REDEMPTION
REDEMPTION
479
favoured individuals that tlie disclosure was directly made (in Jn. to Nathaiiaei, l-*'-^' ; to Nicodemus, 3'2"' ; to the Samaritan woman, 4^*' etc.).
It is to misinterpret Peter's preat eoiifession in Mt Iti'o to take it to mean that up to that time the disciples bad no linovv- ledge that iJesus was the Christ. Ajiart from what is narrated by St. John (l^lff-), the whole ministry of Jesus, as recorded by the Synoptics— the claims He made, the authority Ho exercised — was by implication an assertion of that dignity ; while to the direct testimony borne by the forerunner (Mt 311. 12 I!) was added afterwards the answer jrivcn to the Baptist's doubts (112ft'.). What was new in Peter's confession was the inburst of new illumination, and unshakable strength of conviction, with which the confession was made (1617. 18).
On the other hand, if Jesus knew Himself to be the Messiah of OT prophecy and hope, it is not less certain that He apprehended this great vocation, and the salvation with which it was connected, in a quite different way from most of His contem- poraries. Messiahship for Him, as the account of the Temptation shows, meant the definite renun- ciation of all self-seeking motives, the rejection of all political and worldly ideals, the repudiation of all swerving from the sole end of seeking His Father's glory. Holding such a conception of His mission, and rooted in His consciousness, as His habitual use of Scripture and manner of deducing deep principles from its simplest words show Him to be, in OT and specially Prophetic teaching, it is impossible that, from the first. He should not have clearly perceived the collision that must ensue between Himself and the ruling classes, and the persecution, and ultimately death, which their enmity must bring upon Him. With so clear a vision of the persecutions, scornings, and death that awaited His disciples (Mt lOi^ff-H), He could not be ignorant of His own future. If, however, He saw thus far, it must be that He saw further. The path of self-renunciation and suffering that lay before Him must have presented itself, as we know it did, as part of His Father's ordainment in the accomplishment of His vocation ; not as a fate merely, or even as a martyrdom, but as a neces- sary step to the founding of His Kingdom, and pro- curement of the great end of His Coming — the end of salvation. If this, in turn, presented itself as a problem to His thought, — we speak, perhaps, too humanly of the way in which Jesus arrived at His convictions, — the light was near at hand for its solution in the Prophetic Scriptures, especially in the picture of the Suffering Servant of Is 53. His sufferings were expiatory. No one who reads the Gospels with care can doubt the familiarity of the mind of Jesus with this portion of Prophetic testi- mony. It is probably this prophecy that was in view in the Baptist's announcement to his disciples (-Jn 1-29.3J) J it is contained in the section of Isaiah on the Servant of Jehovah which Jesus cited in the opening of His public ministry as fulfilled in Himself (Lk 4i'ff) ; one interesting passage shows that it was directly before His mind in His last sufferings — ' For I say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in me. And he was num- bered witli transgressors: for that which concerneth me hath fulfilment' (22 "•■'). It cannot have been absent from the numerous prophecies which Jesus declared were fidfilled in His death (Mk i)'-^ U'-^i- -', Lk 18'i 2426.27.4;) i5m^ indeed, the same strain of thought, sacrificial and I^rophetic, which inspired the representation of Jehovah's Servant as One who must and would take upon Himself the burden of the people's sins, and, in substitutionary love, offer Him.self in atonement for them, must have wrought as powerfully in the mind of Jesus, conscious as He was of Ilis peculiar relation to both God and man, and fully aware of what sin was, and of what the forgivene.ss of sin meant to a holy God. If atonement for the world's sin was possible, and Jesus in His representative capacity, and Himself sinless, could offer such atonement,
it cannot be doubted that He would desire to do so.
This point of the connexion of the sufferings and death of Jesus with redemption will receive eluci- dation afterwards ; but already, perhaps, it is po.ssible to see how, during His ministry, a rela- tion of His sufferings to His saving mi.ssion might be present to His own mind, though He said little of it publicly, and only toward the end of His life spoke freely to His disciples of His approach- ing death. His reticence on His death would then be paralleled by His reticence on His Messiahship, which yet was present to His consciousne.ss throughout. On such a view it may be found that the phenomena of the Gospels, as we have them, fall naturally into place, — His general silence on His death in His public teaching, the occasional disclosures in Jn. and the Synoptics, the con- nexion of the later announcements of His death with His resurrection, and, after His resurrection, of both with the preaching of remission of sins, and the promise of the Spirit ; the coherence of this teaching with the Apostolic gospel.