The question that was proposed to Jesus, 'Art Thou the Christ, the
Son of the living God?' was suggested by the facts of His ministry,
and not by anything that had come out in the course of this
investigation. It was the summing up of the impression made on the
ecclesiastical authorities of Judaism by His whole attitude and
demeanour. And if we look back to His life we shall see that there
were instances, long before this, on which, on the same ground, the
same charge was flung at Him. For example, when He would heal the
paralytic, and, before He dealt with bodily disease, attended to
spiritual weakness, and said, 'Thy sins be forgiven thee,' ere He
said, 'Take up thy bed and walk,' there was a group of keen-eyed
hunters after heresy sitting eagerly on the watch, who snatched at
the words in a moment, and said, 'Who is this that forgiveth sins?
No _man_ forgiveth sins, but God only! This man speaketh
blasphemies!' And they were right. He did claim a divine
prerogative; and either the claim must be admitted or the charge of
blasphemy urged.
Again, when He infringed Rabbinical Sabbath law by a cure, and they
said, 'This Man has broken the Sabbath day,' His vindication was
worse than His offence, for He answered, 'My Father worketh
hitherto, and I work.' And then they sought the more to kill Him,
because He not only brake the Sabbath, but also called God His own
Father, making Himself equal with God.' And again, when He declared
that the safety of His sheep in His hands was identical with their
safety in His Father's hands, and vindicated the audacious
parallelism by the tremendous assertion, 'I and My Father are One,'
the charge of blasphemy rang out; and was inevitable, unless the
claim was true.
These outstanding instances are but, as it were, summits that rise
above the general level. But the general level is that of One who
takes an altogether unique position. No one else, professing to lead
men in paths of righteousness, has so constantly put the stress of
His teaching, not upon morality, nor religion, nor obedience to God,
but upon this, 'Believe in Me'; or ever pushed forward His own
personality into the foreground, and made the whole nobleness and
blessedness and security and devoutness of a life to hinge upon that
one thing, its personal relation to Him.
People talk about the sweet and gentle wisdom that flowed from
Christ's lips, and so on; about the lofty morality, about the beauty
of pity and tenderness, and all the other commonplaces so familiar
to us, and we gladly admit them all. But I venture to go a step
further than all these, and to say that the outstanding
_differentia_, the characteristic which marks off Christ's
teaching as something new, peculiar, and altogether _per se_,
is not its morality, not its philanthropy, not its meek wisdom, not
its sweet reasonableness, but its tremendous assertions of the
importance of Himself.
And if I am asked to state the ground upon which such an assertion
may be vindicated, I would point you to such facts as these, that
this Man took up a position of equality with, and of superiority to,
the legislation which He and the people to whom He was speaking
regarded as being divinely sent, and said, 'Ye have heard that it
hath been said to them of old time' so and so; 'but I say unto you':
that this Man declared that to build upon His words was to build
upon a rock; that this Man declared that He--He--was the legitimate
object of absolute trust, of utter submission and obedience; that He
claimed from His followers affiance, love, reverence which cannot be
distinguished from worship, and that He did not therein conceive
that He was intercepting anything that belonged to the Father. This
Man professed to be able to satisfy the desires of every human heart
when He said, 'If any man thirst let him come to Me and drink.' This
Man claimed to be able to breathe the sanctity of repose in the
blessedness of obedience over all the weary and the heavy laden; and
assured them that He Himself, through all the ages, and in all
lands, and for all troubles, would give them rest. This Man declared
that He who stood there, in the quiet homes of Galilee, and went
about its acres with those blessed feet for our advantage, was to be
Judge of the whole world. This Man said that His name was 'Son of
God'; and this Man declared, 'He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father.'
And then people say to us, 'Oh! your Gospel narratives, even if they
be the work of men in good faith, telling what they suppose He said,
mistook the Teacher; and if we could strip away the accretion of
mistaken reverence, and come to the historical person, we should
find no claims like these.'
Well, this is not the time to enter into the large questions which
that contention involves, but I point you to the incident which
makes my text, and I say, 'What need we any further witnesses?'
Nobody denies that Jesus Christ was crucified as the result of a
combination of Sanhedrin and Pilate. What set the Jewish rulers
against Him with such virulent and murderous determination? Is there
anything in the life of Jesus Christ, if it is watered down as the
people, who want to knock out all the supernatural, desire to water
it down--is there anything in the life that will account for the
inveterate acrimony and hostility which pursued Him to the death?
