The Jesus of HistoryGlover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Religion
The Jesus of History
Glover, T. R. (Terrot Reaveley)
Jesus Christ -- Historicity
When we return to the teaching of Jesus, we find that he draws a
clear and sharp line between right and wrong. He indicates that
right is right to the end of all creation, and wrong is wrong up to
the very Judgement Throne of God (Matt. 25). He views these things,
as the old phrase puts it, "sub specie aeternitatis", from the
outlook of eternity. Right and wrong do not meet at infinity. There
is no higher synthesis that can make them one and the same thing.
Everything with Jesus is Theocentric, and until God changes there
will be no very great change in right and wrong. Partly because he
uses the language of his day, partly because he thinks as a rule in
pictures, his language is apt to be misconstrued by moderns. But the
central ideas are clear enough. "How are you to escape the judgement
of Gehenna?" he asks the Pharisees (Matt. 23:33; the subjunctive
mood is worth study). It is not a threat, but a question. There
yawns the chasm; with your driving, how do you think you can avoid
disaster? He warns men of a doom where the worm dies not and the
fire is not quenched; a man will do well to sacrifice hand, foot or
eye, to save the rest of himself from that (Mark 9:43-48). But a
more striking picture, though commonly less noticed, he draws or
suggests in talk at the last supper. "Simon, Simon, behold Satan
asked for you to sift you as wheat, but I prayed for thee, that thy
faith fail not; and thou, when thou comest back, strengthen thy
brethren" (Luke 22:31, 32). The scene suggested is not unlike that
at the beginning of the Book of Job, or that in the Book of
Zechariah (chap. 3). There is the throne of God, and into that
Presence pushes Satan with a demand--the verb in the Greek is a
strong one, though not so strong as the Revised Version suggests.
Satan "made a push to have you." "But I prayed for thee."
To any reader who has any feeling or imagination, what do these
short sentences mean? What can they mean, from the lips of a thinker
so clear and so serious, and a friend so tender? What but
unspeakable peril? The language has for us a certain strangeness;
but it shows plainly enough that, to Jesus' mind, the disciples, and
Peter in particular, stood in danger, a danger so urgent that it
called for the Saviour's prayer. So much it meant to him, and he
himself tells Peter what he had realized, what he had done, in
language that could not be mistaken or forgotten. To the nature of
the danger that sin involves, we shall return. Meanwhile we may
consider what Jesus means by sin before we discuss its consequences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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