Our Lord refusing to judge.
If we regard the Gospels in the light of memoirs of our Lord's actual life upon earth, it may seem [pg 399] strange that so few occasions are noticed in which we are shewn our Lord dealing with the business of ordinary life. Whenever we do find Him forced to take part in any secular proceeding, He is uniformly careful to avoid such decisive action as would establish an authoritative precedent in regard to things which might be left to men to manage. Some people are now disappointed at His not having furnished a wholly new and perfect scheme of human society. So far is He from doing this, that He will not even put patches upon that which He found existing. God had supplied men with faculties to frame social institutions for themselves, and these faculties Christ would leave free to work. If He had interposed to set the world right by absolute power, it might have been asked, Why this had not been done before? and, Whether it was owing to accident that the world had been let to go wrong?
Living among the people as our Lord did, He must commonly have conformed to Jewish usages. He could hardly have performed any act without coming into contact with their ways. If the particulars of every little occurrence in His private life had been set down, perhaps we might have realised, what we now hardly perceive, that in the Gospel we are reading of Jewish life in Galilee two thousand years ago. This absence of what is called “local colour” is partly due to the omission of small particulars. An outline can be more [pg 400] general and more universal than a picture of minute elaboration; and the portraiture of our Lord would have lost much of its singular character of belonging to every age as its own, if the draughtsman's attention had been distracted from what was characteristic, in order to present every detail with equal care.
Now arises the question, How far did our Lord Himself determine which among His doings and sayings should be recorded and which not? If He had Himself left a record, every word would have been regarded as inspired, and the Christian church would have been ruled, not by an indwelling Spirit, but by a book written once for all. It could not have been ruled by both,—for men cannot walk after the letter and after Faith at the same time—and that wooden fixity which characterised Rabbinical Judaism, would have affected Christianity as well. It pleased God that it should be left to men to tell the tale, and so other men may venture to use their judgment about it. But as Christ passed on His course, He must Himself have felt that this or that incident or discourse ought to be handed down. How could He effect this without miracle of any kind? It seems to me that He may have selected, as it were, matters for preservation thus. When He desired an incident to be known, “Wheresoever the Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world,”[302] He emphasizes [pg 401] it, by some action or declaration, as above, viz. by letting drop some vivid expression which takes hold of the minds of men. Thus the story of the denials of Peter is rendered indelible by the words, “before the cock crow twice.” The hard saying or striking expression, sometimes because it touched the quick of men's understandings, and sometimes because it puzzled them to make it out, was thought of again and again, and remained by them as part of themselves. The incident which called the saying forth, or the colloquy in which it occurred would have to be recorded to explain the saying itself: a mass of the matrix would go along with the precious metal embedded in it. What it was not thought needful to preserve, was not enriched with these pregnant sayings and has not survived.
Hence I believe that the withdrawal from us of those “many other things that Jesus did” was not without design. The consequences of this may be of service to us in many ways, but the only one of which I shall speak is this. If every detail of our Lord's acts had been set down, many more of those matters of daily life, on which judgment is now left open, would have been determined for us by the recorded example of our Lord. Many Christians would have felt bound to act as Christ had done, even in those concerns of ordinary life which might well be left to the individual; and many inexorable necessities—many rigid lines for [pg 402] which there was no occasion—would have traversed the field of Christian action.
That our Lord should have thus placed a limit on the particulars that should be recorded about Him falls in with the views taken in this book, viz. that He was anxious to preserve individual freedom of action, and that He looked forward with a general prescience to the course of events.
It is my opinion that our Lord foresaw, that, in time to come, men of different races and under different conditions would desire to fashion their lives after His, and that therefore He purposely freed the account of Himself that should come into their hands from all that was immaterial, and particularly from all that was exclusively Jewish in its garb; but whether this were so or not, the fact remains that no particular national institutions or social usages are consecrated by our Lord's words or practice. Supposing that our Lord knew that posterity would regard His example as a sacred rule, and that He wished men not to be hampered in this way, but to retain free play of thought and will, it is hard to devise for Him a course more expedient for the end in view than that which he actually took.
