_THE COMING OF THE CHRIST._
MATT. i.
The New Testament opens appropriately with the four Gospels; for,
though in their present form they are all later in date than some of
the Epistles, their substance was the basis of all apostolic preaching
and writing. As the Pentateuch to the Old Testament, so is the
fourfold Evangel to the New.
That there should be a manifold presentation of the great facts which
lie at the foundation of our faith and hope, was both to be expected
and desired. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by the first
preachers of it, while in substance always the same, would be varied
in form, and in number and variety of details, according to the
individuality of the speaker, the kind of audience before him, and the
special object he might have in view at the time. Before any form of
presentation had been crystallized, there would therefore be an
indefinite number of Gospels, each "according to" the individual
preacher of "Christ and Him crucified." It is, therefore, a marvellous
proof of the guidance and control of the Divine Spirit that out of
these numerous oral Gospels there should emerge four, each perfect in
itself, and together affording, as with the all-round completeness of
sculpture, a life-like representation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
manifestly of great advantage to have these several portraits of our
Lord, permitting us to see Him from different points of view, and with
varying arrangements of light and shade; all the more that, while
three of them set forth in abundant variety of detail that which is
more external,--the face, the features, the form, all the expression
of that wondrous Life,--the fourth, appropriately called on this
account "the Gospel of the heart of Jesus," unveils more especially
the hidden riches of His inner Life. But, besides this, a manifold
Gospel was needed, in order to meet the wants of man in the
many-sidedness of his development. As the heavenly "city lieth four
square," with gates on the east, and the west, and the north, and the
south, to admit strangers coming from all points of the compass; so
must there be in the presentation of the Gospel an open door for all
mankind. How this great purpose is attained by the fourfold Gospel
with which the New Testament opens can be readily shewn; and even a
brief statement of it may serve a useful purpose as introductory to
our study of that which is known as the First Gospel.
The inscription over the cross was in three languages: Hebrew, Latin,
and Greek. These languages represented the three great civilizations
which were the final outcome of ancient history--the Jewish, the
Roman, the Greek. These three were not like so many nations selected
at random, but stood for three leading types of humanity. The Jew was
the man of the past. He could claim Moses and the prophets; he had
Abraham for his father; his records went back to the Genesis of all
things. He represented ancient prerogative and privilege, the
conservatism of the East. The Roman was the man of the present. He was
master of the world. He represented power, prowess, and victory; and
while serving himself heir to the culture which came from the shores
of the Egean Sea, he had combined with it the rude strength and
restless activity of the barbarian and Scythian of the North. The
Greek was the man of the future. He had lost his political empire, but
still retained an empire in the world of thought. He represented
humanity, and the ideal, and all the promise which was afterwards to
be realized in the culture of the nations of the West. The Jew was the
man of tradition, the Roman the man of energy, the Greek the man of
thought. Turning now to the Gospels, we find the wants of each of
these three types provided for in a wondrous way. St. Matthew
addresses himself especially to the Jew with his Gospel of fulfilment,
St. Mark to the Roman with "his brief and terse narrative of a three
years' campaign," St. Luke to the Greek with that all-pervading spirit
of humanity and catholicity which is so characteristic of his Evangel;
while for those who have been gathered from among the Jews and Romans
and Greeks--a people who are now no longer Jews or Greeks, but are
"all one in Christ Jesus," prepared to receive and appreciate the
deeper things of Christ--there is a fourth Gospel, issued at a later
date, with characteristics specially adapted to them: the mature work
of the then venerable John, the apostle of the Christian.
It is manifest that for every reason the Gospel of St. Matthew should
occupy the foremost place. "To the Jew first" is the natural order,
whether we consider the claims of "the fathers," or the necessity of
making it clear that the new covenant was closely linked to the old.
"Salvation is of the Jews;" the Christ of God, though the Saviour of
the world, had been in a very special sense "the Hope of Israel," and
therefore it is appropriate that He should be represented first from
the standpoint of that nation. We have, accordingly, in this Gospel, a
faithful setting forth of Christ as He presented Himself to the mind
and heart of a devout Jew, "an Israelite indeed, in whom was no
guile," rejoicing to find in Him One who fulfilled ancient prophecy
and promise, realized the true ideal of the kingdom of God, and
substantiated His claim to be Himself the divine Saviour-King for whom
the nation and the world had waited long.
