The Double Search: Studies in Atonement and PrayerJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
The Double Search: Studies in Atonement and Prayer
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Atonement; Prayer -- Christianity
“In fullness of time God sent forth His Son.” How shall we think
of Jesus that is called the Christ? Speaking first in the terms of
evolution, _I_ think of Him as the type and goal of the race--the
new Adam, the spiritual norm and pattern, the Son of Man who is a
revelation of what man at his height and full stature is meant to
be; and this is the way Paul thought of Him: “Till _we all_ come in
the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto
a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.” Eph. IV, 13. “Whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son that _He_ might be the first born
among many brethren.” Rom. VIII, 29. “The expectation of the whole
creation is waiting for the manifestation of sons of God.” Rom. VIII,
19.
The actual fact is that this Life has, profoundly or remotely, touched
every personal life in Europe for a thousand years and has been the
goal and standard for all aspiring souls. He is the pattern in the
mount, the _a fronte_ force which has drawn the individual and the race
steadily up to their higher destiny. On the spiritual side of “the
great divide” the goal is in sight and the goal is an efficient factor
in the process of the evolution of the man within man.
But this pattern-aspect of the Christ life is only one aspect, and we
must not raise it out of due balance and perspective. _Christ is God
humanly revealed._ As soon as we realize that personality is always
a revelation of the ultimate reality of the universe there are no
metaphysical difficulties in the way of an actual incarnation of God.
It is rather what one would expect. There is no other conceivable way
in which God could be revealed to man. If He is a personal being; if
He is love and tenderness and sympathy, and not mere force, only a
Person can show Him. And if we are not kindred in nature, if we have
not something in common, in a word if we are not _conjunct_, then it
is hard to see how any revelation of Him could be made which would mean
anything to us. But if we are _conjunct_, as our own self-consciousness
implies, then an incarnation, a complete manifestation in Personality,
or as Paul puts it, “in the face of Jesus Christ,” is merely the crown
and pinnacle of the whole divine process.
If we are wise we shall not bother ourselves too much over the
metaphysical puzzles which the schoolmen have formulated. We no longer
have the puzzle which was so urgent with them, how two natures,
pole-wide apart, could be united in one Person, for we now know that
divinity and humanity are not pole-wide apart. There is something human
in God and something divine in man and they belong together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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