019. Chapter 17 - The Self-Revelation of Jesus

Chapter 17 - The Self-Revelation of Jesus Unity of Purpose

“These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (John 20:31). Thus does John explain the purpose of his narrative. The theory that the Synoptics have an objective which is something short of this will not bear investigation. This, however, is one of the fundamental lines of attack upon John’s narrative and the secret of the hostile criticism of his account. It is a most amazing thing how the writers, with this deep-set and consuming purpose in their hearts, yet restrain themselves from arguing the case and allow Jesus to state His own claims and offer His own proof. They leave Jesus to reveal Himself in their narratives even as He did during His ministry. Instead of trying to add their arguments as to how certain and conclusive were the proofs He gave of His declarations of deity, they rather confess how slow they were to understand and believe. Truly these narratives are not according to the fashion of worldly wisdom.

John’s Testimony The chief objection of skeptics to the Gospels is concentrated upon Jesus’ teaching concerning Himself. This, on the one hand, is the heart of the Christian gospel, and, in like manner, is the center of the modernistic effort to weaken the claim of Jesus and thus reduce Him to merely human stature. John begins with the identification of Jesus, the Word, with God, and he closes with the crowning proof which Jesus presented in His resurrection; and which caused even Thomas to cry out with fervent conviction: “My Lord and my God.” John records so many clear declarations by Jesus of His deity that the only possible recourse of those who deny His deity is to repudiate John’s narrative: “I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever” (John 6:51); “the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he the Son also to have life in himself” (John 5:25, John 5:26); “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12); “Ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:28); “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: it is my Father who glorifieth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God; and ye have not known him: but I know him….Before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:54, John 8:58); “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30); “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even he that should come into the world” (John 11:25-27); “I am the way, and the truth, and the life...he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:6, John 14:9).

Mark’s Testimony The critical question is, Does this presentation agree with the teaching of Jesus concerning Himself as reported in Matthew, Mark and Luke? The modernist seeks to establish that while the Synoptics represent that Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah, He did not mean by this more than the chosen One of God, and certainly not the Son of God. Since they claim that Mark was the first of these to be written and that there is a development of the doctrine of Jesus’ deity to be seen in the four narratives, it may be best to consider Mark’s Gospel first. The Son of God

Instead of Mark’s regarding Jesus merely as a man and desiring to present Him as a worker of wonders and an extraordinary teacher, but nothing more, he sets forth in the first words of his book this impressive summary: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” This then is his purpose: to write an account of the gospel which will show Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. Now hear what John declares his purpose to be: “But these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Could any more complete unity of purpose be imagined or expressed? And yet the modernists insist that Mark presents an entirely different picture of Jesus as a mere man, and does not desire to prove He is the Son of God. Take the second and third verses of Mark, and what do you find? The second thing Mark does is to quote a passage from Isaiah about the coming of the forerunner to prepare the way for One who is identified with God. Five verses later he introduces the Holy Spirit into the narrative when he records the mysterious prediction of John the Baptist that the Messiah is to baptize in the Holy Spirit. In the tenth verse he describes the marvelous scene where the Holy Spirit descends from heaven and joins Jesus in His earthly ministry. The next verse records how God Himself spoke from heaven and declared Jesus to be His beloved Son.

Testimony of Demons

Mark continually records the cure of those afflicted with demons and the fearful testimony of the demons, quickly silenced by Jesus: “What have we to do with thee, Jesus thou Nazarene? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24); “And the unclean spirits, whensoever they beheld him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God” (Mark 3:11); “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Most High God?” (Mark 5:7).

Controversies and Testimony

He introduces various controversies with the Jewish leaders who hated and opposed Jesus, in order to show not merely the development of the tragic struggle, but the absolute claims to deity which Jesus made: “The Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins”; “Who can forgive sins, but one, even God?” (Mark 2:10, Mark 2:7); “Why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?...The Son of man is lord even of the sabbath” (Mark 2:24, Mark 2:28). This much is affirmed in the opening paragraph of his book. The same object is pursued throughout. The Good Confession

Much is made of the fact that Mark’s brief summary of the scene at Caesarea Philippi omits “the Son of God” from the confession of Peter, which is simply, “Thou art the Christ,” but Mark shows in the same chapter that the confession Jesus is the Christ necessarily implies that He is the Son of God, as he has repeatedly declared and as he now makes clear in the record of the testimony of God at the transfiguration, which immediately followed the confession of Peter: “There came a voice out of the cloud, This is my beloved Son: hear ye him” (Mark 9:7).

