'The Son of Man came... to give His life a ransom for
many.'--Matt. xx. 28.
We hear a great deal at present about going back to 'the Christ of
the Gospels.' In so far as that phrase and the movement of thought
which it describes are a protest against the substitution of
doctrines for the Person whom the doctrines represent, I, for one,
rejoice in it. But I believe that the antithesis suggested by the
phrase, and by some of its advocates avowed, between the Christ of
the Gospels and the Christ of the Epistles, is false. The Christ of
the Gospels is the Christ of the Epistles, as I humbly venture to
believe. And I cannot but see that there is a possibility of a
movement which, carried out legitimately, should command the fullest
sympathy of every Christian heart, degenerating into the rejection
of all the supernatural elements in the nature and work of our Lord,
and leaving us with a meagre human Christ, shrunken and impotent.
The Christ of the Gospels, by all means; but let it be the whole
Christ of all the Gospels, the Christ over whose cradle angels sang,
by whose empty grave angels watched, whose ascending form angels
beheld and proclaimed that He should come again to be our Judge. Go
back to that Christ, and all will be well.
Now it seems to me that one direction in which there is a
possibility of such movement as I have referred to being one-sided
and harmful is in reference to the conception which we form of the
death of Jesus Christ. And therefore I ask you to listen for a few
moments to me at this time whilst I try to bring out what is plain
in the words before us; and is, as I humbly believe, interwoven in
the whole texture of all the Gospels--viz., the conception which
Jesus Christ Himself formed of the meaning of His death.
I. The first thing that I notice is that the Christ of the Gospels
thought and taught that His death was to be His own act.
I do not think that it is an undue or pedantic pressing of the
significance of the words before us, if I ask you to notice two of
the significant expressions in this text. 'The Son of Man
_came_,' and came 'to _give_ His life.' The one word refers to the act
of entrance into, the other to the act of departure from, this earthly
life. They correspond in so far as that both bring into prominence
Christ's own consent, volition, and action in the very two things
about which men are least consulted, their being born and their dying.
'The Son of Man came.' Now if that expression occurred but once it
might be minimised as being only a synonym for birth, having no
special force. But if you will notice that it is our Lord's habitual
word about Himself, only varied occasionally by another one equally
significant when he says that He 'was sent'; and if you will further
notice that all through the Gospels He never but once speaks of
Himself as being 'born,' I think you will admit that I am not making
too much of a word when I say that when Christ, out of the depths of
His consciousness, said 'the Son of Man _came_,' He was teaching
us that He lived before He was born, and that behind the natural fact
of birth there lay the supernatural fact of His choosing to be
incarnated for man's redemption. The one instance in which He does
speak of Himself as 'being born' is most instructive in this
connection. For it was before the Roman governor; and He accompanied
the clause in which He said, 'To this end was I born'--which was
adapted to Pilate's level of intelligence--with another one which
seemed to be inserted to satisfy His own sense of fitness, rather
than for any light that it would give to its first hearer, 'And for
this cause came I into the world.' The two things were not synonymous;
but before the birth there was the coming, and Jesus was born because
the Eternal Word willed to come. So says the Christ of the Gospels;
and the Christ of the Epistles is represented as 'taking upon Him
the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man.' Do you
accept that as true of 'the historic Christ'?
With precise correspondence, if we turn to the other end of His
life, we find the equally significant expression in my text which
asserts for it, too, that the other necessity to which men
necessarily and without their own volition bow was to Christ a
matter of choice. 'The Son of Man came to _give_.' 'No man
taketh it from Me,' as He said on another occasion. 'I lay it down
of Myself.' 'The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' 'My
flesh ... I give for the world's life.' Now, brethren, we are not to
regard these words as mere vague expressions for a willing surrender
to the necessity of death, but as expressing what I believe is
taught us all through Scripture, and is fundamental to any real
grasp of the real Christ, that He died because He chose, and chose
because He loved. What meant that 'loud voice' with which He said
'It is finished,' but that there was no physical exhaustion, such as
was usually the immediate occasion of death by crucifixion? What
meant that surprising rapidity with which the last moment came in
His case, to the astonishment of the stolid bystanders? They meant
the same thing as I believe that the Evangelists meant when they,
with one consent, employed expressions to describe Christ's death,
which may indeed be only euphemisms, but are apparently declarations
of its voluntary character. 'He gave up the ghost.' 'He yielded His
Spirit.' He breathed forth His life, and so He died.
