MESSIAH

No fair criticism can doubt that Jesus saw in these two supreme experiences elements of His work as Saviour. Only thus can we interpret His saying at the Last Supper and His repeated prophecies to His fol-lowers (Mk 142* 8"-9' 93"-»2, Mt 12", Lk 12«- «). Thus He fulfilled in Himself the Messianic picture of the Suffering Servant of Is 53. (e) In conclusion, it appears that Jesus' conception of Himself as Messiah was that He was the One in whom God Himself was revealing Himself as the Saviour of those who would accept Him as the Father. The teaching of Jesus from this point of view becomes something more than theoretical ethics and religion, and is seen to be an exposition of His own MessiD uic self-consciousness. Even in His humilia^ tion and ui His sufferings He was the Divinely em-powered Saviour. If His faith in the ultimate triumph of that salvation took the form of the eschatology of His people, it does not thereby lose any of Its significance. By His sufferings God's righteous Servant did justify many, and by His death on the cross He did draw men to Him. With His resurrection began a new era in religious experience, which revealed the realities of those pictures of that transcendental 'age to come' in which current Messianism clothed the glories of the Divine deliveranoe.

In short, Jesus modified the conception of the Messiah fundamentally: (1) by recognizing in His own experience vicarious suffering as a part of the Divine deliverance, but even more (2) by His insistence on the universal fatherllness of God, which transformed salvation from something ethnic and national into a salvation from sin and death of all those who accept Him as the Christ; i.e. who by faith reproduce in their lives that dynamic union with God, which was the source of the power which He Himself exhibited in His life and resurrection.

2. The conception of the Messiah among the Apostles. — In general the Apostles may be said to have beUeved Jesus to be the Messiah in the sense that (a) in His earthly period of humiUation He was anointed with God 's Spirit; (6) that He had not done the strictly Messianic work during His earthly career; (c) that He had been declared the Christ by His resurrection; and W) that, though now in authority in heaven, He would return to deliver His people, establish a Kingdom, and hold the world-judgment which was to be preceded by the resur-rection of beUevers, if not of all men.

(1) In the primitive Church of Jerusalem expectation centred about the eschatological concept of judgment and deliverance. As appears from the speech of St. Peter at Pentecost (Ac 2"-"), as well as from other addresses from the early chapters of Acts, the disciples believed that the new age was about to dawn. They were U ving in ' the last days ' of the pre-Messianic age. The Christ had appeared, but had been killed, had ascended to heaven after His resurrection, thence He had sent the Holy Spirit to those who believed that He was the Christ, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Jl 228-32 (which, however, had not been thus interpreted by the Pharisees). The Resurrection had not made Him the Christ, but had decisively shown that He was the One whom God had made Lord and Christ (Ac 23«). In the primitive Church the Messianic deliverance was limited to the commonwealth of Israel. If the Gentiles were to share in the Messianic deliverance, they had need to be circumcised and join the Jewish community (Ac 15').

Just how far disciples like St. Peter and St. John were committed to this stnctly Jewish type of Messianic expecta-tion it is difficult to say. It would, however, be unfair to hold that they represented the so-called 'party of the circumcision' which combated St. Paul in his removal of all conditions of salvation beyond faith in Jesus as Christ. It should not be overlooked, moreover, that even in the primitive Jerusalem Church the death of Jeaus was regarded as a part of the Messianic programme of deliverance, though there is no distinct theory of the Atonement formulated.

(2) St. Paul's conception of the Messiah, (i.) This is in marked advance upon that of the primitive Church.

MESSIAH

He was at one with the Jerusalem community in holding that the Kingdom had not yet come, and that Jesus would soon return from heaven to establish it. He built into his Messianic conception, however, a number of important elements, some of which were derived from Judaism. These elements were (a) the vicarious nature of the death of Christ; (6) the pre-existence of Jesus as Christ; (c) the doctrine of the second Adam, i.e. that Jesus in His resurrection was the type of the risen humanity, as Adam was the type of physical humanity; (d) the more or less complete identification of Jesus with the Spirit who came to the disciples, as distinct from having been sent by Jesus to the disciples.

(ii.) It is not difficult to see, therefore, why it was that St. Paul's chief interest did not lie in the career of the historical Jesus as a teacher and miracle-worker, but rather in the Divine, risen Christ who maintained spiritual relations with His followers. To have made the teaching of Jesus the centre of his thought would have been to replace the legalism of the Law by the legaUsm of a new authority. St. Paul was evidently acquainted with the teaching of Jesus, but his message was not that of a completed ethical philosophy, but a gospel of good news of a salvation possible to all mankind, through faith in Jesus as the Messiah. The Pauline gospel to the un-converted (see Ac 13i6-« 148-" 17»-8) started with the expectation of Messianic judgment, presented the crucified Jesus as declared the Christ by His resurrec-tion, proved it by the use of OT prophecy, and closed with the exhortation to his hearers to become reconciled to God, who was ready to forgive and save them. In his thought salvation consisted in the possession, through the indwelling Holy Spirit of God, of the sort of life which the risen Jesus already possessed. Morality was the expression in conduct of this regenerate life.

(ili.) The Pauline Christ is Divine, and His work is twofold. First, it is to be that of the Messiah of Jewish eschatology. The Apostle utilizes many of the elements of the Messianism of the Pharisees, e.g. the two ages, the world-judgment, the trumpet to raise the dead, the sorrows of 'the last days.' But he also made a distinct addition to Messianic thought (a) by his emphasis upon the relation of the death of Jesus to the acquittal of the believer in the eschatological judgment, and (6) in bis formulation of a doctrine of the resurrection by the use of the historical resurrec-tion of Jesus. The argument in this latter case rests on two foundations — testimony and the implications of Christian experience. The Christian is to be saved from death, the wages of sin, after the manner of his risen Lord, who had borne death on his behalf. Thus the Pauline Christology is essentially soteriological. Its speculative elements are wholly contributory to the exposition of the certainty and the reasonableness of the coming deliverance. Clothed though it is in Jewish vocabularies and conceptions, the Pauline conception of Christ and His work has for its foci the historical Jesus and Christian experience. The concepts inherited from Judaism do not give rise to his belief in the resurrec-tion, but his confidence in the historicity of that event gives rise to his Christology. — Secondly, conceiving thus of Jesus as the supreme King of those whom He had delivered, the Pauline conceptions of His relations with the Church followed naturally. God was not to con-demn those who had voluntarily undertaken to prepare for the Kingdom when it should appear. They were ' justified ' through their faith in Jesus as Christ. But could the King of that coming Kingdom 'be indifferent to those who were justified, had already received the Holy Spirit as a first instalment of the future blessing, and were daily awaiting His reappearance? The Christ was the 'Head' of the Church in 'the last days,' just as truly as, in the 'coming age,' He would be King. His supremacy over the Church consisted not merely in that its original nucleus was composed of His dis-ciples, but also in that He had instituted its simple

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