The fact remains that, whether or not Evangelists and Apostles
misconceived His teaching when they gave such prominence to His
personality and His lofty claims, His enemies were under the same
delusion, if it were a delusion; and the reason why the whole
orthodox religionism of Judaism rejoiced when He was nailed to the
Cross was summed up in the taunt which they flung at Him as He hung
there, 'If He be the Son of God, let Him come down, and we will
believe Him.'
So, brethren, I put into the witness-box Annas and Caiaphas and all
their satellites, and I say, 'What need we any further witnesses?'
He died because He declared that He was the Son of God.
And I beseech you ask yourselves whether we are not being put off
with a maimed version of His teaching, if there is struck out of it
this its central characteristic, that He, 'the sage and humble,'
declared that He was 'likewise One with the Creator.'
II. Secondly, note how we have here the witness that Jesus Christ
assented always to the loftiest meaning that men attached to His
claims.
I have already pointed out the remarkable difference between the
explanations which He condescended to give to the Roman governor as
to the perfectly innocent meaning of His claim to be the King of
Israel, and His silence before the Sanhedrin. That silence is only
explicable because they rightly understood the meaning of the claim
which they contemptuously and perversely rejected. Jesus Christ knew
that His death was the forfeit, as I have said, and yet He locked
His lips and said not a word.
In like manner when, on the other occasion to which I have already
referred, the Pharisees stumbled at His claims to forgive sins, He
said nothing to soften down that claim. If He had meant then only
what some people would desire to make Him mean when He said, 'Thy
sins be forgiven thee'--viz., that He was simply acting as a
minister of the divine forgiveness, and assuring a poor sinner that
God had pardoned him--why in common honesty, in discharge of His
plain obligations of a teacher, did He not say so--not for His own
sake, but for the sake of preventing such a tremendous
misunderstanding of His meaning? But He let them go away with the
conviction that He intended to claim a divine prerogative, and
vindicated the assertion by doing what only a divine power could do:
'That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power enough on earth to
forgive sins, He saith unto the sick of the palsy, Take up thy bed
and walk.' There was no need for Him to have wrought a miracle to
establish His right to tell a poor soul that God forgave sin. And
the fact that the miracle was supposed to be the demonstration and
the vindication of His right to declare forgiveness shows that He
was exercising that prerogative which belongs, as they rightly said,
to God only.
And in precisely the same manner, the commonest obligations of
honesty, the plain duty of a misunderstood Teacher, to say nothing
of the duty of self-preservation, ought to have opened His lips in
the presence of the Jewish authorities, if they understood wrongly
and set too high their estimate of the meaning of His claims. His
silence establishes the fact that they understood these aright.
And so, all through His life, we note this peculiarity, that He
never puts aside as too lofty for truth men's highest interpretations
of His claims, nor as too lowly for their mutual relation the lowest
reverence which bowed before Him. Peter, in the house of Cornelius,
said, 'Stand up! for I myself also am a man.' Paul and Barnabas, when
the priests brought out the oxen and garlands to the gates of Lystra,
could say, 'We also are men of like passions with yourselves.' But
this meek Jesus lets men fall at His feet; and women wash them with
their tears and wipe them with the hairs of their head; and souls
stretch out maimed hands of faith, and grasp Him as their only hope.
When His apostle said, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,'
His answer was, 'Blessed art thou, for flesh and blood hath not revealed
it unto thee,' and when another exclaimed, 'My Lord and my God!' this
Pattern of all meekness accepted and endorsed the title, and pronounced
a benediction on all who, not having seen Him, should hereafter attain
a like faith.
Now I want to know whether that characteristic, which runs through all
His life, and is inseparable from it, can be vindicated on any ground
except the ground that He was 'God manifest in the flesh.' Either
Jesus Christ had a greedy appetite for excessive adoration, was a
victim to diseased vanity and ever-present self-regard--the most
damning charge that you can bring against a religious teacher--or He
accepted love and reverence and trust, because the love and the
reverence and the trust knit souls to the Incarnate God their Saviour.
III. And so, lastly we have here witness to the only alternative to
the acceptance of His claims.