As one of the old fathers said, 'Who is this that thus falls asleep
when He wills? To die is weakness, but thus to die is power.' 'The
weakness of God is stronger than man.' The desperate king of Israel
bade his slave kill him, and when the menial shrunk from such
sacrilege he fell upon his own sword. Christ bade His servant Death,
'Do this,' and he did it; and dying, our Lord and Master declared
Himself the Lord and Master of Death. This is a part of the history
of the historic Christ. Do you believe it?
II. Then, secondly, the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught
that His death was one chief aim of His coming.
I have omitted words from my text which intervene between its first
and its last ones; not because I regard them as unimportant, but
because they would lead us into too wide a field to cover in one
sermon. But I would pray you to observe how the re-insertion of them
throws immense light upon the significance of the words which I have
chosen. 'The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister.' That covers the whole ground of His gracious and gentle
dealings here on earth, His tenderness, self-abnegation, sympathy,
healing, and helpfulness. Then, side by side with that, and as the
crowning manifestation of His work of service, without which His
life--gracious, radiant, sweet as it is--would still want something
of its power, He sets His death.
Surely that is an altogether unexampled phenomenon; altogether a
unique and unparalleled thing, that a _man_ should regard that
which for all workers, thinkers, speakers, poets, philanthropists,
is the sad term of their activity, as being a part of His work; and
not only a part, but so conspicuous a part that it was a purpose
which He had in view from the very beginning, and before the
beginning, of His earthly life. So Calvary was to Jesus Christ no
interruption, tragic and premature, of His life's activities. His
death was no mere alternative set before Him, which He chose rather
than be unfaithful or dumb. He did not die because He was hounded by
hostile priests, but He came on purpose that He might so end His
career.
I need not remind you of, and space would not permit me to dwell
upon, other instances in the Gospels in which our Lord speaks the
same language. At the very beginning of His public ministry He told
the inquiring rabbi, who came to Him with the notion that He would
be somewhat flattered by His recognition by one of the authoritative
and wise pundits of the nation, that 'the Son of Man must be lifted
up.' The necessity was before Him, but it was no unwelcome
necessity, for it sprung from His own love. It was the very aim of
His coming, to live a Servant and to die a Ransom.
Dear brethren, let me press upon you this plain truth, that no
conception of Christ's death which looks upon it merely as the
close, by pathetic sufferings, of a life to the activities of which
it adds nothing but pathos, approaches the signification of it which
inheres in the thought that this was the aim and purpose with which
Jesus Christ was incarnate, that He should live indeed the pure and
sweet life which He lived, but equally that He should die the
painful and bitter death which He died. He was not merely a martyr,
though the first of them, but something far more, as we shall see
presently. If to you the death of Jesus Christ is the same in kind,
however superior in degree, as those of patriots and reformers and
witnesses for the truth and martyrs for righteousness, then I humbly
venture to represent that, instead of going back to, you have gone
away from, the Christ of the Gospels, who said, 'The Son of Man came
... to give His life'; and that such a Christ is not a historic but
an imaginary one.
III. So, thirdly, notice that the Christ of the Gospels thought and
taught that His death was a ransom.
A ransom is a price paid in exchange for captives that they may be
liberated; or for culprits that they may be set free. And that was
Christ's thought of what He had to die for. There lay the 'must.'
I do not dwell upon the conception of our condition involved in that
word. We are all bound and held by the chain of our sins. We all
stand guilty before God, and, as I believe, there is a necessity in
that loving divine nature whereby it is impossible that without a
ransom there can be, in the interests of mankind and in the
interests of righteousness, forgiveness of sins. I do not mean that
in the words before us there is a developed theory of atonement, but
I do mean that no man, dealing with them fairly, can strike out of
them the notion of vicarious suffering in exchange for, or instead
of, 'the many.' This is no occasion for theological discussion, nor
am I careful now to set forth a fully developed doctrine; but I am
declaring, as God helps me, what is to me, and I pray may be to you,
the central thought about that Cross of Calvary, that on it there is
made the sacrifice for the world's sins.
