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Page 23
It is worth emphasizing that this Personality in whom we find the
revelation of God and the ideal of manhood is a figure in history. When
an apostle was speaking of "the one Mediator between God and men," he
laid stress on the fact that He was "Himself _man_." When a distinction
is drawn between the Christ of experience and the Christ of history, we
must not be confused. The content of the name "Jesus" was given once for
all in the impression made by the Man of Nazareth, One made "in all
points" like ourselves. We may understand Him better than those who knew
Him in the flesh; we may see the bearing of His life on many situations
that were entirely beyond even His ken; and so we may have "a larger
Christ," exactly as succeeding generations sometimes form truer
estimates of men than contemporaries; but all that is authentic in our
"larger Christ" was implicit in the Man of Galilee. That to which we
respond as to God is the historic Jesus mirrored in His disciples'
faith. We agree with the eloquent words of Tertullian: "We say, and
before all men we say, and torn and bleeding under your tortures we cry
out, 'We worship God through Christ. Count Christ a man, if you please;
by Him and in Him God would be known and adored.'" And our assurance
that we can become like Jesus rests on the fact that this life has been
already lived. A mountain top, however lofty, we can hope to scale, for
it is part of the same earth on which we stand; but a star, however
alluring, we have no confidence of reaching. Jesus' worth as an example
to us lies in our finding in Him "ideal manhood closed in real man."
In fellowship through Jesus with God we discover that His victory is
vicarious; He conquered for Himself _and for us_ the world and sin and
death.
He imparts His faith in the coming of the Divine Order in the world.
His followers share His fearless and masterful attitude towards physical
forces; when they appear opposed to God's purpose of love, the Christian
is confident that they are not inherently antagonistic to it: "to them
that love God all things work together for good." What is called
"nature" is not something fixed, but plastic; something which can be
conformed to the will of the God and Father of Jesus. A pestilential
Panama, for instance, is not natural, but subnatural, and must be
brought up to its divine nature, when it will serve the children of God.
The Rule of God in nature, like the Kingdom in Jesus' parables, must
both be awaited patiently--for it will require advances in men's
consciences and knowledge to control physical forces in the interest of
love--and striven for believingly. And even when bitter circumstances
seem, whether only for the present or permanently, inescapable, when
pain and disaster and death must be borne, the Christian accepts them as
part of the loving and wise will of God, as his Lord acquiesced in His
own suffering: "The cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not
drink it?" And Jesus confers His confidence in the alterability of the
world of human relations. Christians believe in the superiority of moral
over material forces, in the wisdom and might of love. A life like
Christ's is pronounced in every generation unpractical, until under His
inspiration some follower lives it; and slowly, as in His own case, its
success is acclaimed. His principles, as applied to an economic
institution such as slavery, or to the treatment of the criminal, are
counted visionary, until, constrained by His Spirit, men put them into
practice, and their results gradually speak for themselves. His
followers in every age have seemed fools to many, if not to most, of
their judicious contemporaries; but cheered by His confidence, they
venture on apparently hopeless undertakings, and find that He has
overcome the world.
Jesus' victory over sin works in true disciples a similar conquest.
Christians label any unchristlikeness sin, and they vastly darken the
world with a new sense of its evil, and are themselves most painfully
aware of their own sinfulness. Jesus' conscience has creative power, and
reproduces its sensitiveness in theirs; they are born into a life of
new sympathies and obligations and penitences. By His faith, and
supremely by His cross, He communicates to His followers the assurance
of God's forgiveness which reestablishes their intercourse with Him, and
releases His life in them; and Jesus lays them under a new and more
potent compulsion to live no longer unto themselves, but unto their
brethren.
Jesus' conquest of death is to His followers the vindication of His
faith in God, and God's attestation of Him; and with such a God Lord of
heaven and earth, death has neither sting nor victory; it cannot
separate from God's love; and it is itemized among a Christian's assets.
The face of death has been transfigured. Aristides, explaining the
Christian faith about the year 125 A.D., writes, "And if any righteous
man among them passes from the world, they rejoice and offer thanks to
God; and they escort his body as if he were setting out from one place
to another near." Christians speak of their dead as "in Christ"--under
His all-sufficient control.
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