With God Father save the Son, and he to whom- soever the Son willeth to reveal Him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Thus our Lord solemnly presents Him- self to men as the exclusive source of all knowledge of God, and the exclusive channel of divine grace. No one can know the Father save through Him, and through Him alone can rest be found for weary souls. And this His exclusive mediation of saving knowledge He makes to rest upon His unique relation to the Father, by virtue of w^hich the Father and Son, and all that is in the Father and Son, lie mutually open to each other's gaze. Attention has been called to the fact, and it is important to observe it, that the whole passage is cast in the present tense, and the relation announced to exist between the Father and Son is, therefore, represented not as a past relation but as a continuous and unbroken one. What our Lord asserts is thus not that He once was with the Father and knew His mind, and is therefore fitted to mediate it as His representative on earth: it is that He, though on earth, still is with the Father and knows His mind — yea, and will know it unchangeably forever. The rela-
Matthew's Conception of Our Lord 93
tions of time do not enter into the representation. Our Lord presents Himself as the sole source of the knowl- edge of God and of the divine grace, because this is the relation in which He stands essentially to the Father, — a relation of complete and perfect intercom- munion. The assertion of the reciprocal knowledge of the Father and Son, in other words, rises far above the merely mediatorial function of the Son, although it underlies His mediatorial mission: it carries us back Into the region of metaphysical relations. The Son Is a fit and perfect mediator of the divine knowledge and grace because the Son and the Father are mutually Intercommunicative. The depths of the Son's being, we are told, can be fathomed by none but a divine knowledge, while the knowledge of the Son compasses all that God Is; from both points of view, the Son appears thus as " equal with God."
But even this Is far from the whole story. The perfect reciprocal knowledge of each by the other Identification which Is affirmed goes far towards sug- of Jesus gesting that even equality with God With God £^jjg short of fully expressing the rela- tion In which the Son actually stands to the Father. Equality is an external relation : here there Is indicated an Internal relation which suggests rather the term Interpenetration. There Is a relation with the Father here suggested which transcends all creaturely possi- bilities, and In which there Is no place even for sub- ordination. The man Jesus does Indeed represent Himself as exercising a mediatorial function; what He does Is to reveal the Father and to mediate His grace; and that because of a delivery over to Him by the Father. But this mediatorial function Is rooted
94 The Designations of Our Lord
in a metaphysical relation in which is suggested no hint of subordination. Rather in this region what the Father is that the Son seems to be also. There is mystery here, no doubt, and nothing is done to re- lieve the mystery. All that is done is to enunciate in plain words the conception of the relation actually existing between the Father and Son which supplies their suitable account to all those passages in Matthew in which there seems to be suggested a confusion of Jesus with God, whether in function or in person. If this be the relation of Son and Father — if there is a certain mysterious interpenetration to be recognized between them — then it Is no longer strange that to Jesus is attributed all the functions of God, Including the forgiveness of sins and the universal judgment of men, nor that in Him Is seen the coming of Jehovah to save His people, in His presence with men the fulfillment of the prophecy of ' Immanuel,' God- with-us, in the coming of John the Baptist to prepare His way the fulfillment of the prophecy of the mes- senger to make the way of Jehovah straight, and the like. All things M'ere delivered to Him, in short, be- cause He is none else than God on earth.
Of quite similar import is the great declaration with which the Gospel closes. In this our Lord, announcing
Participation that all authority was given to Him of Jesus in the in heaven and earth — that is, that uni- Name versal dominion was committed to Him
— commands His disciples to advance to the actual con- quest of the world, baptizing all the nations Into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and promises to be Himself with them unto the end of the world (28^'^"-"). In the absence of the
Matthew* s Conception of Our Lord 95