II. Jesus had the essential marks of a prophet.— When we turn to the records of the life of Jesus, we find predicated of Him every characteristic that marked the Hebrew prophets. 1. If Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were all introduced to their projihetic career by a vision granted and a voice iieard (Is e^-^, Jer l^-^o, Ezk S^O""), so Jesus com- menced His ministry by receiving at His baptism a vision from heaven and l)y hearing His Father's voice.
The Gospel according to the Hebrews gives the words then spoken to Him in a form different from that given by the Evangelists, and interesting in the present connexion. We read : ' It came to pass when our Lord had ascended out of the water, the whole fountain of the Hol.v Spirit came down and rested upon him and said unto him, "My Son, in all the pro-
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phels I was lookinjj for thee, that thou mi^htest come and that 1 might rest in thee. For thou art luy rest, thou art iii\ tirst- born Son who reijfnest to eternity."' This torni shows how- strong was the behef in the earhest days of the Church that Jesus at His baptism was anointed specially to the ottice of Prophet.
2. Tlie OT propliets were men of God. This title, doubtless, was frequently used, as conveying little more than a customary ai)i)ellation of those holding the office ; j-et the fact of its having been chosen a.s a title shows the underlying conviction, on the part of the nation, that sanctity of character was a necessary condition of receiving communications from .lehovah ; and it thus suggests not only the Divine purport of their message, but also the per- sonal religiousness of the prophets. Isaiah felt tliat, in order to hold intercour>e with God, personal holiness was requisite (6') ; and indeed so fully was tliis felt that the prophetic state Mas looked upon as closely relatetl to cumnutnion with God in jiraijer; and the expression which was generallj- used in the OT for the answering of praj-er was frequently applied to pro])hetic revelation (n:j; Mic3^, Hab2^^-, Jer 23»5. See Oehler, OT Thcol. ii. 336).
That Jesus bore this characteristic of the pro- phetic office needs no showing. He, the one sinless Man, whose whole life was lived in conscious com- munication, full and continuous, with His Father, must necessarily, as regards the titness of holiness, be the very Prophet of prophets. His perfect sin- lessness rendered possible uninterrupted fellowship with God, and guaranteed the perfection of the message He delivered. The pre-eminence of that message rests on the fact that whereas ' God of old times spake unto the fathers in the prophets, he hath In these last times spoken unto us in his Son' (He 1>).
3. Further, as men of God, the message of the prophets was one of moral import. Tliej', as Micah (3^), could say, ' I am full of power to declare unto Jacob his transgressions and to Israel his sins.' The greater prophets had developed far beyond the earlier prophets and still earlier seers, who used their gifts to reveal matters of mere personal in- terest : their message to the individual or to the nation was filled, as occa.sion required, with moral teachings : rebuking sin, calhng to repentance, and threatening Divine judgment.
It is eviilent that Jesus fultilled this characteristic continuously and perfectly. For not onlj- did He, like the prophets before Him, utter words preg- nant with moral enlightenment but also bj* His every word and act He constantly manifested the perfection of moral being. Being Himself the revelation of God, His whole incarnate life was a continuous teaching of infinite moral import.
4. The prophets were conscious of being recipients of direct communiration-1 from Jehovah. In Amos (3") it is said, ' The Lord God doeth nothing with- out revealing his counsel to his servants the prophets ' ; and in Jeremiah (23-) we are told that the prophet stands in 'the counsel of Jehovah.' God spoke to them, and they received His words into their hearts and heard tiiem with their ears (F.zk 3'^'). It might seem that here is a charac- teristic of the prophetic office that is not applicable to Christ. It might be thought that as He is very and eternal God, He required no revelation, having in Himself all the fulness of Divine knowledge, anil tiiat therefore when He taught, He taught not what He had received, but wliat was intrinsically His own. A careful study, however, of the Gospel of St. John, where naturally we seek for light on the mystery of His Person, a.s it is the Gospel of His self-manifestation, leads us to conclude otherwise. In a remarkable number of passages Jesus speaks of receiving from the Father the truths He dis- closed. He says, ' I speak to the world those things which I have heard ' ; 'as my Father hath
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taught me, I speak.' ' I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me' ; ' I spake not from myself, but the Father which sent me. He hath given me a commandment what I should say' (Jn
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In such words Jesus seems clearly to teach that His super- natural knowledge was a gift given to Him from the Father, ' administered to Him in His human nature on some economic principle,' so that He might be fitted perfectl.v to perform the functions of Teacher and Prophet to the Church. In emptying Himself of His glory in the Incarnation, He appears so to liave self-limited His IJivine Powers as to have been dependent ujxjn His Father for supernatural illumination : while the reception by Him of that revelation must hav e been perfect through the complete sympathy that essentially existed between Him and His Father. Like the prophets of old, He received communica- tions from God : but in virtue of His Divine Personality He perfectlx' heard and faithfully expressed every thought revealed to Him. (See, especially', a \aluable charge by O'Brien, Bp. of Ossory, 1SC5 (llacmillan) ; and A. B. Davidson, Biblical Essays, p. 179).