| The Christian Life | November 1945 |
“Behold the Man!”
“Then came Jesus forth, … And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!”—John 19:5
THE Victory of Jesus which overcame the world was not the victory of supernal powers over conditions which common man must meet unaided and face with blunted weapons; it was not the victory of God clothed with flesh, the so-called “Incarnate” God. It was the victory of the man Christ Jesus over the things which we as new creatures in him must daily face, for he “was in all points tempted like as we are.”—Heb. 4:15
We, who are so prone to fall before temptation, and so prone also to regard the immaculate Christ as one not subject to failure, and therefore immune to defeat, should pause sometimes and contemplate this perfect man, and note wherein he found the strength to conquer. We often err in our estimate of this man. The image seldom comes to us, of the lowly one; the carpenter of Nazareth; the companion of fishermen and despised tax-gatherers; a workman who for years, no doubt, wore the common garments of his calling; one not having where to lay his head; who more than once hungered; was hunted by his enemies, and who found it necessary to flee from them for “his hour was not yet come.”
Too often our minds are subtly influenced by the poetic conception of ritualists and painters, and we think of Jesus as clothed in purple, and attended by obsequious disciples who hung upon his every word. We conceive a man who was never in doubt, never feared, and whose course was so clearly marked that there were never any questions in his mind. But does the divine record so depict him?
The Law of Israel lay heavily on the backs of His people, and no less heavily on His own. He said, “I am come to fulfill” the Law, and He explained that it was easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one jot or tittle of the Law to fail. (Matt. 5:17,18) Did He face the prospect, of fulfilling such a Law without a qualm? Can we say that never a doubt entered His mind when He proclaimed as part of His earthly lot, “I came not to send peace, but a sword”?—Matt. 10:34
We do not, perhaps, stop to consider the depression of soul that must have been His at the coldness of the wise men of His generation; the heartlessness and indifference of the great majority with whom He came in contact; the unhealthy interest in His miracles, as though that was the only object of His mission, and not His message. Have we thought of the dullness of perception and the selfishness of His disciples? How often He must have cried out in spirit for some small measure of understanding, some kinship of heart with His noble heart, so great, so finely tuned!
We know He did, for the Word tells us of it—His agony of spirit. His hours-long prayers to His Father: for only in prayer could He find companionship and surcease from loneliness. He had some degree of pleasure when, finally He could look at the poor remnant of the multitudes which had followed Him—eleven weak, imperfect men—and thank His God that He had managed to keep even these few. And yet even of them He said, “Ye shall be scattered, … and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.”—John 16:32
Often we find it difficult to keep our robes unspotted from the world, even when we have the choice of fellowshiping only with the best of those whom we know. Can we not the more appreciate that strong and healthy pureness of mind and heart, the unswerving purpose of Him who could sit at meat with publicans and sinners, dwell daily with iniquity, and yet with such cleanness of life as should have made even sin ashamed of its ugliness?
And yet, was He more than a man? Was He not a god with some untouchable divinity which protected Him against all contact with evil? The divine record does not say so. Rather the Apostle Paul tells us that “we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than angels for the suffering of death.” This is the same statement made concerning Adam, “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.”—Heb. 2:7,9
To what greatness, then, cannot mankind ascend! This we witness in the Man of Galilee. We see it in His sublime indifference to the clamor of the mob thirsting for His life—the mob which yesterday greeted Him with hosannas; the malevolence of the temple politicians who feared His influence; the contempt of His fellow-townsmen; the aloofness of His own family; the coldness of this disciple, the treachery of another.
No, He was not more than a perfect man, but He was the greatest man who ever lived!
Look again at the transparent honesty of the man. He made no claims to personal cleverness. The things which He taught were not of His own finding out. They were His Father’s, not His.
No personal will or desire interposed a barrier between that pure heavenly truth and those who heard it from His lips; He had no ambition but one, to do the will of Him who sent Him—“I and My Father are one.” (John 10:30) Thus His teaching was absolute, and none could gainsay it. So simple was He, and yet so great, that after nineteen centuries no leader has arisen in this earth who has or can displace Him and His teachings.