Final Declaration of Jesus The testimony of Jesus when on trial before the high priest is of central importance: “Again the high priest asked him, and saith unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven. And the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What further need have we of witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be worthy of death” (Mark 14:61-64). The testimony of the centurion is recorded by Mark: “Truly this man was the Son of God.” In the closing verses of his Gospel, Mark affirms: “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God”(Mark 16:19).

Purpose of Mark

It is sometimes affirmed by scholars that the purpose of Mark was “not biographical, but theological.” This is not Scriptural language, but if it is meant to affirm that Mark did not write specifically a book of biography, but had a definite purpose to show how it came to pass that Jesus was condemned and put to death by His own people, then there is truth in the statement. Mark makes no effort to record mere biographical notes; there is a deep-set purpose in each incident and statement that is introduced; he is attempting to show how Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, and how He proved His claim; how it came to pass that, even though He is the Son of God, yet the people rejected and crucified Him; how the purposes of God were fulfilled in this, as seen in His resurrection and the completion of the divine plan of salvation. The Decisive Passage in Matthew When we turn to the Gospel of Matthew and that of Luke, we find ourselves in possession of the same chain of evidence, for most of the above testimony is thrice told, and, in addition, some very powerful new evidence is presented. The key passage for the whole discussion as to whether Matthew represents Jesus’ talking about Himself in the same fashion that John does is found in the close of the eleventh chapter: “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (John 11:27-30). This is so completely of one piece with the reports of John that it sounds like a quotation from his narrative. It is so disastrous for the radical theory that the modernists turn and twist in every conceivable direction trying to escape from it. They try to say that what Jesus meant to say was that every son knows his father better than any one else and vice versa, but when the grand declaration of deity by Jesus is thus diluted, what sort of an introduction does it make for the most daring and touching invitation ever issued to the world: “Come unto me”? The personal pronouns “I,” “me, “mine,” occur seven times in the great invitation and it is absolutely impossible to make it impersonal. Moreover, the declaration of His universal authority with which the statement begins is distinctly personal. All of this personal element is so inter-woven into the texture of the whole passage that some critics, such as Professor Frank Porter of Yale, chose the desperate expedient of tearing the whole passage out of Matthew. When this is done without the slightest textual support from any manuscripts, it is merely a confession that theory has been enthroned and facts blindly discarded. Even Professor Allen declares concerning this passage: “It is a reminiscence of a side of Jesus’ teaching which is prominent in the Fourth Gospel.” After citing the parallel passage in Luke 10:21, Luke 10:22, and “the similar use of the Son — the Father” in Mark 13:32, he declares that this “saying of Christ is as strongly supported as any saying in the Gospels” (Commentary on Matthew, p. 123). The Virgin Birth

Further study of Matthew and Luke will show that their reports of the teaching of Jesus throng with affirmations that emphasize or imply Jesus’ claims to deity. The detailed account of the temptation in both narratives brings out in bold relief the central proposition of the devil, which was a challenge of that which God had just affirmed at the baptism: “If thou art the Son of God.” This establishes as the major objective both of Jesus’ ministry and their narratives that all men shall believe God’s testimony that Jesus is His Son and shall obey His teaching, even as it implies that those who seek to deny this find themselves in the company of the evil one who first challenged it. The accounts of the Nativity in Matthew and Luke declare with unimpeachable evidence and with the most careful and powerful language the virgin birth of Jesus. This shows at once that the deity of Jesus is at the very heart of their presentation of the Gospel. Again, it is exceedingly unfortunate for the radical position that the definite details as to the virgin birth are recorded, not in John, but in Matthew and Luke! If only all the emphatic declarations of Jesus’ deity could be traced to one of the Gospels, the rejection of the testimony would be so much simpler. At this point, it is Matthew and Luke, rather than John, which are assailed. Not only do Matthew and Mark sustain John, but the fact they were written much earlier than John is fatal to the developmental theory, for why, then, does John omit any definite account of the virgin birth? The critics try at this point to use John to discredit Matthew and Luke by arguing that his silence as to the virgin birth impeaches their testimony, but they are thwarted in this attack by the fact that John’s grand prologue to his Gospel gloriously proclaims the pre-existence of Jesus, which reveals the divine unity of the diverse testimony of the Evangelists.

