_THE GOSPEL OF THE JUBILEE._
Immediately after the Temptation Jesus returned, "in the power of the
Spirit," and with all the added strength of His recent victories, to
Galilee. Into what parts of Galilee He came, our Evangelist does not
say; but omitting the visit to Cana, and dismissing the first Galilean
tour with a sentence--how "He taught in their synagogues, being
glorified of all"--St. Luke goes on to record in detail the visit of
Jesus to Nazareth, and His rejection by His townsmen. In putting this
narrative in the forefront of his Gospel is St. Luke committing a
chronological error? or is he, as some suppose, purposely antedating the
Nazareth story, that it may stand as a frontispiece to his Gospel, or
that it may serve as a key for the after-music? This is the view held by
most of our expositors and harmonists, but, as it appears to us, on
insufficient grounds; the balance of probability is against it. It is
true that St. Matthew and St. Mark record a visit to Nazareth which
evidently occurred at a later period of His ministry. It is true also
that between their narratives and this of St. Luke there are some
striking resemblances, such as the teaching in the synagogue the
astonishment of His hearers, their reference to His parentage, and then
the reply of Jesus as to a prophet receiving scant honour in his own
country--resemblances which would seem to indicate that the two
narratives were in reality one. But still it is possible to push these
resemblances too far, reading out from them what we have first read into
them. Let us for the moment suppose that Jesus made two visits to
Nazareth; and is not such a supposition both reasonable and natural? It
is not necessary that the first rejection should be a final rejection,
for did not the Jews seek again and again to kill Him, before the cross
saw their dire purpose realized? Remaining for so long in Galilee, would
it not be a most natural wish on the part of Jesus to see the home of
His boyhood once again, and to give to His townspeople one parting word
before taking His farewell of Galilee? And suppose He did, what then?
Would He not naturally go to the synagogue--as was His custom in every
place--and speak? And would they not listen with the same astonishment,
and then harp on the very same questions as to His parentage and
brotherhood--questions that would have their readiest and fittest answer
in the same familiar proverb? Instead, then, of these resemblances
identifying the two narratives, and proving that St. Luke's story is but
an amplification of the narratives of the other Synoptists, the
resemblances themselves are what we might naturally expect in our
supposition of a second visit. But if there are certain coincidences
between the two narratives, there are marked differences, which make it
extremely improbable that the Synoptists are recording one event. In the
visit recorded by St. Luke there were no miracles wrought; while St.
Matthew and St. Mark tell us that He could not do many mighty works
there, because of their unbelief, but that He "laid His hands on a few
sick folk, and healed them." In the narrative by St. Mark we read that
His disciples were with Him while St. Luke makes no mention of His
disciples; but St. Luke does mention the tragic ending of the visit, the
attempt of the men of Nazareth to hurl Him down from a lofty cliff, an
incident St. Matthew and St. Mark omit altogether. But can we suppose
the men of Nazareth would have attempted this, had the strong body-guard
of disciples been with Jesus? Would they be likely to stand by, timidly
acquiescent? Would not Peter's sword have flashed instantly from its
scabbard, in defence of Him whom he served and dearly loved? That St.
Matthew and St. Mark should make no reference to this scene of violence,
had it occurred at the visit they record, is strange and unaccountable;
and the omission is certainly an indication, if not a proof, that the
Synoptists are describing two separate visits to Nazareth--the one, as
narrated by St. Luke, at the commencement of His ministry; and the other
at a later date, probably towards its close. And with this view the
substance of the Nazareth address perfectly accords. The whole address
has the ring of an inaugural message; it is the voice of an opening
spring, and not of a waning summer. "This day is this Scripture
fulfilled in your ears" is the blast of the silver trumpet announcing
the beginning of the Messianic year, the year of a truer, wider Jubilee.
