The Eternal Verties: The Great Themes of Jesus

What are some of the great themes on which Christ is found most frequently speaking? Are they not God, man, sin, righteousness, salvation, the hereafter? On all these topics we see how, on the one hand, Christ connects his teaching with what had gone before in the Old Testament, and how, on the other, he carries it up to a higher and more spiritual plane.

1. In Christ’s doctrine of God, for instance, there might seem little that is absolutely new. Christ never thinks, any more than the Old Testament does, of proving God’s existence. He takes God, with all his well-known attributes of eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, holiness, and so on, for granted, and does not reason about them. Similarly, Jesus does not argue about a Divine Providence, but assumes it, and draws from it the lesson of trust in the Heavenly Father (Matt. 6:25 ff.). Yet what an incalculable advance is involved in this doctrine of a heavenly Father, interpreted as it is by Christ’s own consciousness of Sonship! And what an extension is given to the thoughts of God’s love and forgiving mercy!

2. Or, take the doctrine of man. Here again Jesus accepts the Old Testament view of the creation (Matt. 19:4–6), nature, and destination of man—a destination to a life of sonship, forfeited by sin, restored only by redemption. But how much more deeply does he penetrate to the core of man’s spiritual being, and assert for him, as an individual, an infinite value in God’s sight! Christ strikes down to that which is universal in man; looks at man in his capacity for spiritual and immortal life; drops wholly out of view accidental characteristics of rank, age, sex, nationality, culture; seizes only on the essentials in man’s nature. This is why his teaching endures, why it is adapted to every race and every stage of culture.

3. What, again, can be more penetrative or spiritual than Christ’s teaching on sin? Sometimes the assertion is made that Jesus has nothing to say on the origin of sin—knows nothing of a fall. But sin certainly was not to Jesus a natural, necessary, or normal state for man. If he appeals to the Genesis narrative of man’s origin on the subject of marriage (Matt. 19:4, 5), it is not likely he would ignore it on the subject of the origin of sin (cf. John 8:44). It is sometimes said, again, that Jesus knows nothing of hereditary evil—of original sin. But does he not? Is there not in his declarations the constant implication of universal sin? Is there not, further, a positive tracing back of sin to a foul fountain in the heart? “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.”

4. Christ teaches the freeness of salvation, and connects this in well-known passages with his own person and redeeming death (Matt. 20:28; 26:25–28; John 3:14–16, and so on).

5. Reverting for a moment to the secular side of Christ’s teaching, it should be observed how, as in other things, Jesus takes over the Old Testament idea of the world. Jesus was no pessimist. He accepts the world as God’s world, God’s creation (Matt. 6:26–30); as, therefore, in itself good, though sin has so woefully defaced it. We see in the parables how he recognizes the whole wealth of natural human relations; the full variety of human talents, occupations, and interests. He sees it all, but has an infinitely higher mission than to occupy himself with its finite aims. His Gospel is the regulating principle of the whole.

It may now be seen in part what Jesus means when he speaks of “the Kingdom of God.” That expression, on his lips, is vast and many-sided in significance, but we appear to get to the core of it when we interpret it to mean simply the supremacy of God in human hearts and human affairs, and in every department of these affairs. The Kingdom of God begins within, in the new life imparted to the soul by Christ, but it is not intended to remain within. It is to work itself out into every department of human life, till the whole is brought under the rule of God. “Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

This is the earthly aspect of the Kingdom, but there is the other—the eschatological, or, as some would now name it, the apocalyptic—on which, largely as it bulks in Christ’s teaching, only a word can here be said. Jesus does not look for the perfection of his Kingdom on earth, but sees its consummation in eternity, connecting this with his own Parousia, with resurrection, and with judgment. It is becoming customary to say that these are elements derived from popular Jewish apocalyptic beliefs—elements which enlightened Christianity must drop off. It might be shown, on the other hand, that they are elements which spring from the depths of Christ’s own consciousness, and which cannot be ignored in any just view of his teaching. The Jewish apocalypses could not have produced them. Jesus knew that he would die and would rise again. He knew himself to be King and Lord of the Kingdom he had founded. He confidently looked forward to a time of triumph and visible manifestation of the Kingdom with which he would be personally identified. However delayed by the slow course of providence, or by the unfaithfulness of the Church itself, that day will surely, in the Father’s good pleasure, come. It is for those who trust their Lord’s word to watch and pray for it (Matt. 24:45–51).—JAMES ORR

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