The Designaiiotis in Matthew
Even more directly connected with the title, ‘ Christ,’ however. Is that of ‘ King ’: and we find Matthew accordingly recording the ascription of that title to Him in the heathen form of ‘ the King of the Jews,’ alike by the wise men of the east who came to worship Him in His cradle (2^) and by the Roman governor at His trial (27^^ cf. 27^'^) and the mocking soldiery (27^®). Jesus accepts it at Pilate’s hands, despite the heathen form which he gives it, and which the priests (27^“) correct to the more acceptable ‘ King of Israel.’ Of more significance is Matthew’s application to Him, when He entered Jerusalem in triumph, of the prophecy of Zecharlah, “ Behold thy King cometh unto thee,” etc. (21^). But, of course, the deepest significance of all attaches to our Lord’s own use of the title ‘ King ’ with reference to Himself in the great judgment scene of Mt 25^^ (verses 34 and 40). Here, calling Himself the ‘ Son of Man,’ He ascends the throne of His glory, and as King, not of Israel, but of all flesh, dispenses their final awards tO' all, according to their several rations to Himself. Such a King certainly was something more than a ‘ Son of David ’ (2 2^^®eq.)^ But that designation also belongs to Him as the ‘ Christ,’ God’s Anointed, who was to occupy the Davidic throne, and accordingly it is represented that the sight of His Messianic works led Him to be recognized no more as ‘the Coming One ’ (ii^) than
23 Cf. W. C. Allen on Mt ii^^. Commenting on the aorist, Ttapedod-q^ he remarks: “The idea involved is of a pre-temporal act, and carries with it the conception of the preexistence of the Messiah. The same thought probably underlies ^Xdov of 5^"^ and the dnoffre lavra
1^) — and that He by no means refused the ascription (esp. 21^’^^).
Obviously, however, no lower title would suit the state of this Messianic King than that highest con- Meaning ceivable one, ‘ the Son of God.’ It is of the likely that there were supernatural im- ‘Son of God* plications in the mind of the evangelist even when he applied to the persecuted infant Jesus the prophetic summary of Israelitish history, “ Out of Egypt did I call my Son” (2^^), although at first sight we might seem to be moving here in the atmosphere of a merely official sonship.^^ In every other instance of the adduction of this designation in Matthew^ these supernatural implications are thrust prominently forward. The very point of Satan’s temptation of our Lord was that He should exercise the supernatural powers which necessarily belonged to Him — if He were indeed really ‘a Son of God’ (4^’^ cf. 829). 25 Sicnilarly the confession wrung from the dis-
2^ Cf. Zahn in loc.: “ According to the connection of the narrative up to this point, Jesus can be called the Son of God for no other reason than that He was born of the Virgin apart from any aid of man (cf. Lk 1^5). The divine sonship of Israel, which was grounded in God’s calling this people into being for a particular purpose, and, as it were, begetting it (Deut 32I®) — an idea which was so vividly conceived that God’s fatherhood is set excludingly over against that of Abraham and Jacob (Is 63^®) — appears as a type of the divine Sonship of Jesus, which actually excludes the bodily fatherhood of the son of David.”
25 Cf. Zahn, in loc. (p. 152); “He is by a word of power to create for Himself the food for which He hungers. This is an echo out of ^ the abyss corresponding to the voice from heaven (3^^). What God declares of Jesus, the devil brings into question (Gen 3^, Job jSseq.)^ demanding from Jesus that He should offer him proof of it. We must not overlook, however, that he does not say, as might have been expected from the undeniable connection with 3^’^, e: 6 ulo^ but el o!o^
ciples by the spectacle of His control of the forces of nature, emphasizes as strongly as possible the supernaturalness of the Being who is capable of such works (14^3).26 In Peter’s great confession (16^®)^’^ the jidjunction of ‘ the Son of the Living God ’ to the simple ‘ Christ ’ is no more without its high significance than the similar adjunction in the high priest’s adjuration (2663)28 q£ t God’ to the simple ‘ Christ.’
