04.21 - Revelation: Christ and the Gospels

(21) Revelation: Christ and the Gospels The Gospels are historical: they are accounts of Christ’s life, works, words and self-manifestation, by means of which we come to know Him and the Father whom He came to reveal. They record how Christ was announced, became incarnate, manifested His glory, was rejected, crucified, rose again, ascended on high, and sent forth the Holy Spirit and created the Christian Church, etc. It is these facts and events that constitute historical revealing and make known the revelation of God to men; and these existed apart from the record and were all accomplished before the Gospels were written. But the Gospels make us acquainted with these facts and events, help us to know them and to find in them the revelation of God: they assure us of their reality and importance, explain their import, and inculcate their lessons. So that both the facts and the record under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth help us to the knowledge and experience of the divine revelation. But the revelation is in the Person, life, work, and mission of Christ, and not in the writing. Like the Prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ was a preacher and teacher of men; a “ teacher sent from God,” and sent to declare Him unto men. As such His life and teaching were always true to God, and to the purpose and will of God to men; but in His individual utterances He had regard to the actual position in which He and His hearers were placed. Accordingly Christ’s utterances must be read in connection with their historical settings, and interpreted in the light of His moral environment, and the special circumstances and relations of His hearers. Hut in respect of the character and righteousness of God, the gracious and redeeming purposes of the Father, 1 1 is love, sympathy, and compassion for the erring sinful children of men, and His purpose to seek and to save the lost, Christ’s work and teaching were full and complete. His discourses concerning the kingdom are set forth in parabolic imagery, thereby making manifest the historical clement in His revelation of God and of His gracious purposes. He embodied these in actual or illustrative historical conditions, and He did this not merely that His teachings might be remembered, or that they might have an additional charm and freshness, but that they might have an historical setting, and be brought into close relation with the events and incidents of everyday practical life.

Christ not only revealed Himself and His Father by His words and teachings, but also by His works; both by His ordinary works as also by His extraordinary works His miracles. These not only exhibited His supreme power and wisdom, and attested His claims to be heard as the “ Sent of God”; but they revealed the love and sympathy of God with the needy, the destitute, and the suffering. They were a revelation of the Fatherly compassion of God towards the afflicted and suffering, and declared the divine purpose to deliver from suffering those who appealed to Him. These works were a more powerful revelation of divine pity and compassion than could have been exhibited in words. And just as the death of Christ “ bearing the sins of men in His own body on the tree,” giving “ His life a ransom for many,” exhibited the gracious love and purpose of God to redeem men, so the miracles of Christ set forth more fully than words could have done His purpose to save man as a sufferer. Compassion is here revealed as a thing of life and power, as an active beneficent movement of God towards suffering humanity. Christ here discloses to us the very heart of God the Father for it is “He that doeth the works.” The most outstanding facts in the self manifestation of Christ are His death and resurrection. There is in them, as facts in the history of redemption, a light and power, a significance and purpose that declare the redemption of the race to be an accomplished fact. This was the redemption for which the race long waited and so long desired; and the death of Christ as an atonement for sin is at once the accomplishment of the purposes of God, and the fulfilment of the prophetic types and sacrifices of the Old Testament. Herein are revealed the wisdom and power, the justice and holiness, the righteousness and the love of God. These facts and events of the Revelation 17:1-18 New Testament, while they have an historical relation, as had the facts and transactions of the Old, have this difference, that, while the Old Testament events pointed forwards to this divine manifestation, the New Testament facts attest its fulfilment and accomplishment. In the Old these things were matter of expectation, here the} are matter of realisation; there they were the subject of promise things that were to come but now the facts arc part of the world’s history and of human experience. Then each successive stage brought men nearer the time of accomplishment, no\v the facts are the revelation of its completion. Then was exhibited a purpose, a gracious intention and design, now is declared the fact and its lessons, the event and its significance, the deed and its advantages and blessings.