4. 3. Joy and Sorrow.
3. Joy and Sorrow.
W e call our Lord "the Man of Sorrows," and the designation is obviously appropriate for one who came into the world to bear the sins of men and to give his life a ransom for many. It is, however, not a designation which is applied to Christ in the New Testament, and even in the Prophet (Is. 53:3) it may very well refer rather to the objective afflictions of the righteous servant than to his subjective distresses. 1 In any event we must bear in mind that our Lord did not come into the world to be broken by the power of sin and death, but to break it. He came as a conqueror with the gladness of the imminent victory in his heart; for the joy set before him he was able to endure the cross, despising shame (Heb.
12:2). And as he did not prosecute his work in doubt of the issue, neither did he prosecute it hesitantly as to its methods. He rather (so we are told,
Lk. 10:21) "exulted in the Holy Spirit" as he contemplated the ways of God in bringing many sons to glory. The word is a strong one and conveys the idea of exuberant gladness, a gladness which fills the heart; 2 and it is intimated that, on this occasion at least, this exultation was a product in
Christ — and therefore in his human nature — of the operations of the Holy Spirit, 3 whom we must suppose to have been always working in the human soul of Christ, sustaining and strengthening it. It cannot be supposed that, this particular occasion alone being excepted, Jesus prosecuted his work on earth in a state of mental depression. His advent into the world was announced as "good tidings of great joy" (Lk. 2:10), and the tidings which he himself proclaimed were "the good tidings" by way of eminence. It is conceivable that he went about proclaiming them with a "sad countenance"
(Mt. 6:16)? It is misleading then to say merely, with Jeremy Taylor, "We never read that Jesus laughed and but once that he rejoiced in spirit." 4 We do read that, in contrast with John the Baptist, he came "eating and drinking," and accordingly was malignantly called "a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners" (Mt. 11:19; Lk. 7:34) ; and this certainly does not encourage us to think of his demeanor at least as habitually sorrowful.
It is pure perversion, to be sure, when Renan, after the debasing fashion of his sentimentalizing frivolity, transmutes Jesus' joy in his redemptive work
(Jno. 15:11, 17:13) into mere pagan lightness of heart and delight in living, as if his fundamental disposition were a kind of "sweet gaiety" which "was incessantly expressing itself in lively reflections, and kindly pleasantries."
He assures us that Jesus travelled about Palestine almost as if he was some lord of revelry, bringing a festival wherever he came, and greeted at every doorstep "as a joy and a benediction": "the women and children adored him." The infancy of the world had come back with him "with its divine spontaneity and its naive dizzinesses of joy." At his touch the hard conditions of life vanished from sight, and there took possession of men, the dream of an imminent paradise, of "a delightful garden in which should
continue forever the charming life they now were living." "How long," asks Renan, "did this intoxication last?", and answers: "We do not know. During the continuance of this magical apparition, time was not measured.
Duration was suspended; a week was a century. But whether it filled years or months, the dream was so beautiful that humanity has lived on it ever since, and our consolation still is to catch its fading fragrance. Never did so much joy stir the heart of man. For a moment in this most vigorous attempt it has ever made to lift itself above its planet, humanity forgot the leaden weight which holds it to the earth and the sorrows of the life here below.
Happy he who could see with his own eyes this divine efflorescence and share, if even for a day, this unparalleled illusion!" 5
The perversion is equally great, however, when there is attributed to our Lord, as it is now very much the fashion to do, "before the black shadow of the cross fell athwart his pathway," the exuberant joy of a great hope never to be fulfilled: the hope of winning his people to his side and of inaugurating the Kingdom of God upon this sinful earth by the mere force of its proclamation. 6 Jesus was never the victim of any such illusion: he came into the world on a mission of ministering mercy to the lost, giving his life as a ransom for many (Lk. 19:10; Mk. 10:4; Mt. 20:28); and from the beginning he set his feet steadfastly in the path of suffering (Mt. 4:3 f.;
Lk. 4:3 f.) which he knew led straight onward to death ( Jno. 2:19, 3:14; Mt.
