We will consider the method of Jesus as a teacher, and the word is appropriate now. He did have a method in teaching men the truths that he knew without reasoning about them, the truths that he did not discover by investigation, the truths he knew because they were in him.
To begin with, Jesus does not seek to prove things to his hearers; he announces what is truth as God announces truth. He is a divine dogmatist; he offers no proof of what he sets forth as truth.
No other teacher ever taught as Jesus did. What we may call his logic-form is pre-eminently the teacher’s; but no teacher ever employed it as did he who came out of Nazareth. He reasons from the weaker to the stronger reason. He does not reason to prove truth to others, as he does not reason to discover it for himself, but to teach it. This is the form of reasoning we find in all his parables and illustrations. His arguments are designed to help his learners understand what he meant and to impress it upon their minds. He never seems concerned about proving to men the truth of what he said, but only to make it plain and to enforce it. Many illustrations might be given; let a few suffice.
One day Jesus was teaching his disciples the doctrine of God’s providence. He makes no argument to prove that there is a providence; he does not seek to convince them, but only to help them realize in their own thoughts the all-embracing, unfailing, and gracious providence that kept them. And he did this not to make them understand the doctrine of providence, but to help them trust in it. He seeks to bring home to them the truth he does not seek to prove. How does he set about it? What is his method? Not a mere man’s method. It is indeed an absolutely simple method; but no other teacher, who has not learned it of him, has used it so in discoursing of such truths.
He begins with what they knew: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” They knew the lilies—that is, they were used to seeing them, the little flowers so common, so insignificant, yet so beautiful. Jesus concludes: “Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”
In the same way he reasons of sparrows and men. He would inspire his disciples with the courage that has its root in faith in God’s loving and unfailing providence. He says to them the great God not only feeds the poor little birds, but cares for them, “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.”
He would teach his disciples the folly of forgetting what is essential in brooding anxieties about small things: “And which of you with taking thought [worrying] can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?... Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.”
He would make men see how perfectly simple and unmysterious is prayer and how absolutely certain it is that God will answer. Have we not listened to mere men—preachers they called themselves, yet doing, it may be, the best they could—mystifying simple-minded people and little children—themselves most of all—with tortuous disquisitions concerning the “subjective” and “objective” results of their devotions! Answering infidels, they suppose!
Jesus makes no argument about the nature of prayer; he has not a word to prove its reasonableness or to harmonize the doctrine with law. He says: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
How does he prove what he affirms? He does not prove it; he brings it home to them: “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or, if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?”