It seems to us, therefore, that the chronology of St. Luke is perfectly
correct, as he places in the forefront of his Gospel the earlier visit
to Nazareth, and the violent treatment Jesus there received. At the
second visit there was still a widespread unbelief, which caused Jesus
to marvel; but there was no attempt at violence, for His disciples were
with Him now, while the report of His Judæan ministry, which had gone
before Him, and the miracles He wrought in their presence, had softened
down even Nazareth prejudices and asperities. The events of the first
Galilean tour were probably in the following order. Jesus, with His five
disciples, goes to Cana, invited guests at the marriage, and here He
opens His miraculous commission, by turning the water into wine. From
Cana they proceed to Capernaum, where they remain for a short time,
Jesus preaching in their synagogue, and probably continuing His
miraculous works. Leaving His disciples behind at Capernaum--for between
the preliminary call by the Jordan and the final call by the lake the
fisher-disciples get back to their old occupations for a while--Jesus
goes up to Nazareth, with His mother and His brethren. Thence, after His
violent rejection, He returns to Capernaum, where He calls His disciples
from their boats and receipt of custom, probably completing the sacred
number before setting out on His journey southward to Jerusalem. If this
harmony be correct--and the weight of probability seems to be in its
favour--then the address at Nazareth, which is the subject for our
consideration now, would be the first recorded utterance of Jesus; for
thus far Cana gives us one startling miracle, while in Capernaum we find
the report of His acts, rather than the echoes of His words. And that
St. Luke alone should give us this incident, recording it in such a
graphic manner, would almost imply that he had received the account from
an eye-witness, probably--if we may gather anything from the Nazarene
tone of St. Luke's earlier pages--from some member of the Holy Family.
Jesus has now fairly embarked upon His Messianic mission, and He begins
that mission, as prophecy had long foretold He should, in Galilee of the
Gentiles. The rumour of His wonderful deeds at Cana and Capernaum had
already preceded Him thither, when Jesus came once again to the home of
His childhood and youth. Going, as had been His custom from boyhood,
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day (St. Luke is writing for Gentiles
who are unversed in Jewish customs), Jesus stood up to read. "The
Megilloth," or Book of the Prophets, having been handed to Him, He
unrolled the book, and read the passage in Isaiah (lxi. 1) to which His
mind had been Divinely directed, or which He had purposely chosen:--
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor,
He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
Then closing, or rolling up, the book, and handing it back to the
attendant, Jesus sat down, and began His discourse. The Evangelist does
not record any of the former part of the discourse, but simply gives us
the effect produced, in the riveted gaze and the rising astonishment of
His auditors, as they caught up eagerly His sweet and gracious words.
Doubtless, He would explain the words of the prophet, first in their
literal, and then in their prophetic sense; and so far He carried the
hearts of His hearers with Him, for who could speak of their Messianic
hopes without awaking sweet music in the Hebrew heart? But directly
Jesus applies the passage to Himself, and says, "This day is this
Scripture fulfilled in your ears," the fashion of their countenance
alters; the Divine emphasis He puts upon the Me curdles in their heart,
turning their pleasure and wonder into incredulity, envy, and a perfect
frenzy of rage. The primary reference of the prophecy seems to have been
to the return of Israel from captivity. It was a political Jubilee he
proclaimed, when Zion should have a "garland for ashes," when the
captive should be free, and aliens should be their servants. But the
flowers of Scripture are mostly double; its pictures and parables have
often a nearer meaning, and another more remote, or a spiritual,
involved in the literal sense. That it was so here is evident, for Jesus
takes this Scripture--which we might call a Babylonish garment, woven
out of the Exile--and wraps it around Himself, as if it belonged to
Himself alone, and were so intended from the very first. His touch thus
invests it with a new significance; and making this Scripture a vestment
for Himself, Jesus, so to speak, shakes out its narrower folds, and
gives it a wider, an eternal meaning. But why should Jesus select this
passage above all others? Were not the Old Testament Scriptures full of
types, and shadows, and prophecies which testified of Him, any one of
which He might have appropriated now? Yes, but no other passage so
completely answered His design, no other was so clearly and fully
declarative of His earthly mission. And so Jesus selected this picture
of Isaiah, which was at once a prophecy and an epitome of His own
Gospel, as His inaugural message, His manifesto.