Further Witness of Matthew and Luke The continuous, vivid narration of the terror-stricken testimony of the demons to the fact that they were in the presence of the Son of God shows that all three of the Synoptics have the very same objective as John: to show that Jesus is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. Jesus did not permit the demons to testify: He desired to reveal Himself and not to be revealed by the devil. Nevertheless, as the demons cried out in terror, their cries were heard by the multitudes and must have produced a deep impression. The fact that Matthew, Mark, and Luke repeatedly tell of their outcries shows that these details are introduced into the narrative for the purpose of showing Jesus’ divine power and authority — His deity. John does not introduce this line of evidence, because it had already had abundant and emphatic expression; but the evidence he does present has the same purpose and is in harmony with that in the Synoptics.

Further Evidence The sermons and parables of Jesus, which are so much more fully reported in Matthew and Luke than in Mark, reveal the same focus of intense desire of these two writers to show that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God and that He would return in glory to judge the world. The climactic revelations of the divine person of Jesus at Caesarea Philippi and at the trials before the Sanhedrin and Pilate are clearly brought forth in the Synoptics. in fact, the more one examines the four Gospels, the more impressive becomes the testimony to the deity of Jesus which is recorded in the Synoptics and not mentioned in John. If John’s Gospel had never been written, it would have been impossible for anyone to have read and believed the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and not accepted the deity of Jesus. Instead of contradicting John’s testimony, they supplement it in a most remarkable way; instead of teaching a doctrine of the person of Jesus which falls short of that in John, they present the same doctrine with the most convincing variety of testimony.

Demise of the Theory The radical theory that the reports of how Jesus revealed Himself show a steady development from Mark who gives but little of claims to deity, to Matthew who describes much stronger claims and begins to omit details which reveal the humanity of Jesus, to Luke who proceeds much further with this development, to John who represents the completion of the development, flattens itself against the solid wall of early Christian testimony that Matthew was written before Mark. Furthermore, according to their own admissions, John was not written later than the close of the first century, and this does not allow time for such an evolutionary process as they suppose In the Gospels. The complete collapse of the efforts to place these books late — in the second century — places the entire modernistic position in a chronological strait jacket. They must keep their suppositions as to the date of the Synoptics as far removed from the death and resurrection of Jesus in order to attack the miraculous elements in the testimony; they must keep them as far removed as possible from the admitted date of John in order to leave as much time as possible for supposed development of views from the Synoptics to John. Thus they place the writings of Matthew, Mark, and Luke within a single decade, naming as a rule the year a.d. 70. And the long process of development of theological ideas which they formerly supposed took place in the Synoptics during a period of a hundred years, they now must affirm took place in ten years. The absurdity of such a supposition is self-evident. Finally, the quotations from the Synoptics which are given to prove such a development, instead of showing any such process, merely show that the writers give independent and varied testimony, some emphasizing one feature or line of evidence, more than another.

Purpose of Miracles A second general objection to the record of the self-revelation of Jesus in John’s Gospel is the assertion: “In the Synoptics the miracles are primarily a manifestation of the sympathy of Jesus, or, at the utmost, of His power and authority. In John they are a revelation of His divine, preexistent glory” (John 2:11) (Hill, Introduction to the Life of Christ, p. 128). This immediately suggests the reflection as to where Jesus ever showed any more sympathy than at the grave of Lazarus, but John is the only writer who records the resurrection of Lazarus. How wonderfully He shows both sympathy for Mary and Martha and the desire to give to the world indisputable proof of His deity! And where would one find any stronger declaration of the fundamental purpose of Jesus in working miracles, that it was to bring faith in His deity and hence salvation to the souls of lost men, than is found in the eleventh chapter of Matthew? The statement that His miracles are merely self-revealing in the Synoptics to the extent of showing “His power and authority” raises the question: How much power and authority? If enough power and authority is claimed, then deity is of necessity affirmed; this is exactly the case throughout all four accounts. Take the case of the paralytic whom Mark declares that Jesus said He was healing to prove that He had the power on earth to forgive sins, in the very face of the charge of the Pharisees that His claim was blasphemy (Mark 2:5-12). John says: “But though he had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on him” (John 12:37). But is this any stronger than the very language of Jesus reported in Matthew: “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes”? (Matthew 11:21). Could any clearer affirmation of the purpose of miracles to lead men to believe in Jesus be imagined than that quoted from the lips of Jesus by Matthew in answer to John’s question of doubt? “Go and tell John the things which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me” (Matthew 11:4-6). The Synoptics are filled with proof that Jesus worked His miracles, not merely because of sympathy for physical suffering, but to prove His deity. The cursing of the fig tree is a most dramatic example. All the declarations of faith by people who were healed, made both before and after the healing, and the constant question of Jesus, “Believest thou?” or His commendation, “Thy faith hath made thee whole” furnish a continuous line of evidence in the Synoptics as in John. The implication of this whole radical objection is that there is a contradiction between Jesus’ working miracles Out of sympathy and out of the desire to prove His deity. This is a monstrous assumption. The two motives are everywhere harmoniously united. The love of Jesus was not so blind as to minister to the ills of the body and disregard the ills of the soul!

