1. The gospel never rises above the limits of its first publication as the Kingdom of God (Mk P*- ^^). No doubt the terms are deepened and spiritualized, as well by the subsequent teaching of Jesus (Lk 1720 1911, Ac !'• *) as by the accomplishment of His atoning work (Lk 24'*^-^^). But though what might have remained an external and almost physical conception became the manifestation of one eternal life (Jn 31^- ^^, 1 Jn P"^), nevertheless the Church of the living God (1 Ti 3^^), the relation of a people of possession to their rightful Lord, King, and Father (Tit 2^^) is constant. Allegiance, faith, sonship are the marks of those who share the membership of this Kingdom. What Jesus the Messiah found was disobedience and disloyalty. Human life, as He was called upon to deal with it, involved sub- jection to another prince (Jn M^**), bondage to another master {S^), ' sonship ' to another ' father' (8^*). To the consciousness of Jesus, Satan- was present, not as a convenient personification of evil that became actual only in tlie individual wills of men, but as the author of sin, the person in whom evil has its spring, even as God is the fount of life. Jesus' sense of dependence upon the Father did not carry with it a monism which saw God in all and all in God. For Him, as for St. John, the whole world lay in the Evil One (1 Jn 5^**, cf. Lk 4'^- ®). His own conflict was with the prince of this world ( Jn 14^"). To be delivered from the Evil One was the converse of being brought into temp- tation (Mt 6^*: the insertion of dWd in Mt., and the absence of the clause in the best MSS of Lk 11^ suggest that it is correlative to the preceding clause, representing the same act differently). He had seen Satan fallen as lightning from heaven (Lk 10^^). Over against the Kingdom of God was the kingdom of Satan (Mt 1226-28 1527 2541, cf. Eev 16i«). The drama of human life was accomplished in presence of this already existing dualism. Christ assumes the current Hebrew conception of a world of spiritual personalities under the leadership of Beelzebub (Lk ll^-^s). The stampede of the swine at Gerasa witnesses to their control, within the limits of Divine permission, over natural forces (Mk 5^^). Physical disease results from Satan's bondage (Lk 13^^). Possession by demons is an abnormal case of its influence over human beings (e.g. Mk G^^-^a). And all opposition to the purpose of God is inspired by Satan ( Jn 8*2-«). The Jews were of their father the devil, so that the works
wrought by them were antithetic to the works of God manifested in Jesus (v.""). Even the chosen Twelve Satan had asked to have, that he might sift them as wheat (Lk 22^^). So the Passion was a continuation of the Temptation, a direct agony and death - struggle wherein the prince of this world was cast out (Jn 12^^ 16"), the strong man spoiled (Lk U^i).
From the first the proclamation of the good news, accompanied as it was with the curing of diseases and the casting out of demons (Mt lO'^- ^, Lk 9^- 2), witnessed to the real character of Christ's work as redemption, ransom, and salvation. For the true unification between the normal and universal pur- pose of the gospel — the forgiveness of sins — and the occasional and particular accessories of it — exorcism and healing — lay not so much in the analogy be- tween bodily disease and spiritual wickedness, as in the fact that both are the exercise of the one Satanic power within the usurped kingdom of evil. No doubt there is a certain suggestiveness in the parallel between disease and sin, which Jesus Himself recognized. But there is nothing in His teaching to suggest the later ideas of taint, infec- tion, vitiated nature. It is trespasses which the Heavenly Father must do away, and that by forgive- ness (Mt 6^^); salvation from sins (pi), i.e. actions involving guilt, is implied by the name Jesus (see art. Guilt). The bringing forth of the people from Pharaoh's bondage to serve Jehovah is the ancient experience which is before the mind of devout men under the old covenant as the pattern of the deliverance which Messiah was to accomplish (Mt 2'-^, cf. Hos IP). Salvation is therefore not the restoration of spiritual health, but the libera- tion of God's people from an evil service. The ministry of the Son of Man consists in giving His life a ransom (Mk lO^s, Mt 2028 ; cf. 1 Ti 2^). And the Fourth Evangelist only interprets the mind of the Master Avhen he speaks of Jesus as dying for the nation, and destined to gather together into one the scattered children of God (Jn lP^-^2)_ jje was the shepherd bringing home the lost sheep dispersed upon the mountains (10^®) ; or, somewhat to vary the idea, the Redeemer coming into the worla, not to judge it along with its prince, but to save it from the Evil One (3"- ^^ J231. 47 1715), and casting out the indwelling Satan by the finger or Spirit of God (Lk IF"). The acceptable year of the Lord is a year of release
2. From the implications of the Gospel narrative we pass to the theology of the Epistles. In order to gain a clear view of St. Paul's doctrine of sin in its completeness, it is necessary to go behind the Epistle to the Romans. We must bear in mind, first of all, the essentially Jewish basis of his thought. To him salvation, or redemption, carried all the associations which had gathered round it in Hebrew history. The Kingdom of Messiah was a vivid reality, and the earlier Epistles show that at first he was not without the common anticipation of its immediate establishment in manifested power. Satan was a concrete fact. If at one time it was the Spirit of Jesus that suffered him not (Ac 16''), at another Satan hindered him (1 Th 2^^). The thorn in the flesh was a messenger of Satan (2 Co 12''). The Christian is armed in order to ward oft' the fiery darts of the Evil One (Eph 6^% Princi- palities and powers were the unseen antagonists of Christ's servants (Eph 6^2, cf. Lk 22^^), the enemies over whom Christ triumphed in the Cross (Col 2^*). If Messiah was to be manifested at the Parousia, Satan was also destined to be manifested in the Man of Sin (2 Th 23-"). A remarkable parallel to the conception of 'the Evil One,' which appears both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel, is found in ' the prince of the power of the