12:40; Lk. 12:49-50; Mt. 9:15; Mk. 2:1-9; Lk. 5:34, etc.). Joy he had: but it was not the shallow joy of mere pagan delight in living, nor the delusive joy of a hope destined to failure; but the deep exultation of a conqueror setting captives free. This joy underlay all his sufferings and shed its light along the whole thorn-beset path which was trodden by his torn feet. We hear but little of it, however, as we hear but little of his sorrows: the narratives are
not given to descriptions of the mental states of the great actor whose work they illustrate. We hear just enough of it to assure us of its presence underlying and giving its color to all his life (Lk. 4:21; 7 Jno. 5:11, 17:13 8).
If our Lord was "the Man of Sorrows," he was more profoundly still "the Man of Joy." 9
Of the lighter pleasurable emotions that flit across the mind in response to appropriate incitements arising occasionally in the course of social intercourse, we also hear little in the case of Jesus. It is not once recorded that he laughed; we do not ever hear even that he smiled; only once are we told that he was glad, and then it is rather sober gratification than exuberant delight which is spoken of in connection with him (Jno. 11:15). But, then, we hear little also of his passing sorrows. The sight of Mary and her companions wailing at the tomb of Lazarus, agitated his soul and caused him tears (Jno. 11:35) ; the stubborn unbelief of Jerusalem drew from him loud wailing (Lk. 19:41). He sighed at the sight of human suffering (Mk.
7:34) and "sighed deeply" over men's hardened unbelief (8:12): man's inhumanity to man smote his heart with pain (3:5). But it is only with reference to his supreme sacrifice that his mental sufferings are emphasized.
This supreme sacrifice cast, it is true, its shadows before it. It was in the height of his ministry that our Lord exclaimed, "I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished" (Lk.
12:50). 10 Floods lie before him under which he is to be submerged, 11 and the thought of passing beneath their waters "straitens" his soul. The term rendered "straitened" 12 imports oppression and affliction, and bears witness to the burden of anticipated anguish which our Lord bore throughout life.
The prospect of his sufferings, it has been justly said, was a perpetua1 13 Gethsemane; and how complete this foretaste was we may learn from the
incident recorded in Jno. 12:27, 14 although this antedated Gethsemane, by only a few days. "Now is my soul 15 troubled," he cries and adds a remarkable confession of shrinking at the prospect of death, with, however, an immediate revulsion to his habitual attitude of submission to, or rather of hearty embracing of, his Father's will. — "And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour! 16 But for this cause, came I to this hour! Father, glorify Thy name!" He had come into the world to die; but as he vividly realizes what the death is which he is to die, there rises in his soul a yearning for deliverance, only however, to be at once repressed. 17 The state of mind in which this sharp conflict went on is described by a term the fundamental implication of which is agitation, disquietude, perplexity. 18
This perturbation of soul is three times attributed by John to Jesus (11:33, 12:27, 13:21), and always as expressing the emotions which conflict with death stirred in him. The anger roused in him by the sight of the distress into which death had plunged Mary and her companions (11:33); the anticipation of his own betrayal to death (13:21); the clearly realized approach of his death (12:27); threw him inwardly into profound agitation.
It was not always the prospect of his own death (12:27, 13:21), but equally the poignant realization of what death meant for others (11:33) which had the power thus to disquiet him. His deep agitation was clearly, therefore, not due to mere recoil from the physical experience of death, 19 though even such a recoil might be the expression not so much of a terror of dying as of repugnance to the idea of death. 20 Behind death, he saw him who has the power of death, and that sin which constitutes the sting of death. His whole being revolted from that final and deepest humiliation, in which the powers of evil were to inflict upon him the precise penalty of human sin. To bow his head beneath this stroke was the last indignity, the hardest act of that
obedience which it was his to render in his servant-form, and which we are told with significant emphasis, extended "up to death" (Phil. 2:8).
