"_A prophet mighty in word before God and all the people._"--LUKE xxiv.
19.
"_A teacher come from God._"--JOHN iii. 2.
In speaking of the teaching of Jesus it is scarcely possible at the
present day to avoid at least a reference to two other closely-related
topics, viz. the relation of Christ's teaching to the rest of the New
Testament, and the trustworthiness of the Gospels in which that teaching
is recorded. Adequate discussion of either of these questions here and
now is not possible; it must suffice to indicate very briefly the
direction in which, as it appears to the writer, the truth may be found.
First, then, as to the relation of the teaching of Jesus to the rest of
the New Testament, and especially to the Epistles of St. Paul. There can
be no doubt, largely, I suppose, through the influence of the Reformers,
that the words of Jesus have not always received the attention that has
been given to the writings of Paul. Nor is this apparent misplacing of
the accent the wholly unreasonable thing which at first sight it may
seem. After all, the most important thing in the New Testament--that
which saves--is not anything that Jesus said, but what He did; not His
teaching, but His death. This, the Gospels themselves being witness, is
the culmination and crown of Revelation; and it is this which, in the
Epistles, and pre-eminently the Epistles of Paul, fills so large a
place. Moreover, it ought plainly to be said that the Church has never
been guilty of ignoring the words of her Lord in the wholesale fashion
suggested by some popular religious writers of our day. Really, the
Gospels are not a discovery of yesterday, nor even of the day before
yesterday. They have been in the hands of the Church from the beginning,
and, though she has not always valued them according to their true and
priceless worth, she has never failed to number them with the choicest
jewels in the casket of Holy Scripture. Nevertheless, it may be freely
granted that the teaching of Jesus has not always received its due at
the Church's hands. "Theology," one orthodox and Evangelical divine
justly complains, "has done no sort of justice to the Ethics of
Jesus."[1] But in our endeavour to rectify one error on the one side,
let us see to it that we do not stumble into another and worse on the
other side. The doctrines of Paul are not so much theological baggage,
of which the Church would do well straightway to disencumber itself.
After all that the young science of Biblical Theology has done to reveal
the manifold variety of New Testament doctrine, the book still remains a
unity; and the attempt to play off one part of it against another--the
Gospels against the Epistles, or the Epistles against the Gospels--is to
be sternly resented and resisted. To St. Paul himself any such rivalry
would have been impossible, and, indeed, unthinkable. There was no claim
which he made with more passionate vehemence than that the message which
he delivered was not his, but Christ's. "As touching the gospel which
was preached by me," he says, "neither did I receive it from man, nor
was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ."
The Spirit who spoke through him and his brother apostles was not an
alien spirit, but the Spirit of Christ, given according to the promise
of Christ, to make known the things of Christ; so that there is a very
true sense in which their words may be called "the final testimony of
Jesus to Himself." "We have the mind of Christ," Paul said, and both in
the Epistles and the Gospels we may seek and find the teaching of
Jesus.[2]
It is, however, with the teaching of Jesus as it is recorded in the
Gospels that, in these chapters, we are mainly concerned. We come,
therefore to our second question: Can we trust the Four Gospels? And
this question must be answered in even fewer words than were given to
the last. As to the external evidence, let us hear the judgment of the
great German scholar, Harnack. Harnack is a critic who is ready to give
to the winds with both hands many things which are dear to us as life
itself; yet this is how he writes in one of his most recent works:
"Sixty years ago David Friedrich Strauss thought that he had almost
entirely destroyed the historical credibility, not only of the fourth,
but also of the first three Gospels as well. The historical criticism of
two generations has succeeded in restoring that credibility in its main
outlines."[3] When, from the external, we turn to the internal evidence,
we are on incontestable ground. The words of Jesus need no credentials,
they carry their own credentials; they authenticate themselves.