And, dear brethren, I beseech you to consider, how can we save the
character of Jesus Christ, accepting these Gospels, which on the
hypothesis about which I am now speaking are valid sources of
knowledge, without recognising that He deliberately led His
disciples to believe that He died for--that is, instead of--them
that put their trust in Him? For remember that not only such words
as these of my text are to be taken into account. Remember that it
was the Christ of the Gospels who established that last rite of the
Lord's Supper, in which the broken bread, and the separation between
the bread and the wine, both indicated a violent death, and who said
about both the one and the other of the double symbols, 'For you.' I
do not understand how any body of professing believers, rejecting
Christ's death as the sacrifice for sin, can find a place in their
beliefs or in their practice for that institution of the Lord's
Supper, or can rightly interpret the sacred words then spoken. This
is why the Cross was Christ's aim. This is why He said, with His
dying breath, 'It is finished.' This truth is the explanation of His
words, 'The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.'
And this truth of a ransom-price lies at the basis of all vigorous
Christianity. A Christianity without a dying Christ is a dying
Christianity. And history shows us that the expansiveness and
elevating power of the Gospel depend on the prominence given to the
sacrifice on the Cross. An old fable says that the only thing that
melts adamant is the blood of a lamb. The Gospel reveals the
precious blood of Jesus Christ, His death for us as a ransom, as the
one power which subdues hostility and binds hearts to Him. The
Christ of the Gospels is the Christ who taught that He died for us.
IV. Lastly, the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His
death had world-wide power.
He says here, 'A ransom for _many_.' Now that word is not used
in this instance in contradistinction to 'all,' nor in
contradistinction to 'few.' It is distinctly employed as emphasising
the contrast between the single death and the wide extent of its
benefits; and in terms which, rigidly taken, simply express
indefiniteness, it expresses universality. That that is so seems to
me to be plain enough, if we notice other places of Scripture to
which, at this stage of my sermon, I can but allude. For instance,
in Romans v. the two expressions, 'the many' and the 'all,'
alternate in reference to the extent of the power of Christ's
sacrifice for men. And the Apostle in another place, where probably
there may be an allusion to the words of the text, so varies them as
that he declares that Jesus Christ in His death was the ransom
'instead of all.' But I do not need to dwell upon these. 'Many' is a
vague word, and in it we see dim crowds stretching away beyond our
vision, for whom that death was to be the means of salvation. I take
it that the words of our text have an allusion to those in the great
prophecy in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, in which we read, 'By
His knowledge shall My righteous Servant' (mark the allusion in our
text, 'Who came to _minister_') 'justify many, for He shall
bear their iniquities.'
So, brethren, I believe that I am not guilty of unduly widening out our
Lord's thought when I say that the indefinite 'many' is practically
'all.' And, brother, if 'all,' then _you_; if all, then _me_; if
all, then _each_. Think of a man, nineteen centuries ago, away
in a little insignificant corner of the world, standing up and saying,
'My death is the price paid in exchange for the world!' That is
meekness and lowliness of heart, is it? That is humility, so beautiful
in a teacher, is it? How any man can accept the veracity of these
narratives, believe that Jesus Christ said anything the least like
this, not believe that He was the Divine Son of the Father, the
Sacrifice for the world's sin, and yet profess--and honestly profess,
I doubt not, in many cases--to retain reverence and admiration, all
but adoration, for Him, I confess that I, for my poor part, cannot
understand.
But I ask you, what you are going to do with these thoughts and
teachings of the Christ of the Gospels. Are you going to take them
for true? Are, you going to trust your salvation to Him? Are you
going to accept the ransom and say, 'O Lord, truly I am Thy servant;
Thou hast loosed my bonds'? Brethren, the Christ of the Gospels, by
all means; but the Christ that said, 'The Son of Man came to ...
give His life a ransom for many.' My Christ, and your Christ, and
the world's Christ is 'the Christ that died; yea, rather, that is
risen again; who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh
intercession for us.'