perfected, and accomplished as an abiding reality.

Such a consciousness as this may well suggest thoughts as to the person of Him who thus asserts Himself. What is important for us now, however, is the fact that it was His consciousness, that the vocation thus announced was the end for which Jesus lived, and constituted the organizing principle to which is due the perfect unity of His character.

The same impression of the loftiness and the definiteness of His vocation, as Jesus conceived it, is deepened by a consideration of other sayings in which He condensed the purpose of His life. While, of course, critical conclusions are manifold, it is not reasonably open to doubt (a) that Jesus claimed to possess authority to forgive sins, and so dispense the characteristic blessing of the New Covenant (Jer 31:34, Mat 9:6); (b) that He claimed to possess a knowledge of God which, in its immediacy and fulness, was generically distinct from that enjoyed by the most advanced OT saint, and to be empowered to reveal God, thus known, to men (Mat 11:27); (c) that He regarded His death as laying the basis of the New Covenant, and being, therefore, the medium of its blessings (Mat 26:28 and parallels).

Again, we cannot fail to feel, in connexion with such words, the drawing on of a mystery in the person of Him who uttered them. Turning aside, however, from all such suggestions, and refraining from all doctrinal construction, we are, nevertheless, not merely permitted, but constrained, to observe that they described the commission under which He acted. They disclose the root of conviction from which His character grew. Take this away, and His character falls to pieces, and becomes no more an ethical unity, but a congeries of inconsistencies. The belief that He was commissioned of God to execute the Divine purpose towards Israel, and, through Israel, towards the world, moved Him from beginning to end of His career, and made Him the character which He was, which we come to know in the Gospels, and which has put its spell upon all subsequent generations.

2. His Dedication to His vocation.The determining purpose of His life was not made known to Jesus for the first time in the experiences of His baptism. The consciousness which He then manifests had certainly a history. The experiences through which He then passed imply a perfectly prepared soul. In His whole bearing, from the moment of His approach to John, there is not a trace of hesitation or bewilderment. A new thing, no doubt, came to Him; but it did not take Him by surprise or usher Him into a calling which He had not foreseen, or from which He had shrunk. By the discipline of the silent years in Nazareth, by the operation of the Divine Spirit, acting along with all external instrumentalities and beneath the conscious movements of His own spirit, His mind had been informed of the task which awaited Him, His faculties had been exercised in the appropriation of so great a destiny, His soul had been fed at sources of Divine strength, and thus enabled to accept in deep surrender the Divine appointment. His character, when first we see Him pass out of obscurity into the light of history, is not like an unfinished building, with scaffolding to be cleared away, and much still to be done before it be beautiful or habitable. It is like a living organism, rooted in the discipline of past years, perfected by adequate preparation, and now ready for its destined uses and its full fruition. His thirtieth year found Him well aware of His vocation, and waiting only for the summons to take it up. The cry of the Baptist reached Him in Nazareth, and He knew that His hour was come. Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan, unto John, to be baptized of him (Mat 3:13). His baptism is at once Christs dedication of Himself to His vocation, and the first step in its accomplishment. His experiences at such an hour are too intimate and profound to be comprehended even by the most reverent study. But their meaning must gather round three points(1) First, the word thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness (v. 15). In this pregnant saying we are conveyed back to the heart of the OT. God is righteous when He fulfils the obligations which He imposed on Himself when He instituted His covenant with Israel. It is still His righteousness which moves Him, when, after Israel has sinned itself out of the covenant relationship, He promises a New Covenant, and brings near a better salvation. This is the righteousness which Jesus has full in view on the verge of Baptism. If this righteousness is to be fulfilled, He who is the executor of the Divine purpose must not shrink from His task, whatever it may bring Him, and he who has a lesser function in the Kingdom must not withstand or hinder Him through any mistaken reverence.

(2) Second, the symbolic deed of baptism. Here also the only possible clue is to be found in the OT. There we see the godly in Israel, themselves right with God, bearing in their own souls the load of the peoples transgressions. What is thus, through successive generations, done and suffered by exercised believers, is assigned in Deutero-Isaiah to the Servant of the Lord, who is in that writing the ideal Israel making atonement for the sins of the actual Israel. In descending to baptism, Jesus is certainly not acknowledging personal unworthiness. It is not even enough to say that He is vicariously confessing the sins of others. He is definitely assuming the place and office of the Servant of the Lord. Himself righteous, He assumes in His deepest soul the load of human sin, and thus at once fulfils the righteousness of God and makes many righteous. The Baptism of Christ, accordingly, is at once the culmination of a lifes experiences, the product of long years of thought and prayer, and the inauguration of a career whose movement and whose goal were already plainly before His inward eye.

(3) Third, the Divine response (v. 16f.). A decision, whose issues we cannot calculate, was accompanied by a pain which we cannot fathom. The doctrine of the two natures, even supposing it to be proved, throws no light on the experiences of that hour. Jesus never found relief in His Divinity from His human suffering. He took refuge in prayer (Luk 3:21). The Father answered with an endowment ample enough even for the task, an assurance strong enough to raise Him above all doubt. The terms in which the assurance is given form a synthesis of the two great figures through whom in the OT the consummation of the Kingdom is achieved, the Messianic King and the Servant of the Lord (Mar 1:11), and afford additional proof of the consciousness with which Jesus began His ministry. What we observe in lesser men, we see in Jesusa great purpose determining the life creating the character. In His case, as in others, to miss the purpose leaves the character a hopeless enigma, the life a meaningless puzzle.

3. His Confirmation in His vocation.Jesus does not sweep forward in emotional enthusiasm from Baptism to the announcement of His claims. The tide of His endowment drove Him (St. Marks phrase) not to cities and throngs, but into desert solitudes, there to win through conflict what was His by right. Jesus certainly did not describe to His disciples in full detail the strife by which He won His soul. Something He did tell, and told it, as alone it could be told, in symbols. The point at issue in the conflict is the vocation to which Jesus has just dedicated Himself. That vocation is the synthesis of all the lines of action by which, in the OT, Gods purpose was being gradually fulfilled; and specially the synthesis of sovereignty and service. The strain of the Temptation is directed to the rending asunder of these two. The effort to which Jesus is summoned is to hold them together in indissoluble connexion, and not, under whatever subtle seductive influences, to snatch at the one and renounce the other. Any breach between them will mean the defeat of the Divine righteousness. Failure here will make Jesus not the Servant of the Lord but His adversary, servant of His enemy. The stages of the Temptation, accordingly, turn upon the humiliations which the element of service will bring into His career, and their supposed incompatibility with the sovereignty, which is His goal. Surely hunger and toil and poverty are insuperable barriers in the way of reaching that supremacy which Jesus would exercise with such benignant grace! The alternative lay clear before Him, the pathway of supernatural power, leading away from normal human experience, or the pathway of service and suffering, leading nearer and nearer to the throbbing heart of humanity. Jesus made His choice, and in that great decision gained His vantage ground. As for Him, He would be man, and would stand so close to men that He could assume their responsibilities and bear their burdens. Thus Jesus won His victory, a solitary man, in death grips with evil, with no strength save the Spirit of God, no weapon save the Word of God. It was a complete victory. Within a character, thus welded by trial, there was no room hereafter for breach with God or with itself. Though other assaults will be made, though they be made by His dearest (Joh 2:3-4), His most loyal (Mat 16:22-23), though in one final onslaught they wring from the Victor sweat of blood, the certainty of their overwhelming defeat is already guaranteed. In studying the character of Christ, we are led from one surprise of loveliness to another; but we are never in any uncertainty as to its permanence, never haunted by any dread of its failure. From the beginning there is the note of finality and absoluteness.

iii. Characteristics of Christ.All character study is necessarily incomplete. A character which could be exhaustively analysed would not be worth the pains taken in making the necessary investigations. The quality of mystery certainly belongs to the character of Christ to a degree that suggests a source of power, deeper and less restricted than that which would suffice to explain shallower and more intelligible personalities. No biography has ever comprehended Him; the intent meditation of nineteen centuries has not exhausted His fulness. It would, accordingly, be both pedantic and unreal to attempt a logical articulation of the elements of His character or a classified list of His virtues. It seems best, therefore, in this article to move from the more general to the more particular, without too great rigidity of treatment. We begin, then, with those impressions of His character which are at once the broadest and the deepest.

1. Spiritual-mindedness.St. Pauls great phrase in Rom 8:6 , the general bent of thought and motive (Sanday-Headlam) directed toward Divine things, which is applied even to the best men we know, with reserves and limitations, exactly expresses the prevailing direction of Christs life and character. He possesses the spiritual mind to a degree which stamps Him as being at once unique among men, and also true and normal man, realizing the ideal and fulfilling the duty of man as such. He moves habitually in the realm of heavenly realities. He does not visit it at intervals. He dwells there, even while He walks on earth, and is found amid the throngs and haunts of men. He carries with Him the aroma of its holiness and peace and blessedness. That His disciples were with him (Mar 3:14) was the secret of their preparation, the source of any wisdom they manifested, any success they achieved. The most mature experience of the power of Christ, and the most lofty conception of His person, find their ultimate warrant in this, that the unseen world becomes visible in His character. Apart from this, they are composed of things so unreal as feelings and opinions. Illustration and proof of the spiritual-mindedness of Christ are too abundant to be specified in detail. The following points will suffice to indicate its quality and significance.