Manner of Revelation The last attack upon John’s presentation of Jesus’ self-revelation, and the one upon which the radicals place the most emphasis, is the claim that John contradicts the Synoptics in representing that Jesus revealed Himself as the Son of God at the very start of His ministry, while the latter show that He very gradually unveiled His claims. “In the Synoptics we find a slow and orderly advance in Christ’s unveiling of His mission and claims. He begins by preaching the kingdom of God, but says nothing about Himself as the King — the long expected Messiah. He checks the demoniacs when they would proclaim Him the Son of God. He waits patiently for the time when there shall dawn upon His disciples a recognition of what He is; and He rejoices greatly when Peter — far along in the course of the ministry — pronounces Him to be the Messiah, the Son of God; but even then He charges them to say nothing publicly about it And only in the last week of His life does He throw away all reserve, and announce His divine claims to any one who may listen. In John there is no such progress: all is evident from the outset. The Baptist points out Jesus as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29). His disciples at the very outset hail Him as the Son of God, the King of Israel (John 1:49). To the woman of Samaria, looking for the Messiah, He says, ‘I am he’ (John 4:26). And in His public discourses from the very beginning He emphasizes His divinity” (Hill, Introduction to the Life of Christ, p. 127). A Divine Mosaic This sounds like a very imposing theory: startling and convincing by reason of its simplicity; menacing in its implications as to the credibility of John. When one places the theory, however, in contact with the actual facts as to the testimony of the four Evangelists, just what happens? It is found to be in such absolute contradiction to the facts in the case, that the only way the unbelieving critics can hope to make out their theory is by cutting up the records with the most ruthless violence and discarding the evidence which would destroy their theory. The testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as to the self-revelation of Jesus is as an exquisitely beautiful mosaic most mysteriously and marvelously interlaid. When such an effort is made, as in the above theory, to analyze and divide the mosaic on some direct line of cleavage which leaves the Synoptics on one side and the Gospel of John on the other, it immediately becomes clear that the mystifying intricacy of the mosaic defies such division: the blocks of evidences are so fitted together that they overlap or fall short of the theoretical line: here, a block reaches over too far; there, another does not reach; here, they are absolutely intertwined. The only thing the exasperated critic can do in his desperate determination to unearth a line of cleavage which will prove a contradiction and enable him to deny the testimony to the deity of Christ, is to seize a knife and cut right through the mosaic, regardless of the facts. To represent these emasculated remnants as the actual, original design requires a curious disdain for historical facts and an amazing confidence in the infallability of one’s own imagination.