The Mosaic Code, in its play upon the temporal octaves, had made
provision, not only for a weekly Sabbath, and for a Sabbath year, but it
completed its cycle of festivals by setting apart each fiftieth year as
a year of special grace and gladness. It was the year of redemption and
restoration, when all debts were remitted, when the family inheritance,
which by the pressure of the times had been alienated, reverted to its
original owner, and when those who had mortgaged their personal liberty
regained their freedom. The "Jubilee" year, as they called it--putting
into its name the play of the priestly trumpets which ushered it in--was
thus the Divine safeguard against monopolies, a Divine provision for a
periodic redistribution of the wealth and privileges of the theocracy;
while at the same time it served to keep intact the separate threads of
family life, running its lines of lineage down through the centuries,
and across into the New Testament. Seizing upon this, the gladdest
festival of Hebrew life, Jesus likens Himself to one of the priests, who
with trumpet of silver proclaims "the acceptable year of the Lord." He
finds in that Jubilee a type of His Messianic year, a year that shall
bring, not to one chosen race alone, but to a world of debtors and
captives, remissions and manumissions without number, ushering in an era
of liberty and gladness. And so in these words, adapted and adopted from
Isaiah, Jesus announces Himself as the world's Evangelist, and Healer,
and Emancipator; or separating the general message into its prismatic
colours, we have the three characteristics of Christ's Gospel--(1) as
the Gospel of Love; (2) the Gospel of Light; and (3) the Gospel of
Liberty.
1. The Gospel of Jesus was the Gospel of Love. "He anointed Me to preach
good tidings to the poor." That there is a Gospel even in the Old
Testament no one will attempt to deny, and able writers have delighted
in tracing out the evangelism that, like hidden veins of gold, runs here
and there, now embedded deep in historical strata, and now cropping out
in the current of prophetical speech. Still, an ear but little trained
to harmonies can detect a marvellous difference between the tone of the
Old and the tone of the New Dispensation. "Evangelists" is scarcely the
name we should give to the prophets and preachers of the Old Testament,
if we except that prophet of the dawn, Isaiah. They came, not as the
bearers of glad tidings, but with the pressure, the burden of a terrible
"woe" upon them. With a voice of threat and doom they recall Israel back
to the ways of fidelity and purity, and with the caustic of biting words
they seek to burn out the cancer of national corruption. They were no
doves, those old-time prophets, building their nests in the blossoming
olives, in soft accents telling of a winter past and a summer near; they
were storm-birds rather, beating with swift, sad wings on the crest of
sullen waves, or whirling about among the torn shrouds. Even the eremite
Baptist brought no evangel. He was a sad man, with a sad message,
telling, not of the right which men should do, but of the wrong they
should not do, his ministry, like that of the law, being a ministry of
condemnation. Jesus, however, announces Himself as the world's
Evangelist. He declares that He is anointed and commissioned to be the
bearer of good, glad tidings to man. At once the Morning Star and Sun,
He comes to herald a new day; nay, He comes to make that day. And so it
was. We cannot listen to the words of Jesus without noticing the high
and heavenly pitch to which their music is set. Beginning with the
Beatitudes, they move on in the higher spaces, striking the notes of
courage, hope, and faith, and at last, in the guest-chamber, dropping
down to their key-note, as they close with an _eirenicon_ and a
benediction. How little Jesus played upon men's fears! how, instead, He
sought to inspire them with new hopes, telling of the possibilities of
goodness, the perfections which were within reach of even the human
endeavour! How seldom you catch the tone of despondency in His words! As
He summons men to a life of purity, unselfishness, and faith, His are
not the voice and mien of one who commands to a forlorn hope. There is
the ring of courage, conviction, certainty about His tone, a hopefulness
that was itself half a victory. Jesus was no Pessimist, reading over the
grave of departed glories His "ashes to ashes;" He who knew our human
nature best had most hopes of it, for He saw the Deity that was around
it and within it.