(1) His knowledge.He Himself, on one occasion, distinguished the objects of His knowledge as heavenly things (), and earthly things (, Joh 3:12). The former are the mysteries of the Kingdom, the counsels of Jehovah, which in the OT He makes known by the medium of the prophets. The latter are the facts of human nature, as that is essentially related to the being and character of God, and is capable of receiving and experiencing the powers and truths belonging to the Kingdom of God. There is no doubt as to the kind of knowledge He evinced, and believed Himself to possess, regarding heavenly things. He is not inquiring like Socrates, nor reasoning like Plato, nor commenting like a scribe. He knows with absoluteness and fulness (Mat 11:27). He beholds with immediate direct vision (Joh 1:18; Joh 6:46). He reports what He sees and hears (Joh 3:11; Joh 8:38; Joh 15:15). He does not in any formal way teach the religion which lives in Him. The thing itself He merely expresses, nay, still more presupposes than expresses (Beyschlag).

Christs knowledge of earthly things, i.e. His insight into the subjective experiences of men and the moral condition of their souls, has the same note of absoluteness; and His judgments upon them and His dealings with them have an authority and finality which would be unwarrantable did they not rest on perfect discernment (Mar 10:21, Luk 7:39, Joh 1:42; Joh 1:47; Joh 2:25). Of this He Himself could not but be aware; and, indeed, He expressly made it His claim (Joh 13:18). Peters heart-broken appeal (Joh 21:17) belongs to the incidents of the Forty Days, and so cannot be used directly as proof; but no doubt it reflects the impression which the historic Christ made upon those who knew Him, viz. that He saw into their inmost souls with a discernment as intimate and deep as Gods, which, like Gods, could neither be evaded nor hindered.

Whether Christ possessed supernatural knowledge of facts in the order of external nature has been much discussed, but does not now concern us. We are not even concerned at present with any explanation of His knowledge of Divine things. But we are bound to note, and to give full weight to the fact, that in the Gospel portraiture the world of heavenly realities, both in themselves and in their earthly manifestations and applications, is open to Jesus, that He is in complete spiritual affinity with it, and speaks upon all matters that belong to it with definite and self-conscious authority. Even if His Divinity be denied, it must be allowed that He is a man possessed of undimmed spiritual vision.

(2) His teaching.Jesus is not a lecturer, making statements, however brilliant and luminous, of the results of investigation. He is a revealer, disclosing in the mother-speech of religion the heavenly realities which were open to His inward eye. His teaching, therefore, is inexhaustible, begetting, in the process of studying it, the faculty of ethical insight, and continuously raising, in the effort to practise it, the standard of the moral judgment. Yet it retains the quality of spiritual delight which enchained its first listeners. It is gracious in its unfoldings of the Divine compassions; in its disclosure not merely of the fatherliness, but of the fatherhood of God; in its invitations, pleadings, promises; and, most of all, in its astounding declaration, which pride deemed blasphemous and humility never questioned, of the Divine forgiveness, deep, and free, and fearless. It is holy and spiritual, rejecting conventional piety, emphasizing, as even the OT had not done, the inward state of a mans heart Godward, describing the type of character required in citizens of the Kingdom in terms of such unearthly purity and loveliness, as would produce despair were any other than Himself the speaker. It is universal, perfecting the Law and the Prophets, in this respect also, that it declared the height of spiritual privilege to be attainable, not merely by Israel, but by man as such, irrespective of merit or privilege.

Such a voice had never been heard in Israel; not Hoseas, with its tears of Divine compassion; not Isaiahs, with its royal amplitude; not his who in pure and lofty song heralded the return from Babylon; not Johns as it rang out from hill to hill his summons to repentance. Astonished by its novelty, wooed by its charm, bowed by its authority, the multitudes followed a little way as it called them heavenward; and some elect souls rested not till they too entered the universe of truth whence Jesus uttered His voice. The greatest foe to faith is the haste which seeks to construct dogmas about Christ before Christ is known. To some souls the time for dogma comes late, or not at all. In any case, dogma, however accurate, must rest on the trustworthiness of Jesus in His disclosure of spiritual fact.

(3) The effect of His presence.A spiritual mind produces upon those who come under its in influence a twofold impression, that of remoteness and that of nearness and sympathy. This is conspicuously the case with Jesus. We have abundant evidence of His having a dignity of presence, which smote with awe those who had but occasional glimpses of Him, and filled at times His most familiar friends with fear, and also of His being the kindest, gentlest, and most sympathetic of souls. It could not be otherwise. To have discerned the end which created His career, to make choice of it with such full intelligence of all that it involved, to live for it in such entire consistency with its scope and requirements, means a moral grandeur unapproached by sage or prophet. Separated from the mass of men, removed from their pursuits, He must have been. Yet the very greatness of His vocation, the very depth of His insight both into the purpose of God and the need of man, produced in Him, along with that deep distinctiveness, the kindliest appreciation of the little things which make up the life of man, the most sympathetic interest in ordinary human concerns, and an entire approachableness to the humblest applicant for counsel or comfort. This combination of a majesty which smites to the ground the instruments of prostituted justice, with a manner so tender that babes smile in His arms and women tell Him the secret of their care, must have its source deep in the heavenly region which was His habitual abode.

2. Love to God.The heavenly region which Jesus inhabited was not an abyss of being where the finite loses itself in the absolute. It was a realm of persons, Divine and human, who dwelt together in intelligent, spiritual fellowship. The doctrine of the One, which is found in every climate and revives in every century, is not the clue to Jesus thought of God. The key to His theology is the doctrine of the Father; His love to the Father is the motive of His life. He proclaimed love to God, absorbing all energies, comprehending all activities, as the first, the great commandment, of which the second, love to man, is the direct corollary. But when we compare His own obedience to the first commandment with that of other men, a very significant distinction is to be observed. The most devout souls in their nearest approach to God are conscious that their love is not perfect. This defect is due in part to sin, and the chastened soul rebukes the coldness of its affection; and in part to finitude, and the adoring soul continually aspires after higher attainments. In the case of Jesus, the note, either of compunction or of aspiration, is never heard. The explanation of this is not that in later recensions of the tradition such notes were struck out, in deference to a mistaken sense of reverence, or to support a novel view of His person; but that the impression of complete spiritual attainment belongs to the very essence of the character as set forth in the Gospels. We may dispute whether such a character ever existed; but we cannot question the fact that such a character has been portrayed, with a verisimilitude which makes the portraiture a greater miracle than the actual reality of the character depicted would have been. Jesus loved God perfectly: this is the only fair interpretation of the record. There is no trace of moral disparity, no failure of mutual understanding, no sign of effort on the part of Jesus to cross a chasm, however inconsiderable, between Himself and God. He receives the communications of the Fathers love without perturbation or amazement, as of one overwhelmed by the Divine condescension; and He responds without extravagance of emotion, in words which do not labour with overweight of meaning, but are easy, natural, simple, and glad, the very language of One who is the Son of such a Father. He and the Father are one. The Synoptic picture, as well as that of the Fourth Gospel, makes this feature plain. There can be no doubt that this fact raises the Christological problem in its profoundest form. What man is He who thus receives and returns the love of God?

Two of loves characteristic manifestations, moreover, are found in Christ in perfect exercise. (1) Obedience. We have seen that the character of Christ is created by the vocation to which He dedicated Himself. We now observe that this vocation is, in the view of Jesus, nothing impersonal, but is the personal will of the Father. This is the Fathers business, and to it He, as the Son, is entirely devoted. The will of the Father does not mean for Jesus a series of commands. It is rather to His deep conviction a purpose, moving throughout His whole life, and comprehending every detail of His activity. The obedience of the Son, accordingly, is not a series of events. It is the identification of His will with the will of the Father, and a complete reproduction of that will in the whole conduct of His life. Sayings in the Fourth Gospel, such as Joh 4:34; Joh 6:38; Joh 8:29, bring into clear utterance the impression conveyed by the whole career of Jesus, and express an obedience which has lost the last trace of distance between the will of the Son and the will of the Father. Again, we must postpone all discussion of the possibility of such obedience, and must emphasize the actuality of the representation. Two things are plain: first, Jesus was conscious of being in complete and constant harmony with God, and profoundly unconscious of even the slightest failure to fulfil the whole will of God; and, second, those who knew Him best believed that in Him they had witnessed a unique moral achievement, viz., an obedience absolutely perfect, both in its extent and in its inward quality. (2) Trust. Perfect love casteth out fear (1Jn 4:18). Jesus trust in God was, like His obedience, complete. It amounted to an entire and unfailing dependence upon God, so that whatever He did, God wrought in Him. In other servants of God we observe, even in their deepest experiences, a certain dualism of self and God, a self assisted to a greater or less degree by God. This account would not be adequate to the experiences observable in the record regarding Christ. He is, without doubt, a person, not will-less, but acting in complete self-determination, and yet His deeds are the Fathers. No process of analysis can distinguish in any word or deed of His an element which comes from Himself and another which comes from God. In Christ we find a perfect spiritual organisma man so completely inhabited by God that His words and deeds are the words and deeds of God. Follow Him in His career, as it passes with unbroken steadfastness from stage to stage of an unfolding purpose, study Him in His dealing with men, and note the sureness of His touch, penetrate the secret of His consciousness as He from time to time lifts the veil (Joh 5:20; Joh 5:30; Joh 7:16; Joh 12:49; Joh 14:10; Joh 14:24); and the result to which we are forced is, that here is a human life rooted in the Divine, filled and environed by it. This is, of course, no ontological explanation; but it states the ethical and spiritual phenomenon which demands an explanation; and this explanation must reach to the sphere of personal being.