First Recorded Words of Jesus The first words recorded from the lips of Jesus are words of startling self-revelation. They pertain to His person, His conduct, His divine mission, and His relation to the Father. The crucial phrase “My Father” occurs in this statement of Jesus. Hear the child of twelve standing in the temple, surrounded by the scholars of the nation, say to His astounded mother and to Joseph: “How is it that ye sought me? knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?” What a grand argument for the above radical theory, if the critics could point out that this scene and statement is recorded only in John! They hold that John represents Jesus as telling everything about His personality right at the beginning and that the Synoptics represent Jesus as not discussing Himself, but the kingdom, up to the scene at Caesarea Philippi. If this be true John must be the writer to tell how Jesus thus declared Himself in the temple at the age of twelve. How unfortunate for the theory that these first recorded words of Jesus are not found in John’s Gospel at all, but only in Luke 2:49! Thus at the very first historical test applied to the theory, the critic must resort to violence, as he reaches for his operating knife to remove the historical testimony from the records in order to maintain his theory. The Second Recorded Words The second recorded words from the lips of Jesus also concern His divine person. John the Baptist draws back in awe from the request of Jesus to be baptized: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” The reply of Jesus confirms the implication of sinlessness and the resulting conclusions as to the divine mystery of His person: “Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.” According to the theory, this should be found only in John, but, as a matter of fact, it occurs only in Matthew 3:14, Matthew 3:15. The Third Recorded Words The third recorded words of Jesus also center in the mystery of His deity, as He answers calmly the repeated challenges of the devil in the wilderness: “If thou art the Son of God….” This, too, should be found only in John, to make the theory work out. On the contrary, it is not mentioned in John, but is found only in Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13. The miraculous testimony of God Himself to the identity of Jesus, His Son, occurs between the second and third recorded words of Jesus. Hear the voice from heaven as Jesus was raised from the waters of baptism: “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased.” Here again is death and destruction to the radical theory that everything is unveiled at the beginning in John’s Gospel and only gradually revealed in the Synoptics! All three Synoptical writers record the testimony of God; John does not mention it. Thus the very first meeting of the theory with the facts not only deflates the theory; the facts turn it upside down and inside out. The radicals declare John is unhistorical because he represents the Baptist as declaring plainly at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “Behold the Lamb of God.” But the Synoptics (which they use to discredit John) declare that God spoke from heaven and proclaimed, “Thou art my Son...!” The critics are forced to resort to violence again and with high hand remove the evidence by denying the miraculous testimony of God. Some hold that the descent of the Spirit and the voice of God were not perceived or understood by the multitude. It is most probably true that the crowd, although the filled with awe at what they saw and heard, did not understand the significance of the descending dove, nor understand the words spoken by God (John 12:27-29; Acts 9:3-8; Acts 22:9). Jesus was thus left free to reveal Himself. It must be noted, however, that John indicates even more clearly that the testimony of the Baptist (“Behold the Lamb of God...”; “I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God) was given, not to the multitudes, but to His disciples (John 1:35). Thus, while both the Synoptics and John depict events and record statements that must have created a certain surge of excitement and expectation in the nation, yet they left abundant room for Jesus to reveal Himself as He would. The Sermons and Miracles of Jesus When we begin to examine the sermons of Jesus in all four narratives, we find that the theory can not stand in the presence of the facts: instead of Jesus’ never discussing Himself in the early Synoptical accounts but always teaching concerning the kingdom, we find the unveiling of the kingdom and the King are parallel in each of the Gospels. This is an absolute necessity for a kingdom to have a King; the proclamation of the kingdom of God could not be so abstract as to ignore the King. The Old Testament had clothed the predictions of the kingdom continually in terms of the divine King who should come; John the Baptist had set the nation on fire with his bold predictions: “There cometh after me he that is mightier than I...” (Matthew 3:11; Mark 1:7, Luke 3:16; John 1:27). These predictions were made by John after his ministry had stirred the most excited inquiries throughout the nation as to whether he were the Christ. “And as the people were in expectation, and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether he were the Christ” (Luke 3:15). “The Jews sent unto him from Jerusalem priests and Levites to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed and denied not; and he confessed, I am not the Christ” (John 1:19, John 1:20). Now when Jesus began His ministry with a marvelous succession of miracles, it was inevitable that everyone should discuss the question as to His identity. This is exactly what happened, and it is indicated in all four narratives. The theory that Jesus did not discuss Himself but merely gave abstract teaching concerning the kingdom until the last days of His ministry, overlooks the excited atmosphere in which His ministry was carried on; it denies the astounding miracles which accompanied His teaching from the very start, for they constituted a self-revelation of Jesus and forced people to conclusions He did not need to affirm each time a miracle was worked.

Harmonious Testimony

John shows that when Jesus cleansed the temple in the opening days of His ministry, the national leaders immediately issued a challenge to Him to work some overpowering miracle to prove His Messiahship (Who else but the Messiah could thus have the right to take charge of the temple?): “What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” (John 2:18). The miracles worked in Jerusalem caused many to believe on Him, and caused Nicodemus to come for a night conference. It is very important to notice that Nicodemus began with inquiries as to the person and work of Jesus, but the replies of Jesus turned the discussion to the kingdom. This is in John’s Gospel and not in the Synoptics! The opening phases of the Galilean ministry as described in the Synoptics were after the same fashion, as Jesus discussed both the King and the kingdom. The outcries of the demoniacs, stifled by Jesus’ stern rebukes, yet heard by the multitudes, concentrated the most excited inquiries upon Jesus: “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God….What is this? a new teaching! with authority he commandeth the unclean spirits and they obey him” (Mark 1:24, Mark 1:27; Luke 4:34-36). The personal claim of Jesus that He had the power on earth to forgive sins introduced a discussion, not of the kingdom, but of the King. The Pharisees protested He was claiming the authority of God Himself; Jesus responded, not by an abstract discussion of the kingdom, but with a miracle which proved the divine claims of the King! (Matthew 9:2-8; Mark 2:5-12; Luke 5:18-26). Fear and amazement filled the hearts of the people and their awed reflection shows how their thoughts were focused upon the person and nature of Jesus: “We have never seen it on this fashion.” The Sermon on the Mount The Sermon on the Mount contains a startling revelation of the divine person of Jesus. He is discussing the kingdom throughout, but see how often the King enters the discussion. “When men persecute you for my sake”; “I came not to destroy but to fulfill”; “I say unto you “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth...”; “Every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them….” The Sermon on the Mount is the favorite citation of radicals to prove that Jesus discussed the kingdom and not the King in the Synoptics. It, by itself, is quite sufficient to destroy their theory! Jesus is the King! The implication is that those who do not accept Him as Lord shall not enter into the kingdom, even as those who call Him “Lord, Lord” but obey not. This same presentation of Himself, more veiled at times than others, is seen throughout the Synoptics and is especially pointed and emphatic in the sermon recorded in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. Read again this whole sermon with its towering declarations of deity and its presentation of the evidence. The Sermon at Nazareth A most important example is seen in the sermon at Nazareth in the very opening of the Galilean ministry. Jesus read as His text a glowing Messianic prediction from Isaiah and declared Himself the fulfillment of it. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he appointed 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….And he began to say unto them, Today hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears. His sermon is not recorded beyond the opening assertion that He was the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah, but the excited discussion of the people at its close did not concern the kingdom but the personal claims of Jesus Himself and led to the furious attempt of the unbelieving crowd to destroy Him. The theory that Jesus did not unveil His person in the early part of His ministry as recorded in the Synoptics finds a deadly rebuttal in this passage in Luke 4:16-30. The Divine Method

