Among other things, two facts have come to clear recognition at some stage in this discussion. One is that Jesus knew that the society which He was labouring to establish, the Kingdom of God, was certain to 1>e established, and that both the chief place in the establishment of it and the supreme place in it after its establishment belonged to Him. The other fact is that Jesus recognized the inevit- able and deeply rooted antagonism which He and His society must encotmter and overcome, and that the way of suffering was the onlj- path by which He could reach the goal of success. The conviction of the certaintj' of the establishment of the King- dom of God must accordingly carrj- with it the con- \-iction that all the conflicts and sufferings necessary to the establishment of this Kingdom were eqtially certain. Without doubt, Jesus saw in the OT Scrip- tures those experiences narrated and depicted which
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were necessary as the conditions of accomplish- ing the work which belonged to the establishment of the Kingdom of God. He claimed that He was establishing the Kingdom, that the foremost place in it belonged to Him, and that the position of men in the Kingdom was determined by relation to Him- self. Accordingly He, the pre-eminent agent in the establishment of the Kingdom, in order to accom- plish the purpose for which He was labouring, must accept into His experience all the trial and conflict which could befall any person engaged in the same work. OT prophecy, therefore, as a programme of the establishment of the Kingdom, depicted the ex- periences and labours of God's servants, ^^'llich were an unavoidable part of their work in achieving the results which they sought. The Synoptics record the sense of Jesus that suft'erings prophesied in connexion with the establishment of the Kingdom were necessary (Sd, Mt 16'-^ ct al.). He saw that the goal was certain to be reached, and that the OT representation of the toils, sufferings, and ex- periences necessary for the accomplishment of the labour which He was to perform concerned Him more fully than they concerned any one else, be- cause the chief place in the Kingdom Avas His. So all the partial successes and the unsuccessful at- tempts in jjast generations to estal>lish the ideal society were prophetic of what must come before the goal should be reached.
We must believe that this typical nature of the OT records and prophecy was that which Jesus had in His mind when He applied the OT prophecies to Himself. This is a principle, and the use which Jesus made of the OT in ethical and spiritual matters was so prevalently that of principle, that it is most natural to regard the use of prophecy as that of principle. Like the Semitic mode of presenting prin- ciples by concrete examples, so was His use of the OT Scriptures bj' definite illustrations and allusions to individuals. The instances noted above of the use of Is 53'2, Zee 13", Ps 4P (Heb. '») 35'9 GtH (Heb. ^), may all without violence be interpreted as concrete illustrations of principles, instead of being regarded as citations of specific predictions of His individual experience. Jesus saw in Himself the fulfilment of all that belonged to the life of conflict which must be met by any of the members of the Kingdom of blessing, and of all that belonged to the work of deliverance of the people from those habits of life \yhich enslaved them, and which might render them liable to re-enslavement after haWng once experi- enced some release.
The view thus derived from the broad consideration of the teaching of .Jesus is supported by the various words conve\-ing the Idea of fulfihuent in respect to the OT utterances and their relation to the experiences of Jesus (T>.-^/>iu, Mt 2&>i- 56 Jik wn) 5-,^ -*^' J" If' 15'- 171^' ; ^^..>i,c.,m 131-. ; .;<.Ut, Lk 21- ; T=A.,-, Lk 22.i7 ; rjx=^, Lk 1831 2237, Jn 1930). The study of these passages gives the idea of the completion of the incom- plete, the culmination of a process, as was the case in the use of nofi fu ^"°^'® '^'o^'is when applied to the Law. E.g. Mt
; ,V \u fe'eneration of .Jesus exemplified in their conduct, more fully than any previous generation could have done, that wilful blindness, that spiritual insusceptibility described in Is 69. lo Thus in the experience of Jesus He thought that nothing was to be lacking of the element of suffering which was the indispens- able condition of His entering into the fulness of power needed bv the .Messiah. Since He was the One who should perfect the work for which so many before Him had toiled and suffered. He must gain His power by the same method as thev, for the verv nature Of things made this a necessity, and His experience must fulfil theu-s by taking up into it every variety known by them, and hll out to complete realization every U-pb of suffering bv which one must enter into power. He needed greater power than others, hence He must suffer much more than thev
,,,!> v!* u^ J^^^*^^ .^^'^^ *^e 'arge and broad conception of prophecy which is evident in the words of Jesus is not equally n^v!"rfjr ^^itings of the Evangelists. Mark and Luke
^t}^ \ f i'''' °* prophecy, and present no variation from the method of Jesus Matthew and John had much more use for OT prophecy. As Orientals, they also would naturally follow t»,^),TT -iP^ /^!"^ '" f^« "«e of the common method of nf T^«?." ^^ 1 "f ^*;''.?,- "^^""^ passages which in the mouth vJZv ^ "''' ^\°^ Illustrative value were often stated bv the tvangehsts so as to seem the fulfilments of strict predictions.