value is recognized in the miracles, but it is onli
: ' though
ye believe not me, believe the works' (Jn 10^'*);
by an afterthought, or as a second best : ' thoug
• believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me ; or else, believe for the very works' sake ' (141'). The main line of thought is that which deprecates faith based on signs and wonders (4^). When the multitudes ask, ' What sign doest thou then? our fathers did eat the manna in the wilder- ness,' the answer of Jesus virtually is, ' / am the bread of life. ... He that eateth me shall live by me . . . the words that I speak unto you are spirit and are life' (Jn &°^-). In other words, the authority of Jesus does not depend upon any ex- ternal credentials ; it is involved in what He is, and must be immediately apprehended and re- sponded to by the soul. What enables men to re- cognize Je.sus as what He is, and so to acknowledge His authority, is, according to the representation of the central chapters in John (chs. 6-10), a need in their nature or state which Ho can supply. If we wish to be sure that He is the Christ, the King in the Kingdom of God, the way to certainty is not to prove that- He was born at Bethlehem' of the seed of David (1*°), nor that He came into the world mysteriously (7"), nor that He has done many miracles (7'') : it is to see in Him the living bread (ch. 6), the living water (ch. 4 and 7^), the light of the world (chs. 8 and 9), the Good Shepherd (ch. 10), the Giver of Life (chs. 5 and 11). These are ideas or experiences which are relative to universal human needs, and therefore they are universally intelligible ; every one who knows what it is to be hungry, thirsty, forlorn, in the dark, dead, knows how to appreciate Jesus ; and apart from these experiences no cleverness in applying prophetic or other theological signs to Him is of any value. All this is strictly relevant, for it is through experiences in which we become debtors to Jesus for meat and drink, for lij/ht and life, that we become conscious of what His authority
(7) Once, at least, the authority of Jesus was challenged in a quasi-legal fashion. When He drove the traders from the Temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him, saying, 'By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority?' (Mt 21=™-, Mk ll="f-, Lk 20"f'). Formally, by His
counter question about the Baptist, Jesus only silences His adversaries ; but more than this i.s meant. If, He suggests, they had been true to the earlier messenger of God, they would have had no difficulty about His claims. If they had re- pented at John's summons, and been right with God, then to their simple and humble hearts Jesus' action would have vindicated itself ; as it is, to their insincere souls He has no advance to make. The ambassador of an earthly king has creden- tials external to his person and his message, but not the ambassador in whom God Himself visits His people. His actions like His words speak for themselves. Throughout the Fourth Gospel it is an affinity of spirit with Jesus on which the recog- nition of His authority depends. It is those who are of God (Jn 8^'), of the truth (18"), those who are His sheep (lO'"-"''), who hear His voice : those who are not of God, especially the insincere, who seek honour from one another (5"), are inevitably offended in Him.
2. Thus far we have considered the authority of Christ as it was exercised, acknowledged, or de- clined during His life on earth. But the NT exhibits much more than this. It is not merely as historical, but as exalted, that Christ exercises authority — in the Church. In all its aspects the authority which we have studied in the Gospels reajjpears in the Epistles. It is perpetuated in the Christian society in an effective, if somewhat unde- linable way.
What strikes one first in the NT literature, apart from the Gospels, is the almost complete absence of literal appeal to Jesus. The Apostles, whatever be the explanation, do not, except on rare occasions, quote the Lord. It is true that when they do so. His word is regarded as decisive in a sense in which even the word of an apostle is not (cf. 1 Co 7'" with vv.'^- ==•'"'). It is true also that passages like Ro 12. 13, and much in the Epistle of James, could only have been written (in all probability) by men who not only had the Spirit of Christ, but whose minds were full of echoes of His words. Nevertheless the fact remains that Jesus is hardly appealed to formally as an autho- rity in the NT writings. Tliere could be no more striking proof of the fact that Christianity was apprehended from the first as a free and spiritual religion to which everything statutory was alien. Not even the word of Jesus had legal character for it. What Jesus sought and found in His disciples was a spiritual remembrance of Himself. His words were preserved not in a phonograph, or in a stenographic report, but in the impression they made, in the insight they gave, in the thoughts and experiences they produced in the lives of living men. They were perpetuated not merely by bein^ put on record, but still more by being preached. Now to preach is not only to report, but to apply ; and the application of the word of Christ to new circumstances inevitably and uncon- sciously brings with it a certain or rather an uncertain amount of interpretation, of bringing out the point, of emph.asis on this or that which at the moment demands it. What we wish to know is whether the men whose ministry perpet- uated the word of Christ, and perpetuated it in this free and spiritual fashion, had the qualifica- tions demanded by their task. Could Christ so lit them for their ministry that they shoiilil \»- luiilri- no legal constraint, and yet should never 1«' iiniail h ful to His meaning, or misrepresent llim "i lln work? In other words, could He in any s.-usc transmit His authority to His witnesses, so that it should be felt in them as in Him ?