The title asserts Christ’s humanity—his absolute identifica- tion with our race: “his having a genuine humanity which could deem nothing human strange, and could be touched with a feeling of the infirmities of the race which he was to judge” (Liddon, “Our Lord’s Divinity”). It also exalts him as the representative ideal man. ‘All human history tends to him and radiates from him; he is the point in which humanity finds its unity; as St. Irenaeus says, ‘He recapitulates it.’ He closes the earlier history of our race; he inaugurates its future. Nothing local, transient, individualizing, national, sectarian dwarfs the proportions of his world-embracing character. He rises above the parentage, the blood, the narrow horizon which bounded, as it seemed, his human life. He is the archetypal man, in whose presence distinction of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization, degrees of mental culture are as nothing”
(Liddon).
Cu. VI.] LUKE. 313
But the title means more. As Son of Man he asserts the authority of judgment over all flesh. By virtue of what he is as Son of Man, he must be more. “The absolute relation to the world which he attributes to himself demands an absolute relation to God. . . . Heisthe Son of Man, the Lord of the world, the Judge, only because he is the Son of God” (Luthardt). Christ’s humanity can be explained only by his divinity. A humanity so unique demands a solution. Divested of all that is popularly called miraculous, viewed simply as a man, under the historical conditions of his life, he is a greater miracle than all his miracles combined. The solution is ex- pressed in Heb. i.
23. Leap for joy (cxiptjcate). See ch. i. 41,44. Compare Matthew, be exceeding glad (ayadmaote: see on 1 Pet. i. 6).
Their fathers. Peculiar to Luke. 24. Woe. These woes are not noted by Matthew.
Have received (azréyere). In Matt. vi. 5, 16, the Rev. has properly changed “they have their reward” to “ they have re- ceived.” The verb, compounded of azo, off or from, and éyea, to have, literally means to have nothing left to desire. Thus in Philip. iv. 18, when Paul says, “J have all things (atéyo mavta),” he does not mean merely an acknowledgment of the receipt of the Church’s gift, but that he is fudly furnished. “I have all things to the full.”
Consolation (zapdxdnaots). From srapd, to the side of, and kanréw, to call or summon. Literally, a calling to one’s side to help ; and therefore entreaty, passing on into the sense of ea- hortation, and thence into that of consolatory exhortation ; and so coming round to mean that which one is summoned to give to a suppliant—consolation. Thus it embodies the cald for help, and the response to the call. Its use corresponds with that of the kindred verb wapaxadéw, to exhort or console. In its original sense of calling for aid the noun appears in the New
314 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. VI.
Testament only in 2 Cor. viii. 4: with much entreaty. The “verb appears frequently in this sense, rendered beseech, pray (Matt. viii. 834; xiv. 836; Mark i. 40; v. 12, etc.). In the sense of consolation or comfort the noun occurs in Luke ii. 25; vi. 24 ; 9.Cor. i. 3; vii4; Philem. 7. The verb, in Matt. 11. 185 -ve2; Luke xvi. 25; 2 Cor. i. 4. In some instances, however, the meaning wavers between console and exhort. In the sense of exhortation or counsel, the noun may be found in Acts xiii. 15 ; Rom. xii. 8; Heb. xiii. 22. The verb, in Acts ii. 40; xi. 23; xiv. 22; Rom. xii. 8; Tit. ii. 15. Neither the noun nor the verb appear in the writings of John, but the kindred word mapakrntos, the Paraclete, Comforter, or Advocate, is peculiar to him. On this word, see on John xiy. 16. It should be noted, however, that the word comfort goes deeper than its popular conception of soothing. It is from the later Latin confortare, to make strong. Thus Wycliffe renders Luke i. 80, “the child waxed, and was comforted in spirit” (A. V., waxed strong); and Tyndale, Luke xxii. 43, “there appeared an angel from heaven comfortmg him” (A. V., strengthening). The comfort which Christ gives is not always soothing. The Holy Spirit, the Com- forter, is to convince of sin and of yudgment. Underlying the word is the sense of a wise counsel or admonition which rouses and braces the moral nature and encourages and strengthens it to do and to endure. When, therefore, Christ says “ they that mourn shall be comforted,” he speaks in recognition of the fact that all sorrow is the outcome of sin, and that true comfort is given, not only in pardon for the past, but in strength to fight and resist and overcome sin. The atmosphere of the word, in short, is not the atmosphere of the sick-chamber, but the tonic breath of the open world, of moral struggle and victory; the atmosphere for him that climbs and toils and fights.