THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
The Message of its Five Chief Preachers : A re-examination
IN theology, as in any other science, we should avoid or
escape from many serious errors were we more carefully to collate and to
compare all the relevant facts before forming theories.
In these
papers we wish to examine the statements of Holy Scripture regarding the
subject matter of the preaching of John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus Christ, and
His foremost messengers - the apostles, Peter, Paul, and John. Positively we
may thus discern much illuminating truth, and incidentally we may detect some
confusing errors.
I. JOHN THE
IMMERSER
(1) The Kingdom. It must have been a mighty message
given in mighty energy which could draw from their duties and pleasures into
the deserts the vast masses and all classes of a whole country. Such it indeed
was, its burden being this stupendous announcement: "Repent! for the kingdom of
the heavens has drawn near !" (Matt. 3. 2; etc.).
Some five centuries
earlier, just when world dominion had passed from Israel’s kings to
Gentile sovereigns, the prophet Daniel had outlined to the first Gentile
emperor the divinely foreseen course of world history, and had declared that in
the days of certain kings, to be ten in number, "the God of the heavens shall
set up a kingdom . . . which shall stand for ever " (Daniel 2. 44). This was
the culminating event to which all prophecy pointed; it became the ardent hope
of true believers (Luke 1. 67-79; 2. 38; 23. 51); and naturally, the
countryside was thrilled when one in the spirit and power of the great Elijah
cried, "The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near"- for the use of this
expression would recall to the hearers the well known phrase in Daniel. Its
retention in the written record in the gospel narrative serves similarly to
refer the reader to Daniel, and so it forms an illuminating verbal connection
between the beginning of the New Testament and the Old Testament.
4 THE KINGDOM HAS DRAWN NEAR
But we
may not assume that the masses of John’s hearers understood his message
correctly. They were as liable as we, though perhaps with more excuse, to read
into it what they wished to hear, and to gather from his words what they did
not say. It is for us to notice exactly what he did say and also what he did
not say.
John did not announce that the time had arrived when the Stone
cut out from the mountain without hands should break in pieces all
world-powers, and establish by force a new universal and imperishable empire.
Daniel foretold this, and this will most assuredly come to pass. But John did
not declare this to be imminent or then possible. He could not have done so
without exposing himself to the immediate and fatal retort that the ten kings
were not present in whose days those events were to happen. Any such assertion
would have destroyed his character as a prophet. World conditions in his time
did not correspond to those required by prophecy. What he did announce was that
the kingdom of the heavens had " drawn near." Here is to be observed the vital
need that translation should be as strictly accurate as language can possibly
admit. The rendering "the kingdom . . . is at hand" naturally raises the idea
of it being near in point of time, but this is not contained of necessity in
the word, and should not be introduced unless that be of necessity the sense,
which here it is not. For other meanings being possible, this one is not the
necessary meaning. Two kingdoms may be said to have drawn near to each other.
when the sovereign of one visits the territory of another, for a kingdom is
concentrated and represented in its king.
Again, a small state may cut
itself out of an empire by rebelling and setting up its separate government.
The empire may be said to have drawn near to such a state if the emperor should
venture thereinto with an appeal for submission and an offer of pardon. And
should any rebels accept such gracious overture, and return to their true
allegiance, they would thus, morally and legally, have received the empire and
have entered into it, though perchance continuing to reside on rebel territory.
The statement of John demands no more fulfilment than this, and this strictly
and fully corresponds to the historic facts. Through John, His ambassador and
forerunner, and then in person, Jesus, the Sovereign of the Kingdom of the
heavens, had drawn near to this rebel world with a call to repentance and an
offer of pardon. Such as submitted to the call received the King (John 1. 12)
and received the kingdom (Mark 10. 15), and thus to their vast advantage found
that the kingdom had indeed drawn near. These would then await the day, near or
distant, when the forces of the empire should suppress the rebellion, to the
destruction of persistent rebels, and by power reincorporate the state into the
empire. The waiting time in the midst of rebels from whom they had seceded
would often be difficult and even dangerous, but the hope of the triumph of the
empire would animate their hearts and guide their actions. But already, without
the coming of that time, they would know that the empire had drawn near to
them, that they had received it and were now in it, being subjects of its
sovereign. Nothing further than as above is required to fulfil John’s
announcement; therefore nothing further should be read into it. It has been
taught dogmatically that John offered to Israel the immediate establishment of
the visible kingdom in glory; that because Israel as a nation rejected the
offer it was withdrawn; that thereupon another offer was substituted therefor:
but these ideas do not arise from anything which John said or anybody else ever
said, as will be apparent when we advance to what later preachers
taught.
(2) Repentance. From the nature of John’s message
it followed that his first call was for repentance: "Repent ye, for the kingdom
of the heavens has drawn near." Repentance, as the Greek word shows, means a
change of mind. This may or may not be accompanied by profound inward
disturbance, by anguish of heart, emotional display. Its essence is that one
accepts and acts upon a new view of matters.
