it is In point of significance the day of judgment, when the destinies of men shall be finally assigned them by the ' Son of Man ' (21^^ 12^ 9^®) : destinies which shall be determined according to the attitude which each has occupied towards the ' Son of Man ' on earth (12^ 92^) . To all His enemies It is therefore a day of vengeance (18^), and only as one prevails to stand before the * Son of Man ' can he hope to escape the dread which His coming brings to the earth (12^®). The picture, it will be seen, Is the picture of a Redeemer and Ad- juster who comes In humiliation to save, and returns
122 The Designations of Our Lord
in glory to gather up the results of His work and finally to adjust the issues of the historical development of the world. Whence does He come to save? There is no plain declaration. We are left to infer it from the obvious connection of the title with the oracle of Daniel 7^^, from the more narrative portions of the Gospel, as e. g., the opening chapters where the super- natural birth of Jesus is set forth in detail and with all its implications, and from the very clear suggestion that the whole career of the ' Son of Man,' in its earthly manifestation and its subsequent glory alike, is of a piece and is the outworking of a definite plan of action held clearly in His own mind from the first and carried firmly out in every detail of His living.
The sense of His mission which is thus inherent in the favorite Messianic designation He applied to Him- self finds expression also in other forms Tcsus* Mission °^ locution which Luke reports our
Lord as employing. Thus, for ex- ample, He is reported as speaking of Himself repeat- edly as " coming " with obvious pregnancy of meaning, possibly with some reference to the expectation of the Messianic coming which found embodiment in the des- ignation of the Messiah as ' the One to Come,' — a des- ignation in Luke also reported as applied to Jesus hypothetically by John the Baptist (7^^'""), — but cer- tainly with its chief implication in a profound sense of His mission ([3^*^] 4^^ 5"" 7^^ [cf. 7^^ of John the Bap- tist], 19^*'), and possibly with some contrast in mind with His second coming (9-^ [j236 8eq.-| jgs 2i27). Without essential difference of meaning this " coming " is interchanged with " being sent " — the author of the
The Designations in Luke 123
" mission " being thus more clearly indicated as God. Thus Luke varies Mark's language ( i^^) in recording our Lord's declaration that " He had come forth " spe- cifically to preach, by giving it rather: " for there- fore was He sent " (4^^) — plainly indicating that " came " and " was sent " alike refer to His divine mission.^^ Possibly in this variation there is an allusion to the passage from Isaiah which Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (cf. Lk 4^^), but in any event the term is unambiguous, and is elsewhere repeated (9"*^ 10^^), and from it we may at least learn that according to the representation in Luke also Jesus prosecuted His work on earth under a sense of performing step by step a task which had been given Him to do and which He had come into the world to perform.
We need call attention only In passing to the record by Luke also (^^^'^^) of Jesus' employment of the fig- ure of the ' Bridegroom ' with refer-
,_, ., , ence to Himself and His relations to
Bridegroom
God's people, thus declared to be His Bride, as they were currently represented as the Bride of Jehovah in the Old Testament. In this remarkable saying, preserved in all three of the Synoptics and as- signed by all of them to the earlier portion of His ministry, we have evidence not only that Jesus regarded His ministry as a mission He had come to perform, and already knew that It Involved His death, but that He conceived this mission as Messianic and the Mes- slahship as a divine function, so that His coming was
38 Cf. Weiss on Lk 4*^ : " Luke therefore already interprets the i^TjXdov of Mark incorrectly of His divine Mission." But perhaps Weiss does not know the true meaning of the expression in Mark as V7eU as Lake did!
124 The Designations of Our Lord
the coming of Jehovah, the faithful husband of His people (Hos 2^^).^^