* * * * *
The opening words of this Gospel suggest that we are at the Genesis of
the New Testament, the genesis not of the heavens and the earth, but
of Him who was to make for us "new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." The Old Testament opens with the thought,
"Behold I make all things;" the New Testament with that which amounts
to the promise, "Behold I make all things new." It begins with the
advent of "the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven." That He was indeed a
"Second Man," and not merely one of the many that have sprung from the
first man, will presently appear; but first it must be made clear that
He is man indeed, "bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh;" and
therefore the inspired historian begins with His historic genealogy.
True to his object, however, he does not trace back our Lord's
descent, as does St. Luke, to the first man, but contents himself with
that which is especially interesting to the Jew, setting Him forth as
"the son of David, the son of Abraham." There is another difference
between the genealogies, of a more serious kind, which has been the
occasion of much difficulty; but which also seems to find readiest
explanation in the different object each Evangelist had in view. St.
Luke, writing for the Gentile, is careful to give the natural descent,
while St. Matthew, writing for the Jew, sets forth that line of
descent--diverging from the other after the time of David--which made
it clear to the Jew that He was the rightful heir to the kingdom. The
object of the one is to set Him forth as the Son of Man; of the other
to proclaim Him King of Israel.
St. Matthew gives the genealogy in three great epochs or stages,
which, veiled in the Authorized Version by the verse division, are
clearly exhibited to the eye in the paragraphs of the Revised Version,
and which are summed up and made emphatic at the close of the
genealogical tree (ver. 17). The first is from Abraham to David; the
second from David to the captivity in Babylon; the third from the
captivity to Christ. If we glance at these, we shall find that they
represent three great stages in the development of the Old Testament
promises which find their fulfilment in the Messiah.
"To Abraham and to his seed were the promises made." As given to
Abraham himself, the promise ran thus: "In thy seed shall all the
nations of the earth be blessed." As made to David, it indicated that
the blessing to the nations should come through a king of his line.
These were the two great promises to Israel. There were many others;
but these stand out from the rest as constituting the mission and the
hope of Israel. Now, after long waiting, both are to be fulfilled in
Christ. He is the chosen Seed in Whom all nations shall be blessed. He
is the Son of David, who is to sit upon His throne for ever, and
reign, not over Israel alone, but over men, as "Prince of Peace" and
"King of Glory." But what has the captivity in Babylon to do with it?
Very much; as a little reflection will show.
The captivity in Babylon, as is well known, was followed by two great
results: (1) it cured the people of idolatry for ever, so that, while
politically the kingdom had passed away, in reality, and according to
the spirit, it was then for the first time constituted as a kingdom of
God. Till then, though politically separate from the Gentile nations,
spiritually Israel had become as one of them; for what else than a
heathen nation was the northern kingdom in the days of Ahab or the
southern kingdom in the time of Ahaz? But after the captivity, though
as a nation shattered into fragments, spiritually Israel became and
continued to be one. (2) The other great result of the captivity was
the Dispersion. Only a small remnant of the people came back to
Palestine. Ten of the tribes passed out of sight, and but a fraction
of the other two returned. The rest remained in Babylon, or were
scattered abroad among the nations of the earth. Thus the Jews in
their dispersion formed, as it were, a Church throughout the ancient
world,--their eyes ever turned in love and longing to the Temple at
Jerusalem, while their homes and their business were among the
Gentiles--in the world, but not of it; the prototype of the future
Church of Christ, and the soil out of which it should afterwards
spring. Thus out of the captivity in Babylon sprang, first, the
spiritual as distinguished from the political kingdom, and, next, the
world-wide as distinguished from the merely national Church. Clearly
then the Babylonish captivity was not only a most important historical
event, but also a stage in the grand preparation for the Advent of
the Messiah. The original promise made to Abraham, that in his seed
should all the nations of the earth be blessed, was shown in the time
of David to be a promise which should find its fulfilment in the
coming of a king; and as the king after God's heart was foreshadowed
in David, so the kingdom after the Divine purpose was foreshadowed in
the condition of the people of God after the captivity in Babylon,
purified from idolatry, scattered abroad among the nations, with their
innumerable synagogues (prototypes of our churches) and their
peculiarities of faith and life and worship. Abraham was called out of
Babylon to be a witness for God and the coming Christ; and, after the
long training of centuries, his descendants were taken back to
Babylon, to scatter from that world-centre the seed of the coming
kingdom of God. Thus it comes to pass that in Christ and His kingdom
we see the culmination of that wonderful history which has for its
great stages of progress Abraham, David,[1] the Captivity, Christ.
