The Manifestation Of Jesus Christ

( Originally Published 1913 )

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."—PHIL. ii. 5.

THE religious character, the character of the servant of God, which was in due time to grow up and blossom into the " mind of Christ," is shown to us in various stages of its growth in the Old Testament, from the first step of realising God, the faith and self-abandonment of Abraham, and the severe ethical schooling of the law, to the burst of feeling, thought, imagination, affection, which we meet with in the Psalms and Prophets. In depth and reality and strength of purpose there is no difference to be traced ; the elements which are unfolded at a later stage are implicit, or partially anticipated, in the earlier; but in fulness and richness of detail, in range of ideas and capacity for expression, in the shaping and heightening and refining of its various elements, we see a development and expansion going on, till we have the character, as it could be reached before our Lord, in the history and words of the prophets. So men learned to pray, to feel, to think, to teach. It was the fruit of the long discipline of the Jewish Church. In the Holy Family; in the devout shepherds of Bethlehem ; in Zacharias and Elisabeth, " righteous before God and walking in all the commandments and ordinances blameless;" in Simeon, "just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel," and Anna, the prophetess, "serving God with fastings and prayers night and day," and "speaking to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem;" in the great Baptist himself, in the Twelve, in the " Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile," and in so many others, we see all that this character did, in fitting souls for what Jesus Christ had to teach them. And, on the other hand, in Saul the Pharisee, the "Hebrew of the Hebrews," Saul " zealous towards God," Saul, "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless," " living in all good conscience," but hating the name of Jesus, and only thinking of doing God service by persecuting God's saints, we see how far short this character might fall, even in its higher forms, of the " mind of Christ."

But that religious character, hitherto nursed and fostered in the Jewish Church, was to give place to something deeper and yet more perfect. In its higher types, as well as in its shortcomings and perversions, it was to give place, as the flower to the fruit, as childhood to manhood. For the great change, with which all patriarchal and Jewish hope and thought were saturated, without yet knowing all it meant and was to be, came at last. For "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" "and was made man "—with man's life to lead, and man's death to die, and if we may venture so to speak of what words are inadequate to express, with human character to raise to its highest purity and power, as the model and standard to His creatures.

No change that ever was, none that could be imagined, was so great as this presence of Jesus Christ among us; but this greatest of changes came into the world in silence ; outwardly it seemed continuous with the past ; He Who was to make all things new "came down," as the Psalmist had said, " like the rain into a fleece of wool, even as the drops that water the earth." And as with other things, so it was with this change and elevation of the idea and type of the religious character. Very early in His teaching our Master set before men what in His eyes were its true excellences and its necessary conditions. In the Sermon on the Mount He has drawn in outlines that will endure to the end of time the picture of what in His kingdom is accounted the true and perfect life. He has set His seal and His blessing on the qualities which are its distinguishing features ; He has pointed out its perversions and the mistakes made about it ; He has interpreted what were held to be its laws ; He has pointed out the fatal dangers—outward show and hollow untruth and unreality—which make of religious life a ruin. But He emphatically disclaimed, in this teaching, any break with truths received before. It was the old truth, illuminated, unfolded, enforced with more solemn sanction and greater authority. " Think not that I am come to destroy the law, and the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." The great novelty was that He was in earnest ; that He put the real meaning to what others taught and handed down in words. In the Beatitudes were the marks and tokens of the true citizens of that Kingdom of Heaven which He was announcing. But every one of the Beatitudes in substance and spirit, more than one in actual words, had been spoken before by Psalmist or prophet. He seemed to be but carrying on their work; to be but confirming once more what their hearts and convictions had made them feel to be the truth. He seemed to be only summing up with the authority of a Master who knew all things, and could not be mistaken, what His servants had already declared to a world which could not be persuaded, and had remained deaf to their witness.

But was this all ? Is this enough to satisfy the meaning of that "mind of Christ," which was henceforth to be the aim and the measure of the Christian character ? Oh, indeed believe it, that was much, to have the highest righteousness of the Old Testament raised to the completeness of the Sermon on the Mount. That was no mere outward and formal, legal righteousness, which filled the heart of the Psalmist, which spoke and lived in Isaiah and Daniel, which was preached by the great Forerunner who was "filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb," than whom "no greater had risen among them that were born of women." That was no artificial or conventional righteousness which passed so naturally into the first words and teaching of Christ, the first and fundamental announcement of the spirit and ethical character which were to be in His disciples. But beyond even all this, with Christ there came, there could not but come, something more. The example which He showed was something the world had not yet seen. The work which He came to do was some-thing which the mind of man could not have dared to imagine. The opening of the heavens which came with His ministry on earth, the light which rose with it on the dark questions of human existence, changed the very meaning of human life. How could our life be the same, into which His life had come—in which we had " seen with our eyes and looked upon, and our hands handled" the Eternal Word? How could things not be new, where "deep called to deep " in the Cross of Jesus Christ, the deeps of human sin and human misery, and the deeps of the love of God.

