V.—CHRIST THE SON OF MAN.
"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matt. viii. 20).
"Who do men say that the Son of man is?" (Matt. xvi. 13).
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life" (John iii. 14).
It is a matter of profound gratitude that our Saviour was a man. "The Son of man," as well as "the Son of God," was essential to His great work of bringing salvation to the race. In one sense we are all sons of man, but not as He was. He was not simply the Son of Mary and her ancestors. He was the Son of humanity. He was equally akin to the race. He touches humanity at every angle and on every side. While He was the Son of David according to the flesh, He is the kinsman of the race as a partaker of our common nature. "Since the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself, in like manner, partook of the same." He ignored all accidental relationships closer than this shared by the race. The members of His own household obtained not a blessing which He did not as freely bestow on others. The fact that He did not manifest greater partiality toward His mother has been a matter of comment. The simple fact is, that the relationship with which we are concerned, and of which the inspired record treats, is to the race; hence it is not concerned about His personal family affections. His brothers and sisters and mothers are those who hear His word and keep it.
The world has ever had too far-away ideas of God. It has contemplated God at a great distance. It puts Him beyond the stars. Indeed, the stars fade away from view in the distance behind us, as we ascend in imagination to the dwelling-place of the Most High. The world can never be suitably impressed with God's presence while it holds Him at a distance. He can never be sensibly near unto us while we keep Him beyond the stars. Nor can we be influenced by the idea of His presence till we learn that "he is not far from each one of us."
God tried to impress His people anciently with the idea of His presence by various visible manifestations. Abraham realized time and again that God was his present companion and friend. When Jacob saw the ladder reaching to heaven, and angels ascending and descending on it, he said, "Surely, the Lord is in this place." And when Moses drew near to see the burning bush, a voice from its flame demanded the removal of the sandals from his feet, for the ground on which he stood was holy ground.
God impressed Israel with the awfulness of His presence as a Lawgiver, whom the nations were to honor, by His voice from Mount Sinai which "shook the earth." The glorious manifestation of God's presence at the tabernacle, in the midst of the camp of Israel, impressed them with the fact that the God of their fathers was with them; that He was in their midst; that He had not forgotten His covenant; and that He would be with them to sustain them in every emergency till the end. With all this, they often forgot God and went astray. What would they have done without it?
In the person of Jesus, God perfected the divine purpose of bringing Himself into a realized nearness to the human family. He clothed Himself in our humanity, and became one with us. We are thus enabled to look upon Him, to contemplate Him, not as a great, self-existing Spirit, incomprehensible and awful, but as a man. Jesus was a man; and "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is God manifest in flesh. And as God is thus manifest, would He have us apprehend Him. Just, therefore, as we can appreciate the nearness of Jesus as a loving and sympathizing kinsman, may we appreciate the nearness of His Father and our God.
It is evident that men need a God to whom they can get sensibly near. There is no profit in the worship of a God of abstractions. There is in it no food for the soul. What is there to satisfy the languishing soul in a prayer to the "Great Unknown and Unknowable"? They that come to God must believe that He is. And that "is" is a personal divine being, into whose arms we may cast our helpless selves, and on whose bosom we may pillow our weary head; instead of a great, bewildering, incomprehensible abstraction, "without body, parts, or passions."
We are brought into a sacred nearness with God in the life of Jesus. From His bed in the manger to His rest in a borrowed grave, we have a life of abject poverty. He was the friend and companion of the poor. The world is full of poverty, and ever will be. But the poorest of every age and country find a companion and friend, of like sufferings with themselves, in the person of Jesus. The cares and sorrows of life, resulting from poverty, of which the world knows most as a daily burden, were fully realized by Him; and in it all He is a deeply sympathetic friend.