Students of the Book of Acts are sometimes puzzled at the variety of answers given to the supreme question of life: “What must I do to be saved?” A careful study of the context in each case will show that the question always received the same answer: faith, repentance, confession, baptism, and a life of devoted service to Jesus, although not all these elements are actually stated in the specific answer to the question on any occasion. The immediate answer given in each case differed according to the particular situation of the hearer, but the elements of the complete answer are plainly implied in the context. Exactly the same method is seen in the delineation of the self-revelation of Jesus in the four Gospels. There is a steadfast, harmonious presentation; sometimes He revealed Himself more clearly than at others. There is a gradual crescendo, a distinctly developing climax in each of the narratives, even though the details are so often completely different.

General Principles

Two general considerations are plainly shown to have governed the manner and degree of the self-revelation of Jesus: (1) the attitude, situation, background and motives of the hearer; (2) the public state of mind in the community or the nation. Too sudden and complete an unveiling of His divine person and His unlimited power would have defeated itself. God’s love, as well as God’s power, had to be revealed: the spiritual nature of the kingdom as well as the infinite power of the King. Although it seems at a glance that John’s narrative leaves no room for gradual revelation because of very startling revelations made at the beginning, a study of the text will show that these declarations were semi-private and still left the unprepared multitudes to be informed gradually. The Baptist’s testimony was to his disciples; the declaration of Nathanael, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel” was heard only by the little group of disciples; the revelation to Nicodemus was to a single individual and closely veiled. John 3:16 seems very plain to us, but the entire conversation was a stimulating but perplexing enigma to Nicodemus; the declaration “I that speak unto thee am he” was very clear, but limited to the Samaritan woman and the isolated community where He thus proclaimed Himself. Such a revelation would not prevent the gradual unfolding of His person and program in Galilee and Judaea. There is no contradiction between this record of the early Judaean ministry in John’s account and the gradual revelation of Himself in the other three Gospels.

Jesus’ revelation of Himself to the nation faced the obstacle of a stubborn, ingrained conception of the Jewish people that the Messiah was to be a worldly monarch, destroying Rome’s might and giving the Jews glorious domination over the world. This was the beacon light of hope in the hearts of the people. The mighty sweep of Jesus’ ministry met this stolid devotion to a worldly ideal like an irresistible force meeting a well-nigh immovable body. The ministry of Jesus was not play-acting; it was a living movement which had to face the inevitable maelstrom of political maneuvers by selfish parties and cliques. There were two mighty whirlpools of politics: one centered in Jerusalem — a swirling cesspool of self-seeking and bitter party struggle between the Pharisees and Sadducees for the control of the nation, that drew in a great crowd of sycophants and petty office holders; the other centered in Galilee — the wild, fanatical movement of the Zealots that continually threatened to engulf the nation in war against Rome. The ministry of Jesus rose to a mighty flood, which, though influenced by the vortex in Galilee or that in Jerusalem, ‘yet swept through and over them and burst the man-made obstacle of the crucifixion to rush on after the resurrection in the fulfillment of the purpose whereunto God had sent it.