What do we see ? How is the "mind of Jesus Christ" gradually disclosed in the history of His ministry and work ? It begins with the same words which describe the Baptist's austere preaching—" Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He expands, with even more heart-searching thoroughness, the Baptist's call to depth and reality of obedience. The Sermon on the Mount enforces the great lesson of righteousness in language as stern and as unrelenting as any to be found in the Bible. The New Testament, with all its glad tidings of mercy, is a severe book, and it begins its teaching in the most severe form. But the history goes on, and we see the great and awful "Prophet," as He seemed, revealing more and more the most wonderful and unexpected sympathy with men in all that they suffer and all that they need, the most tender compassion for what torments and bows them down, whether sin or pain ; the most fearless indulgence for the weak and tempted ; the most gracious bounty ; the attractiveness which makes the lowliest and the children come to Him, the loftiness which welcomes the humblest company, and makes Him indifferent to where He lays His head. The Preacher of the Sermon on the Mount takes to Himself the prophetic description—" The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." And so it was. No one comes near Him without blessing. The leper is not told to stand aloof, but is made whole. The fever in the disciple's household is cured with the touch of His hand. The humble faith of proselytes and aliens, of the centurion praying for his poor sick servant, of the Syrophenician woman praying for her sick daughter, of the sufferer trying to steal a cure from the hem of His garment, is recognised and blest. This is what men saw when they followed in His track ;—" the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk ; the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear ; the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." Men applied to Him the prophet's words, " Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." His dwelling, His companionship is with the crowds—the poor, the unknown, and uncared for. But He throws Himself without flinching into the company of all men, not only at the marriage at Cana and the supper at Bethany, but at the feast at the Pharisee's house, or "eating and drinking with publicans and sinners." It is not that the early severity has disappeared. It is not that the sense of the conflict with evil, with the treacheries and sins of the self-blinded human will, is less keen and persistent. In the moment of mercy and healing and relief the sin that needed pardon as well is not forgotten. It is strange that any one can be blind to the sternness of Jesus Christ. But along with the severity which is never far off—severity to Himself, severity to those whom He chooses and commissions and trusts—" he that taketh not up his cross is not worthy of Me "—severity to all double motives and wavering professions, severity to that wicked hatred of good which refuses to see it when it is as the sun in the heavens—along with His awful severity, which waxes more and more awful as the history moves to its end, there is also close beside it the stream of ineffable and overflowing tenderness—to the little children, to the woman that was a sinner, to the fainting and hungry multitude, to the despair of the house of Jairus, to the widow following the funeral of her only son, to the sisters of Lazarus His "friend," to the bewildered and heart-stricken disciples of whom He had to take leave. The tenderness deepens as the sternness becomes more terrible ; and terrible as this sternness grows to be, both in language and demean-our, it is this tenderness in its numberless forms and inexhaustible freedom and depth that has stamped its special mark on the story. And at length the end comes : the Last Supper, the Agony in the garden, the great prayer of intercession, "having loved His own, He loved them to the end;" and then the Judgment-seat, the Cross, the Last Words, words of thought for others in His own extremest need—" Woman, behold thy son," "Father, forgive them," "This day shalt thou be with Me." That is what men saw, and remembered, and have written down for us, and have burned into the memory. of the world. And then they learned who He was Who had so gone in and out among them. They saw Him "declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead." They found that they had seen, in the conditions of our mortal life, the only-begotten Son of the Father.

Here, then, was given among other things the standard and ideal of the religious character. Hitherto it had attained its highest point, in the Psalms and Prophets, and in the lives of those who had drunk in their spirit; and who can say that that point was not a high one ? Who, with the Psalms in his hands, can say that the love of God, the hope of His goodness, the certainty of His kingdom, the humility and resignation of the penitent, are faintly shown there? But all was not there. " I tell you," says our Master, " that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them." " All these having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." Jesus Christ had lived and died, and now the whole religious character must take a fresh colour from the great change. Jesus Christ had lived a human life. In much of it it was not possible for man to follow Him ; but in much it was possible, and it was what He meant His disciples to do. He had taught men more about God and about themselves than the best of them had known before. He had given light, He had brought strength, He had unsealed affections and appealed to motives beyond the reach even of patriarchs and prophets. Much as there must be essentially in common in the religious character, as we read it in the Old Testament, and in the New, we feel that there is a definite and striking difference. New elements have been added to it. It has become a new combination. For now it can have no other model than the life and the mind of the Incarnate Son.