ej TOO 6eoo» He is to prove not that He is the unique Son of God whom God just on that account has chosen as the Messiah, but that He is a being more closely related than other men to God (cf. Mt 1^33 27'^®). If it cannot be unknown to the evil spirit, who is acquainted with the voice from heaven, that Jesus has been chosen to be the Messiah, nevertheless what he demands of Him has nothing directly to do with this vocation. It is, however, surely to be expected of One who as a Son of God must have power over nature, that He should rescue Himself from the unsuitable condition of a hungry man by the use of His power.”
from the predicate (cf. on the other hand, 31'^ i6^6 even nor the position of Oeou before olog Is to be overlooked. Even if divine Sonship and Messianic dignity were s)monyms (see to the contrary p. 145 seg.), and what had cast the disciples into adoring wonder had had anything to do with the office of the Messiah, the absence of the article nevertheless would forbid us to think of that here (cf. on the contrary, i2~^ 16^6 21^ 2663). What is said and what there was occasion to say Is not who but what kind of a man Jesus was. The question elicited by a similar occasion, 7ioran6<^ kariv ourof (S^t) is here answered; though, naturally, not after the fashion of a scholastic dictum, but in the direct expression of an overwhelming experience. Not a son of man, but a Son of God He is, who exhibits such supernatural power over the elements, and shows Himself so exalted over the hesitancies between the power of faith and the feebleness of the flesh which accompany human weakness even when the spirit is willing, — as was to be seen in Peter.”
27 Cf. Zahn in loc. pp. 534-5: goes above 14^2 In confessing Jesus as the Son of God, and of the living God; that is, Jesus had manifested the works of the Son of a God who exists and acts, etc.
In both instances the Intention Is to go beyond the mere designation of our Lord as the Messiah, and to bring into relief the supernaturalness of His person. Even when the Jews railed at Him as He hung on the cross that He had proclaimed Himself ‘ the Son of God’ (27^^’^^), the point of their scoff was that He had laid claim to a supernatural relationship which implied supernatural powers. Nevertheless, the deepest connotations of the Sonship to God come out most plainly in connection with the less technical forms of this designation. At the apex of these stands, of course, the double attestation which, it Is recorded, was given to Jesus from heaven Itself as God’s ‘ Son,’ w^ho because His ‘ Son ’ was also His ‘ Beloved,’ His chosen, in whom He was well pleased (3^'^ 17^).^® But quite worthy of a place by the side of these supreme attestations Is the allusion which our Lord makes to Himself in one or two of His parables, as the ‘ Son,’ in differentiation from all “servants” of God whatsoever; as God’s Son and unique Heir, who, despite what those to whom He was sent should do unto Him, shall be constituted by God’s marvelous working the stone
29 Cf. Zahn in loc., pp. 145 seq., where the question is fully discussed and solidly argued: “As at 2^^ so here the divine Sonship is to be explained from 1I8-25. it expresses not an official, but a personal relation; it is not identical with the Messianic office, but its presupposition.” One of the arguments on which Zahn lays stress, however, scarcely serves: “ The idea that God, out of the many sons which He has, has chosen one and that for the Messiahship, is excluded by the attribute for in this connection dya7T7]T6<^ bears the es- tablished sense of only son=^iovo^ev>;9*” It appears to be probable, on the contrary, that, as W. C. Allen, in loc., puts it “ 6 dyanTjTo? is not an attribute of d oloq [loo, but an independent title — ‘the Beloved ’ — the Messiah.” The matter is discussed by Dr. J. Armitage Robinson in Hastings’ Diet. Bib. II. 501, and in his commentary on Ephesians, pp. 229!!.
which Is the head of the corner (21^’^'^®) and as the King’s Son, all those unworthy of a place at whose marriage feast should have their part In the outer darkness where Is the weeping and the gnashing of teeth (22^). This ‘Son’ obviously Is no less In origin and nature divine than In His working In the earth the Lord of the destinies of men.