And just here we touch what we may call the fundamental chord in the
Gospel of Jesus, the Fatherhood of God; for though we can detect other
strains running through the music of the Gospel, such as the Love of
God, the Grace of God, and the Kingdom of God, yet these are but the
consonant notes completing the harmonic scale, or the variations that
play about the Divine Fatherhood. To the Hebrew conception of God this
was an element altogether new. To their mind Jehovah is the Lord of
hosts, an invisible, absolute Power, inhabiting the thick darkness, and
speaking in the fire. Sinai thus throws its shadow across the Old
Testament Scriptures, and men inhale an atmosphere of law rather than of
love.
But what a transformation was wrought in the world's thought and life as
Jesus unfolded the Divine Fatherhood! It altered the whole aspect of
man's relation to God, with a change as marked and glorious as when our
earth turns its face more directly to the sun, to find its summer. The
Great King, whose will commanded all forces, became the Great Father, in
whose compassionate heart the toiling children of men might find refuge
and rest. The "Everlasting Arms" were none the less strong and
omnipotent; but as Jesus uncovered them they seemed less distant, less
rigid; they became so near and so gentle, the weakest child of earth
might not fear to lay its tired heart upon them. Law was none the less
mighty, none the less majestic, but it was now a transfigured law, all
lighted up and suffused with love. No longer was life one round of
servile tasks, demanded by an inexorable, invisible Pharaoh; no longer
was it a trampled playground, where all the flowers are crushed, as Fate
and Chance take their alternate innings. No; life was ennobled, adorned
with new and rare beauties; and when Jesus opened the gate of the Divine
Fatherhood the light that was beyond, and that "never was on sea or
land," shone through, putting a heavenliness upon the earthly, and a
Divineness upon the human life. What better, gladder tidings could the
poor (whether in spirit or in life) hear than this--that heaven was no
longer a distant dream, but a present and most precious reality,
touching at every point, and enfolding their little lives; that God was
no longer hostile, or even indifferent to them, but that He cared for
them with an infinite care, and loved them with an infinite love? Thus
did Jesus proclaim the "good tidings;" for love, grace, redemption, and
heaven itself are all found within the compass of the Fatherhood. And He
who gave to His disciples, in the Paternoster, a golden key for heaven's
audience-chamber, speaks that sacred name "Father" even amid the agonies
of the cross, putting the silver trumpet to His parched and quivering
lips, so that earth may hear once again the music of its new and more
glorious Jubilee.
2. The Gospel of Jesus was a Gospel of Light. "And recovering of sight
to the blind," which is the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew passage
in Isaiah, "the opening of the prison to them that are bound." At first
sight this appears to be a break in the Jubilee idea; for physical
cures, such as the healing of the blind, did not come within the scope
of Jubilatic mercies. The original expression, however, contains a
blending of figures, which together preserve the unity of the prophetic
picture. Literally it reads, "The opening of the eyes to them that are
bound;" the figure being that of a captive, whose long captivity in the
darkness has filmed his vision, and who now passes through the opened
door of his prison into the light of day.
In what way shall we interpret these words? Are they to be taken
literally, or spiritually? or are both methods equally legitimate?
