The prophet with inspired skill drew a picture of Him who was to be the liberator of the people. Seven hundred years passed, and one quiet Sabbath day, in a small town in Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth looked upon that picture and declared that He was its original. Even so did Hawthorne sketch the stone face in the mountain, which long afterwards was realized by the youth of the valley who had gazed upon it and prayed to be like it. The words of the prophecy referred directly to the period of Babylonian captivity. Israel, in exile, longed for political deliverance. Dry expositions of the Mosaic law could not satisfy captives who waited for the proclamation of their freedom. They could not sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.
They craved the assurance of the fact of God’s love. Our prophecy is the communication of that fact. It meant more than political deliverance; it meant the graciousness of Jehovah’s pardon, the beauty of his love and the pathos and triumph of his passion in their behalf. “Good tidings” and “proclamation” henceforth became the classic terms for all communications from God to man.
The words “gospel” and “preaching” were first employed in a religious sense in the Greek translation of this passage. Regular preaching developed during this period and took its place with sacramental worship. Then it was that the synagogue arose with its pulpit and became no less a factor in religious life than the altar of the temple. And it was in the pulpit of a synagogue in Nazareth that Jesus reread this prophecy and affirmed the fact of its fulfillment. Thus, the first public discourse of the matchless preacher was a proclamation of the gospel.
The deepest meaning of His message was spiritual. It was to the spiritually poor and blind and bruised and imprisoned, but its historical setting suggests the improvement of temporal conditions. Indeed, the twentieth century test of Christianity is its ability to do this very thing—to produce social values.
Jesus Christ astonished His hearers by His stupendous claims. His program sounded pretentious, and it was, for one who was less than the highest type of man and the very God himself. Do you comprehend the scope of Christ’s undertaking? He himself defined it:
“To preach good tidings to the poor”—Almshouses.
“To proclaim release to captives”—Prisons.
“Recovery of sight to the blind”—Asylums.
“To set at liberty them that are bruised”—Hospitals.
He proposed a program of happiness for almshouses, health for hospitals, healing for asylums and freedom for prisons.
He announced that His presence brought the joyful year of jubilee, when liberty was proclaimed to slaves, release to debtors and the restoration of family estates to their dispossessed owners. In His mind the jubilee year typified the Messianic era, the period of the bestowment of a free, full and finished salvation. Oh! glorious era, foreseen in prophecy, inaugurated by Jesus, and drawing near through the benevolent efforts of this and similar organizations.
What then was the message and the meaning of Christ’s life as related to prisoners? I answer: He preached an evangel of emancipation. He proclaimed the privileges of the pardon. He promised a supernal splendor to the penitent.
He sanctioned punishment. Punishment is justified mainly upon three grounds: The vindication of the law, the protection of society and the reformation of the wrongdoer.