‘When they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak.... For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you’ (Matt. x. 19, 20).
And in St. Luke’s version of the promise as to answers to prayer, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as imparted to the believer:
‘If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?’ (Luke xi. 13).
The gift of the Holy Spirit in connexion with prayer is one of the topics in the Last Discourse as recorded by St. John. On the other hand there are in the Synoptics remarkable allusions to the continued presence of Christ with His people. Such is that which follows immediately upon the verse about Baptism in the threefold Name: ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.’ And in Matt. xviii. 20, ‘Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them[[69]].’ Wendt connects this last passage with the instances in which acts done in the name of Christ and for the benefit of His followers are spoken of as though they were done to Him. For instance, ‘Whosoever shall receive one of such little children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me’ (Mark ix. 37; cf. Luke x. 16; Matt. xxv. 40). Wendt goes on to dilute the meaning of these allusions. He would make them mean no more than that such actions have the same value and the same reward as though they were done to Christ. But the ascending series is against this: ‘Whosoever receiveth Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.’
And once again we have to ask, what is the origin of all those passages in the Epistles, where St. Paul speaks of the solidarity between Christ and the whole body of the faithful, so that in that extraordinary phrase the sufferings of His Apostle actually fill up or supplement the sufferings of Christ (ἀνταναπληρῶ τὰ ὑστερήματα τῶν θλίψεων τοῦ Χριστοῦ, Col. i. 24)?
The existence of such passages suggests the probability—and indeed more than probability—that there were others like them, but more directly didactic and expository, which have not been preserved. The Fourth Gospel contains some specimens of this teaching; but that Gospel and the Synoptics together rather give specimens of a class of teaching than make any approach to an exhaustive record of all that our Lord must have said on these topics.
We have seen that the Synoptic Gospels distinctly represent our Lord as the Jewish Messiah. They represent Him as filled from the first with the consciousness of a mission that is beyond that of the ordinary teacher or prophet. He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes. The demoniacs recognized in Him a presence before which they were awed and calmed. He took upon Himself to forgive sins, with the assurance that those whom He forgave God also would forgive. He called Himself, in one very ancient form of narrative, ‘Lord of the sabbath.’ He did not hesitate to review the whole course of previous revelation, and to propound in His own name a new law superseding the old. He evidently regarded His work on earth as possessing an extraordinary value. He was Himself a greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah; and, what is perhaps more remarkable, He seems to regard His own claim as exceeding that of the whole body of the poor (‘Ye have the poor always with you ... but Me ye have not always’). As His teaching went on, He began to speak as though His relation to the human race was not confined to His life among them, but as though it would be continued and renewed on a vast scale after His death; He would come again in the character of Judge, and He would divide mankind according to the service which (in a large sense) they had rendered, or not rendered, to Him.
These are a number of particulars which helped to bring out what there was extraordinary in His mission. By what formula was it to be described and covered? It was described under the Jewish name ‘Messiah,’ with its various equivalents. Among those equivalents, that which the apostolic generation deemed most adequate was ‘the Son of God.’ One of the Synoptic Gospels says expressly that He applied this title to Himself (Matt. xxvii. 43), and it is quite possible that He did so, but critical grounds prevent us from laying stress upon the phrase. On two great occasions (the Baptism and Transfiguration) the title is given to Him by a voice from heaven. But only in a single passage (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22) is there anything like an exposition of what is contained in the title. The mutual relation of the Father and the Son is expressed as a perfect insight on the part of each, not only into the mind, but into the whole being and character of the other.
Different critics have dealt with this saying in different ways. Harnack, in his famous lectures, gave it the prominence that it deserves, but at the same time reduced its meaning, in accordance with his generally reduced conception of Christianity. His exegesis tended to limit the peculiar knowledge of the Son to His special apprehension of the truth of Divine Fatherhood. M. Loisy demurs to this. He says:
‘There is clearly involved a transcendental relation, which throws into relief the high dignity of the Christ, and not a psychological reality, of which one cannot see the possibility in respect to God. The terms Father and Son are not here purely religious, but they have already become metaphysical; theological and dogmatic speculation has been able to take hold of them without greatly modifying their sense. There is only one Father and only one Son, constituted, in a manner, by the knowledge that they have of one another, absolute entities the relations of which are almost absolute[[70]].’