Precisely at this point, however, when the facts we are describing seem to pass beyond the limits of normal human experience, we are summoned to observe that the trust and obedience of Jesus were not maintained without strenuous solicitude, or the use of those means which aid the human spirit in its adherence to God. His obedience was not easy. His will, in its ceaseless surrender, was subjected to increasing strain. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered (Heb 5:8). The disposition of obedience was always present. But the disposition had to maintain itself in the face of greater and greater demands upon it. And as He had to meet these demands, rising with the rising tide of the things which He suffered, He entered ever more deeply into the experience of what obedience was (A. B. Davidson on Heb 5:7-10). His ability to bear the strain to which He was thus subjected is due to a trust in God which was continually revived by His habit of prayer, to which there is such frequent and significant reference in the narrative (Luk 3:21-22, Mar 1:35, Luk 5:16; Luk 6:12-13, Mat 14:23, Luk 9:18; Luk 9:28, Mat 26:36-44, Luk 23:46). An increasing revelation of the Divine will, an unceasing advance in obedience, a continuous exercise of trust, are the strands woven together in the character of Christ. The product is that perfect thing, a life which is His own, and is entirely human, which is also, at the same time, the coming of God to man.

3. Love to men.The source of this characteristic, which shines resplendent from every page of the narrative, is to be found in that which we have just been considering, Christs love to God. Here we must do justice to the facts brought before us in the portrait. The noblest servants of God in the field of humanity have done their work out of a sense of obligation. They have received so much from God, that they have felt themselves bound, by constraint of the love of which they are recipients, to serve their fellow-men; and in this service their love for men has grown, till it has become no unworthy reflexion of the love of God. It would be, however, a miserably inadequate account of the facts of Christs ministry among men to say that He loved them out of a sense of duty, and served them in discharge of a debt which He owed to God. The vocation which formed His character was not bare will. It was love, seeking the redemption of men. Jesus acceptance of this vocation meant that His love to God entered into, and blended with, the love of God to men. He loved God, and the love of God to Him became in Him the motive-power of His love to men. His love to God and His love to men constitute one energy of His soul. He turns toward the Father with the deep intelligence and the full sympathy of the Son; and straightway He turns toward the world with the widest and tenderest charity (Mat 11:27-28, cf. Joh 10:15). Those, accordingly, upon whom Jesus poured His love, never sought to distinguish between it and the love of God. Enfolded by the love of Christ, they knew themselves to be received into the redeeming love of God; and their grateful love to Jesus was the proof and seal of the Divine forgiveness. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven: for she loved much (Luk 7:47). Long before the doctrine of His Divinity was framed, the love of Christ was regarded by its recipients as the spiritual medium in which the Divine compassion reached them. Hebrew thought did not work with categories of being and substance. The human heart never works with categories at all. But it can identify love when it receives it; and therefore it makes an experimental synthesis of the love of Christ and the love of God, and sets Christ in a relation toward God occupied by no other man.

The love of God to man being such as He extends to no lesser creature implies that man has a value for God which no other creature possesses; and to Jesus man has the same supreme value. Of this value there are no earthly measurements, not any created thing (Mat 10:31; Mat 12:12), not any institution, however sacred (Mar 2:27), not even the whole world (Mar 8:36). Even the moral ruin, in which sin has involved human nature, does not diminish its value, but rather accentuates its preciousness, and adds to the love of God, and therefore also of Jesus, a note of inexhaustible passion (Mat 18:10; Mat 18:12-14). Christs doctrine of man does not breathe the spirit of 18th cent. individualism. Not for man as a spiritual atom, self-contained and all-exclusive, does Jesus have respect. But for man akin to God, capable of Divine sonship, He has deep and loving admiration. Not for man, harassed with passions for whose might he is not responsible, guilty of acts which to comprehend is to pardon, does Jesus have regard. But for man, meant for so much and missing so much, framed for perfection, destroyed by his own deed, He has love and pity, throbbing in every word, passing through action and through suffering to the ultimate agony, the final victory of the Cross.

iv. Social relations.We have now to follow the character of Christ, which we have been studying in its origin, its development, and its leading features, as it manifests itself in the relations in which He stood to His fellow-men. The narratives attempt no enumeration of incidents. They present us with typical instances, in which the true self of Jesus is disclosed. From these we are able to conceive the figure of Christ as He moved amid the circles where human life is ordinarily spent.

1. Family.It is difficult, from the very scanty materials before us, to trace the relations of Jesus towards the members of His family circle, and to distinguish clearly their attitude towards Him. Yet the following points may be regarded as certain: (I) The life of Jesus, prior to His baptism, was spent within the family circle, and was characterized by two features. First, a loyal and affectionate discharge of the duties of a son, presumably as bread winner for His mother. The very astonishment of His fellow-villagers at His subsequent career is sufficient evidence that during the period prior to His public ministry He fulfilled the ordinary obligations of family life. Second, a deepening sense of His vocation, which, while it did not render Him less dutiful as a son and brother, could not fail to give Him a distinctiveness which would inevitably excite adverse criticism on the part of His kindred, should they prove unsympathetic or unintelligent.

(2) The attitude of His mother towards Him, both before and after His baptism, was twofold. (a) Belief in His unique mission and extraordinary powers. Her words to Him in Cana of Galilee (Joh 2:3) are pointless, unless they express a persuasion, born of long pondering, and revived by the recent events connected with His baptism, that He has a mission which could be nothing less than Messianic, and that the time has come for the display of powers with which necessarily He must be endowed for the fulfilment of His task. (b) A profound misconception of the nature of His mission, and of the means by which it should be inaugurated and carried on, together with a critical attitude towards Him, in regard to what she evidently considered an inexplicable, and even blameworthy, negligence on His part to seize the opportunity presented in the circumstances of the feast. For this misunderstanding we need not greatly blame her, for it was shared by His disciples even after the Resurrection; unless, indeed, we conceive, what is most probable, communings between mother and son during those long silent years, which might lead us to marvel that she, who surely might have understood, failed as completely as others to discern His purpose.

(3) The attitude of His brethren is still less intelligent. There is no suggestion in the narrative of any sympathy with Him whatsoever. After thirty years together, they could find no other explanation for His behaviour than temporary insanity, and could conceive no other plan than to put Him under temporary restraint. If His mother joined in this estimate and this proposal (Mar 3:21), it must have been with the conviction that she had the right and duty of intervening to save Him from Himself, and rescuing Him from a course which would prove fatal to His mission as she conceived it. It is certain that she joined His brethren in making an approach to Him, with the obvious intention of inducing Him to change His plan of action (Mar 3:31). At a later stage His brethren offered Him a final challenge (Joh 7:3-4). They did not believe in Him (v. 5), and therefore their suggestion to Him has not quite the sense of Marys at Cana of Galilee. It expresses their demand to have this matter of His Messiahship (about which they had no doubts) settled once for all by open demonstration: Manifest thyself to the world.

Here, then, is the situation of Jesus with respect to His family. He loves His kindred as son and brother; but He knows that His vocation demands the sacrifice of family life, and this sacrifice, with its deep pain, He is prepared to make. He is called upon, however, to endure a yet deeper pain. Not only has He to leave the dear fellowship of the home, and face a world which will prove in the end bitterly hostile, but among the members of the home He can find no understanding hearts to cheer Him and comfort Him on His lonely way. Worse still, when His nearest and dearest withstand Him, or seek to divert Him from His appointed path, He has to repel them in words which He knows must keenly wound them. To be tempted by His very love for His mother and His brethren to deviate from the line of obedience to His mission, must have put a peculiar strain upon His spirit, and brought Him most exquisite pain. In each of the incidents alluded to above we feel this note of pain: when He declines the intervention of His mother (Joh 2:4); when He turns from His mother and His brethren to His disciples (Mar 3:31-35); and when He has, in plain words, to state to His brethren that they and He belong to two different worlds of thought and action (Joh 7:3-9; cf. Joh 15:19). That between Him and His mother there was a bond of love deeper than all misunderstanding, gains pathetic proof when from the cross He commends her to His beloved disciple: Woman (the very word, , He had used in Cana of Galilee, courteous and affectionate, and yet suggestive of a cessation of the old relationship of mother and child), behold thy son. Behold thy mother (Joh 19:26 f.).