Evidently they are both intended, for Jesus was the Light-bringer in
more senses than one. That the Messiah should signalize His advent by
performing wonders and signs, and by working physical cures, was
certainly the teaching of prophecy, as it was a fixed and prominent hope
in the expectation of the Jews. And so, when the despondent Baptist sent
two of his disciples to ask "Art Thou He that should come?" Jesus gave
no direct answer, but turning from His questioners to the multitude of
sick who pressed around Him, He healed their sick, and gave sight to
many that were blind. Then returning to the surprised strangers, He bids
them carry back to their master these visible proofs of His
Messiahship--how that "lepers are cleansed, and the blind receive their
sight." Jesus Himself had a wonderful power of vision. His eyes were
divinely bright, for they carried their own light. Not only had He the
gift of prescience, the forward-looking eye; He had what for want of a
word we may call the gift of perscience, the eye that looked within,
that saw the heart and soul of things. What a strange fascination there
was in His very look! how it flashed like a subtle lightning, striking
and scathing with its holy indignation the half-veiled meanness and
hypocrisy! and how again, like a beam of light, it fell upon Peter's
soul, thawing the chilled heart, and opening the closed fountain of his
tears, as an Alpine summer falls on the rigid glacier, and sends it
rippling and singing through the lower vales. And had not Jesus an
especial sympathy for cases of ophthalmic distress, paying to the blind
a peculiar attention? How quickly He responded to Bartimæus--"What is it
that I shall do for thee?"--as if Bartimæus were conferring the benefit
by making his request. Where on the pages of the four Gospels do we find
a picture more full of beauty and sublimity than when we read of Jesus
taking the blind man by the hand, and leading him out of the town? What
moral grandeur and what touching pathos are there! and how that stoop of
gentleness makes Him great! No other case is there of such prolonged and
tender sympathy, where He not only opens the gates of day for the
benighted, but leads the benighted one up to the gates. And why does
Jesus make this difference in His miracles, that while other cures are
wrought instantly, even the raising of the dead, with nothing more than
a look, a word, or a touch, in healing the blind He should work the
cure, as it were, in parts, or by using such intermediaries as clay,
saliva, or the water of Siloam's pool? Must it not have been
intentional? It would seem so, though what the purpose might be we can
only guess. Was it so gradual an inletting of the light, because a glare
too bright and sudden would only confuse and blind? or did Jesus linger
over the cure with the pleasure of one who loves to watch the dawn, as
it paints the east with vermilion and gold? or did Jesus make use of the
saliva and clay, that like crystal lenses, they might magnify His power,
and show how His will was supreme, that He had a thousand ways of
restoring sight, and that He had only to command even unlikely things,
and light, or rather sight, should be? We do not know the purpose, but
we do know that physical sight was somehow a favourite gift of the Lord
Jesus, one that He handed to men carefully and tenderly. Nay, He Himself
said that the man of Jerusalem had been born blind "that the works of
God should be manifest in him;" that is, his firmament had been for
forty years darkened that his age, and all coming ages, might see
shining within it the constellations of Divine Pity and Divine Power.
But while Jesus knew well the anatomy of the natural eye, and could and
did heal it of its disorders, putting within the sunken socket the
rounded ball, or restoring to the optic nerve its lost powers, this was
not the only sight He brought. To the companion clauses of this
prophecy, where Jesus proclaims deliverance to the captives, and sets at
liberty them that are bruised, we are compelled to give a spiritual
interpretation; and so "the recovering of sight to the blind" demands a
far wider horizon than the literalistic sense offers. It speaks of the
true Light which lighteth every man, that spiritual photosphere that
environs and enswathes the soul, and of the opening and adjusting of the
spiritual sense; for as sight without light is darkness, so light
without sight is darkness still. The two facts are thus related, each
useless apart from the other, but together producing what we call
vision. The recovering of sight to the blind is thus the universal
miracle. It is the "Let light be" of the new Genesis, or, as we prefer
to call it, the "regeneration." It is the dawn, which, breaking over the
soul, broadens unto the perfect day, the heavenly, the eternal noon.
Jesus Himself recognized this binoculism, this double vision. He says
(John xvi. 16), "A little while, and ye behold Me no more; and again a
little while, and ye shall see Me," using two altogether different
words--the one speaking of the vision of the sense, the other of the
deeper vision of the soul. And it was so. The disciples' vision of the
Christ, at least so long as the bodily presence was with them, was the
earthly, physical vision. The spiritual Christ was, in a sense, lost,
masked in the corporeal. The veil of His flesh hung dense and heavy
before their eyes, and not until it was uplifted on the cross, not until
it was rent in twain, did they see the mysterious Holy Presence that
dwelt within the veil. Nor was the clearer vision given them even now.
The dust of the sepulchre was in their eyes, blurring, and for a time
half-blinding them--the anointing with the clay. The emptied grave, the
Resurrection, was their "pool of Siloam," washing away the blinding
clay, the dust of their gross, materialistic thoughts. Henceforth they
saw Christ, not, as before, ever coming and going, but as the
ever-present, the abiding One. In the fuller light of the Pentecostal
flames the unseen Christ became more near and more real than the seen
Christ ever was. Seeing Him as visible, their minds were holden,
somewhat perplexed; they could neither accomplish much nor endure much;
but seeing Him who had become invisible, they were a company of
invincibles. They could do and they could endure anything; for was not
the I AM with them always?
