The Man of Galilee

by Atticus G. Haygood

In the view of Jesus sin is the one evil; deliverance from sin is deliverance from all evil; it is salvation. He struck at sin as the root of all possible evil; he recognized no evil that was in man’s circumstances, as if his evil came out of fate or in some way invincible by him; it is all of sin.

Wherefore Jesus does not set about bettering man’s circumstances, by direct effort improving the sanitary, economic, political, or social conditions of life; he works upon man himself. Whatever improves man’s condition is, in the doctrine of Jesus, to be desired; but it is not enough to make man comfortable; he must be made good. He teaches that all that is truly good and needful will come to men who are delivered from sin, and that no real good can come to him whose sin remains in him. First, last, all the time, Jesus makes deliverance from sin the one thing needful—the chief good.

As his manner was, he does not argue about it; he states his doctrine positively, “with authority,” as one knowing the whole truth of the case. There is no qualifying word to tone down his statements and to leave place for retreat from possible mistakes.

His doctrine he taught and illustrated in every possible way. It is in his more formal discourses, his briefest comments on men and things, his most occasional conversations and most incidental remarks. His doctrine is in all his efforts to do men good, as it is in every warning and every promise.

And there is never a shadow of doubt, a suspicion of hesitation. From his first word to the last, from the beatitudes to the prayer on the cross, it is always the same thing; man’s trouble is all in his sin; his only salvation is deliverance from sin.

It comes out in the most incidental way. When the penitent Magdalene washed his feet with her tears, at Simon’s table, he said not a word about her lost social position or of its possible restoration. He said, “Thy sins are forgiven; thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”

When the four kind and loving friends of Capernaum—whose names we would like to know—had brought their palsied neighbor to Peter’s house, and had at last, with much trouble, through the broken roof laid him down at the feet of Jesus, the first words were not about palsy and healing, but about sin and salvation: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” This is what the story of the penitent publican, crying out, “God be merciful to me a sinner,” means. It is what the story of the prodigal means; it is what the whole life and teaching of Jesus mean.

We must notice particularly that the mere conception of a divine incarnation is not peculiar to the story of Jesus. The notion of incarnation, the idea of the gods taking a form of flesh and manifesting themselves to men, is in the traditions of almost every nation. It has been said, hastily, I believe, that there are some races, at least some tribes, so low in development as to have no idea of God whatever. It is easy to be mistaken in such matters; it is difficult for a cultivated man to find out what a savage really thinks about any subject, least of all his religion. Perhaps the language difficulty is the least bar to understanding in such a case; the differences between men are not measured by differences in speech only. It is certain that the conception of God is, in some form, in most nations. I believe it is in all. And in every nation there is some sort of notion of divine manifestation.

The attempt to represent the gods in stone, in metal, in wood, or even in rude drawings and paintings, comes after a traditional belief has long held its place in men’s thoughts of their manifestation in some visible and tangible form.

It is not always a human form; it is generally not a human form, except as it is part of the conception: as in the eagle-headed Belus of Babylon, as in the winged bulls, with the head of a man and the feet of a lion, that Layard found in the ruins of Nineveh. These composite images represented ideas of the gods, not facts concerning them. Thus the image found in the ruins of Nineveh represented strength, swiftness, courage, intelligence. But the ideas expressed in these strange and grotesque forms grew out of traditions of divine manifestation, of incarnation.