Many things, as is natural, contribute to make this difference. But in the New Testament two great ideas force themselves into new prominence, profoundly affecting religious character : the idea of sin, and the idea of the love of God ; the love of God to man, the love of man to God, and to man for God's sake.

No one can fail to see that the idea of sin was greatly deepened by our Lord's coming. The truth about sin was an awful part of the revelation of Christianity. He came to redeem us from it, to forgive, to heal it; but the measure of its mischief is the Cross ; the Passion of the Son of God was needed for its remedy, and not the darkest passages of the Old Testament can so disclose the judgment of God about its malignity. The New Testament opens a new chapter in our thoughts about sin, its mystery, its certainty, its consequences, its deadly haunting and presence, not only in outward acts, but in the secret of thought and imagination and conscience, in the springs of the will—sin, the act of the moral being, the turning away from truth and good and right and purity, of the real self within a man. In our Lord's earthly life we are shown what sin could do in its many forms to thwart His work ; and its power, we know, is in the world still. The consciousness of sin within and around, the consciousness of what sin really is, the sense of its subtleties, its horrors, the fear of its snares, the necessities of conflict, have struck deep into the religious character of Christians, and they show dark and terrible in contrast with the stainless purity of our Lord. Men are serious when they learn some grave fact about themselves, some fatal unsoundness of constitution, some peril to their happiness. Religious men have had henceforth to take into account their knowledge of this deep disease of their nature, which has come with the greater light of our Lord's presence and holiness.

The spirit which was to be His gift was to " convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment," to open the eyes of men more widely, and in a way not known before, to the depth and meaning of these tremendous certainties. But as revelation more wonderful and surprising even than that—for conscience had not been idle in the past generations of mankind—was the counterpart to this dread unveiling. It was the coming of its remedy. It was the idea, in the breadth and dominant greatness in which Christianity presented it, of the love of God. The love of God, the love of God in Christ Jesus, the love of God in His presence among us, in His acceptance of the extremities of our lot, in His infinite compassion and infinite patience, in the tenderness of His inexhaustible sympathy—the love of God in the manger of Bethlehem, the love of God in the awful Passion at Jerusalem—in Jesus Christ dying for the world, in Jesus Christ victorious, in Jesus Christ reigning, in the perpetual Presence, in the ever-inspiring Comforter, in the unceasing Intercession—that was the "glad tidings" which fills the New Testament—which is the record of that great change in the religious aspects of life, for which God had been preparing mankind for long years, and which with the fulness of time was now come. "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son"—"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends "—" As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down My life for the sheep"—"Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end"—"The propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world "—all these and like wonderful sayings which throng into our memory as the daily food of our souls--what could the utmost revealed to the elder Church, all that faith and hope most relied on then, be, when compared with these? Who could have spoken then, as it was simply natural and reasonable for Peter and Paul and John to speak—" Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee ; " "Who loved me and gave Himself for me"—"To know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge" —" Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins ; . . and we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him."