But perhaps the most Illuminating passages In this reference remain yet to be adduced. These are those. three remarkable utterances of our Lord which are recorded at 24^% 11^^ and 2 818-20^ The first of these we have already met with In Mark. It Is that difficult saying In which our Lord declares that “ concerning the day and hour ” of His coming “ no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet the Son, but the Father only ” — which differs from the parallel In Mark significantly only In the added emphasis placed on the exclusion of all others whatsoever from this knowledge by the adjunction to the exception of the Father of the emphatic word “ only.” The elevation of the Son here to superangellc dignity, as the climax of the enumeration of those excluded from the knowledge In question Is reached In His name — no one at all, not even the angels of heaven, nor yet even the Son — Is what It particularly concerns us to note. Implying as It does the exaltation of the Son above the highest of creatures, “ the angels of heaven.”^^ The second of
SI The words “ nor yet the Son ” are, to be sure, lacking in a few somewhat unimportant witnesses to the text, but can scarcely be adjudged of doubtful genuineness. W. C. Allen rejects them In sequence to a theory of his own of the relation of Matthew to Mark, and Matthew’s habit of dealing with Mark’s christological statements. Zahn the utterances in question is in some respects the most remarkable in the whole compass of the four Gospels. { Even the Gospel of John contains nothing which penetrates more deeply into the essential relation of the Son to the Father. Indeed, as Dr. Sanday suggests, “ we might describe the teaching of the Fourth Gospel ” as only “ a series of variations upon the one theme, which has its classical expression in ” this “verse of the Synoptics ” “All things were delivered unto me by my Father; and no one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.” The point of the utterance, it will be seen, is that in it our Lord asserts for Himself a relation of practical equality with the Father, here described in most elevated terms as the “ Lord of heaven and earth” (v. 25).®® As the Father only can know the Son, so the Son only can know the Father: and others may know the Father only as He is revealed by the Son. That is, not merely is the Son the exclusive revealer of God, but the mutual knowledge of Father and Son is put on what seems very much a par. The Son can be known only by the Father in all that He is, as if His being were infinite and as such in- more wisely retains them, as do all the editors. “The documentary evidence in their favor,” says Hort justly, “ is overwhelming.”
33 Cf. Zahn on Mt ii25-30 440): “As Jesus here names Him
whom He has just called ‘ His Father,’ in the second and third clauses simply ‘the Father ’ — which is not to be paralleled with the address of vv. 25, 26 — so He names Himself three times simply ‘ the Son,’ in order to designate Himself as the only one who stood to God in the full sense of that name in the relation of a Son to a Father.”
scrutable to the finite intelligence; and His knowledge alone — again as if He were infinite in His attributes — is competent to compass the depths of the Father’s infinite being. He who holds this relation to the Father cannot conceivably be a creature, and we ought not to be surprised, therefore, to find in the third of these great utterances (28^®'^^) the Son made openly a sharer with the Father (and with the Holy Spirit) in the single Name of God: “All authority was given me^^ in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the 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 commanded you; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Having in the former passage declared His intercommunion with the Father, who is the Lord of heaven and earth, Jesus here asserts that all authority in heaven and earth has been given Him, and asserts a place for Himself in the pj;ecincts of the ineffable Name. Here is a claim not merely to a deity in some sense equivalent to and as it were alongside of the deity of the Father, but to a deity in some high sense one with the deity of the Father.
Alongside of these more usual Messianic titles, there are found in Matthew, as in Mark, traces of the use
Less Common of Others of our Lord, apparently less Messianic current among the people. In Matthewy too, for example, we find Jesus represented as designated from heaven ‘ the Beloved,’ who has been chosen out by God as His rep-
Note the aorist, which as in ii27 (cf. W. C. Allen, in loc.) appears to refer to a pre-temporal act.