Change your mind as to
God and His divine rights and demands; as to your false, rebellious,
self-opinionated attitude towards Him; as to the sin of independence of and
animosity against Him. Adopt His view of the situation in place of your own;
yield your own demands and consent to His terms; surrender your arms, cast
yourself on His mercy; cease to do evil, learn to do well. Such was John’s
imperious, inflexible condition as preparation for that kingdom in which no sin
is tolerated, in which unquestioning, undeviating obedience to the will of God
is the law of life, the secret of bliss.
Such repentance is the
necessary preliminary to entering the kingdom of God in any sense, present or
future, for rebellion against a sovereign of necessity excludes from his
kingdom.
(3) Baptism. It is further emphasized that John
preached "the baptism of repentance" (Mark 1. 4). The term "to baptize" means
to dip, to immerse. The plunging of the person beneath the water was a symbolic
burial, as of one who had died, with a view to his resurrection into a new
life. In this sense the act was already well known to Jews and to heathen. John
called repenting sinners to acknowledge by this step that their former life was
so wrong as to merit death, that they held themselves as in heart-intention
dead to the former life, and that they desired henceforth to live in that new
moral world of which John was the herald, the kingdom of the heavens. After
death—never before—comes burial. None but the dead should be buried:
all the dead should be. After burial comes resurrection, a walking in newness
of life in a new world.
(4) Faith. As a faithful herald John
directed the hearts of his hearers away from himself toward his Sovereign. Paul
summarizes John’s ministry thus: "John baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him that should
come after him, that is, on Jesus" (Acts 19. 4). His message was, that entrance
into the kingdom was by faith in Christ.
But never a hint did John
give that if the people would receive Jesus as Messiah, the visible kingdom
could forthwith be set up. In truth his message was exactly the contrary: "he
seeth Jesus coming to him, and saith, Behold! the Lamb of God, that taketh away
the sin of the world." And this he repeated, saying on the morrow," Behold !
the Lamb of God" (John 1. 29, 36). The daily ritual of fifteen hundred years,
the substitutionary death of millions of lambs, had taught the people that the
lamb must die, its blood must be shed, ere any sinner could escape death and
enter into life under the favour of the Holy One.
Thus from the
beginning John taught that Jesus must die as the substitute of men in order
that the sin of the world might be expiated. This was an entirely indispensable
preliminary to this earth being incorporated into the kingdom of God at last,
or to any individual entering that kingdom in present heart experience.
PARDON AND GOOD WORKS
The theory that
the visible kingdom could be offered to Israel then and there without the
sacrificial death of the Son of God, if only Israel had been willing, proposes
what was a legal and moral impossibility. Divine law and sound morality demand
that sin shall be punished, and law and morals be thus vindicated; and that
this be effected through the punishment of a willing and worthy substitute if
the actual culprits are to have opportunity of pardon and of entrance into the
kingdom of God. The theory is, of course, flatly contradictory to the Old
Testament Scriptures. It would have meant that Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and all
such passages, never would have found fulfilment - a sheer impossibility. John
never could have made such a proposal without exposing himself to the
condemnation of making void the whole sacrificial ritual of Moses, and the
express and many declarations of the prophets that Messiah must suffer. In
simple fact, it was upon Christ as the atoning Lamb that he called men to place
their faith, obviously presupposing His death.
(5) Remission of
sins. Upon the basis of the prefigured, and soon to be accomplished
atonement, John proclaimed, what upon no other ground whatsoever would he have
dared to declare, the forgiveness of sins:" he preached the baptism of
repentance unto the remission of sins" (Mark 1. 4). Then, as. now, it was
blessedly true of God that" He pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly
repent and unfeignedly believe His holy gospel; "the genuineness of the
repentance and confession being attested at the time by public submission to
baptism.
(6) Evidential Works. John laid the heaviest possible
stress upon the producing of proof of heart repentance and renewing by the
doing of good works: "Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of repentance . . .
Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance" (Matt. 3. 8: Luke 3. 8). He
smashed with a blow all trust in godly parentage; "think not to say within
yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: "he insisted that each tree would be
judged by its own fruit, and if this were not good the tree would be cut down
and cast into the fire: he protested that the Coming One, to whom he directed
men, would preserve only wheat, but burn up all chaff. (7) A New Society. This
implied, in effect, that .Christ would in result gather a new society of men,
composed of persons compared to trees bearing good fruit, to wheat.
(8) The Baptism in the Spirit.
Finally, John announced that the One
of whom he spoke, standing unknown as yet in their midst, was He who should
fulfil the ancient and rich promises of God, given through Ezekiel (36. 26, 27)
and Joel (2. 28), and baptize such as believed on Him in the Holy Spirit.
Thereby should be made inwardly effective and enduring that preliminary work of
repentance and faith and holiness which it was John’s high honour to begin
by preaching and by baptizing in water, so preparing the way of the Lord
Jesus.