Now, even in the physical vision there is a wonderful correspondence
between the sight and the soul, the prospect and introspect. As men read
the outward world they see pretty much the shadow of themselves, their
thoughts, feelings, and ideas. In the German fable the travelled stork
had nothing to say about the beauty of the fields and wonders of the
cities over which it passed, but it could discourse at length about the
delicious frogs it had found in a certain ditch. Exactly the same law
rules up in the higher vision. Men see what they themselves love and
are; the sight is but a sort of projection of the soul. As St. Paul
says, "The natural man receiveth not the things of God;" the things
which God hath prepared for them that love Him are "things which eye saw
not, and ear heard not." And so Jesus gives sight by renewing the soul;
He creates around us a new heaven and a new earth, by creating a new, a
clean heart within us. Within every soul there are the possibilities of
a Paradise, but these possibilities are dormant. The natural heart is a
chaos of confusion and darkness, until it turns towards Jesus as its
Saviour and its Sun, and henceforth revolves around Him in its
ever-narrowing circles.
3. The Gospel of Jesus was a Gospel of Liberty. "He hath sent Me to
proclaim release to the captives," "to set at liberty them that are
bruised." The latter clause is not in the original prophecy, but is a
rough adaptation of another passage in Isaiah (lviii. 6). Probably it
was quoted by Jesus in His address, and so was inserted by the
Evangelist with the passages read; for in the New Testament the
quotations from the Old are grouped together by affinities of spirit,
rather than by the law of textual continuity. The two passages are one
in their proclamation and promise of liberty, but they by no means cover
the same ground. The former speaks of the liberation of captives, those
whom the exigencies of war or some change of fortune have thrown into
prison; the latter speaks of deliverance to the oppressed, those whose
personal liberties may not be impawned, but whose lives are made hard
and bitter under severe exactions, and whose spirits are broken, crushed
beneath a weight of accumulated ills. Speaking generally, we should call
the one an amnesty, and the other an enfranchisement; for one is the
offer of freedom to the captive, the other of freedom to the slave;
while together they form an act of emancipation for humanity,
enfranchising and ennobling each individual son of man, and giving to
him, even the poorest, the freedom of God's world.
In what sense, then, is Jesus the great Emancipator? It would be easy to
show that Jesus, personally, was a lover of freedom. He could not brook
restraints. Antiquity, conventionalism, had no charms for Him. Keenly in
touch with the present, He did not care to take the cold, clammy hand of
a dead Past, or allow it to prescribe His actions. Between the right and
the wrong, the good and the evil, He put a wall of adamant, God's
eternal "No;" but within the sphere of the right, the good, He left room
for largest liberties. He observed forms--occasionally, at least--but
formalism He could not endure. And so Jesus was constantly coming into
collision with the Pharisaic school of thought, the school of
routinists, casuists, whose religion was a glossary of terms, a volume
of formulas and negations. To the Pharisee religion was a cold, dead
thing, a mummy, all enswathed in the cerecloths of tradition; to Jesus
it was a living soul within a living form, an angel of grace and
beauty, whose wings would bear her aloft to higher, heavenlier spheres,
and whose feet and hands fitted her just as well for the common walks of
life, in a beautiful, every-day ministry of blessing. And how Jesus
loved to give personal liberty to man--to remove the restrictions
disease had put around their activities, and to leave them physically,
mentally free! And what were His miracles of healing but proclamations
of liberty, in the lowest sense of that word? He found the human body
enfeebled, enslaved; here it was an arm, there an eye, so held in the
grip of disease that it was as if dead. But Jesus said to Disease,
"Loose that half-strangled life and let it go," and in an instant it was
free to act and feel, finding its lesser jubilee. Jesus saw the human
mind led into captivity. Reason was dethroned and immured in the
dungeon, while the feet of lawless passions were trampling overhead. But
when Jesus healed the demoniac, the imbecile, the lunatic, what was it
but a mental jubilee, as He gives peace to a distracted soul, and leads
banished Reason back to her Jerusalem?