2. Friends.The vocation of Christ was one which could be executed by Himself alone. Necessarily He lived in a deep spiritual solitude, to which no human being could have access. Yet no sooner did He take up the burden of His mission than He proceeded to surround Himself with companions, and to cultivate human friendships. In the relations of Jesus to His friends three points are to be noted.

(1) His dependence upon them.It will be a profound mistake if we conceive the end for which Jesus lived in any barely historical or formal manner. The end was the Kingdom of God, or the New Covenant; but these titles do not, in the mind or language of Christ, stand for a political or ecclesiastical institution. They mean, fundamentally, an experience of God generically identical with that enjoyed in Israel, but perfected, and therefore also universalized. This experience is destined, in the counsels of God, for humanity. To secure it for mankind, so that under fit spiritual conditions all men may enter into it, is the task which Jesus in clear consciousness definitely assumed. Suppose Him, however, to have fulfilled His task as the Servant of the Lord, He will lose His labour, unless He secure representatives and witnesses, who shall declare to all whom it concerns the accomplishment of Gods gracious purpose. This testimony, moreover, cannot be borne by mere officials. Suppose, for instance, that the Resurrection was a fact. Suppose, further, that it had been verified by the investigations of experts drawn from the chief seats of learning of the ancient world. Nothing is more certain than that this testimony, taken alone, would not have advanced by a hairbreadth the purpose to which Jesus devoted Himself. Testimony to certain facts, there is no doubt He required; but this testimony would be valueless, did it not presuppose, and rest on, personal acquaintance with Himself, and participation in His own fellowship with God. His representatives must be His friends, bound to Him by personal ties of close and intelligent sympathy; capable of bearing witness, not merely to a series of His acts, but to His character and to His influence; having an understanding not merely of His doctrine, but of Himself. It was essential, therefore, that from the outset He should have friends about Him, to whom He should fulfil all the sacred obligations of a friend. When, accordingly, He comes to give them their commission, He makes it plain to them that His vocation is their vocation, having the same Divine origin, and carrying with it His own spiritual presence (Luk 4:18; Luk 4:21; Luk 4:43, Mat 15:24; Mat 10:40-42, Joh 20:21, Mat 28:19-20).

How much the friendship of His disciples was to Jesus, the whole narrative bears witness. Their faith in Him was the greatest encouragement, apart from immediate Divine assurances, that He could receive as He faced the appalling difficulties of His task. There is an unmistakable note of pathos in His clinging to His disciples, when the natural support of family loyalty is denied Him. They were to Him brother, sister, mother. There can be no doubt that, had His three most intimate friends watched unto prayer, His last agony would have been alleviated. It is the pathos of His position that His friends never knew how much He depended on them. To them He was the Strong One upon whom they leaned, from whom they took everything, to whom, in unconscious selfishness, they gave but little. Love must have been to Jesus a constant hunger. Never in all His life did He get it satisfied; and yet it never failed, but remained the master passion of His soul. Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

(2) His self-communications to them.The chief thing a friend can give to a friend is himself; and Jesus poured out on His friends the wealth of His personality: His love (Joh 13:34), His knowledge (Joh 15:15), His example (Joh 13:15); so that, when He reviews His life, He can plead with His Father His own perfect fulfilment of loves obligations (Joh 17:6; Joh 17:8; Joh 17:12). The riches of Christ, thus bestowed upon them, vivified their imagination, quickened their emotion, enlightened their understanding, subdued and renewed their wills, till they came to be not wholly unfit representatives of Him on whose errand they went. This influence, which Jesus exerted, had none of the aspect of an impersonal force. It consisted in the touch of spirit upon spirit in the mystic depths of fellowship; and this touch is not to be conceived as having the equal pressure of the atmosphere. Under certain conditions, which are necessarily too deep and delicate for analysis, the love of Christ gathered an intensity which made His friendship in these instances special and emphatic (Joh 11:3; Joh 11:5; Joh 13:23). Yet so exquisite was His tact, so evident His goodwill, that those about Him, though they might quarrel among themselves for pre-eminence, never brought against Him the charge of favouritism. They knew He loved them according to the measure of their receptivity, and with a reserve of tenderness and power for ever at their disposal. They assented as in a dream to His own word, Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (Joh 15:13). Afterwards they awoke, and remembered, and understood.

(3) Their response to Him.It is impossible to miss the brighter aspect of their attitude towards Him. They were glad in His company, happier than the disciples of the Pharisees or of John, happy as sons of the bride-chamber (Mar 2:19). This joy of theirs in His presence throws a very lovely light upon His character. He knew the goal toward which His steps were taking Him, and was standing within sight of the cross. Yet no shadow from His spirit clouded theirs. They rejoiced in Him, and in the new world of religious experience to which He introduced them. They knew themselves to be possessed of privileges, which from the point of view of the OT had been no more than an aspiration. In the fellowship of their Master and Friend they stood nearer to God than the ripest saint of the OT, immeasurably nearer than any legalist of their own day. This joy of theirs in Him is, besides, reflection and proof of His joy in them. It is strange, when we consider the spiritual elevation at which He lived, but it is certain, that He had a very real joy in their presence. He delighted to stimulate their minds by questioning, to enrich their conceptions by definite teaching. He welcomed every indication of their growing intelligence; and when He discerned that they were awake to His meaning, He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit (Luk 10:21).

They trusted Him.The result at which Jesus aimed in all His dealings with them was the production in them of faith; and by faith He meant a trust in Himself as complete as that which men ought to repose in God. Without doubt, this raises far-reaching questions regarding His personal relation to God. But the fact itself remains, as an element in the portrait of Christ, whether presented by the Synoptics or by the Fourth Gospel, that Jesus directed men to Himself as the source of all good, whether lower or higher (Mat 8:10; Mat 8:13, and many instances connected with the healing of the body; Luk 7:50, and other instances where spiritual effects are secured by faith, which are to be found in the Synoptics, and more copiously in the Fourth Gospel). His training of the Twelve was not wholly fruitless. They gave Him what He sought, though not with the largeness and simplicity for which He longed.

It is noteworthy that their faith in Him is not to be gauged by its verbal expression. That might be surprisingly full, while the faith might be most rudimentary; or the expression of faith might well-nigh be silent, while yet the trust itself remained, scarce distinguishable from despair, and yet a root whence life might come. From the beginning Jesus produced an impression upon those admitted to His company, for which they felt there was only one possible interpretation; and this, even at that early stage, they stated with great fulness (Joh 1:41; Joh 1:45; Joh 1:49). Jesus, however, did not consider that His end was gained, but proceeded with His education of these men, and allowed all factors in the case, especially such as seemed to exclude the possibility of Messianic glory, to make their due impress. Then, at the proper psychological moment, He put the supreme questionWho say ye that I am? and received from Peters lips the confession of His Messiahship (Mat 16:16 f.). Even then Jesus was under no illusion with respect to the faith which had received such emphatic expression. He made allowances for an eclipse of faith which might seem total; but still, in spite of all appearances, He believed in His disciples faith in Him, not indeed in their intellectual or emotional utterances, but in the surrender of their wills to Him, and their personal loyalty.

We are thus recalled to the darker side of their relations with Him. Indeed, readers of the narrative are apt to be more severe in their judgment upon the disciples than was the Master Himself. Certainly their defects and shortcomings are patent enough, and the contrast between their Master and them can scarcely be exaggerated. He has not where to lay His head; their minds are occupied with the question of rewards (Mat 19:27). He is meek and lowly in heart; they dispute about pre-eminence (Mat 18:1-3, Luk 22:24). His kingdom is for the poor in spirit; they lay plans for private advantage (Mat 20:20). It is not of this world; to the end they are thinking of physical force (Luk 22:49). He invites all to His fellowship; they are narrow and exclusive (Mar 9:38-40). Fury is not in Him; they would invoke judgment upon adversaries (Luk 9:54-56). They boasted their courage; but in the hour of His uttermost peril they all forsook him, and fled (Mat 26:56). There can be no doubt that these things greatly moved Him, but the note of personal offence is entirely lacking. There is astonishment at their slowness, but no bitterness or petulance: Do ye not remember? (Mar 8:18); Are ye also even yet without understanding? (Mar 15:16); Have ye not yet faith? (Mar 4:40). Sometimes silence is His severest answer: Lord, here are two swords! It is enough! (Luk 22:38). He makes His very censures the occasion of further instruction: It is not so among you. The Son of Man came to minister (Mar 10:43-45). Even when His spirit was most grieved, there was no flash of resentment, but only the most poignant tenderness: Simon, sleepest thou? couldest thou not watch one hour? (Mar 14:37); The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter (Luk 22:61).

This ignorance and waywardness on the part of His disciples, combined with their genuine love for Him and His abounding love for them, constituted a very severe trial of Jesus fidelity to His vocation. The greatest temptation, says a keen analyst of character, is the temptation to love evil in those we love, or to be lowered into the colder moral atmosphere of intense human affection, or to shrink from what is required of us that would pain it. Jesus loved His friends. He knew that His course of conduct would inflict upon them unspeakable disappointment and distress; and this knowledge must have filled His own heart with keenest pain. When, accordingly, the disciple who most clearly confessed His Messiahship denounced the path He had chosen, the path of suffering, as inconsistent with the rank He had led His friends to believe was His, He felt Himself assailed in what the author above quoted ventures to call His weakest point. It was the Temptation repeated; and as such He repelled it with hot anger.