What man, what sect, what church has ever applied His simple rule of life, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, … soul, … strength, and … mind, and thy neighbor as thyself” as He showed them how it should be applied? (Luke 10:27) “Take up thy cross, and follow Me.” (Matt. 16:24) Men have wrestled with this simple demand for honest, wholehearted consecration to God as the prime requisite for salvation; have distorted it into every conceivable form in an endeavor to explain something which is so simple as to require no explanation, until today one looks in vain for a denominational church which is content to rest everything on this simple premise.
But no excellence of aim, no sublimity of achievement could safeguard Him from distress and suffering. It was God’s will for Him to be despised and rejected of men. His earthly brothers “did not believe in Him”; His townsmen “were offended in Him” and said, “Whence hath He this wisdom? Is not this the son of Joseph the carpenter?” (John 7:5; Matt. 13:54-58) The learned men who sought to trap Him with trick questions, confounded by His simple, impeachable wisdom, said, “He has a devil.”—John 8:48; 10:20
Some said He was a “good man.” and others answered, Yes, but He talks against the temple. The worldly-wise Pharisees disliked Him for His warnings against them as “devourers of widows’ houses”—no common workman should thus speak to education and authority! (Matt. 23:14) The Pharisee looked for a King, a Son of David, not an obscure though divinely blessed child born in a stable, the companion of ignorant fishermen, the friend of sinners who spoke to outcast Samaritan women and offered them hope, and who looked for lost sheep. They sent sneered at the Galilean. How could He be a prophet!
Some again, content to accept what those in authority approved, asked, like the chief priests and Pharisees of the returning “officers,” “Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on Him?” (John 7:45-48) And for them, that apparently settled the matter. When Jesus said he wasn’t seeking his own glory and that if a man kept his saying, that man would never see death, these same Pharisees said, “Now we know that thou halt a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets. … Art thou greater than … Abraham?” (John 8:50-53) What could such men have made of the Sermon on the Mount? In it they would have found every cause for offense—blasphemy against Moses and the Law, an overthrowing of the sacred traditions, a veritable shaking of the ark—for in that sermon He said nothing of new moons and phylacteries, nor of shewbread and tithes. He ignored the delicate social differences of Levite and priest; in fact, He seemed to have no respect for any of the niceties nor even the essentials of the temple worship. He was no better than an infidel!
Yet there were men who listened to Him. Those who were to arrest Him said, “Never man spake like this man.” (John 7:46) The seed of truth which He sowed did not all fall on the stony ground of religious intolerance; some of it fell on good ground, and brought forth its respective thirty, sixty, and hundred-fold. Priests and Levites stopped their ears; but harlots, and publicans, and fishermen listened and entered the Kingdom before them. Women who were looked at askance by the “godly,” washed His feet with their tears, and were blessed. The cold-hearted religionist shut up his God behind the curtains of a holy place, and embalmed His blessings in the sacred scrolls, but on the hillside and the seashore the Man who had fellowship with His Father threw open the doors of God’s favor to any who had ears to hear.
Some came to this man of the people whose simple wisdom confounded the wise, and caught some faint glimmer of the dawn-light shining through His words. Asked by this strange preacher, “Whom say ye that I am?” Peter replied, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt. 16:15,16) But then, he was only an ignorant fisherman who probably couldn’t write his own name legibly. Yet Jesus thought enough of his answer to attribute it to divine education, the Word of the Lord!
Some were able to grasp the great and simple truth that the way to God was not through the blood of bulls and goats—nor through ritualism—“Thou desirest not sacrifice … thou delightest not in burnt offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”—Psa. 51:16-17
We cannot tell—no man can tell—the feelings which this new doctrine awakened when heard for the first time. The freedom from priestly ritual and iron-bound rules must have seemed like a veritable breath of spring blowing over the sterile wastes of formalized religion. There must have been many a Simeon waiting for this consolation; many a Mary longing for her “better part”; many a soul in fisherman’s cabin and in stately home that caught at least a glimpse of the truth as God’s light shone through some crevice which Hope made in the wall of Prejudice and Superstition that man had erected between himself and his God.