* * * * *
So much for the earthly origin of the Man Christ Jesus; but His
heavenly descent must also be told; and with what exquisite simplicity
and delicacy is this done. There is no attempt to make the words
correspond with the greatness of the facts. As simple and transparent
as clear glass, they allow the facts to speak for themselves. So it is
all the way through this Evangel. What a contrast here to the spurious
Gospels afterwards produced, when men had nothing to tell, and so must
put in their own poor fictions, piously intending sometimes to add
lustre to the too simple story of the Infancy, but only with the
effect of degrading it in the eyes of all men of taste and judgment.
But here there is no need of fiction, no need even of rhetoric or
sentiment. The fact itself is so great, that the more simply it is
told the better. The Holy One of Israel came into the world with no
tinsel of earthly pomp; and in strict harmony with His mode of
entrance, the story of His birth is told with like simplicity. The Sun
of Righteousness rises like the natural sun, in silence; and in this
Gospel, as in all the others, passes on to its setting through the
heaven of the Evangelist's thought, which stands, like that other
heaven, "majestic in its own simplicity."
The story of the Incarnation is often represented as incredible; but
if those who so regard it would only reflect on that doctrine of
heredity which the science of recent years has brought into such
prominence, if they would only consider what is involved in the
obvious truth that, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," they
would see that it was not only natural but necessary that the birth of
Jesus Christ should be "on this wise." Inasmuch as "the first man is
of the earth, earthy," "the Second Man" must be "of heaven," or He
will be no Second Man at all; He will be sinful and earthy like all
the others. But all that is needful is met in the manner so chastely
and beautifully set forth by our Evangelist, in words which, angelic
in their tone and like the blue of heaven in their purity, so well
become the angel of the Lord.
Some wonder that nothing is said here of Nazareth and what took place
there, and of the journey to Bethlehem; and there are those who are
fain even to find some inconsistency with the third Gospel in this
omission, as if there were any need to wonder at omissions in a story
which tells of the first year on one page and the thirtieth on the
next! These Gospels are not biographies. They are memorials, put
together for a special purpose, to set forth this Jesus as the Son of
God and Saviour of the world. And the special object, as we have seen,
of St. Matthew is to set Him forth as the Messiah of Israel. In
accordance with this object we have His birth told in such a way as to
bring into prominence those facts only in which the Evangelist
specially recognised a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Here
again the names give us the main thoughts. Just as Abraham, David,
Babylon, suggest the main object of the genealogy, so the names
Emmanuel, Jesus, suggest the main object of the record of His birth.
"All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet."
The first name mentioned is "Jesus." To understand it as St. Matthew
did, we must bear in mind that it is the old historic name Joshua, and
that the first thought of the Hebrew mind would be, Here is One who
shall fulfil all that was typified in the life and work of the two Old
Testament heroes who bore that name, so full of hopeful
significance.[2] The first Joshua was Israel's captain on the occasion
of their first settlement in the land of promise after the bondage in
Egypt; the second Joshua was Israel's high priest at their second
settlement in the land after the bondage in Babylon. Both were thus
associated with great deliverances; but neither the one nor the other
had given the rest of full salvation to the people of God (see Heb.
iv. 8); what they had done had only been to procure for them political
freedom and a land they could call their own,--a picture in the
earthly sphere of what the Coming One was to accomplish in the
spiritual sphere. The salvation from Egypt and from Babylon were both
but types of the great salvation from sin which was to come through
the Christ of God. These or such as these must have been the thoughts
in the mind of Joseph when he heard the angel's words: "Thou shalt
call His name Joshua; for it is He that shall save His people from
their sins."