resentative (3^^ and as identifying Himself with the mysterious Shepherd of Zechariah who is Jehovah’s fellow (26^^). And we find Him here also not only designating Himself the ‘ Bridegroom ’ (9^^), but elucidating the designation in a couple' of striking parables (the parable of the Ten Virgins, 2.1 seq.,5,6,10. parable of the Marriage of the
King’s Son, 22^®®^^-), the suggestion of which is that the fate of men hangs on their relation to Him; that men all live with reference to Him; and it is He that opens and shuts the door of life for them. The high significance of these designations as applied to Jesus has already been pointed out when we met with them in Mark. It is more important, therefore, to observe here that the irnplicit reference in Mark to the ‘ Servant of Jehovah ’ as a designation of Jesus is made explicit in Matthew by the formal application to Him of the prophecy in Isaiah 40^ (12^®®®*^-) as a divine prediction of the unostentatiousness of His ministry, in its striking contrast with the expectations which had been formed of the Messiah’s work on the basis of the predictions centering around the Anointed King, the Son of David.
This unostentatiousness entered also into the conception of the Messiah expressed in our Lord’s favorite self-designation of ‘ Son of Man,’ — ‘Son of Man’ which in Matthew’s representation, too, appears as the standing Messianic designation which our Lord employs of Himself, occurring as such about thirty times. The Messianic character of this designation is placed beyond all doubt by its interchange with other Messianic titles (I6^^ cf. verses 16, 20; 17^ cf. verse 10 [the forerunner of Messiah]; 24^^ cf. verse 23; 26®"^, cf. verse 63): and the conception suggested by it of the Messiah, as judged by the substance of the passages in which it occurs, differs in nothing from that derived from the passages in Mark except that it is illuminated by more details. Here, too, we learn that the ‘ Son of Man ’ came to minister, — or more specifically for the purpose of redemption: “ the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (20^®). Suffering and death were, therefore. His appointed portion (17^^ 17^^ 20^^ 252,24,45^^ as indeed Scripture had foretold (12^*^). But after death is the resurrection (17^’““ 20^® 12^®), and after the resurrection the “ coming ” in great glory to judge the world (10^^ 26®^). There is nothing here which we had not already in Mark, but everywhere details are filled in. The fortunes of the earthly life of the ‘ Son of Man ’ are traced. We learn that He lived like other men, without asceticism, — “ eating and drinking” (ii^^); but lived a hard and suffering life, — He had not where to lay His head (8“^). His task was to sow the good seed of the word (13^^). As part of His lowliness, it emerges that blasphemy against Him is forgivable, as it is not against the Holy Ghost (12^^). And the suffering He is called on to endure runs out into death (17^^’^“). It would not be easy to give a more itemized account of the sufferings He endured at the end than Mark gives, but they are all set down here, too (20^®), as also is the promise of the resurrection (12^^ 1^9.23 20^®). When He shall come again is left here, too, in the indefinite future
(24"^, cf. iO“"), but the suddenness of its eventuation is emphasized
The details become notably numerous again, however, when the purpose and accompaniment of this coming are adverted to (13^^ 16“^ 19^^ 24^^ 25^^ 26®^). The ‘ Son of Man ’ is “ henceforth to be seen sitting at the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven” (26^^ 24^^). He is to come in the glory of His Father with His angels (i6“^), for all the angels are to be with Him (25^^). The end of His coming is to pass judgment on men and to consummate the Kingdom. “ For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then shall He render unto every man according to his deeds ” (i6“^) — and this is “to come in His kingdom” (i6“®). There is naturally a punitive side to this judgment and a side of rev/ard. Of the punitive side we are told that “ when the sign of the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory shall appear,” “ all the tribes of the earth shall mourn” (24''^^^); and that He “shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (13^^). On the side of reward we are told that “ those who have followed Him, in the regeneration when the ‘ Son of Man ’ shall sit on the throne of His glory ” “ also shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelv^tribes of Israel” (19"®). For “He shall send forth His angels with a great sound of trumpets, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds; from one end of heaven to the other” (24^^), and “then dom of their Father ” (13^^). It is obviously the universal judgment that is here brought before us; and the consummation of the Kingdom, when by this judgment all that is impure js drafted out of it and the chosen are made sharers in the universal regeneration. The whole scene of the judgment is pictured for us with great vividness in the remarkable passage, where all the nations are depicted as summoned before the throne of the ‘ Son of Man’s ’ glory and separated according to their deeds done in the body — interpreted as relating to Him — to the eternal inheritance of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world or to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The ‘ Son of Man ’ appears here accordingly as the King on His throne apportioning to men their eternal destinies.
