(2) His own self-knowledge and His oirn. self- icitness, which establish the fact of a conscience at once perfectly true and absolutely void of any sense of sin.
{a) He taught His disciples to pray for forgive- ness ; but He never set them the example of asking it on His own behalf. He Avas their example in prayer as in all else ; but that which is a constituent element in the prayers of all sinful men, the con- fession of sin and the supplication of forgiveness, does not appear in any prayer of His. There is even a scrupulous avoidance of any phrase which would seem to include Himself in the class of those whose prayers must contain this element, c.ff. Mte"- " 7", where ' ye ' is emphatic and significant.
(6) He is absolutely intolerant of evU. He counsels the extreme of loss in preference to its presence (Mk 9^^-"). He traces it to its source in heart and will, and demands cleansing and renewal there (Mk 7'=--^). Vet nowhere does He bewail His own pollution, or seek for cleansing. He lives a life of strenuous devotion ; but there is not a hint of any process of mortifying sin in His members. Such unconsciousness of sin is a psychological impossibility, if His was simply the goodness of an aspiring, struggling, human soul, striving after the ideal, and ever drawing nearer it. By tlie very height of His ideal He would be convicted of shortcoming. But nothing in His language or bearing suggests, even remotely, such a conviction. AA''e know this Man, and we know that in His own consciousness there was no gulf between Him and perfection, and that to His own deepest feeling there was between Him and the Father perfect moral identity. If this Man be a sinner, the com- petence of the moral judgment is destroyed for ever.
(c) He required moral renewal on the part of all men (Mt 18^ Jn S% But there is no record of the conversion of Jesus, and there is no hint of a belief on His part that He needed it. True, He accepted, or rather demanded, baptism of John ; but His action, as interpreted by Hinif^elf, plainly implies that in uniting Himself with the sinful people. He was under constraint of love, and not under the compulsion of an alarmed and awakened conscience. That there was anything in His ex- perience analogous to a death to sin of His own, and a rising into a life of new obedience, is con- tradicted by every line of the Gospel portrait.
{d) He loved and pitied sinners. His sympa- thetic treatment of them stands in lovely contrast with the cruelty of the Pharisaic method. Yet, in all His dealing witli sinners, He preserves the note of ethical distinction. He unites Himself with sinners. His sin-bearing is a fact, even before Calvary. Yet at the point of closest and most sympathetic union with sinners there is com- plete inward aloofness from their sin. The con- tention that only a sinner can properly understand
a sinner and fully sympathize with him, is purely a priori, and absolutely refuted by the ministry of Jesus. Did any philanthropist, any lover of souls, ever sympathize as Jesus did with sinners ? Long before Christ, Plato had noted and disposed of the fallacy that a man needs to be tainted with sin before be can effectively deal with it. ' Vice can never know both itself and virtue ; but virtue in a well-instructed nature will in time acquire a knowledge at once of itself and of vice. The virtuous man, therefore, and not the vicious man, will make the wise judge' (Republic, 409). Let us add, not a wise judge merely, but a loving friend and helper. Sin is a hindrance, not a help, in loving. The crowning help which Jesus bestowed the forgiveness of sins. This was
beyond doubt a Divine prerogative, both in the minds of those who observed His conduct and in His own. If He exercised it, therefore, while aware of His own sinfulness. He was uttering blasphemy, and the worst verdict of His critics was justifiable. His forgiving sin is absolute proof that to His own consciousness He was sinless.
(c) He died for sinners. What has just been said of His forgi^^ng sinners applies with yet mightier force to His deed in dying. He believed it to be of such unique value for God that, on the ground of it, He could forrive the sins of men. Without trenching on the discussions that gather round the death of Christ, and without attempting any dogmatic statement, we are safe in asserting that to Jesus His blood was covenant blood, rati- fying the New Covenant which had been the pro- found anticipation of OT prophecy (Jer SI""**). No man, conscious of being himself a sinner, could have ~u]>]"i~iil tliat his death would create the Covciijiii .iiicl ]'i(i. tire the forgiveness of sins. Since Je-us .. rtiiiily l.ilieved that His death would have this stuinndous effect, it is certain also that He believed Himself to be utterly removed from the need of forgiveness.
AVhat is thus to be traced, as the implication of our Lord's dealing Avith sinners, becomes in the Fourth Gospel His explicit self-assertion. It may be that, had these utterances stood alone, they might have been discounted as due to dogmatic preconceptions on the part of tlie writer. Since, Iiowever, they are in complete 2)sychological har- mony with the whole Synoptic jiortraiture, they cannot be thus explained away. They are, besides, precisely what might be looked for, and carry with them strong internal evidence of their genuineness. Innocence may be unconscious of itself, but not that sinlessness which is the correlate of perfection. Self-knowledge must accompany that goodness which grows toward maturity, and maintains its integrity against temptation. Jesus did not live in a golden mist. He may be trusted in His self- witness ; and the occasions mentioned in the Fourth Go.spel on which He bore such witness are precisely those of great trial or deep experience, when a' man is permitted, nay required, to state tlie truth regarding Himself. He bears witness : (a) before His enemies, as part of His self-defence (Jn 8«), arguing from His purity of heart to His undimmed vision of things unseen ; (^) to His own, as example and encouragement (Jn 15'°), revealing the secret of a serene and joyful life, as jiart of His last charge and message ; (7) to His Father, in an hour of sacred communion (Jn 11*), as the review and estimate of His life ; (5) on the cross (Jn 19="), as the summary of His long war- fare, the note of final achievement of the whole will of God.