He hath spoken 'blasphemy,' not because He had derogated from the
dignity of divinity, but because He had presumed to participate in
it. And it seems to me, with all deference, that this rough
alternative is the only legitimate one. If Jesus Christ did make
such claims, and His relation to the Jewish hierarchy and His death
are, as I have shown you, apart even from the testimony of the
Evangelists, strong confirmation of the fact that He did--if Jesus
Christ did make such claims, and they were not valid, one of two
things follows. Either He believed them, and then, what about His
sanity? or He did not believe them, and then, what about His
honesty? In either case, what about His claims to be a Teacher of
religion? What about His claims to be the Pattern of humanity? That
part of His teaching and character is either the manifestation of
His glory or it is like one of those fatal black seams that run
through and penetrate into the substance of a fair white marble
statue, marring all the rest of its pale and celestial beauty.
Brethren, it seems to me that, when all is said and done, we come to
one of three things about Jesus Christ. Either 'He blasphemeth' if
He said these things, and they were not true, or 'He is beside
Himself' if He said these things and believed them, or
'Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ;
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.'
Now I know that there are many men who, I venture to say, are far
better than their creed, and who, believing it impossible to accept,
in their plain meaning, the plain claims of Jesus Christ to
divinity, do yet cleave to Him with a love and a reverence and an
obedience which more orthodox men might well copy. And far be it
from me to say one word which might seem even to quench the faintest
beam of light that, shining from His perfect character, draws any
heart, however imperfectly, to Himself. Only, if I speak to any such
at this time, I beseech them to follow the light which draws them,
and to see whether their reverence for that fair character should
not lead them to accept implicitly the claims that came from His own
lips. I humbly venture to say that if we know anything at all about
Jesus Christ, we know that He lived declaring Himself to be the
Everlasting Son of the Father, and that He died because He did so
declare Himself. And I beseech you to ponder the question whether
reverence for Him and admiration of His character can be logically
and reasonably retained, side by side with the repudiation of that
which is the most distinctive part of His message to men.
Oh, brethren, if it is true that God has come in the flesh, and that
that sweet, gracious, infinitely beautiful life is really the
revelation of the heart of God, then what a beam of sunshine falls
upon all the darkness of this world! Then God is love; then that
love holds us all; did not shrink from dying for us, and lives for
ever to bless us. If these claims are true, what should our attitude
be but that of infinite trust, love, submission, obedience, and the
shaping of our lives after the pattern of His life?
These rejectors, when they said, 'He speaketh blasphemies,' were
sealing their own doom, and the ruined Temple and nineteen centuries
of wandering misery show what comes to men who hear Christ declaring
that He is the Son of the living God and the Judge of the world, and
who find nothing in the words but blasphemy. On the other hand, if
we will answer His question, 'Whom say ye that I am?' as the apostle
answered it, we shall, like the apostle, receive a benediction from
His lips, and be set on that faith as on a rock against which the
'gates of hell' shall not prevail.
'SEE THOU TO THAT!'
'I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to
that. 24. I am innocent of the blood of this just
Person: see ye to it.'--MATT. xxvii. 4, 24.
So, what the priests said to Judas, Pilate said to the priests. They
contemptuously bade their wretched instrument bear the burden of his
own treachery. They had condescended to use his services, but he
presumed too far if he thought that that gave him a claim upon their
sympathies. The tools of more respectable and bolder sinners are
flung aside as soon as they are done with. What were the agonies or
the tears of a hundred such as he to these high-placed and heartless
transgressors? Priests though they were, and therefore bound by
their office to help any poor creature that was struggling with a
wounded conscience, they had nothing better to say to him than this
scornful gibe, 'What is that to us? See thou to that.'
Pilate, on the other hand, metes to them the measure which they had
meted to Judas. With curious verbal correspondence, he repeats the
very words of Judas and of the priests. 'Innocent blood,' said
Judas. 'I am innocent of the blood of this just Person,' said
Pilate. 'See thou to that,' answered they. 'See ye to it,' says he.
He tries to shove off his responsibility upon them, and they are
quite willing to take it. Their consciences are not easily touched.
Fanatical hatred which thinks itself influenced by religious motives
is the blindest and cruellest of all passions, knowing no
compunction, and utterly unperceptive of the innocence of its
victim.
And so these three, Judas, the priests, and Pilate, suggest to us, I
think, a threefold way in which conscience is perverted. Judas
represents the agony of conscience, Pilate represents the shuffling
sophistications of a half-awakened conscience, and those priests and
people represent the torpor of an altogether misdirected conscience.