Meeting Hostility and Misplaced Enthusiasm

All four Gospel accounts show how the self-revelation of Jesus was influenced by these two political whirlpools and their outlying eddies. John shows more of the collision with the Jerusalem forces, although he also gives important information on how He altered His methods of revealing Himself to meet the Zealot efforts to capture His movement in Galilee. The Synoptics show plainly the impact of Jesus’ ministry against both of these shifting currents of hostility or impulsive, mistaken zeal. Three general effects were produced on the methods of self-revelation of Jesus: (1) The hardened unbelief of the hypocritical leaders in the capital led Him to make His claims very strong and clear, and His miracles very public when in Jerusalem, so that they were without excuse in rejecting Him, and the slow-moving faith of the capital would have every needed stimulation. (2) The rash, violent program of the Zealots that led them to rush forward in wild excitement to seize His movement for their own selfish ends caused Jesus to proceed more carefully in His self-revelation in Galilee and to guard His demonstrations of miraculous power with the most emphatic teaching of the spiritual character of the kingdom. (3) The sweeping currents of hostility or misplaced zeal caused Him continually to shift His location from one town or community to another, lest the inevitable, tragic climax of His combat with the hostile hierarchy come before He had time to evangelize the nation; or the irrational ardor of the Zealots should overflow to the destruction of life. Thus we find in John’s Gospel, Jesus healing the lame man at the pool of Bethesda and sending him straight through the midst of the Sabbath throngs in the temple in order to focus upon the miracle the attention of the hardened, unbelieving leaders at the capital. And we also see in the Synoptics Jesus strictly warning the leper He has healed in Galilee, which is already in a ferment of excitement over Him, to tell no man of the cure but to go to the priest as commanded in the law. This was the continual policy of Jesus in the exciting days of His Galilean ministry. The teaching of Jesus concerning Himself was governed by exactly the same method, as all four Gospels show. The climax of excitement came in Galilee with the feeding of the five thousand, where the Zealots, in their wild enthusiasm, sought to take Jesus by force and make Him king. It is John who gives us the clearest view of this crisis with the Zealot movement and how Jesus thwarted the worldly-minded, violent leaders by dismissing both His disciples and the multitude, spending most of the night in prayer on a mountain top, and then rejoining His disciples by walking on the water. The modernists argue strongly against the credibility of John because of the self-revelation in Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue at Capernaum the next day: “Even the sacramental teachings concerning eating His flesh and drinking His blood are given in the discourse on the day after the feeding of the five thousand; and John wholly omits any institution of the sacrament in connection with the Last Supper” (Hill, Introduction to the Life of Christ, pp. 127, 128). A study of the circumstances shows that Jesus achieved an eternal purpose that day in giving for all the ages a sublime sermon on the Bread of Life, and that He achieved an immediate purpose of thwarting any further move by the Zealots by preaching such a profoundly difficult sermon that they could not comprehend and turned away from Him in selfish disgust. To make a point out of the sermon in the sixth chapter of John, the radicals would have to show that the tremendous declarations of Jesus about Himself as the Bread of Life led everybody to realize His deity; as a matter of fact, John tells how it was so obscured from their worldly minds that it caused them to desert Him in such numbers that only a few disciples remained faithful (John 6:60-69). Thus the climax of their vituperation against John becomes a deathblow to their own theory.

Revelation to the Disciples

Running parallel to the unveiling of the divine majesty of Jesus to the nation, there was the continuous self-revelation to His chosen disciples. Each was a separate movement, for, while every exciting impulse to believe which came from miracle or sermon was shared by the disciples, yet they were given much to sustain them when the faith of the multitude sagged, and the disciples, in the midst of their hours of growing faith, had to wrestle with terrifying predictions, as yet withheld from the crowd. The accompanying chart should help in gaining an understanding of how these two movements grew, and how they were related to each other.