Even these would scarce dare to believe the vision, such was their awe of Moses and the Law and their reverence for the priest. To them the words of Jesus must have sounded divine, for they brought hope to the weary spirit, rest to the toiler, relieved pain of its sting, affliction of despair. “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.”—Matt. 5:3,5
There must have been many who were tired of mere formalistic religion which had lost its meaning; pained with the prostitution of temple worship and priestly hypocrisy. These were hungering and thirsting for righteousness, yet knowing no road to reach it, for error and prejudice and priestcraft had blinded them so that they dared not think as men, nor look on the sunlight which God was ready to shed in their minds. But this new gospel of tolerance and love, of personal sacrifice and heavenly aim, did its work in their hearts, when once they yielded themselves to its beneficent influence.
Roman might, at the behest of priestly iniquity, tore their Leader from them and hung Him on a cross, but He still lived on in the hearts of His disciples. And yet they feared, and sought some relief from the intolerable loss of their dearest hopes. “I go afishing,” said Peter, and six other disciples joined him; but at the first contact with the risen Lord the boat was again abandoned on the shore, the net left untended on the drying rack. (John 21: 1-14) The Spirit would not down, and the pull of earthly interests had not the power to hold them. At the bidding of the man in whom they had believed and followed they left all again, and continued to follow—to the upper room, and the cloven tongues of fire, and to fullness of understanding!—Acts 1:12-14; 2:1-4
Poor they may have been, ignorant, unlearned men, but they had now a purpose and a message—a new knowledge to impart. The Kingdom of which the man had spoken so often seemed nearer now, and many must yet hear of it. That was their task, as the Master declared, “I will make you fishers of men.”—Matt. 4:19
Then started the strangest contest men have ever seen. On the one hand all the strength of the world—the Jews with their ancient records from the hands of Moses, David, Isaiah and all the prophets; their Law from the hands of Jehovah, attested by miracles, upheld and defended by priests, children of Levi, sons of Aaron; the temple, strong without, and beautiful within, with its golden porch, its Beautiful gate, its ceremonials from ancient time; the wealth of the powerful; the pride, self-interest, and prestige of the priestly class; the indifference of the worldly; the hatred of the wicked, the scorn of the learned, the contempt of the great—these were all arrayed against the humble followers of Jesus.
Allied with Jewish power was Grecian learning, still more confounded with a chaos of religion with its deep mysteries and priestly power; its schools of sophism, its false philosophies and its cynicism; its pomp, festivals, games to hold the multitude; arts, science, heroes and gods, poetry and sculpture.
There, too, was the mistress of the world, Rome the mighty, queen of nations, conqueror of kings who, seated on her seven hills, compelled the tribute of a world. She was haughty and insolent and looked with amused contempt on Greeks and Egyptians, and permitted them, because she did not fear them, to erect their temples and worship as they wished.
On this side were all the wealth, education, power, folly and sin of the world. On the other side, what? A handful of ignorant—according to the standards of this present, evil world order—Jewish fishermen, despised at home, unknown abroad; collected and held together in the name of a small village working-man, who died on the cross, and whom they believed to be risen from the dead. They had no temple, no ritual, no scrap of handwriting of Him whom they called Leader; but little money, no human philosophy, no eloquence.
A Roman gave them no heed because they were so utterly beneath contempt. A priest of Jerusalem looked at them askance, only as they might, for a little while, continue to disturb the people with their resurrection nonsense, believing, probably, that if it got too obnoxious, the Sanhedrin would know how to deal with these “fools” who continued to deify the Man whose body they had “stolen away by night.”—Matt. 28:13
But pride, prejudice, power, all failed before a God-given truth, for truth is indestructible, and whatever these fishermen lacked, one thing they did possess was the truth!