In the case of one of the Twelve, it is to be noted that his criticism was not a temptation, because it was not the result of uncomprehending love, but of intelligent and bitter hate. Judas discerned the inevitable issue of Jesus line of action; perceived that it involved all his own secret ambitions in utter ruin; and in revenge determined to be the instrument of the destruction which he foresaw. Again and again Jesus interposed to save him by warnings, which Judas alone could comprehend in their dreadful significance: One of you shall betray me (Joh 13:21; cf. Joh 6:70 One of you [the Twelve] is a devil). In the end He had to let him go: That thou doest, do quickly (Joh 6:27). The depth of Jesus acquaintance with God, the honour He put on human nature, may be measured by His dealing with Judas. There are some things God cannot do. This Divine inability Jesus recognized, and made it the norm of His own dealing with souls. We need not apologize for Jesus choice of Judas. He chose him for the very qualities which led Him to the others, and which were, perhaps, present in Judas in a conspicuous degree. He loved him as He loved the others, and with a yet deeper yearning. But there came a time when, in imitation of the Father, He felt bound to stand aside. To have saved Judas by force would have violated the conditions under which the redemption of man is possible.

Even the briefest review of Christs relations to His friends constrains the inference that, in the essential qualities of friendship, He is perfect; and the supposition becomes altogether reasonable, that, if He were alive now and accessible, the possession of His friendship would be salvation, and the loss of it would be the worst fate that could befall any human being.

3. Mankind.The attitude of Jesus toward His fellow-men is determined by the function which He had been led, through His deep sympathy with God, to assume on their behalf. He believes Himself called to fulfil, i.e. to perfect, and so to accomplish as permanent spiritual fact, the religion of the OT. We must not raise premature questions, but we must not evade plain facts. Jesus springs from the OT. He transcended it in this, that He believed the privileges of the New Covenant were to be verified, consummated, and bestowed upon men, through His mission. This mission He accepted, in clear prevision of what it involved, and in deep love to God and to men. It is plain that such a position carries with it unique authority, and warrants claims of extraordinary magnitude. He who knows Himself to be the mediator of the highest good to men knows Himself to be supreme among men. This consciousness is clear and unmistakable in the utterances of Jesus. He presents Himself to men as the object of a trust and a reverence that are nothing less than religious (Mar 2:17, Luk 19:10, Mat 10:32; Mat 18:20). He passes verdicts upon their inner state that are not less than Divine in their insight and their absoluteness (Luk 9:57-62, Mat 9:2; Mat 9:6). He makes demands which no one has a right to make who does not know Himself to be completely the organ of the Divine authority (Mat 4:19; Mat 9:9; Mat 19:21; Mat 10:37). He claims to be the arbiter of the final destinies of men (Mar 8:38, Mat 7:21-23; Mat 13:41; Mat 16:27, together with the undoubted teaching of the so-called eschatological discourses Mat 25:1 ff.), a function which in the OT belongs not even to Messiah, but to Jehovah alone (Joe 3:12, Mal 3:1; Mal 4:3). Such a consciousness, whose intensity suggests, if it does not prove, a unique constitution of the person of Christ, throws into high relief aspects of the character of Christ which seem at a cursory glance incongruous with it.

(1) Lowliness.The self-assertion of Jesus is not the assertion of a self independent in its power and dignity, but of a self which has no interest save the cause of God, no glory that is not His. At the heart of the self-assertion of Jesus there is profound self-renunciation. It would be a mistake to describe Jesus as selfless. He has a self, which He might have made independent of God, which, however, in perfect freedom of act, He surrendered wholly to God. The lowliness of Christ, accordingly, is not mere modesty or diffidence. It is the quality of a self, at once asserted and denied. This paradox is carried out during His whole career. In youth, when the purpose of His life is being formed, there is no irritable self-consciousness. In manhood, when the knowledge of His mission is clear and full, and the spiritual distance which separated Him from other men is obvious to His inward eye, there is no outward separateness of manner. The life of the common people was His life, without any trace of condescension or hint of masquerade. His acceptance of the lowly conditions of His life is so complete, that there is no sense of incongruity on His part between what He was and the world He lived in. In His teaching He is able to attack pride without any risk of having imputed to Him a pride more subtle and more offensive. More remarkable still, He offers Himself as a pattern of the very humility He is inculcating, without raising any suspicion of unreality. The words, I am meek and lowly in heart (Mat 11:29), on the lips of any other man, would refute the claim they make. In His case it is not so. They mean that the self which lays its yoke on men is already crucified, and has no claim to make on its own behalf. Toward the close of His life its open secret is given, when, at the Last Supper, in full consciousness of His personal dignity, He washed the feet of those who, He knew, would fail Him in the end, and of one by whose impending treachery His own would soon be nailed to the cross.

(2) Considerateness.With His idea of man and His conception of His vocation, it was impossible for Jesus to regard human personality as other than sacred. All the dues of humanity, accordingly, He paid with scrupulous exactitude. It would be superfluous to search in the narratives for instances of His justice, honesty, and truth. The distinctiveness of His calling kept Him apart from the ecclesiastical and political institutions of His country; but He was careful not to disturb them, even when He felt most critical of them (Mat 17:24-27, Mar 12:17), and the charge of rebellion was readily seen by Pilate to be baseless. The same distinctiveness deprived Him of a business career, and, therefore, of the sphere wherein many virtues are most severely tried; but it is noteworthy that the disciple company had a treasurer, whose duty it was to take care of the money intrusted to him, and whose dishonesty became a step toward Calvary (Joh 12:6). Towards individuals His attitude was wholly without respect of persons. He paid men the honour of being perfectly frank and fearless in all His dealings with them. He did them the justice of letting them know the judgment He passed upon them. Herod, Pilate, the Pharisees, stood before His bar and heard their sentence. His fairness is never more conspicuous than in His dealing with Judas, whom He would not permit to suppose that he was undetected, Jesus fully recognizing that a mans probation can be carried on only in the light.

But there is due to human nature more than the strictest honesty or truth. Jesus authority over men, instead of leading Him to be careless in the handling of a soul, impelled Him to an exquisite carefulness which extended from the needs of the body to the more delicate concerns of the mind. If He imposes heavy tasks, He remembers the frailty of the human frame: Come ye apart, and rest awhile (Mar 6:31). If the coming grief saddens His companions, He turns from His own far deeper sorrow to still their tumultuous distress: Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (Joh 14:1). If He must rebuke, His reproaches pass into excuses: The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak (Mat 26:41). Most lovely of all is His treatment of those who might seem to have forfeited all claim to respect. He laboured by a more emphatic courtesy, a more tender chivalry, to bind up the broken self-respect, and to rebuke that insolent contempt of the sinful and degraded which so deeply dishonours God. Before the ideal in publican and harlot He bowed in reverence, and constituted Himself its resolute defender.

(3) Compassion.The respect which Jesus has for human nature becomes, in presence of human need, a very passion for helping, healing, saving. The qualities which most deeply impressed the men and women of His day, and which shine most clearly in His portrait, are not His supernatural gifts, but His unwearied goodness, His sincere kindness, His great gentleness, His deep and tender pity. By these He has captivated the imagination, and won the reverence of humanity. The narratives have felt the throbbing compassion of Jesus heart, and have used the very phrase with a sweet monotony (Mar 1:41, Mat 20:34; Mat 9:36, Luk 7:13, Mat 14:14; Mat 15:32).

The compassion of Jesus is manifest in the wonderful works which are ascribed to Him. All of them, with the exception of the coin in the fishs mouth and the withering of the fruitless fig-tree, which have a special didactic aim, are works of mercy. They are, no doubt, proofs of power; but they are essentially instances of the sympathy of Jesus, in virtue of which He enters into the fulness of human need. The instinct of one Evangelist has no doubt directed subsequent thought toward the truth. When Jesus wrought His healing miracles, He was fulfilling a prophecy which had special reference to sin (Mat 8:17). By no easy exercise of power did He relieve the distresses of men, but by a real assumption of their sorrow. Every such act stands in organic connexion with the deed of the Cross, in which He bare the sin which is the root of all human infirmities.

Yet more conspicuously the compassion of Jesus is to be seen in the method of His ministry, which led Him to seek the company of sinners, not because their sin was not abhorrent to His nature, but because He loved His vocation, and loved those who were its objects. The disinterestedness which Plato ascribes to the true physician deepens, in the case of this Healer of men, to a pure and burning passion. Twice His compassion found vent in tears: once in presence of mans mortality, once in sight of the city whose abuse of privilege had earned extremity of woe. There are depths here we cannot fathom, since there is mercifully denied us perfect knowledge of the evil which Jesus knowledge of God fully disclosed to His view. Knowing God, living in unbroken fellowship with Him, Jesus knew, as none other could, what sin and death were. He lived and died with the spectacle of their power ever before Him. His knowledge is the measure of His compassion, and both are immeasurable.