Several instances occur in the Gospels, of appeal being made to our Lord about vexed matters belonging to the life of that time. Such appeals He always meets much in the same way. He puts the matter aside, either by positively refusing [pg 403] to judge or by giving the question an unexpected turn.
The cases to which I shall refer are, (1) the disputed inheritance, (2) the woman taken in adultery, (3) the paying of the didrachma, (4) the judgment on the tribute to Cæsar.
1. It seems to have been during the ministry in some city, either in Judæa or Peræa, when the people were pressing on one another to get near our Lord, that one of the multitude said to Him, “Master bid my brother divide the inheritance with me.”[303]
This man was influenced by some notion that he had been wronged, a notion which was very likely born of cupidity. This greed he carried always about him, it was uppermost in his mind, and when he found the crowd listening to the Preacher of righteousness, he thought that he might turn the influence of this Preacher to account for his own ends. If, by an ex parte statement he could get Christ's judgment on his side, possibly his brother would do His bidding. The Jewish Law of inheritance was plain and courts of Law were accessible, but perhaps his claim had been disallowed; at any rate he thought it a cheaper plan to get the great Preacher to interfere.
Our Lord repudiates in strong terms the notion that He is a “judge or a divider.” Judges and dividers through many ages had been provided for [pg 404] regular duty in a regular way; but Christ's coming was an act standing by itself in the History of the race. It had nothing to do with the internal concerns of this people or of that. Its influence was worldwide. He was to kindle the new fire, to set alight the spiritual passion in mankind. He notes how, in the man who appeals to Him, every affection had been absorbed and killed by his covetousness. He turns to the multitude and inveighs against this insidious vice, and delivers to them the parable[304] of the rich man who would pull down his barns and build greater. There is no hidden meaning lying behind this parable as there is in those in which He set the Kingdom forth, it is only an instructive story for the hearers to carry away. Then, turning to the disciples, He puts the matter in a higher light. His moral is ever this, that to improve a man's well being, whether of a material or a social kind, you must begin by making the man himself as good as you can. Such material well being as is needed for society will follow on the moral and spiritual improvement of individual men. “Seek ye first,” says He, “the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”[305]
Let us suppose for a moment that our Lord had listened to this man and reviewed his case and left a judgment. What would have been the result? We should have had an isolated [pg 405] case of the Law of inheritance, on which an irreversible decision had been pronounced. Every code framed for Christian lands would have had to accept and embody this. Endless comments on this particular case would have been written, endless guesses at the circumstances of it would have been made, and every one who contested a distribution would have endeavoured to shew that this decision covered his claims. Moreover, whenever the Christian missionary came to a new country, instead of holding a purely spiritual position he would have brought with him a new law of inheritance as part of the new religion, and people could not have accepted his teaching without changing usages to which they clung.
(2) Next comes the case of the woman taken in adultery (see p. [370]). In the criminal jurisdiction of Moses the leading thought was to “put away evil;” but men had grown less cruel, and pity for the offender and hope of his reformation were coming into play. If the Lord had given judgment either in one way or the other we should have been landed in endless perplexity. The difficult questions of the distinction between a sin and a crime, and whether it is advisable for a state to enforce morality, would have been complicated by a Divine decision in a case of which the relation would not, unless the account were fuller than the Gospel notices usually are, contain all the particulars that are material.
The two cases that remain refer to polity rather than to law.
(3) The “didrachma” were levied apparently as a tax for the Temple service, enforced by custom, if not by positive law. Those who collected it ask Peter if our Lord does not pay this annual sum, and Peter at once declares that He does. But our Lord will not leave the matter so. The money shall be paid, because to refuse the payment would waken ill feeling and give an impression altogether false; but our Lord will not sanction such a payment with His authority, without protest and explanation. It might have been made the ground of supporting many kinds of religious impost if He had. He puts the question in such a light that His practice can never be quoted in support of any such demand.