Clearly, according to Matthew’s account of our Lord’s declarations, the ‘ Son of Man ’ has His period The High ®f humiliation on earth, living as other Meaning of men sowing the seed (13^^),
* Son of Man’ having not where to lay His head (8^^) as He ministers to men (20^®), forgiving even blasphemy against Himself (12^^) and all indignities (i7i2’22), down to death itself (17^^ 20^®) — and yet even while on earth having authority to forgive sins (9®) and to regulate religious ordinances (12®), and dying only that He may ransom others (202^). And He has also His period of exaltation, when having risen from the dead (12^® 1^9,23 He in due time comes in His glory, surrounded by His servants the angels (162^ 25^^ 24^^), and gathers to Himself His chosen ones whom He has ransomed by His death (24^^ 13^^) ^nd, cleansing His Kingdom of all that is iinrlean. RPts If- nn in Ifs dpstlned nerfectlon (16^^).
The picture that is drawn is clearly, then, a picture of voluntary humiliation for a high end, with the accomplishment of the end and return to the original glory. In order to bring all its implications out in their completeness we have only to recall what Matthew tells us, on the one hand, of the ‘ Son ’ who is superior to angels (24^®), who is God’s adequate and exclusive Revelation, knowing Him even as He is known (ii^^), who is sharer with the Father in the one ineffable Name (28^^'^^); and, on the other, in the opening chapter of his Gospel, of the supernatural birth of this heavenly Being, breaking His way to earth through a virgin’s womb in fulfillment of the prophecy that He should be called “ Immanuel,” “ God with us,” For it can scarcely be doubted that Matthew means this name ‘Immanuel’ (i‘^) to be interpreted metaphysically of Jesus, and therefore adduces the prophecy as a testimony to the essential deity of the virgin-born child, — and indeed the angel messenger himself is recorded as not obscurely indicating this when he explains that the child whose birth he announces shall be called Jesus “ because it is He that shall save His people from their sins ” — thus applying to the promised infant the words spoken in Ps 130^ of Jehovah Himself: “And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities.”®® The very name ‘ Jesus ’ for Matthew, as truly as that of ‘ Immanuel ’ itself, is thus freighted with an implication of the deity of its bearer: and this is only a symbol of the saturation of his Gospel with the sense of the supreme majesty of the great personality whose life-history as the promised Messiah he has undertaken to portray.
In seeking to form an estimate of the significance of this list of designations ascribed to Jesus in Mat- Profundity of thew, it does not seem necessary to Matthew’s attempt to draw out separately, as we Suggestiveness attempted to do in the case of Mark, the evidence they supply to the primary emphasis laid in Matthew upon the Messianic dignity of Jesus and that they supply to the recognition of the divine majesty of His person. It lies on the very face of these designations that by Matthew, as truly as by Mark, Jesus js conceived in the first instance as the promised Messiah, and His career and work as fundamentally the career and work of the Messiah, at last come to introduce the promised Kingdom. And it lies equally on their very face that this Messiah whom Jesus is represented as being is conceived by Matthew, and is represented by Matthew as having been conceived by Jesus Himself, as a “ transcendent ” figure, as the current mode of speech puts it, i. e., as far transcending in His nature and dignity human conditions.