(4) Forgiveness.Without doubt, Jesus believed Himself to be the agent of the Divine love, the mediator of the Divine forgiveness. He had power on earth to forgive sins (Mat 9:6). This forgiveness He announced as the prerogative of His office; but the actual experience of forgiveness, as the redeeming act of God, came through the love which Jesus Himself manifested. His welcome of sinners was their reception into the fellowship of God. This is a fact which no prejudice against doctrine ought to invalidate, which, probably, no doctrine can adequately explain. Hence follow two features of the portrait of Christ, each most significant and suggestive. He accepted the gratitude of forgiven sinners as though He were Gods own representative (Luk 7:40-50); and He regarded sins committed against Himself as committed against God, who in His mission was seeking to save men. His forgiveness of such offences, accordingly, is not measurable in terms of quantityunto seven times or seventy times seven; but has the very qualities of boundlessness and inexhaustibleness which He attributes to the forgiveness of God. There is only one limitation, and that does not belong to the character of God, but to the constitution of human nature. There is a sin which hath never forgiveness (Mat 12:31-32, Mar 3:28-29, Luk 12:10). It does not consist, however, in a definite offence against God or His Christ, but in a frame of mind, an habitude of soul, which is psychologically beyond reach of forgiveness. Apart from this limit, which on Gods side is none, forgiveness is infinite.

When, accordingly, we proceed to examine the sins committed against Jesus, we perceive that they form an ascending scale of guilt, according to the advancing measure of light and privilege against which they were committed, and so also of pain to Him and of peril to the transgressors. First, there is the sin of those who were directly responsible for His death. Dark and dreadful though this was, compounded of the vilest qualities of polluted human nature, it was, nevertheless, even in its deadliest guilt, not a sin against absolutely clear conviction. Hence the victim of so much wrong prays even while the nails rend His flesh: Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do (Luk 23:34). It is impossible to narrow the scope of this petition to the unconscious instruments, the Roman soldiers; it must extend also to the Jews themselves, to the mob, and even to their more guilty rulers. Peter (Act 3:17) and Paul (1Co 2:8) cannot have been mistaken in their interpretation of the crime which slew their Lord.

Second, there is the sin of those who deserted Him in His need, and especially of him who denied his Master with oaths and curses. They were bound to Jesus by every tie of affection and of loyalty. He trusted them, and they failed Him. Yet it could not be said of them that they knew what they did. Their action was without premeditation, without real sense of its meaning. A spasm of overpowering fear confounded their intelligence and destroyed their resolution. Shameful it was, and must have wrung the heart of Jesus with anguish; yet at its worst it was committed against the Son of Man, not against the Holy Spirit. They knew not what they were about to do, but He knew (Mar 14:27), and broke their hearts with His free forgiveness (Mar 14:72).

Third, the sin of Judas. Of all the crimes of which guilty man is capable, treachery is, in the judgment of all men, the most dreadful; and therefore Dante (Inferno, xxxi. 134) has placed Judas in the jaws of Lucifer. Did Judas, then, commit the sin against the Holy Spirit? It is profitless to discuss the question. No absolute verdict is possible. It is certain that Jesus dealt with Judas, in clear light of truth, with the utmost consideration, and with far-reaching forbearance. Appeal after appeal He made to him, seeking to reveal him to himself, while scrupulously shielding him from the suspicions of his fellows, and retaining him to the last possible moment within the sphere of loving influence. Finally, He gave him that permission to do wrong which human freedom wrings from Divine omnipotence, and which is, at the same time, Gods severest judgment upon the sinner (Joh 13:27, Mat 26:50 Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 ). Who can tell if it be not also Gods last offer of mercy? In the end (perhaps not too late), the goodness of Jesus smote with overwhelming force upon the conscience of Judas. He repented himself (Mat 27:3). Whatever value may be attached to such repentance, whatever destiny may have awaited Judas beyond the veil of flesh, which he so violently tore aside, there can at least be no more impressive testimony to the forbearance, the love, and the wisdom of Jesus, than this overwhelming remorse.

v. The Virtues of His vocation.The end for which Jesus lived determined all His actions, and called into exercise all the virtues of His character, as well the more general characteristics of spiritual-mindedness, love to God, and love to men, as the specific virtues of His social relations. The vocation of Jesus, however, as Servant of the Lord was definite; and with respect to it He had a definite work to do. Questions as to the conceptions which it implies with respect to the constitution of Christs person do not now concern us. But we are concerned to observe that, in His discharge of His duty, certain aspects of His character shine forth with special beauty. They are such as these

1. Faithfulness.There is an unmistakable note of compulsion in His life. He has received a precise charge, and He will carry it out with absolute precision and unswerving fidelity. This is the mind of the boy, when as yet the nature of His mission cannot have been fully before Him (Luk 2:49). This is the conviction of the man, who has come to know what office He holds, and what is the thing He has to do or endure (Mat 16:21, Mar 8:31). Many specific expressions (e.g. Joh 4:34; Joh 9:4-5; Joh 11:9-10) and the whole tenor of His life convey the same impression of a man looking forward to a goal, in itself most terrible, yet pressing toward it with unwavering determination. The imperative of duty, and the burden of inexorable necessity, are laid upon His conscience; and He responds with complete obedience.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who displays a singular insight into the ethical conditions of Christs work, mentions the virtue of fidelity as being conspicuous in the Apostle and High Priest of our confession (Heb 3:2; Heb 3:6), and draws a far-reaching parallel and contrast between Him and Moses, as between a son and a servant. In filial faithfulness there are three aspects: (a) perfect identification with the Fathers will, (b) entire absorption in the Fathers concerns, (c) free access to the Fathers resources; and these are plainly seen in Christs discharge of His duty. There is not the slightest trace of servility. The will to which He yielded absolute devotion is that of One whom He perfectly loved and trusted, to whom He could freely come for everything He required. The absolute control of the Divine resources, which is attributed to Him in the Fourth Gospel (Joh 13:3), is borne out by every trait of the Synoptic portrait. He was not toiling with inadequate resources at an uncomprehended task. Even when the strain upon His will is heaviest, and His whole soul shrinks from what lies before Him, there is one word which delivers His faithfulness from any suspicion of bondage: Father, if it be possible (Mat 26:39; Mat 26:42, Mar 14:36, Luk 22:42).

2. Courage.The courage of Jesus Christ is the crown of His faithfulness. It was not tested by such occasions as the sinking ship or the stricken field, but by conditions yet more severe. Outraged prejudice, wounded pride of caste, threatened privilege, were banded together to destroy Him. They disguised themselves in zeal for the honour of God. They, no doubt, attracted to their side sincere, though unenlightened, loyalty to His cause; and Jesus must have known the reformers keenest pain, the sense of wounding good and true men. They sought alliances with powers most alien to their professed aims. They found support in the ignorant enthusiasm of the multitude, who mistook the aims of Jesus, and in the more culpable misunderstanding of His disciples and friends. The Fourth Gospel is surely historic in representing the breach between Jesus and the leaders of the religious world of His day as having taken place in the opening weeks of His ministry. It is inconceivable that the wide divergence of His views from those of the Pharisees and Sadducees should not have been manifest in the very first announcement of them. He certainly was not, and His adversaries could not have been, blind to the issues of the controversy. It had not proceeded far, when it became apparent to them that it could be terminated only by their defeat or by His destruction. With unscrupulous plans and bitter hate they laboured to compass His ruin. With sublime courage He persevered in His vocation, though He was well aware that every step He took only made the end more certain. When the end comes, it finds Him spiritually prepared. He moves with firm and equal tread. From the loving fellowship of the Supper He passes, without bewilderment, to the conflict of Gethsemane. From the shadow of the trees and the darker shade of His unknown agony, He goes to face the traitor, with no other tremor than that of amazement at such consummate wickedness (Luk 22:48); and surrenders Himself to the instruments of injustice, less their captive than their conqueror. Amid the worst tortures men can inflict, we hear no murmur. We do not merely observe, with what of admiration it might have deserved, a stoical fortitude, which proudly repels every assault on the self-sufficiency of the human spirit. We observe a more moving spectacle, the Servant of the Lord accepting unfathomed pain as the crown of His vocation, thus rendering to the Father a perfect obedience, and finishing the work given Him to do.