Christian men and women reading, _e.g._, the fourteenth of St. John's
Gospel say within themselves that if these are not the words of Jesus, a
greater than Jesus is here; and they are right. The oft-quoted challenge
of John Stuart Mill is as unanswerable to-day as ever it was. "It is of
no use to say," he declares, "that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels,
is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable
has been super-added by the traditions of His followers.... Who among
His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the
sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character
revealed in the Gospels?"[4]
I
Assuming, therefore, without further discussion, the essential
trustworthiness of the Gospel records, let us pass on to consider in
this introductory chapter some general characteristics of Christ's
teaching as a whole.
Mark at the outset Christ's own estimate of His words: "The words that I
have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life;" "If a man keep My word
he shall never see death;" "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My
words shall not pass away;" "Every one which heareth these words of Mine
and doeth them "--with him Christ said it should be well; but "every one
that heareth these words of Mine and doeth them not"--upon him ruin
should come to the uttermost. Sayings like these are very remarkable,
for this is not the way in which human teachers are wont to speak of
their own words; or, if they do so speak, this wise world of ours knows
better than to take them at their own valuation. But the astonishing
fact in the case of Jesus is that the world has admitted His claim. Men
who refuse utterly to share our faith concerning Him and the
significance of His life and death, readily give to Him a place apart
among the great teachers of mankind. I have already quoted the judgment
of John Stuart Mill. "Jesus," says Matthew Arnold, "as He appears in the
Gospels ... is in the jargon of modern philosophy an absolute"[5]--we
cannot get beyond Him. Such, likewise, is the verdict of Goethe: "Let
intellectual and spiritual culture progress, and the human mind expand,
as much as it will; beyond the grandeur and the moral elevation of
Christianity, as it sparkles and shines in the Gospels, the human mind
will not advance."[6] It would be easy to multiply testimonies, but it
is needless, since practically all whose judgment is of any account are
of one mind.
But now if, with these facts in our minds, and knowing nothing else
about the teaching of Jesus, we could suppose ourselves turning for the
first time to the simple record of the Gospels, probably our first
feeling would be one of surprise that Jesus the Teacher had won for
Himself such an ascendency over the minds and hearts of men. For
consider some of the facts which the Gospels reveal to us. To begin
with, this Teacher, unlike most other teachers who have influenced
mankind, contented Himself from first to last with merely oral
instruction: He left no book; He never wrote, save in the dust of the
ground. Not only so, but the words of Jesus that have been preserved by
the evangelists are, comparatively speaking, extremely few. Put them all
together, they are less by one-half or two-thirds than the words which
it will be necessary for me to use in order to set forth His teaching in
this little book. And further, the little we have is, for the most part,
so casual, so unpremeditated, so unsystematic in its character. Once and
again, it is true, we get from the Evangelists something approaching
what may be called a set discourse; but more often what they give us is
reports of conversations--conversations with His disciples, with chance
acquaintances, or with His enemies. Sometimes we find Him speaking in
the synagogues; but He is quite as ready to teach reclining at the
dinner-table; and, best of all, He loved to speak in the open air, by
the wayside, or the lake shore. Once, as He stood by the lake of
Gennesaret, the multitude was so great that it pressed upon Him. Near at
hand were two little fishing-boats drawn up upon the beach, for the
fishermen had gone out of them, and were washing their nets. "And He
entered into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put
out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes
out of the boat." It is all so different from what we should have
expected; there is about it such an air of artless, homely simplicity.
Finally, we cannot forget that Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews. Son of
God though He was, He was the son of a Jewish mother, trained in a
Jewish home, in all things the child of His own time and race. Whatever
else His message may have been, it was, first of all, a message to the
men of His own day; therefore, of necessity, it was their language He
used, it was to their needs He ministered, it was their sins He
condemned. The mould, the tone, the colouring of His teaching were all
largely determined by the life of His country and His time.
Yet this is He concerning whom all ages cry aloud, "Never man spake like
this man." This is He before whom the greatest and the wisest bow down,
saying, "Lord" and "Master." How are we to explain it? Much of the
explanation lies outside of the scope of our present subject; but if we
will turn back to the Gospels again we may find at least a partial
answer to our question.