So clear is this in fact that our Interest as we read instinctively takes hold in Matthew of matters quite other than those which naturally occupy it in Mark. In Mark the attention of the reader is attracted particularly to the implications of the superangelic dignity ascribed to the Messiah; and he finds himself unpre- meditatingly noting the evidence of the presupposition of His heavenly origin and relations, of His preexistence, of His more than human majesty, of His divine powers and functions. These things are so much a matter of course with Matthew that the attention of the reader is drawn insensibly off from them to profounder problems. This Gospel opens with an account of the supernatural bir^h of Jesus, which is so told as to imply that the birth is supernatural only because the person so born is not of this world, but in descending to it fulfills the prophecies that Jehovah shall come to His people to dwell among them and to save them from their sins. From the very outset, therefore, there can be no question in the mind of the reader that he has to deal no-t merely with a supernatural life but with a supernatural person, all whose life on earth is a concession to a necessity arising solely from His purpose to save.^ No wonder rises in him, therefore, when he reads of the supramundai^ powers of this person, of His superhuman insight, of His supernatural deeds. That He is superior to the angels, who appear constantly as His servants, and is in some profound sense divine, clothed with all divine qualities, strikes him as in no sense strange. The matters on which he finds his mind keenly alert rise above these
the evangelist, Jesus, born of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit, was the preexistent Messiah (= the Beloved) or Son who had been
forechosen by God (3^'^ 17®) > and who, when born Into the world as Jesus, was ‘ God-with-us ’ (i^^). In this respect the writer of the First Gospel shows himself to be under the influence of the same conception of the Person of Christ that dominates the Johannine theology, though this conception under the categories of the Logos and the Divine Son is worked out much more fully in the Fourth than in the First Gospel.”
Matthezv^s Conception of Our Lord 9 1 things, and concern the precise relations in which this superangelic, and therefore uncreated, Being is conceived to stand to the Deity Himself.
It is not possible to avoid noting that all the designations applied to Jesus in this narrative tend to run Richness up at once on being applied to Him of His into their highest implications. Even Implications simple name ‘ Jesus ’ is no exception to this. For here it is represented as itself a gift from heaven, designed to indicate that in this person is fulfilled the promise that Jehovah shall visit His people, — for it is He who, in accordance with the prediction of the Psalmist (130^), shall save His people — His people, although, in accordance with that prediction, they are Jehovah’s people — from their sins Similarly the simple honorifics ‘ Master ’ and ‘ Lord ’ rise in Matthew’s hands to their highest value; ‘ Master ’ becomes transformed into the more absolute Master of the House ” with His despotic power, governing all things in accordance with His will (20^^) and disposing of the destinies of men in supreme sovereignty (iO“^ J^24seq.,36seq.^. ‘ Lord ’ becomes the proper designation of the universal King and Judge (2^37,44) ^hose coming is the coming of Jehovah (3^).
X^As the ‘ Christ ’ He is pictured as sitting less on David’s throne than on God’s (22^^’'^^); as ‘ King,’ less as the ruler of the nation for Israel than as Judge of all the world for God (25^^®®"^); as ‘Bridegroom’ as holding in His own hands the issues of life (22^ 25^); as ‘ the Son of Man ’ as passing through humiliation only to His own proper glory (i6“^ 24^® 26^); as ‘ the Son of God ’ less as God’s representative and the vehicle of His grace than as God’s fellow and the sharer with the Father in the one Ineffable Name (2 818-20)^ Thus the reader Is brought steadily upwards to the great passages In which Matthew records Jesus’ supreme self-testimony to His essential relations with His Father, and his attention Is quite Insistently focused upon them.
“ All things were delivered unto me of my Father,” says Jesus, as reported In one of them (ii^^): “and ^ ■ Assimilation ^o One knoweth the Son save the of Jesus Father; neither doth any know the
With God Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son wllleth to reveal Him. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Thus our Lord solemnly presents Himself to men as the exclusive source of all knowledge of God, and the exclusive channel of divine grace. No one can know the Father save through Him, and through Him alone can rest be found for weary souls. And this His exclusive mediation of saving knowledge He makes to rest upon His unique relation to the Father, by virtue of which the Father and Son, and all that Is In the Father and Son, He mutually open to each other’s gaze. Attention has been called to the fact, and It Is Important to observe It, that the whole passage Is cast In the present tense, and the relation announced to exist between the Father and Son is, therefore, represented not as a past relation but as a continuous and unbroken one. What our Lord asserts Is thus not that He once was with the Father and knew His mind, and Is therefore fitted to mediate It as His representative on earth: It Is that He, though on earth, still Is with the Father and knows His mind — yea, and will know it unchangeably forever. The rela- tions of time do not enter into the representation. Our Lord presents Himself as the sole source of the knowledge of God and of the divine grace, because this is the relation in which He stands essentially to the Father, — a relation of complete and perfect intercommunion. The assertion of the reciprocal knowledge of the Father and Son, in other words, rises far above the merely mediatorial function of the Son, although it underlies His mediatorial mission: it carries us back into the region of metaphysical relations. The Son is a fit and perfect mediator of the divine knowledge and grace because the Son and the Father are mutually intercommunicative. The depths of the Son’s being, we are told, can be fathomed by none but a divine knowledge, while the knowledge of the Son compasses all that God is; from both points of view, the Son appears thus as “ equal with God.”
