Consider what this means. Reference has already been made in an earlier
chapter to Christ's witness concerning Himself, to His deep and
unwavering consciousness of separateness from all others. But more
striking, perhaps, than any illustration mentioned there is that
furnished by the fact before us now. What must His thoughts about
Himself have been who could speak of Himself in relation to all others
as Christ does here? When men write about Jesus as though He were merely
a gentle, trustful, religious genius, preaching a sweet gospel of the
love of God to the multitudes of Galilee, they are but shutting their
eyes to one half of the facts which it is their duty to explain.
Speaking generally, we do well to distrust the dilemma as a form of
argument; but in this case there need be no hesitation in putting the
alternative with all possible bluntness: either Christ was God, or He
was not good. That Jesus, if He were merely a good man, with a good
man's consciousness of and sensitiveness to His own weakness and
limitations, could yet have arrogated to Himself the right to be the
supreme judge and final arbiter of the destinies of mankind, is simply
not thinkable. And the more we ponder the stupendous claim which Christ
makes, the more must we feel that it is either superhuman authority
which speaks to us here or superhuman arrogance. Either Christ spoke out
of the depths of His own Divine consciousness, knowing that the Father
had committed all judgment unto the Son; or He made use of words and put
forth claims which were, and which He must have known to have been,
empty, false, and blasphemous.
Such is the significance of Christ's words in their relation to Himself.
It is, however, with their relation to ourselves that we are primarily
concerned now. Of the wholly unimaginable circumstances of that day when
the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the nations be gathered
before Him I shall not attempt to speak. As Dean Church has well
said,[57] no vision framed with the materials of our present experience
could adequately represent the truth, and, indeed, it is well that our
minds should be diverted from matters which lie wholly beyond our reach,
that they may dwell upon the solemn certainties which Christ has
revealed. Let us think, first of the fact, and secondly of the issues,
of Judgment.
I
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