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Page 21
(3) _A singular victory_--a victory over the world and sin and death.
Jesus believed in and proclaimed a new order of things in the world--the
Kingdom of God--in which His Father's will should be realized. It was an
order in which men should live in love with one another and with God, in
which justice, kindness and faithfulness should prevail in all
relationships, and in which all God's children's needs should be
supplied, their maladies healed, their wrongs righted, their lives made
full. This Kingdom was already in the earth in Himself and in the new
life He succeeded in creating in those who followed Him. It found itself
opposed by physical forces that were injurious to humanity; and these He
met fearlessly, sleeping in a storm so violent as to terrify His
fisherman companions; and, what is more, He commanded these forces for
His Father's purpose in a way that amazed His first followers and is
still amazing to us. The reports of His mighty works have to be
carefully scrutinized by historical scholars, and no doubt the
historicity of some of them is much more fully attested than that of
others; but when every allowance is made for the ideas of a
prescientific age in which miracles were relatively frequent, and for
the possible growth of the marvellous elements in the tradition, enough
remains to show that here was a Personality whose power cannot be
limited by our usual standards of human ability. Judged by past or
present conceptions of what is natural, His works were supernatural; He
Himself regarded them as the breaking into the world through Him of the
new order that was to be. He discouraged men's craving for the
physically miraculous, and thought little of the faith in Him produced
by its display; but there can be no question of His extraordinary
control of physical forces for the aims of His Kingdom. It was, however,
in the moral conflict between the Divine Order and things as they were,
that He saw the decisive collision, and faced it with heroic faith in
His Father's victory. When the dominant authorities in Church and State
were about to crush Him, He looked forward undismayed, and in the
glowing pictures of fervent Jewish men of hope He imaged the Divine Rule
He proclaimed coming in power.
He was to His followers the Conqueror of sin. He went forth to wage war
with evil in the world, because He was conscious that He had first bound
the strong man, and could spoil his house. In an autobiographical
parable He seems to have told them something of His own battle with
temptation and of His victory. They found in Him One who both shamed
and transformed them; they saw Him forgiving and altering sinners; and,
above all, His cross, from the earliest days when they began to ask
themselves what it meant, had for them redemptive force.
He was to them the Victor of death. However the historian may deal with
the details of the narratives of the appearances of the risen Jesus to
His disciples, he cannot fail to recognize the conviction of Jesus'
followers that their Lord had returned to them and was alive with power.
We must remember that it was to faith alone that the risen Jesus showed
Himself, and that no one outside the circle of believers (unless we
except Saul of Tarsus) saw Him after His death. Historical research,
independent of Christian faith, may not be able positively to affirm the
correctness of the Easter faith of the disciples, for the data lie, in
part at least, outside the range of such research. But the historian
must leave the door open for faith; and he may go further and point out
that faith's explanation best fits the facts. Present faith finds itself
prepared to receive the witness of the men of faith centuries ago. The
attempt to banish Jesus from our world signally failed; He was a more
living and potent force in it after, than before, His death.
This singular religious experience, character and victory we ascribe to
the Jesus of history through the tradition which preserves for us His
religious impression upon His immediate followers. There are some who
lay little stress upon the events of the past; like Shelley's Skylark,
they are "scorners of the ground." Why, they ask, should we care what
took place in Palestine centuries ago? The answer is that it is the
roots which go down into historic fact which give the whole tree of
Christian faith its stability and vigor. A tree gathers nourishment and
grows by its leaves; and Christianity has undoubtedly taken into itself
many enriching elements from the life about it in every age; but a tree
without roots is neither sturdy nor alive. A Christianity which
disregards its origin in the Jesus of genuine memory may label anything
"Christian" that it fancies, and end by losing its own identity; and a
Christianity which does not constantly keep learning of the Jesus of the
New Testament, and renewing its convictions, ideals and purposes from
Him, ceases to be vital. We do not think of Christianity as a fixed
quantity or an unchanging essence, but as a life; and life is ever
growing and changing. But with all its growth and change it keeps true
to type, and the type is Jesus Christ. The gospels, which conserve the
impress of that Life upon men of faith, are anchors in the actual amid
windy storms of speculation. We are not constructing a Christ out of our
spiritual experiences, but letting Him who gave life to these early
followers, through their memories of Him, recreate us into His and their
fellowship with God and man.
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