So profound a repugnance to death and all that death meant, manifesting itself during his life, could not fail to seize upon him with peculiar intensity at the end. If the distant prospect of his sufferings was a perpetual
Gethsemane to him, the immediate imminence of them in the actual Gethsemane could not fail to bring with it that "awful and dreadful torture" which Calvin does not scruple to call the "exordium" of the pains of hell themselves. 21 Matthew and Mark almost exhaust the resources of language to convey to us some conception of our Lord's "agony" 22 as an early interpolator of Luke (Lk. 22:44) calls it, in this dreadful experience. 23 The anguish of reluctance which constituted this "agony" is in part described by them both — they alone of the Evangelists enter into our Lord's feelings here — by a term the primary idea of which is loathing, aversion, perhaps not unmixed with despondency. 24 This term is adjoined in Matthew's account to the common word for sorrow, in which, however, here the fundamental element of pain, distress, is prominent, 25 so that we may perhaps render Matthew's account: "He began to be distressed and despondent" (Mt. 26:37). Instead of this wide word for distress of mind,
Mark employs a term which more narrowly defines the distress as consternation, — if not exactly dread, yet alarmed dismay: 26 "He began to be appalled and despondent" (Mk. 14:33). Both accounts add our Lord's own pathetic declaration: "My soul 27 is exceeding sorrowful even unto death," the central term 28 in which expresses a sorrow, or perhaps we would better say, a mental pain, a distress, which hems in on every side, from which there is therefore no escape; or rather (for the qualification imports that this hemming-in distress is mortally acute, is an anguish of a
sort that no issue but death can be thought of 29) which presses in and besets from every side and therefore leaves no place for defence. The extremity of this agony may have been revealed, as the interpolator of Luke tells us, by sweat dropping like clots of blood on the ground, as our Lord ever more importunately urged that wonderful prayer, in which as Bengel strikingly says, 30 the horror of death and the ardor of obedience met (Lk. 22:44). This interpolator tells us (Lk. 22:43) also that he was strengthened for the conflict by an angelic visitor, and we may well suppose that had it not been for some supernatural strengthening mercifully vouchsafed (cf. Jno. 12:27f.
), the end would then have come.' 31 But the cup must needs be drained to its dregs, and the final drop was not drunk until that cry of desertion and desolation was uttered, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
(Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34). 32 This culminating sorrow was actually unto death.
In these supreme moments our Lord sounded the ultimate depths of human anguish, and vindicated on the score of the intensity of his mental sufferings the right to the title of Man of Sorrows. The scope of these sufferings was also very broad, embracing that whole series of painful emotions which runs from a consternation that is appalled dismay, through a despondency which is almost despair, to a sense of well-nigh complete desolation. In the presence of this mental anguish the physical tortures of the crucifixion retire into the background, and we may well believe that our
Lord, though he died on the cross, yet died not of the cross, but, as we commonly say, of a broken heart, that is to say, of the strain of his mental suffering. 33 The sensitiveness of his soul to affectional movements, and the depths of the currents of feeling which flowed through his being, are thus thrown up into a very clear light. And yet it is noticeable that while they tore his heart and perhaps, in the end, broke the bonds which bound his
fluttering spirit to its tenement of clay, they never took the helm of life or overthrew either the judgment of his calm understanding or the completeness of his perfect trust in his Father. If he cried out in his agony for deliverance, it was always the cry of a child to a Father whom he trusts with all and always, and with the explicit condition, Howbeit, not what I will but what Thou wilt. If the sense of desolation invades his soul, he yet confidingly commends his departing spirit into his Father's hands (Lk.