At first these preachers of a new religion had false notions on many subjects; they were full of Jewish technicalities and fables; looked for the almost immediate return of their Christ “with power and great glory.” They quarreled among themselves on points of doctrine. Paul, writing to the churches of Galatia, speaks of Peter’s dissembling for fear of the Jews—“But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.” (Gal. 2:11-16) In spite, however, of their follies and early mistakes, these earnest Jews had something—a religious fire burned in their breasts, the Word of God, the Word of the man Christ Jesus, which grew and prevailed. We see the rising tide of the new religion as it flows from the lakeshore of Galilee, through Jerusalem, Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, Corinth, Rome, till, in all nations it leaves its indelible mark.
Strange doctrine! It did not offer to emancipate the slave, but told him to be a better slave. It did not demand of the master freedom for his bond-servants, but admonished him to be a better master. “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh. … with good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men. … And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with Him.”—Eph. 6:5-9
Rome, which first tried by fire and sword, and the fang and claw of wild beasts to exterminate this dangerous heresy, at last recognized its growing power, and debauched it to the use of political advancement. Thus, with its rising power, this new faith becomes corrupted.
By compromising a little here and a little there in order that power may be the more rapidly gained and more absolute, the persecuted became the persecutors; the humble, proud; and the pure stream of truth becomes a murky and polluted water.
Christianity in a Dark World
Christianity came to the world in a dark hour, when old ideas were being doubted, and new desires were making restless the masses of mankind. It was a transition period in history to which the new doctrine gave direction and impetus. Christianity came as a light shining in darkness, and it also came as a fulfillment of prophecy. Men stood in need of something, not realizing what it was, and perhaps this was it. So men eventually flocked to the standard of the cross because it was made popular, its stigma being removed, but ignoring its upward, heavenward pointing finger, and seeing only its potentiality for authority and earthly emolument.
Today, the pure truth taught by the carpenter of Nazareth again points the way through world chaos to a brighter dawn; for today, again, He has come, but not as in the days of His flesh, but as a Ruler a Mighty Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, in “power and great glory.” Thus, hope fills the hearts of His disciples of today with holy joy, even as they approach the end of their “tabernacling” in the flesh.
And yet they are still flesh, for this Holy Spirit of righteousness, joy, and peace, is held precariously in an earthen vessel. Violence and cunning still oppose those who travel the way of the cross; temptations still obstruct the pathway of the pure in heart; they fear and are afraid oftentimes, and regret that they are so imperfect.
Let all such look again at the man, Jesus, in the days of his earthly ministry. Let them listen to his voice, speaking from the depths of his own experience: “And he was withdrawn from them … and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”—Luke 22:41,42
And again, to His disciples, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. I will not leave you comfortless. I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. … Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”—John 14:1,18,16,17,27; Luke 12:32
So prayed and so spoke Jesus, the man of God, the noble Leader who, with bleeding feet and breaking heart, showed the way of sacrifice that leads to the crown of glory. The way of the cross is the thorny road he offered to his followers as the way to Life. He promised no easy path, but showed by example that there was help available for every time of need.
The risen Christ is the assurance of the victory for all his faithful footsteps followers—“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”—John 16:33
The glorified Christ, the reigning King of kings, is an earnest of the inheritance of the saints. To the overcomers is given the crown of life: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”—Rev. 3:21
The glorious hope is the great incentive to days of sacrifice and suffering in this life. But oftentimes there is discouragement, the feeling that the “prize of the high calling of God” is too great to aspire to, too remote to attain. Temptations prove strong, and failures are common, until the wayfarer ceases to look at the bright shining over the hilltop, and sees nothing but the thorns and rocks among which he stumbles along the way.
But, dim and shadowy though it may be, the eye of faith can see ahead a weary figure who was “touched with a feeling of our infirmities,” who struggled through the heat and burden of the day, who bore the sneers and reveling of the scornful, who lacked companionship to cheer Him, and whose only recourse for peace of mind and heart was in prayer to His Father.
Look often at that man, for with His stripes we are healed. Think often of His temptations and regard His victories, not of course, in His own strength but in the power of Him that sent Him, and follow the pattern He laid out. Follow Him, the “author and finisher of our faith” who “endured so great a contradiction of sinners against Himself.”