3. Patience.It is an error to describe patience as a passive virtue, if by that epithet is indicated the spirit which makes no resistance, because resistance is seen to be futile. Patience is rather the associate of courage, and springs from the same root, namely, identification of will with a great and enduring purpose. Jesus has made the eternal purpose of God for the redemption of man the controlling principle of His life; and therefore He is enabled to be patient, in the widest and deepest meanings of the term. He patiently waits for God. This lesson He learned from the OT; this gift He acquired in that deep communion with God, which was the privilege of the OT believer, and is the heart of all true religion. Nothing is more remarkable in a man so intense, endowed, moreover, with supernatural powers, than His reserve. He is eager for the achievement of His task, straitened till His baptism be accomplished (Luk 12:50). Yet He is never betrayed into rashness of speech or action. He maintains His attitude of intent expectancy. The idea of an hour for Himself, and for His work, and for His great victory, known to the Father, and made known at His discretion, lies deep in the heart of Jesus (Mar 13:32; Mar 14:41, Luk 10:21, Joh 2:4; Joh 4:21; Joh 4:23; Joh 5:25; Joh 5:28; Joh 7:30; Joh 8:20; Joh 12:23; Joh 12:27; Joh 13:1; Joh 17:1). To Him time was the measure of Gods purpose; death, Gods instant. He , suffers long with wayward or injurious persons. God hides Him in His pavilion from the strife of tongues, and from that sense of personal injury which enkindles temper and provokes unadvised speech. So identified is He with God, that offences against Himself lose themselves in Divine forgiveness. His meekness is not weakness, but that amazing strength which can take up a personal wrong, and carry it into the Divine presence with vicarious suffering. He , endures in undying hope the severest trial (Heb 12:2-3). The idea that His death was unexpected by Jesus, and felt by Him to demand an explanation which He attempted to provide in obscure suggestions and laboured analogies, is most false to the profound unity of His character. The Cross is the key to His character. This was the climax of His mission, the introduction to the victory which lay beyond; and this, when it came, He endured with a brave patience which was rooted in His assurance that His vocation was from God and could not fail. This was His victory, even His patience (Rev 1:9).

4. Calmness.The patience of Jesus has for its inner correlative deep serenity of soul. He lived in God; and, therefore, He was completely master of Himself. We observe in Him, as a matter of course, that control of the so-called lower desires of our nature which was the Greek conception of sober-mindedness or temperance. We see, beyond this, a more remarkable proof of self-possession in His control over the very motives and desires which impelled Him to devote His life to the service of God and man. There is no feeling of strain in the utterances of His soul as He speaks of or to His Father. The phenomena of excitement or rapture, which disfigure so many religious biographies, are wholly absent from the record of His deepest experiences. In His attitude toward men, whom He regarded it as His mission to save, there is perfect sanity. The harsh or strident note, which is scarcely ever absent in the speeches of reformers, is never audible in His words. His love for men is not a mountain torrent, but a deep, calm current, flowing through all His activities. We cannot, with verbal exactness, attribute to Him the enthusiasm of humanity, which the author of Ecce Homo regards as the essential quality of a Christian in relation to his fellow-men, if, at least, the phrase suggest even the slightest want of balance, or any ignorance of the issues of action, or any carelessness with respect to them. He is the minister of the Divine purposes, never of His own emotions, however pure and lofty these may be. Yet we are not to impute to Him any unemotional callousness. He never lost His calmness; but He was not always calm. He repelled temptation with deep indignation (Mar 8:33). Hypocrisy roused Him to a flame of judgment (Mar 3:5; Mar 11:15-17, Mat 23:1-36). Treachery shook Him to the very centre of His being (Joh 13:21). The waves of human sorrow broke over Him with a greater grief than wrung the bereaved sisters (Joh 11:33-35). There were times when He bore an unknown agony, which could be shared by none, though He sought for human sympathy up to the very gates of the sanctuary of pain (Joh 12:27, Mar 14:32-34). Yet, whatever His souls discipline might be, He never lost His self-control, was never distracted or afraid, but remained true to His mission and to His Father. He feels anger, or sorrow, or trouble, but these emotions are under the control of a will that is one with the Divine will, and therefore are comprehended within the perfect peace of a mind stayed on God.

5. Self-sacrifice.Christ pleased not Himself (Rom 15:3). These words, brief though they be, sum up the character of Christ as St. Paul conceived it. They convey, without doubt, the impression made by the record of His life. If this estimate is just, if Christ was an absolutely unselfish man, if He made a full sacrifice of Himself, His character stands alone, unique in the moral universe. We cannot make this statement without raising problems of immense difficulty, which it is the business of theology to face. But no mystery beyond ought to restrict our acknowledgment of ethical fact. Christ had a self, like other men, and might have made it, in its intense individuality, His end, laying a tax upon the whole universe in order to satisfy it. The ideal of self-satisfaction was necessarily present to His mind, inasmuch as it is inevitably suggested in all self-consciousness. It was definitely presented to Him in His temptation in the wilderness. But once for all in that initial conflict, and again and again in life, He beat back the temptation, rejected that ideal, surrendered Himself to His vocation, and sought no other satisfaction than its fulfilment. His life is a sacrifice. He set the world behind His back, and had no place or portion in it (Luk 9:58). The way He went was the path of self-denial and cross-bearing (Mar 8:34, Joh 12:25-26). His death was a sacrifice. The death of one whose life was a sacrifice must have had sacrificial significance for God and man. It could not be a fate to be explained by an after-thought. It must have been essentially an action, a voluntary offering made to God, laid on the altar of human need. The story of the Passion, read from the point where He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem to the point where He went, as He was wont, to the Mount of Olives, and so through every detail of suffering, portrays, indeed, one led as a lamb to the slaughter, but as certainly one who, having power to keep His life, laid it down, in free surrender, in deep love to the Father (Joh 10:17-18). He was endowed with powers which He might have exerted to deliver Himself from the hand of His enemies; He did not so exert them. He did not even employ them to win one slightest alleviation of His sufferings. He might have saved Himself; yet, with deeper truth, Himself He could not save. The self-sacrifice of Christ is the foundation of the Kingdom of God, the purchase of mans redemption, the basis of that morality which finds in Him its standard and its example.

Concluding estimate.When we have studied the character of Christ from the points of view suggested in the foregoing scheme, we are conscious that we are only on the threshold of a great subject, to whose wealth of meaning no formal study can do justice. The character of Christ presents unsearchable riches to every sympathetic student. Every generation, since His bodily presence was withdrawn, has been pursuing that investigation; none has comprehended His fulness, or been forced to look elsewhere for information and inspiration. He has laid upon us the necessity of continuously seeking to understand Him, and of applying, in the manifold occasions and circumstances of life, the fulness of the moral ideal presented in Himself.

1. When, however, we pause in our detailed studyto whatever length we may have carried itor in our application of His precept and examplehowever successfully, or with whatever wistful consciousness of failure, we may have pursued it; when we lift our gaze afresh to the portrait presented in the Gospels, the impression deepens upon us with new and overwhelming conviction, that in Christ there is achieved, as a fact of the moral universe, goodness, not merely comparative, but absolute. It is not merely that among the choice spirits of our race He occupies the front rank, but that He stands alone. Jesus Christ is the Master of all who seek to know God, in the sense that His character is supreme and final in the moral progress of humanity. He is completely human. Like men, He pursued the pathway of development. Like men, He was assailed by temptation, and waged incessant warfare with evil suggestions. Yet He is absolutely unique. He is not merely better than other men. He is what all men ought to be. It is not merely that we see in Him an approximation to the moral ideal, nearer and more successful than is to be discerned in any other man; but that we find in Him the moral ideal, once for all realized and incarnated, so that no man can ever go beyond Him, while all men in all ages will find it their strength and joy to grow up toward the measure of His stature. Again and again we are made to feel, when we contemplate such virtues as have been adverted to in the preceding pages, e.g. love to God, love to men, consecration, unselfishness, and the like, that there is the note of absoluteness in His attainment. Between Him and the ideal there is no hairbreadth of disparity. His fulfilment of the will of God is complete. What God meant man to be is at once disclosed and finished.

2. The positive conception of the absolute goodness of Jesus carries with it the negative conception of His sinlessness. As we stand before the figure in the Gospels, our sense of His perfection reaches special solemnity and tenderness in the impression of His stainless and lovely purity. Attempts, no doubt, have been made to fasten some charge of sin on Jesus, e.g. that of a hasty or imperious temper; or even to extract from Himself some acknowledgment of imperfection (Mar 10:18). These attempts have totally failed, and have exhibited nothing so clearly as the fact that they are afterthoughts, designed to establish the a priori dogma that sinlessness is an impossibility. Such procedure is, of course, wholly unscientific. If a record, otherwise trustworthy, presents us with the portrait of a sinless man, we are not entitled to reject its testimony because, if we accept it, we shall have to abandon a dogma or revise an induction. When, accordingly, we study the NT with unprejudiced mind, two great certainties are established beyond question.

(1) The impression of His sinlessness made upon His disciples.Some of these men had been in close contact with Him, a fellowship so intimate that it was impossible that they could be mistaken in Him. Through this intimacy their moral ideas were enlarged and enriched; their spiritual insight was made delicate and true. The men who created the ethic of the NT are the spiritual leaders of the human race, and they owed their inspiration to their Master. They knew all the facts. They were spiritually competent to form a sound estimate. Without a tinge of hesitation they ascribe to Him complete separation from the very principle of evil (1Pe 2:22, 2Co 5:21, 1Jn 3:5, Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26). They assign to Him an office which required absolute sinlessness, knowing that any proof of deviation from the holiness of God would have reduced the claim they made on behalf of their Master to utter confusion (Act 3:14; Act 7:52; Act 22:14, 1Jn 2:1). A group of men, who knew Christ thoroughly, believed Him to be sinless. A generation, which had the facts fully before them, accepted this as the truth regarding Jesus of Nazareth. Add to this the mysterious effect the personality of Jesus had upon those whose contact with Him was brief, even momentaryPilate (Luk 23:4), Pilates wife (Mat 27:19), the centurion who superintended the judicial murder (Mar 15:39, Luk 23:47), the malefactor who died beside Him (Luk 23:40 ff.). Among all the witnesses the traitor himself is the clearest and fullest (Mat 27:4).