23:46). 34 And through all his agony his demeanor to his disciples, his enemies, his judges, his executioners is instinct with calm self-mastery. The cup which was put to his lips was bitter: none of its bitterness was lost to him as he drank it: but he drank it; and he drank it as his own cup which it was his own will (because it was his Father's will) to drink. "The cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" (Jno. 18:11), — it was in this spirit, not of unwilling subjection to unavoidable evil, but of voluntary endurance of unutterable anguish for adequate ends, that he passed into and through all his sufferings. His very passion was his own action. He had power to lay down his life; and it was by his own power that he laid down his life, and by his own power that he trod the whole pathway of suffering which led up to the formal act of his laying down his life. Nowhere is he the victim of circumstances or the helpless sufferer. Everywhere and always, it is he who possesses the mastery both of circumstances and of himself.' 35
The completeness of Jesus' trust in God which is manifested in the unconditional "Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt" of the "agony," and is echoed in the "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit" of the cross, finds endless illustration in the narratives of the Evangelists. Trust is never, however, explicitly attributed to him in so many words. 36 Except in the scoffing language with which he was assailed as he hung on the cross:
"He trusteth in God; let him deliver him now if he desireth him" (Mt.
27:43), the term "trust" is never so much as mentioned in connection with his relations with God. Nor is the term "faith." 37 Nor indeed are many of what we may call the fundamental religious affections directly attributed to him, although he is depicted as literally living, moving and having his being in God. His profound feeling of dependence on God, for example, is illustrated in every conceivable way, not least strikingly in the constant habit of prayer which the Evangelists ascribe to him. 38 But we are never directly told that he felt this dependence on God or "feared God" or felt the emotions of reverence and awe in the divine presence. 39 We are repeatedly told that he returned thanks to God, 40 but we are never told in so many words that he experienced the emotion of gratitude. The narrative brings
Jesus before us as acting under the impulse of all the religious emotions; but it does not stop to comment upon the emotions themselves.
The same is true of the more common emotions of human life. The narrative is objective throughout in its method. On two occasions we are told that Jesus felt that occurrences which he witnessed were extraordinary and experienced the appropriate emotion of "wonder" regarding them (Mt.
8:10; Lk. 7:9; Mk. 6:6). 41 Once "desire" is attributed to him (Lk. 22:15), — he had "set his heart," as we should say, upon eating the final passover with his disciples — the term used emphasizing the affectional movement. 42
And once our Lord speaks of himself as being conceivably the subject of "shame," the reference being, however, rather to a mode of action consonant with the emotion, than to the feeling itself (Mk. 8:38; Lk.
4:26). 43 Besides these few chance suggestions, there are none of the numerous emotions that rise and fall in the human soul, which happen to be
explicitly attributed to our Lord. 44 The reader sees them all in play in his vividly narrated life-experiences, but he is not told of them.
We have now passed in review the whole series of explicit attributions to our Lord in the Gospels of specific emotional movements. It belongs to the occasional manner in which these emotional movements find record in the narrative, that it is only our Lord's most noticeable displays of emotion which are noted. One of the effects of this is to give to his emotions as noted the appearance of peculiar strength, vividness and completeness. This serves to refute the notion which has been sometimes advanced under the influence of the "apathetic" conception of virtue, that emotional movements never ran their full course in him as we experience them, but stopped short at some point in their action deemed the point of dignity. 45 In doing so, it serves equally, however, to carry home to us a very vivid impression of the truth and reality of our Lord's human nature. What we are given is, no doubt, only the high lights. But it is easy to fill in the picture mentally with the multitude of emotional movements which have not found record just because they were in no way exceptional. Here obviously is a being who reacts as we react to the incitements which arise in daily intercourse with men, and whose reactions bear all the characteristics of the corresponding emotions we are familiar with in our experience.