(4) Those who came asking whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Cæsar, like those who brought the woman taken in adultery, had a hostile intent. They asked with a view only to entangle, not with a desire to learn. Our Lord always baffles those who address Him in this spirit. In dealing with the question of the tribute, He avoids each horn of the dilemma and teaches a grand lesson to the people who heard. For they were to render to God “the things that were God's,” that is to say, not a man's money, but the whole man himself, for he is made in God's image and carries the likeness of it in his personality, just as the [pg 407] coin carries on its face the name and the impress of Cæsar. Thus, in these words, the whole man is claimed as God's own by Christ.
If our Lord had either enforced or forbidden these two payments, His authority, appealed to on this side or that, would have further embittered questions which are bitter enough of themselves. Men have often pored over Scripture to extract an authority for what they wanted to do, and the case of the tribute money, notwithstanding our Lord's answer, has been pressed into the service of the upholders of imperial power.
Dr Bryce speaking of the Mediæval Empire says:—
“From the New Testament the authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.’ ”
In finishing this notice I must remark that there is one social institution about which our Lord does not shun to speak; this is marriage. He upholds the sanctity and inviolability of the marriage tie more stringently than did the Jewish Law. The [pg 408] scribe who came “making trial” of our Lord is confounded—not by being put off without an answer—as usually happens in these cases, but by the singular positiveness of the reply.
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that marrieth her when she is put away committeth adultery.”[306]
This exception is not inconsistent with the principles governing our Lord's acts. Christ's teaching was meant for all mankind, and Christianity would have been less adapted for universal use if it had been bound up with particular institutions. But marriage is not a particular institution, it is declared to be as universal as the human race; it goes down deeper than all divisions, it belongs to the stock below the point where the branches sprout. Thus Christ's recognition of the sanctity of marriage does not hamper human legislation, or prevent the growth of Humanity in any manner consistent with its health.
Close by the side of this matter lies another on which I must only say a word. It is one of the Gesta Christi that He has put woman into her right place. Slowly and quietly has this come about, as a growth from seed turned up in the soil, and not a construction upreared by men,—as indeed, with the changes that are wrought by [pg 409] Christ is mostly the way. He says not a word about the social condition of women or their position in the eye of the Law; He puts forward no grievances, He asserts no claim. To have done either one or the other in His day would have been to bring about a violent upheaval, which would have destroyed all chance of the germination of the seed. Nowhere do men cling to old usages with more tenacity than in the matter of relations between sex and sex. These variations of usage may rest upon solid grounds, and it would have stood in the way of the adaptability of what He left to the needs of all races and all times, if by one rigid ordinance He had enforced uniformity, even in the justest way. But though our Lord says little about the right place of women yet He treats them as though that proper place were already theirs; for parts are given them in His great world-drama consistent with those they take in the common life of family and home.[307]
One word that our Lord drops has too important a bearing on this point to be passed by. Frequently as our Lord alludes to eternal life, it is rarely that anything as to the modes of this [pg 410] life can be gathered from His speech, but in the one passage in which He does touch on this directly, He implies that distinction of sex ceases with the life upon earth.
“But they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.”[308]
There is to be no marrying or giving in marriage in the Kingdom of God. All will there be as the angels of heaven. There can be no such thing as a male or female soul. Some may be educated for eternal life in the frame of man and others in that of woman, but when out of the body all distinction comes to an end, and both one and the other, if deemed worthy of the resurrection to life, assume the nature of angels of God. When this comes home to a people and they see that the distinction of male and female is one of a day, while the angelic existence, in which no distinction shall remain, is an everlasting one, then whatever remains that seems degrading in the condition of woman will be in the way to disappear.
I will end this by stating the truth which I have had it in view to bring out.
Supposing that Christ, lest He should hamper [pg 411] free human growth, was unwilling to tie down posterity to particular rules touching the affairs of life, and that He also foresaw that in time men would take His behaviour as a model for their own; then the course He actually took, in refusing to sanction by His example this or that course of proceeding in matters coming within man's cognizance, was admirably suited to His end, and met perfectly the circumstances of the case.