But even this is far from the whole story. The perfect reciprocal knowledge of each by the other Identification which is affirmed goes far towards sugof Jesus gesting that even equality with God
With God £^pg short of fully expressing the relation in which the Son actually stands to the Father. Equality is an external relation: here there is indicated an internal relation which suggests rather the term interpenetration. There is a relation with the Father here suggested which transcends all creaturely possibilities, and in which there is no place even for subordination. The man Jesus does indeed represent Himself as exercising a mediatorial function; what He does is to reveal the Father and to mediate His grace; and that because of a delivery over to Him by the Father. But this mediatorial function is rooted in a metaphysical relation in which is suggested no hint of subordination. v^Rather in this region what the Father is that the Son seems to be also. There is mystery here, no doubt, and nothing is done to relieve the mystery. All that is done is to enunciate in plain words the conception of the relation actually existing between the Father and Son which supplies their suitable account to all those passages in Matthew in which there seems to be suggested a confusion of Jesus with God, whether in function or in person. If this be the relation of Son and Father — if there is a certain mysterious interpenetration to be recognized between them — then it is no longer strange that to Jesus is attribu^d all the functions of God, including the forgiveness of sins and the universal judgment of men, nor that in Him is seen the coming of Jehovah to save His people, in His presence with men the fulfillment of the prophecy of ‘ Immanuel,’ Godwith-us, in the coming of John the Baptist to prepare His way the fulfillment of the prophecy of the messenger to make the way of Jehovah straight, and the like. All things were delivered to Him, in short, because He is none else than God on earth. •
Of quite similar import is the great declaration with which the Gospel closes. In this our Lord, announcing Participation that all authority was given to Him of Jesus in the in heaven and earth — that is, that uni- Name versal dominion was committed to Him — commands His disciples to advance to the actual conquest of the world, baptizing all the nations into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and promises to be Himself with them unto the end of the world (28^^“®). In the absence of the
'Matthew^ s Conception of Our Lord 95 former passage, It might conceivably be possible to look upon the dominion here claimed and the conjunction here asserted of the Son with the Father In the future government of the Kingdom as having no rooting In His essential nature but as constituting merely a reward consequent upon our Lord’s work. In the presence of that passage we cannot void this, however, of Its testimony to essential relations. And the relation here assigned to the Son with respect to deity Is the same as was suggested there. The significant point of this passage Is the singular “ Name.” It does not read, “ Into the names ” — as of many, but of one, — “ Into the Name ” of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The Father, the Son and the Spirit are therefore In some Ineffable sense one, sharers In the single Name. Of course It Is what we know as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity which Is suggested here, as It was less clearly suggested In the former passage,, and as this doctrine Is needed In order give consistency and solidity to the pervasive suggestion of Matthew’s entire narrative that Jesus, whose ( career he Is recounting. Is In some higher sense than mere delegation or representation not merely a superhuman or superangellc or supercreaturely person, but an actually Divine Person, possessed of divine prerogatives, active In divine power, and In multiform ways manifesting a divine nature. It were Impossible for Matthew to paint Jesus as he has painted Him, and to attribute to Him what we have seen him attributing to Him, without some such conception as Is enunciated In these two great passages In his mind to support, sustain and give Its justification to his representation. So far from these passages offending the reader as they