Perhaps it may be well explicitly to note that our Lord's emotions fulfilled themselves, as ours do, in physical reactions. He who hungered (Mt. 4:2), thirsted (Jno. 19:20), was weary (Jno. 4:6), who knew both physical pain and pleasure, expressed also in bodily affections the emotions that stirred his soul. That he did so is sufficiently evinced by the simple circumstance that these emotions were observed and recorded. But the bodily expression of the emotions is also frequently expressly attested. Not only do we read
that he wept (Jno. 11:35) and wailed (Lk. 19:41), sighed (Mk. 7:34) and groaned (Mk. 8:12) ; but we read also of his angry glare (Mk. 3:5), his annoyed speech (Mk. 10:14), his chiding words (e. g. Mk. 3:12), the outbreaking ebullition of his rage (e.g. Jno. 11:33, 38) ; of the agitation of his bearing when under strong feeling (Jno. 11:35), the open exultation of his joy (Lk. 10:21), the unrest of his movements in the face of anticipated evils (Mt. 27:37), the loud cry which was wrung from him in his moment of desolation (Mt. 27:46). Nothing is lacking to make the impression strong that we have before us in Jesus a human being like ourselves.
It is part of the content of this impression, that Jesus appears before us in the light of the play of his emotions as a distinct human being, with his own individuality and — shall we not say it? — even temperament. It is, indeed, sometimes suggested that the Son of God assumed at the incarnation not a human nature but human nature, that is to say, not human nature as manifesting itself in an individual, but human nature in general, "generic" or "universal" human nature. The idea which it is meant to express, is not a very clear one, 46 and is apparently only a relic of the discountenanced fiction of the "real" existence of universals. In any case the idea receives no support from a survey of the emotional life of our Lord as it is presented to us in the Evangelical narratives. The impression of a distinct individuality acting in accordance with its specific character as such, which is left on the mind by these narratives is very strong. Whether our Lord's human nature is
"generic" or "individual," it certainly — the Evangelists being witness — functioned in the days of his flesh as if it were individual; and we have the same reason for pronouncing it an individual human-nature that we have for pronouncing such any human nature of whose functioning we have knowledge. 47.
This general conclusion is quite independent of the precise determination of the peculiarity of the individuality which our Lord exhibits. He himself, on a great occasion, sums up his individual character (in express contrast with other individuals) in the declaration, "I am meek and lowly of heart."
And no impression was left by his life-manifestation more deeply imprinted upon the consciousness of his followers than that of the noble humility of his bearing. It was by the "meekness and gentleness of Christ" that they encouraged one another to a life becoming a Christian man's profession (II Cor. 10:1); for "the patience of Christ" that they prayed in behalf of one another as a blessing worthy to be set in their aspirations by the side of the "love of God" (II Thess. 3:5); to the imitation of Christ's meek acceptance of undeserved outrages that they exhorted one another in persecution —
"because Christ also suffered for sin, leaving you an example, that ye should follow in his steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously" (I Pet. 2:21-23). Nevertheless we cannot fix upon humility as in such a sense our Lord's "quality" as to obsecure in him other qualities which might seem to stand in conflict with it; much less as carrying with it those "defects" which are apt to accompany it when it appears as the "quality" of others.
Meekness in our Lord was not a weak bearing of evils, but a strong forbearance in the presence of evil. It was not so much a fundamental characteristic of a nature constitutionally averse to asserting itself, as a voluntary submission of a strong person bent on an end. It did not, therefore, so much give way before indignation when the tension became too great for it to bear up against it, as coexist with a burning indignation at all that was evil, in a perfect equipoise which knew no wavering to this side
or that.' It was, in a word, only the manifestation in him of the mind which looks not on its own things but the things of others (Phil. 2:5), and therefore spells "mission," not "temperament." We cannot in any case define his temperament, as we define other men's temperaments, by pointing to his dominant characteristics or the prevailing direction of his emotional discharges. 48 In this sense he had no particular temperament, and it might with truth be said that his human nature was generic, not individual. The mark of his individuality was harmonious completeness: of him alone of men, it may be truly said that nothing that is human was alien to him, and that all that is human manifested itself in him in perfect proportion and balance.