But these deliverances and liberties, glorious as they are, are but
figures of the true, which is the enfranchisement of the soul. The
disciples were perplexed and sorely disappointed that Jesus should die
without having wrought any "redemption" for Israel. This was their one
dream, that the Messiah should break in pieces the hated Roman yoke, and
effect a political deliverance. But they see Him moving steadily to His
goal, taking no note of their aspirations, or noticing them only to
rebuke them, and scarce giving a passing glance to these Roman eagles,
which darken the sky, and cast their ominous shadows over the homes and
fields of Israel. But Jesus had not come into the world to effect any
local, political redemption; another Moses could have done that. He had
come to lead captive the captivity of Sin, as Zacharias had foretold,
"that being delivered out of the hand of our (spiritual) enemies, we
might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days
of our life." The sphere of His mission was where His kingdom should be,
in the great interior of the heart. A Prophet like unto Moses, but
infinitely greater than he, He too leaves the palace, of the Eternal,
laying aside, not the robes of a prospective royalty, but the glories He
possessed with the Father; He too assumes the dress, the speech, nay,
the very nature, of the race He has come to redeem. And when no other
ransom was sufficient He "offered Himself without spot to God," "our
Passover, sacrificed for us," so sprinkling the doorway of the new
Exodus with His own blood. But here we stand on the threshold of a great
mystery; for if angels bend over the mercyseat, desiring, but in vain,
to read the secret of redemption, how can our finite minds grasp the
great thought and purpose of God? We do know this, however, for it is
the oft-repeated truth of Scripture, that the life, or, as St. Peter
puts it, "the precious blood of Christ," was, in a certain sense, our
ransom, the price of our redemption. We say "in a certain sense," for
the figure breaks down if we press it unduly, as if Heaven had held a
parley with the power that had enslaved man, and, at a stipulated price,
had bought him off. That certainly was no part of the Divine purpose and
fact of redemption. But an atonement was needed in order to make
salvation possible; for how could God, infinitely holy and just, remit
the penalty due to sin with no expression of His abhorrence of sin,
without destroying the dignity of law, and reducing justice to a mere
name? But the obedience and death of Christ were a satisfaction of
infinite worth. They upheld the majesty of law, and at the same time
made way for the interventions of Divine Love. The cross of Jesus was
thus the place where Mercy and Truth met together, and Righteousness and
Peace kissed each other. It was at once the visible expression of God's
deep hatred of sin, and of His deep love to the sinner. And so, not
virtually simply, in some far-off sense, but in truest reality, Jesus
"died for our sins," Himself tasting death that we might have life, even
the life "more abundant," the life everlasting; suffering Himself to be
led captive by the powers of sin, bound to the cross and imprisoned in a
grave, that men might be free in all the glorious liberty of the
children of God.
But this deliverance from sin, the pardon for past offences, is but one
part of the salvation Jesus provides and proclaims. Heaven's angel may
light up the dungeon of the imprisoned soul; he may strike off its
fetters, and lead it forth into light and liberty; but if Satan can
reverse all this, and fling back the soul into captivity, what is that
but a partial, intermittent salvation, so unlike Him whose name is
Wonderful? The angel said, "He shall save His people," not from the
effects of their sin, from its guilt and condemnation alone, but "from
their sins." That is, He shall give to the pardoned soul power over sin;
it shall no longer have dominion over him; captivity itself shall be led
captive; for
"His grace, His love, His care
Are wider than our utmost need,
And higher than our prayer."
Yes, verily; and the life that is hid with Christ in God, that, with no
side-glances at self, is set apart utterly to do the Divine will, that
abandons itself to the perfect keeping of the perfect Saviour, will find
on earth the "acceptable year of the Lord," its years, henceforth, years
of liberty and victory, a prolonged Jubilee.