Christ, Christianity and the Bible. Haldeman Isaac Massey
two thousand years the world, without a dissenting voice, has borne witness that he is the one man who came into the earth and walked through it superlatively good.
Among the voices in the common consent of the world that Jesus Christ was a good man, there are those who with equal insistence deny that he was Almighty God.
They agree that he had the spirit of God; that he had it in measure such as no other man before or since. They announce their belief that he is the mightiest advance on humanity ever known; that all other religious teachers pale before him as the stars before the sun. They speak of his spotless life with fervent admiration, and draw special attention to his discourses as models of exhortation to righteousness and truth. To them the sermon on the mount is a chef d’œuvre. Out of that sermon they take the maxim about doing unto others as you would they should do unto you. They take that maxim and frame it about and make it the “Golden Rule” of human life. They exalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shall govern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, we shall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. In fact, if we seek a panegyric on the humanity of Christ; if we desire to see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity put beyond compare with the sons of men – we must needs go to the Socinian, the Arian and the Unitarian – those who deny the deity of Christ. But this exaltation of the human Christ is simply setting up a man of straw that with one blow of deific discount he may be knocked down again. He is set up as man that he may be cast down as God.
They will not accept him as God.
God Almighty (we are told) cannot be confined or shut up in any one man. Man as man and, therefore, every individual man in his part, is the avatar of God. Each man is in some sense the incarnation of God. God is more or less enthroned in all men. God is to be found in all men as he is to be found in all nature.
A good man – call Jesus a good man – set him up as high as you please, build as lofty a pedestal for him as you will, but Almighty God —Never!
Over against this exaltation of Christ as a merely good man, and the persistent denial that he was God, stands the unmistakable claim which Jesus Christ himself made – that he was God.
He made that claim in many ways.
He claimed it by declaring his power and authority to forgive sin.
That was a striking moment when he proclaimed it for the first time. Four men had brought a paralytic to the house where he was preaching. When they could not get in because of the crowd, they climbed up on the roof, took off some of the tiling, and by means of ropes or corners of the mattress let the man down to the very feet of Jesus. When he saw their faith, he turned to the sick man and said, “Son (son of Abraham), thy sins are forgiven thee.”
At once there was an uproar. The leading men, sitting round and watching him, burst out with a protest, charging him with blasphemy, saying that God only could forgive sin.
And they were right.
No mere man can forgive sin. Again and again the Scriptures teach us that forgiveness is with God that he may be feared.
In announcing the man’s sins forgiven, Jesus clearly claimed the prerogative, power and authority, which belong to God.
He claimed this equality by declaring himself to be the Son of God. To the Jews, “Son of God” was equivalent to “God the Son.” It meant to them, the moment he styled himself by that name, an unqualified claim to essential equality with the Father. Because of this they raged against him and would have killed him, crying out that he had made himself equal with God.
He made this claim in terms which admit of no misunderstanding. He said:
“I and my Father are one.”
When Philip said, “Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” he answered and said:
“Hast thou been with me so long time and hast thou not known me, Philip? From henceforth ye know him and have seen him.”
To Philip he had also said:
“I am the way and the truth and the life – no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”
By this statement he deliberately shut out all other men as the ground and means of approach to God. He declares that God, the Father, can be found in and through him alone; that he is the supreme way, the very truth and the very life; not that he knows some truth and has a measure of life in common with men, but that he is the truth – the absolute life. Such attitude, such claimed rights, privileges and powers, belong alone to God.
But he goes beyond this.
He testifies that he has been from all eternity the manifestation of the very selfhood of the Father. Hear what he says:
“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”
He traces his personality backward beyond the hour when the world was launched into space, before the stellar systems were created. He goes beyond time, he takes us into eternity, and in that unbegun and measureless distance declares with all the calm assurance of accustomed truthfulness that he had the glory, the visibility, the outward manifestation and splendor of the Father’s own essential selfhood; that his relation to him was that of one who was from all eternity his determination, definition and utterance.
Such claims as these are the claims of one who declares himself to be, and without restraint, nothing less than Almighty God.
On one occasion when talking to the Jews he said that Abraham had rejoiced to see his day, had seen it and was glad. They turned upon him and reminded him that he was not yet fifty years old, how then could he have seen Abraham, or Abraham him – that Abraham who had been dead nearly two thousand years?
He faced them and said:
“Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.”
The striking thing in the statement is not the claim of pre-existence – great as that is – not that he claimed to have been in existence already – not fifty years merely, but two thousand – no! all these utterances are remarkable enough, but these are not the astounding thing he said. The astounding, the unspeakably extraordinary thing he said is found in just two words:
“I am.”
There is one place in Holy Scripture where this phrase is supremely used. In the third chapter of the book of Exodus it is recorded that God manifested himself to Moses at the burning bush, and there declared himself to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He commanded Moses to return to Egypt, appear before Pharaoh and demand the release of the Children of Israel from their cruel bondage; and when Moses inquired by what name he should speak to the people, he answered:
“Say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto you.”
“I AM.”
To the Jew these two words set forth the supreme name and title of the eternal God.
In saying, therefore, “Before Abraham was – I AM,” Jesus announced himself to be the eternal, self-centred, supreme being, Almighty God. When he said this, and because they understood him, because they knew exactly what he meant by these words, the Jews took up stones to stone him.
If I were seeking to demonstrate by object lesson, and in a fashion that would admit of no reply, that Jesus claimed to be Almighty God, I would summon the mightiest and most masterful artist the world knows to come and paint for me the scene which takes place a little later as a consequence of that moment when he emphasizes his claim by saying:
“I and my Father are ONE.”
The picture would represent a great crowd of scowling, fierce, angry Jews, their hands filled with stones – some of them drawn back, the whole figure intense with readiness to cast the fatal stone – and Jesus, standing a little distance apart, looking calmly on.
Underneath the picture I would have written in great golden letters (letters so artistic, so startling, so wonderful in form, that at the risk of art itself – almost at the risk of minimizing the picture at the first glance, subordinating it to interest in