This holds true whenever we think of the moral or practical authority of Jesus. It is never legal : that is, we can never take the letter in which it is expressed and regard it as a statute, incapaljle of interpretation or modification, and binding in its literal meanin" for all persons, all times, all social conditions. This is plain in regard to such a com- mand of Jesus as the one given to the rich ruler : no one will say that this is to be obeyed to the letter by all who would enter into the Kingdom of God. But it is equally true of precepts which are addressed to a far wider circle, and which are sometimes supposed (like this one) to rest in a peculiar sense on the authority of Jesus. Take, e.g., the case of the Sermon on the Mount in Mt 521-48 From beginning to end this may be read as an assertion of the moral authority of Jesus, an authority which is conscious of transcending tlie higiiest yet known in Israel. ' It was said to them of old time . . . but I say unto you. ' On what do the words of Jesus throughout this passage depend for their actual weight with men ? They depenil on the consciousness of men that through these words the principle of morality, for which our nature has an abiding affinity, is finding expres- sion. But just because we are conscious of this principle and of the affinity of our nature for it, we are free with regard to any particular expression of it ; the particular words in which it is embodied even by Jesus do not possess the authority of a statute to which we can only conform, but about which we must not think. When Jesus says, ' Whoso shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him also the other ; to him that would go to law with thee and take thy coat, leave also thy cloak ' : it is not to keep us from thinking about moral problems by giving us a rule to be blindly obeyed, it is rather to stimulate thought and deliver us from rules. His precepts are legal in form, but He came to abolish Icuiili-m, uu.l lliuiefore they were never meant to be liliTnlly rr:i.l. When they are literally read, coiisriuinr -iinply refuses to take them in. They are ra-uisti.- in form, but anti-casuistic in intention, and liieir authority lies
148
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
AUTHORITY OF CHRIST
in the intention, not in the form. What the pre- cepts of non-resistance and non-retaliation mean is that under no circumstances, under no provoca- tion, must the disciple of Jesus allow his conduct to be determined by any other motive than that of love. He must he prepared to go all lengths with love, and no matter how love is tried, he must never renounce it for an inferior principle, still less for an instinctive natural passion, such as the desire for revenge. Put thus, the moral authority of Jesus is unquestionable, and it asserts itself over us the more, the more we feel that He em- bodied in His own life and conduct the principle which He proclaims. But there is nothing in this which binds us to take in the letter what Jesus says about oaths, or non-resistance, or revenge ; and still less is there anything to support the idea that His words on these subjects are part of a fanatical renunciation of the world in the region of honour as well as of property, — a literal sur- render, in view of the imminence of the Kingdom, of all that makes life on earth worth having. It is not uncommon now for those wlio regard the Kingdom of God as purely transcendent and eschatological to match this paradoxical doctrine with an ethical system equally paradoxical, a system made up purely of renunciation and nega- tion, and to fasten it also upon Jesus ; but it is hardly necessary to I'efute either the one paradox or the other. What commands conscience in the most startling words of Jesus is the truth and love which dictate them, but to recognize the truth and love is to recognize that no form of words is bind- ing of itself. It is tlie supreme task of the moral being to discover what in his own situation truth and love require ; and there is no short cut to the discovery of this, even in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is our authority, but His words are not our statutes : we are not under law, even the law of His words, but under grace — that is, under the inspiration of His personality ; and though His words are one of the ways in which His moral ascendency is established over us, they are only one. There is an authority in Him to which no words, not even His own, can ever be equal.
The final form which this practical or moral authority of Jesus assumes in the NT is the re- cognition of Him as Judge of all. Probably in the generation before that in which He lived the Jews had come to regard the Messiah as God's vice- gferentin the great jud,i;iiient wliirli usliered in the world to come; but «li;it vf liml in the NT in this connexion is not tlir funn.-il i laiisference of a piece of Messianic ddL'iiKitii- tn .lesus; it is the moral recognition of the moral supremacy of Jesus, and of His right to pronounce finally on the moral worth of men and things. Experiences like that which inspired Lk 5' (' Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord '), Jn i-^ (' Come see a man which told me all things that ever I did '), 21^' ('Thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee '), are the basis on which tlie soul recog- nizes Christ as Judge. The claim to be Judge appears also in Hisown teaching (Mt 7"'-, Lk IS^"-, Mt 25^^-) ; and if the form of the words in the first of these passages has been modified in tradition in order to bring out their bearing for those for whom the Evangelist wrote, no one doubts that their substance goes back to Jesus. It is He who con- templates the vain pleas which men will address to Him 'in that day'^men who with religious profession and service to the Church liave never- theless been morally unsound. The standard of judgment is variously represented : it is ' the will of my Father which is in heaven ' (Mt 7^') or 'these sayings of mine' (7") or it is what we might call in a word ' humanity ' (2iy^- ^-) : and in its way each of these is a synonym for the moral