The knowledge which spirit has of spirit, the insight of our moral nature, the verdict of conscience, are all confounded if the taint of sin lay on the soul of Jesus.

(2) His own self-knowledge and His own self-witness, which establish the fact of a conscience at once perfectly true and absolutely void of any sense of sin.

(a) He taught His disciples to pray for forgiveness; but He never set them the example of asking it on His own behalf. He was their example in prayer as in all else; but that which is a constituent element in the prayers of all sinful men, the confession of sin and the supplication of forgiveness, does not appear in any prayer of His. There is even a scrupulous avoidance of any phrase which would seem to include Himself in the class of those whose prayers must contain this element, e.g. Mat 6:9; Mat 6:14; Mat 7:11, where ye is emphatic and significant.

(b) He is absolutely intolerant of evil. He counsels the extreme of loss in preference to its presence (Mar 9:43-49). He traces it to its source in heart and will, and demands cleansing and renewal there (Mar 7:15-23). Yet nowhere does He bewail His own pollution, or seek for cleansing. He lives a life of strenuous devotion; but there is not a hint of any process of mortifying sin in His members. Such unconsciousness of sin is a psychological impossibility, if His was simply the goodness of an aspiring, struggling, human soul, striving after the ideal, and ever drawing nearer it. By the very height of His ideal He would be convicted of shortcoming. But nothing in His language or bearing suggests, even remotely, such a conviction. We know this Man, and we know that in His own consciousness there was no gulf between Him and perfection, and that to His own deepest feeling there was between Him and the Father perfect moral identity. If this Man be a sinner, the competence of the moral judgment is destroyed for ever.

(c) He required moral renewal on the part of all men (Mat 18:3, Joh 3:5). But there is no record of the conversion of Jesus, and there is no hint of a belief on His part that He needed it. True, He accepted, or rather demanded, baptism of John; but His action, as interpreted by Himself, plainly implies that in uniting Himself with the sinful people, He was under constraint of love, and not under the compulsion of an alarmed and awakened conscience. That there was anything in His experience analogous to a death to sin of His own, and a rising into a life of new obedience, is contradicted by every line of the Gospel portrait.

(d) He loved and pitied sinners. His sympathetic treatment of them stands in lovely contrast with the cruelty of the Pharisaic method. Yet, in all His dealing with sinners, He preserves the note of ethical distinction. He unites Himself with sinners. His sin-bearing is a fact, even before Calvary. Yet at the point of closest and most sympathetic union with sinners there is complete inward aloofness from their sin. The contention that only a sinner can properly understand a sinner and fully sympathize with him, is purely a priori, and absolutely refuted by the ministry of Jesus. Did any philanthropist, any lover of souls, ever sympathize as Jesus did with sinners? Long before Christ, Plato had noted and disposed of the fallacy that a man needs to be tainted with sin before he can effectively deal with it. Vice can never know both itself and virtue; but virtue in a well-instructed nature will in time acquire a knowledge at once of itself and of vice. The virtuous man, therefore, and not the vicious man, will make the wise judge (Republic, 409). Let us add, not a wise judge merely, but a loving friend and helper. Sin is a hindrance, not a help, in loving. The crowning help which Jesus bestowed on sinners was the forgiveness of sins. This was beyond doubt a Divine prerogative, both in the minds of those who observed His conduct and in His own. If He exercised it, therefore, while aware of His own sinfulness, He was uttering blasphemy, and the worst verdict of His critics was justifiable. His forgiving sin is absolute proof that to His own consciousness He was sinless.

(e) He died for sinners. What has just been said of His forgiving sinners applies with yet mightier force to His deed in dying. He believed it to be of such unique value for God that, on the ground of it, He could forgive the sins of men. Without trenching on the discussions that gather round the death of Christ, and without attempting any dogmatic statement, we are safe in asserting that to Jesus His blood was covenant blood, ratifying the New Covenant which had been the profound anticipation of OT prophecy (Jer 31:31-34). No man, conscious of being himself a sinner, could have supposed that his death would create the Covenant and procure the forgiveness of sins. Since Jesus certainly believed that His death would have this stupendous effect, it is certain also that He believed Himself to be utterly removed from the need of forgiveness.

What is thus to be traced, as the implication of our Lords dealing with sinners, becomes in the Fourth Gospel His explicit self-assertion. It may be that, had these utterances stood alone, they might have been discounted as due to dogmatic preconceptions on the part of the writer. Since, however, they are in complete psychological harmony with the whole Synoptic portraiture, they cannot be thus explained away. They are, besides, precisely what might be looked for, and carry with them strong internal evidence of their genuineness. Innocence may be unconscious of itself, but not that sinlessness which is the correlate of perfection. Self-knowledge must accompany that goodness which grows toward maturity, and maintains its integrity against temptation. Jesus did not live in a golden mist. He may be trusted in His self-witness; and the occasions mentioned in the Fourth Gospel on which He bore such witness are precisely those of great trial or deep experience, when a man is permitted, nay required, to state the truth regarding Himself. He bears witness: () before His enemies, as part of His self-defence (Joh 8:46), arguing from His purity of heart to His undimmed vision of things unseen; () to His own, as example and encouragement (Joh 15:10), revealing the secret of a serene and joyful life, as part of His last charge and message; () to His Father, in an hour of sacred communion (Joh 17:4), as the review and estimate of His life; () on the cross (Joh 19:30), as the summary of His long warfare, the note of final achievement of the whole will of God.

If Jesus were in any degree sinful, He must have known it, and had He known it He would have told us. If He knew it and did not tell us, we should have just cause of complaint against Him, since, in that case, He must have allowed a false impression to grow up regarding Him. If He was sinful and did not know it, He must fall out of the rank of the best men, because in that case He lacks the noblest and most moving element in the character of those who have agonized heavenward,a deep sense of demerit and an adoring sense of the grace of God. But, in truth, the mere statement of these alternatives and inferences is intolerable. The conscience of the race has been created by Jesus Christ. His character is at once the rebuke and the inspiration of every age. He is the moral ideal realized once for all. There is no other, no higher goodness than that which is incarnated in Him; and, as has been said, the difference between the highest morality that exists and a perfect one is a difference not of degree, but of kind (Davidson, Theol. of O.T.).

To this affirmation regarding Jesus we are constrained to come. Nothing less is a fair interpretation of the record. He stands alone. Man though He be, He is distinguished from all men by unique moral and spiritual excellence. Between Him and God there is a relationship to which there is no parallel in the case of any other man. The absolute distinctiveness of the character of Christ is not a dogma, constructed under philosophical or theological influences. It is a fact to which every line of the portrait bears unanswerable evidence. Stated as a fact, however, it becomes at once a problem which cannot be evaded. Whence hath this man these things? How the answer shall be framed,whether the Nicene formula is adequate, or, if not, how it is to be corrected and supplemented, is the task laid upon the intellect and conscience of the Church of to-day. It is certain that upon the earnestness and honesty with which she takes up that task will depend her vitality and her permanence. It is certain also that intellectual progress in apprehending the mystery of the Person of Christ will be conditioned by moral progress in apprehending, appropriating, and reproducing the perfection of His character.

Literature.The main source for any character study of Christ must be sought in the Gospels themselves. The Lives of Christ will, of course, give abundant information and help: Neander, Edersheim, Didon, Weiss, Beyschlag, Keim. Works dealing directly with the character of Christ as an ethical study seem to be rare. All Dr. Braces works are penetrated by the ethical spirit: Training of the Twelve, Kingdom of God, Galilean Gospel, Apologetics, Humiliation of Christ. Seeleys Ecce Homo, and Abbotts Philochristus are helpful. An anonymous work, The Gospel for the Nineteenth Century (Longmans, Green, & Co.) has a most valuable study of the character of Christ. Robinsons Studies in the Character of Christ (Longmans, Green, & Co., 1900), Ullmanns Sinlessness of Jesus, Forrests Christ of History and Experience, and Prof. Garvies recent papers in the Expositor on The Inner Life of Christ, Godets Defence of the Christian Faith, Mackintoshs Primer of Apologetics, Nicolls The Churchs One Foundation, all deal with aspects of the subject. References also are to be found in works on Systematic Theology, by such writers as Dorner, Martensen, Oosterzee, and in last-named authors Image of Christ, as well as in treatises on Christian Ethics; cf. also Stalkers Imago Christi; Fairbairns Studies in the Life of Christ, ch. iii.; Herrmanns Communion with God, p. 70ff.; Liddons BL [Note: L Bampton Lecture.] , Lect. iv.

T. B. Kilpatrick.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels