Authority is of the very essence of lordship. Jesus said to his disciples, "Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" The tone of authority in the Sermon on the Mount astonished the multitudes. The same note was heard in all his teaching. He claimed lordship over things of God's appointment, "even of the Sabbath," and in his final mandate, "all authority in heaven and upon earth"--"Go ye, therefore, and disciple all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."

      Jesus delegated his authority to his disciples at such times and in such measure as his purposes required. When he sent forth the twelve "to preach the kingdom of God," he gave them "power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases." When the seventy returned from a like mission, for which they had been similarly endowed, they reported exultingly, "Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name." Permanent power and authority were bestowed upon his apostles, for the establishment of the church, and the completion of the body of gospel truth, of which the church was to be the pillar and support. It came to them on Pentecost as a miraculously attested spiritual endowment. By virtue of it they testified to the superhuman lordship of Christ, and became the heralds of his commands among all nations.

      From that time forth the apostles boldly faced the world with the declaration that this crucified Jesus of Nazareth, seated at the right hand of God, was "both Lord and Christ;" that his lordship extended to all men for all time, and should at last bring all [468] enemies into subjection. As rational men they could not have submitted to his lordship so loyally, and have executed his commands so heroically, in spite of torture and death, unless they had been convinced that the authority of Jesus was superhuman. As rational men we can not admit the unlimited demands that Christ makes upon our allegiance, unless we believe his authority to be above that of popes and kings, as his apostles believed it to be above that of councils and Cæsars. Such inflexible demands inevitably raise the old questions, "By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority?" For us, as for those priests and elders, the alternatives are: The admission of its superhuman origin, or the denial of its existence. But its superhuman origin is inseparably bound up with the superhuman origin of Christ himself. The New Testament writers recognize this, and teach that the lordship of Christ is by virtue of divine inheritance; depending upon his own heavenly origin.

      To establish his heavenly origin, the Holy Spirit enabled those unskilled writers to disentangle the lordship of Christ from all human implications, and to portray him as "God manifest in flesh;" "the fulness of the Godhood bodily;" "the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance." The portrait is a composite of two distinct ones given in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In the first we see "the effulgence of God's glory; the very image of his substance," and write among our credenda, "He is very God." In the second, the human lineaments of care and sorrow and pain, with love and longing for sympathy and appreciation, are so conspicuous that we are prone to say, "He is very, and only, man." But the two are so blended by the inspired artists in the living, loving, serving, yet commanding Christ, that we may see in him, if we have spiritual vision, "the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

      In our thinking lordship is inseparably associated with power. No authority is recognized as legitimate which is not able to enforce its will. Only "he who can is king." In his "mighty works" Jesus is portrayed as demonstrating his power in all realms over which he claimed lordship, even in those of sin and death. John selects from the "many signs which Jesus did in the presence of his disciples" enough to prove his power, and to show that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." As lordship and power such as Jesus exercised are not of man, and as men have no means of determining their source, the inspired writers harmoniously emphasize the fact that they depend upon his superhuman origin. But from what quarter of the infinite superhuman realm did he come? from the benevolent, or the malevolent; from that of light, or of darkness; of life, or of death? John answers, in that awfully sublime genealogy which never could have been the product of the human imagination: "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God." "The

B. J. RADFORD.

Logos became flesh and dwelt among men," and oh, glory in the highest, "full of grace and truth;" of love and service! For the purpose of identification, Matthew traces the genealogy of Christ back to Abraham; Luke extended it to Adam, and then the Spirit of truth flung out, by the hand of John, this spiritual line, safely above all possibility of carnal entanglement--the lifeline which alone can keep us from foundering in the uncharted sea of rationalistic speculation.

      Having thus revealed his heavenly origin, John exclaims, "He that cometh from above is above all; he that is of the earth is of the earth, and of the earth he speaketh." The speech, the thoughts, the ambitions, the lordships, of the earthborn are of the earth, and it is difficult for even the Spirit of revelation to lift them above it. Jesus earnestly sought to help his disciples and the multitudes to an understanding of his divine origin: "I am come down from heaven, not to do mine own will, [469] but the will of him that sent me;" "I am the living bread which came down out of heaven;" "I know whence I came and whither I go, but ye know not whence I come or whither I go;" "Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world;" "Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." From a mere man these would be simply insane mouthings. Rationalists meet the claims of the Virgin-born with the sneer, "Is not this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How doth he now say, 'I am come down out of heaven'?" Many even of his own disciples said, "This is a hard saying, who can hear it?" The answer of Jesus would apply to his disciples now, "There are some of you that believe not." Unbelievers, ancient and modern, have the same "stone of stumbling and rock of offense"--a virgin-born Son of God. It is too hard a saying; it is out of all "experience." How can he whom we know to be the son of Joseph claim to be the Son of God, "come down out of heaven"?

      That he may help our unbelief and our dull vision, the holy Spirit has inwrought the portrait of Jesus in the Scriptures with lineaments not of fleshly origin, and beyond the reach of human invention. Let us trace some of these through their exquisite blendings with those human features which make him so dear, and so near, to us.

      When asserting the lordship pertaining to his Christhood, when exercising his divine power, Jesus was careful to cut himself loose from all human kinships. It must be understood that his lordship was of his deity and not of his humanity. When his mother chided him for remaining at the temple without permission, the reply, "Knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house?" was not a piece of boyish disrespect. She did not realize its meaning until the lesson was repeated at the marriage in Cana of Galilee. In this "beginning of his signs," when, as Son of God, he was about to demonstrate his lordship over nature, it must be taught, once for all, that humanity had neither part nor lot in the matter. "Woman, what have we in common?" As Lord and Christ he recognized no more kinship with Mary than with any other human being. To have remembered this would have saved the church from the follies of Mariolatry. The same lesson was expressed with dramatic emphasis upon a vast multitude, when his mother and his brethren sought to rescue Jesus from his own intemperate zeal. To them, pleading the privileges of kinship in this interference, he replied, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" Then "he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren." His lordship and his Christhood are not after the law of carnal heredity, but "after the power of an endless life." But, if the Lord Christ was thus above all human relationships, he was, by the same token, above all human obligations. When John, baptizing unto repentance, hesitated to baptize the sinless One, Jesus said, "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Suffer it now. It was not until after his baptism that he entered upon his ministry, miraculously certified as Son of God. As son of Abraham he recognized every social obligation; as Son of God he recognized none, not even that to observe the Sabbath. When the Pharisees assailed him for violating it, he left them angered and baffled by the paradox, "The Son of man is lord also of the sabbath." His hour for proclaiming himself as Son of God having not yet come, he veiled his deity behind his humanity, that seeing they might not see. But blessed are they who can see. To them "the fashion of his countenance is altered," and they behold the glory of that lordship which, on the mount of transfiguration, overstrode the boundaries of mortality at will, and superseded that of Moses and Elijah.

      When the tribute expected of every Jew for the service of the temple was demanded of him, Jesus declared that he was exempt, because the temple was his Father's house. In the same spirit he consented to the death which was appointed unto men; but it must be understood that no man could take his life from him. He had "power to lay down his life and to take it again." When safe beyond the line of mortality, [470] he informed Moses and Elijah of his purpose to return to Jerusalem, and pass out by the terrible and darkened way of Gethsemane and Calvary, instead of by the glory gate upon the mount.

      Now, who are these that so marvelously veil the lordship of God behind the humility of man; so inimitably and harmoniously blend divine sovereignty and human service? Not only were they "unlearned and ignorant men," but they worked remote from one another in time and place; yet all lines and colors harmoniously blend in the masterpiece of all masterpieces.

      No less significant is the unstudied agreement of the New Testament writers that Jesus is Lord in a sense incapable of establishment by human testimony. When, at Cæsarea Philippi, Peter exclaimed, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus answered, "Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven." Flesh and blood can furnish no data for such a proposition.

      Paul tried to teach the Greeks of Corinth that the lordship of Christ was a transcendental fact, beyond their scientific verification, and so to be accepted by faith. "No man can say that Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit." His kingdom is not of this world. His is a spiritual lordship, to be revealed by the Spirit of truth. It is one of the things hidden from the wise and knowing, and, as it was among the Corinthians of Paul's day, so now "not many wise after the flesh" receive it, but to those who do receive it the crucified Christ is still "the power of God and the wisdom of God."

      When, on Pentecost, Peter made the first authoritative announcement to the world that Jesus was "both Lord and Christ," he was conscious of its transcendental nature. "Being therefore at the right hand of God exalted, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear;" "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified." He sought, on this birthday of the church, to establish two all-important facts: 1. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 2. His coronation as Lord and Christ. Let us note how he dealt with them.

      In promising the Holy Spirit to his apostles, Jesus said, "The Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father shall bear witness of me; and ye also bear witness of me, because ye have been with me from the beginning." The promise was fulfilled on Pentecost, and, as we have seen, the Spirit bore witness that Jesus was "made both Lord and Christ." But the other fact, the resurrection of Jesus, was established by the testimony of the apostles. It was a matter within their own knowledge. During the ten days of waiting for the Spirit, the eleven completed their number by choosing, under divine guidance, one who should take the place of Judas. They clearly understood the thing to be proved, and the qualifications necessary for a competent witness thereto. Peter thus set them forth: "Of the men that have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, from the baptism of John until the day that he was received up from us; of these must one become a witness with us of his resurrection."

      All this proves that the lordship of Christ, as proclaimed by the Holy Spirit, is a concept beyond the power of the human mind to create or to verify. It extends its saving power over the realms of sin and death.

      Jesus constantly refused homage, by whomsoever offered, on any other ground than that, of his deity. He would not be made king at the demand of the multitude. He desired no allegiance to himself as Son of David. Passion week showed how fickle that could be. He desires no homage to-day as son of Joseph. Nor would he accept homage offered to him as the wisest of men. When Nicodemus sought to honor him as "a teacher sent from God," Jesus startled him by a blunt refusal of such homage. His lordship was such that even Nicodemus could enter into its allegiance and enjoy its privileges only by way of a new birth, having been begotten from above. He departed a wiser man. Nor would he be worshiped as the holiest of men. When the rich young ruler, running in his zeal and [471] kneeling in his reverence, exclaimed, "Good Master," Jesus astonished him by demanding, "Why callest thou me good? None is good save one, God." This was no make-believe self-depreciation. He was "holy, guileless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens," but men must know that this was not of his humanity, but of that Godhood which made him one with the Father. By this he claimed lordship over the property and the life of this earthly ruler who had just knelt before him.

      Who is this that spurned all homage offered to him as king or sage or saint, yet whose heart overflowed in grateful benediction upon the humble fisherman who recognized him as "the Christ, the Son of the living God"? And whence did these unlettered writers obtain this masterpiece of all portraiture? It would be as credible that the Digger Indians, with their brutish minds and crude pigments, had created the Sistine Madonna, as that those unlearned Galileans, unaided by the Holy Spirit, created this portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ. There it is, inwoven in the sacred text. From it gleams forth in increasing splendor the life which is the light of men. "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, in the person of Jesus Christ, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God."

      Rationalists reject Christ's lordship largely because he insists upon his "authority" in matters of faith. "He taught as one having authority." "He that believeth not shall be condemned." Authority, abused in the name of Christ, inflicted upon medieval Christendom untold shame and misery. It hid the truth which makes men free and taught the lies which make them slaves. The church riveted the chains of bondage upon the minds as well as the bodies of men. So cruel was it that when freed they fled, in sheer panic, to intellectual anarchy. In the French Revolution the stampede from abused authority plunged society into chaos. It took France three generations to recover the sanity which recognizes authority as the corner-stone of the social fabric.

      The lordship of Christ finds broader and deeper recognition in each succeeding generation. The efforts to body forth his divine majesty have produced the world's masterpieces in painting, in poetry and in music. Loyalty to him as Lord of all has inspired the sublimest heroism; not only in such as Paul and Wickliffe and Huss and Luther and Latimer, but in multitudes of common men and women, whom it has lifted to exultant martyrdom. It inspires and sustains the "far-flung battleline" of the earth-encircling missionary hosts. They face all foes and dare all dangers because of their faith in the Captain of the world's salvation.

      Christ's tenth legion are those who believe that his divine power will enable them to triumph over sin and death. "Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"

[CCR 468-472]