The measure of faith in the hearts of the disciples and of the multitudes is an imperfect gauge and yet somewhat of a gauge as to the self-revelation of Jesus. It might be considered a minimum measure inasmuch as their faith continually fell short of the height to which the actual revelation should have carried them. The chart is arranged to show how the tides of faith rose and fell, in both the hearts of the disciples and the multitudes. Faith always holds mortal combat with doubt in the human heart, and we are never able to maintain exactly the same high level of faith any more than we are able at all times to occupy the heights of unselfish nobility that we at times achieve. Obstacles from without and weaknesses within continually cause at least some fluctuation. The faith of the disciples started upward under the initial impulse of the testimony of John the Baptist backed by the miraculous events of the baptism and rose to an early climax in the confession of Nathanael (John 1:29-51). It was strengthened by the miracle at Cana (John 2:11). The disciples were left bewildered and confused by the shocking collision with the national leaders which followed the cleansing of the temple (John 2:22); but the miracles and ministry in Jerusalem further increased their enthusiasm (John 2:23-25). When Jesus retired from Judaea under the increasing pressure of hostility (John 4:1-3), it seems to have caused the faith of the disciples to sag, but the self-revelation to the Samaritans furnished another upward impulse to their faith. Thus we find the tide rising and falling throughout the ministry of Jesus. The miracles and the astounding teaching of Jesus tended constantly to develop the faith of the disciples and of the multitudes, but the spiritual character of Jesus’ teaching and program collided strongly with the current materialistic views about the Messiah, and the hostility of the leaders of the nation tended to make the faith of those about Jesus erratic and uneven. Especially when Jesus retired from the fierce assaults of His enemies and carried on quiet evangelistic work in other centers, such a course caused the faith of the disciples to sink. A good illustration of the influence of this opposition upon the faith of the disciples is found in the perplexed and discouraged protest of the disciples after Jesus’ controversy concerning eating with unwashed hands: “Then came the disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, when they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up Let them alone: they are blind guides” (Matthew 15:12-14). This shows also how Jesus sought to brace their faith under such a strain. The refusal of Jesus to meet the challenge of His enemies to show a sign from heaven had a like effect upon them and was followed by a similar aftermath of rebuke and exhortation that analyzed their hearts: “And Jesus said to them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). The self-revelation to the multitudes naturally was more limited, faced greater obstacles, and did not receive the same antidote of private instruction. Moreover, the constant change of location from one city to another enabled Jesus to evangelize a wide territory, and it also had the effect of delaying the fullness of His self-revelation to the nation, for a community which had been stirred to fever heat by His miracles and messages was allowed to calm down and think things over while He was gone from the midst. Thus an abortive climax was avoided in either Judaea or Galilee or in any separate community: the Zealots were prevented from capitalizing on His movement and turning it to their worldly ends; the Pharisees were thwarted in their deadly plots and were themselves given time to reconsider and repent; but the fires of enthusiasm were not allowed to die out completely in any one section by reason of too long an absence of Jesus.

Climactic Development The feeding of the five thousand stands out as the first great climax of the self-revelation of Jesus both to the multitudes and to His disciples. It was immediately followed by a collapse of popular enthusiasm because of His refusal to permit the Jews to make Him king. This also caused a sharp decline in the faith of the disciples, and it was for this reason, largely, that Jesus dismissed the disciples and sent them across the lake to separate them from the corrupting influence of the worldly-minded crowd. When He came to them, walking on the water, their faith, staggered by the events of the day, was again roused to the heights and made more spiritual. The difficult sermon on the Bread of Life at Capernaum the next day definitely ended the popularity of Jesus in Galilee and gave His disciples grave concern, but they refused to yield their faith (John 6:66-69). The self-revelation to the multitudes in Galilee practically ended as Jesus went from one trip of retirement to another; isolated campaigns such as the one in the Decapolis which culminated in the feeding of the four thousand followed, but most of the time was devoted to the earnest instruction of the disciples. The confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi stands out as the culmination of the self-revelation to the disciples. The chart suggests that at the very moment when the faith of the multitudes was the lowest, that of the disciples was the highest; this resulted from the revelations given to them apart from the crowd. The stunning prediction of His death, following immediately upon the confession of Peter, left the bewildered disciples in a whirl of despairing thoughts from which the transfiguration lifted them (the three by direct revelation, and the rest by unconscious influence). Renewed predictions of His death brought further vacillation and dazed anticipations from which the resurrection of Lazarus, mighty miracle though it was, was unable to stir them, for the predictions of death formed an obstacle they could not evade or surmount. The triumphal entry brought about the swiftest change in the feelings of the crowd and the disciples: it caused the disciples to forget the predictions of His death and led the multitudes to hope that at last He would declare Himself king by force and use His invincible power to destroy His enemies. When He failed to do aught but continue His spiritual program, the fickle, worldly multitudes turned away in disgust, and the disciples with breaking hearts saw the tragic end closing in. The crucifixion brought the depths of despair from which nothing but the actual presence of the risen Christ was able to stir the disciples. A number of appearances and much instruction was needed to lead them to a faith that was now clear and complete and which wavered not as they went forward to Pentecost and the hectic days which followed. The multitudes remained in the valley of despair until the amazing announcement of the resurrection led them forth at Pentecost to the final mountain top of faith.