Such a truth, such a faith, could not come into religious life and character without making it different from anything that it could have been before. The great thought of the love of God, familiar as it was to the elder saints, could not but mean much more now than it ever had meant before. Love—love that could not be doubted—that kept back nothing—that accepted no limit—spoke and revealed itself as it never had done, supreme and paramount, in the words and ministry of Jesus Christ. We must wait till the next world before we can understand to the full the meaning of all that we saw " in the face of Christ Jesus," of all that we heard of His words, of all that He did among us. But that stupendous appeal to man's deepest feeling, to his imagination, to his most serious thought and reason, could not but create, in what men did and lived for, something which was new in the world. After Jesus Christ, the soul of religion—I do not say the foundation, or other necessary adjuncts or organs, but the soul and energetic principle of religion—could be only love—love with its freedom, its inventiveness, its fearlessness, its generosity, its joy. Obedience to God must take the shape of love. After such a self-sacrifice, self-sacrifice and self-devotion must become not an occasional heroism, but the natural and habitual mood of the religious soul. The love of God, that love which gave His Son for all the world, broke down at once the barriers of race and polity and religion, all privileges of a chosen seed or an imperial citizenship, all the most deeply rooted distinctions of caste or blood, and made all men brethren, all men one in Jesus Christ, Greek and Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free—all one, in the unity and in the common hopes of the human race. It gave every man a new interest in all men. It bound all together with the certainty of being equally cared for and thought of, for Jesus Christ had loved all, and died for all. What must sin now be to him who believed that Jesus Christ in His love for men had died for the sins of men ; had died, "the just for the unjust, to bring us unto God " ? What were "the sufferings of this present time," what were the utmost that we could win or achieve in it, when men remembered the love and. the power of Him Who had come to "seek and to save us," and Who meant us to be "with Him where He is"? The scene of man's great interests was shifted from this familiar world, with its objects, its pleasures, its troubles : there was much to do here still, much to be thankful for, much to hope, much to strive for, much to suffer; but the light had broken upon it from the world above, and had altered all proportions and all perspectives. Was it not reason now to say--" Set your affections on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God '' ? "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Can anything be more natural—could anything be more original and new at the time—than the pictures of religious character given by the Apostles as the reflections of the mind of Christ and directly connected with what He was and did ? "Beloved," says St. John, speaking of his tremendous theme with almost a child's simplicity, "if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." Or take one of St. Paul's varied descriptions—so varied, I had almost said so picturesque, so suggestive of what is true and bright and happy and noble in character, breathing the profoundest peace, the strongest moral effort, the most joyful self-surrender to God, all that purity of thought and motive without which man cannot hope to see the face of God in the next world, or to live the life of God in this. Take such a passage as the 12th chapter of the Romans, or the impassioned burst in the First Epistle to the Corinthians on Charity, moving with the rhythmic march of the loftiest Hebrew Psalm or Greek chorus. Or take the following from one of the central group of Epistles—" Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering ; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any : even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also ye are called in one body : and be ye thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom ; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him ;" and then follows a series of details about the duties and affections of daily home life. Or these words—which, as we have just heard, lend themselves so beautifully to music 1—" Rejoice in the Lord alway ; and again I say, rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing ; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus " —and then winding up with that magnificent summary of all that can make a man not only holy, but great, not only a saint, but a hero. " Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are-honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." When had the world heard words so strange, and yet so reasonable ?

And thus there has come,—the crown of the long travail of the ages of God's patience, in the only way in which it could come—a form and type of human character, not in idea, but in real life and action, which was a new thing among men, which reflects the thought and temper of Him " Who loved us and gave Himself for us "—built up on the foundation of the old religious character, as it had been developed from the first to the days of John the Baptist, inheriting strength and severity from its almost Puritan strictness—inheriting from it devotion, reverence, and godly fear, its confidence, its thankfulness, its triumphant joy, and all that deep music in the minor key of which the Psalms and Prophets are full ; but a new and mighty spirit had breathed into it—breathed into it from the love and victory of the Passion and the Cross—breathed into it unearthly serenity and sweetness and daring, breathed into it new affections and new hopes. A copy of the " mind of Christ," it came with new and unthought-of possibilities of goodness. It was no dream, no speculation, no theory on paper or literary picture. It has proved itself by the continuous trial of centuries and by a thousand tests ; by infinitely varied images of mercy, nobleness, self-discipline, self-devotion ; by the martyr's fortitude and the missionary's sacrifice ; proved itself in many a patient and suffering life, in many a generous enterprise, in many a holy deathbed, in the blessed peace and innocence of countless homes. "Many prophets and kings have desired to see the things which we see, and have not seen them:" to be able to look back over such a company of the saints, and with Bishop Andrewes to give God thanks "for their faith, their hope, their labours, their truth, their blood, their zeal, their diligence, their tears, their purity, their beauty." Shall we now be content with a righteousness which does not exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, which at best goes no further than a form of Jewish obedience? Or must we not feel that in days like ours something more is wanting—something stronger, something more real, to nerve to effort and to endure in trial ? My brethren, be of those who have done something to raise the standard of righteousness in the world. Some of you may have noticed the saying quoted the other day of a keen observer who was not a believer—" The advance of society "—he might have said, " the advance of the kingdom of God "—"depends on the constant exertions of the good man ; when he abandons these exertions, it drops back like lead." Do we not need in these perilous times—of which the splendour, and power, and bewildered moral and religious thought remind us at moments of the closing days of the Roman Empire—do we not need to clear our confused fancies, to readjust our standard, to retemper our slack souls, to refresh our hopes, by setting before us the health and directness and simplicity of the religious character, shown in the New Testament ? If we are to be happy and at peace, we must face seriously the Apostles' lesson—that in all that men think of one another and themselves, in all they do to one another or for one another, in all they claim from others or yield to others, in the whole intercourse and governance and direction of life, there is for Christians but one true standard and model. " If there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the spirit," if these things are not shadows and self-delusions, then in all that you do or think—" let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross."