meditatingly noting the evidence of the presupposition of His heavenly origin and relations, of His pre- existence, of His more than human majesty, of His divine powers and functions. These things are so much a matter of course with Matthew that the at- tention of the reader is dra-wn insensibly off from them to profounder problems. This Gospel opens with an account of the supernatural birth of Jesus, which Is so told as to imply that the birth is supernatural only because the person so born is not of this world, but in descending to it fulfills the prophecies that Jehovah shall come to His people to dwell among them and to save them from their sins. From the very outset, therefore, there can be no question in the mind of the reader that he has to deal not merely with a super- natural life but with a supernatural person, all whose life on earth is a concession to a necessity arising solely from His purpose to save.^ No wonder rises in him, therefore, when he reads of the supramundane powers of this person, of His superhuman insight, of His supernatural deeds. That He is superior to the angels, who appear constantly as His servants, and is in some profound sense divine, clothed with all divine qualities, strikes him as In no sense strange. The matters on which he finds his mind keenly alert rise above these
iCf. W. C. Allen, Hastings' D. C. G., I., 308: "In the thought of the evangelist, Jesus, born of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit, was the preexistent Messiah (= the Beloved) or Son (ii^^), who had been forechosen by God (31^^ 17^) > and who, when born into the world as Jesus, was * God-with-us ' (i^^). In this respect the writer of the First Gospel shows himself to be under the influence of the same con- ception of the Person of Christ that dominates the Johannine theology, though this conception under the categories of the Logos and the Divine Son is worked out much more fully in the Fourth than in the First Gospel."
Matthezv's Conception of Our Lord 91
things, and concern the precise relations in which this superangelic, and therefore uncreated, Being is con- ceived to stand to the Deity Himself.
It is not possible to avoid noting that all the desig- nations applied to Jesus in this narrative tend to run Richness ^P ^^ once on being applied to Him of His into their highest implications. Even
Implications ^]^g simple name ' Jesus ' is no exception to this. For here it is represented as itself a gift from heaven, designed to indicate that in this person Is ful- filled the promise that Jehovah shall visit His people, - — for it is He who, In accordance with the prediction of the Psalmist (130^), shall save His people — His people, although, in accordance with that prediction, they are Jehovah's people — from their sins (i^^). Similarly the sim^ple honorifics ' Master ' and ' Lord ' rise in Matthew's hands to their highest value; ' Mas- ter ' becomes transformed Into the more absolute *' Master of the House " with His despotic power, governing all things in accordance with His will (20^^) and disposing of the destinies of men In supreme sov- ereignty (lO"^ j^24seq.,36seq.^ . ^^^ ' Lord ' bccomes the proper designation of the universal King and Judge (25^^'*^) whose coming is the coming of Jehovah (3^). As the ' Christ ' He Is pictured as sitting less on David's throne than on God's (22^^''^^) ; as ' King,' less as the ruler of the nation for Israel than as Judge of all the world for God (25^^ ^^'*); as 'Bridegroom' as holding In His own hands the Issues of life (22^ 25^) ; as ' the Son of Man ' as passing through humiliation only to His own proper glory (16^^ 24^^ 26^*); as ' the Son of God ' less as God's representative and the vehicle of His grace than as God's fellow (n^^) and
92 The Designations of Our Lord
the sharer with the Father in the one ineffable Name (28'^"^°). Thus the reader is brought steadily upwards to the great passages in which Matthew records Jesus' supreme self-testimony to His essential relations with His Father, and his attention is quite insistently focused upon them.
" All things were delivered unto me of my Father,"
says Jesus, as reported in one of them (ii"^) : " and
Assimilation "o One knoweth the Son save the
of Jesus Father; neither doth any know the