Joseph, though a poor carpenter of Nazareth, was a true son of David,
one of those who waited for the salvation of Israel, who had welcomed
the truth set forth by Daniel, that the coming kingdom was to be a
kingdom of the saints of the Most High,--not of political adventurers,
as was the idea of the corrupt Judaism of the time; so he was prepared
to welcome the truth that the coming Saviour was One who should
deliver, not from the rule of _Rome_, but from the guilt and
power and death of _Sin_.
As the name Joshua, or Jesus, came from the earliest times of Israel's
national history, the name Emmanuel came from its latest, even out of
the dark days of King Ahaz, when the hope of the people was directed
to the birth of a Child who should bear this name. Some have thought
it enough to show that there was a fulfilment of this hope in the time
of Ahaz, to make it evident that St. Matthew was mistaken in finding
its fulfilment in Christ; but this idea, like so many others of the
same kind, is founded on ignorance of the relation of the Old
Testament history to the New Testament times. We have seen that though
Joshua of the early times and his successor of the same name did each
a work of his own, yet both of them were in relation to the future but
prototypes of the Great Joshua who was to come. In the same way
exactly, if there was, as we believe, a deliverance in the time of
Ahaz, to which the prophet primarily referred, it was, as in so many
other cases, but a picture of the greater one in which the gracious
purpose of God, manifested in all these partial deliverances, was to
be "fulfilled," _i.e._, filled to the full. The idea in the name
"Emmanuel" was not a new one even in the time of King Ahaz. "I will be
with you;" "Certainly I will be with you;" "Fear not, for I am with
you,"--such words of gracious promise had been echoed and re-echoed
all down the course of the history of the people of God, before they
were enshrined in the name prophetically used by Isaiah in the days of
King Ahaz; and they were finally embodied, incarnated, in the Child
born at Bethlehem in the fulness of the time, to Whom especially
belongs that name of highest hope, "Emmanuel," "God with us."
If, now, we look at these two names, we shall see that they not only
point to a fulfilment, in the largest sense, of Old Testament
prophecy, but to the fulfilment of that which we all need most--the
satisfaction of our deepest wants and longings. "God is light;" sin is
darkness. With God is the fountain of life; "sin when it is finished
bringeth forth death." Here shines the star of hope; there lies the
abyss of despair. Now, without Christ we are tied to sin, separated
from God. Sin is near; God is far. That is our curse. Therefore what
we need is God brought near and sin taken away--the very blessings
guaranteed in these two precious names of our Lord. As Emmanuel, He
brings God near to us, near in His own incarnate person, near in His
loving life, near in His perfect sympathy, near in His perpetual
presence according to the promise, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto
the end of the world." As Jesus, He saves us from our sins. How he
does it is set forth in the sequel of the Gospel, culminating in the
sacrifice of the cross, "to finish the transgression, and to make an
end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness." For He has not only to bring God down to
us, but also to lift us up to God; and while the incarnation effects
the one, the atonement, followed by the work of the Holy Spirit, is
necessary to secure the other. He touches man, the creature, at his
cradle; He reaches down to man, the sinner, at His cross--the end of
His descent to us, the beginning of our ascent with Him to God. There
we meet Him; and saved from sin, we know Him as our Jesus; and
reconciled to God, we have Him with us as Emmanuel, God with us,
always with us, with us throughout all life's changes, with us in
death's agony, with us in the life to come, to guide us into all its
wisdom and honour and riches and glory and blessing.
[1] To some minds it may present itself as a difficulty that the great
name of Moses should not find a place in the series; was not he as
much of an epoch-maker as David? The answer is that, from the point of
view of prophecy and promise, he was not. This, which lies implicitly
in St. Matthew's summary, is set forth explicitly by St. Paul in his
epistle to the Galatians, where he shows that the Law, as a stage in
the dealings of God with the nation, did not belong to the main course
of development, but came in as an episode, was "added because of
transgressions" (Gal. iii. 16-19).
[2] The Hebrew name Joshua, of which Jesus is simply the Greek
transliteration, combines the two words Jehovah and Salvation (cf.
Num. xiii. 16).