The series of emotions attributed to our Lord in the Evangelical narrative, in their variety and their complex but harmonious interaction, illustrate, though, of course, they cannot of themselves demonstrate, this balanced comprehensiveness of his individuality. Various as they are, they do not inhibit one another; compassion and indignation rise together in his soul; joy and sorrow meet in his heart and kiss each other. Strong as they are — not mere joy but exhultation, not mere irritated annoyance but raging indignation, not mere passing pity but the deepest movements of compassion and love, not mere surface distress but an exceeding sorrow even unto death, — they never overmaster him. He remains ever in control. 49 Calvin is, therefore, not without justification, when, telling us 50 that in taking human affections our Lord did not take inordinate affections, but kept himself even in his passions in subjection to the will of the Father, he adds: "In short, if you compare his passions with ours, they will differ not less than the clear and pure water, flowing in a gentle course, differs from dirty and muddy foam." 51 The figure which is here employed may, no
doubt, be unduly pressed: 52 but Calvin has no intention of suggesting doubt of either the reality or the strength of our Lord's emotional reactions. He expressly turns away from the tendency from which even an Augustine is not free, to reduce the affectional life of our Lord to a mere show, and commends to us rather, as Scriptural, the simplicity which affirms that "the Son of God having clothed himself with our flesh, of his own accord clothed himself also with human feelings, so that he did not differ at all from his brethren, sin only excepted." He is only solicitous that, as Christ did not disdain to stoop to the feeling of our infirmities, we should be eager, not indeed to eradicate our affections, "seeking after that inhuman apatheia commended by the Stoics," but "to correct and subdue that obstinacy which pervades them, on account of the sin of Adam," and to imitate Christ our
Leader, — who is himself the rule of supreme perfection — in subduing all their excesses. For Christ, he adds for our encouragement, had this very thing in view, when he took our affections upon himself — "that through his power we might subdue everything in them that is sinful." Thus, Calvin, with his wonted eagerness for religious impression, points to the emotional life of Jesus, not merely as a proof of his humanity, but as an incitement to his followers to a holy life accordant with the will of God. We are not to be content to gaze upon him or to admire him: we must become imitators of him, until we are metamorphosed into the same image.
Even this is, of course, not quite the highest note. The highest note — Calvin does not neglect it — is struck by the Epistle to the Hebrews, when it declares that "it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High-priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb.
2:17). "Surely," says the Prophet (Is. 53:4), "he hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows" — a general statement to which an Evangelist (Mt.
8:1) has given a special application (as a case in point) when he adduces it in the form, "himself took our infirmities and bore our diseases." He subjected himself to the conditions of our human life that he might save us from the evil that curses human life in its sinful manifestation. When we observe him exhibiting the movements of his human emotions, we are gazing on the very process of our salvation: every manifestation of the truth of our Lord's humanity is an exhibition of the reality of our redemption. In his sorrows he was bearing our sorrows, and having passed through a human life like ours, he remains forever able to be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Such a High Priest, in the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "became" us. We needed such an one. 53 When we note the marks of humanity in Jesus Christ, we are observing his fitness to serve our needs.
We behold him made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, and our hearts add our witness that it became him for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
1. So e.g. Cheyne, G. A. Smith, Skinner, Workman.
2. 'Agalliaomai&: see G. Heine, Synonymik des N.T.-lichen Griechisch 1898, p. 147: "chairo in general, gaudeo, laetor (chara), agalliao, -omai exsulto, vehementer gaudeo, Mt. 5:12; Lk. 10:21 (agalliasis) Lk. 1:14, 44, summum gaudium (frequently in LXX; not classical." There is a good brief account of the word given by C. F. Gelpe, in the Theologische Studien und
Kritlken, 1849, pp. 645-646: "the profoundest and highest transport." Cf.
Codet in loc. "'Agalliasthai, to exult, denotes an inner transport, which takes place in the same deep regions of the soul of Jesus as the opposite emotion expressed by the embrimtsthai, to groan (Jno. 9:33 ). This powerful influence of external events on the inner being of Jesus proves how thoroughly in earnest the Gospels take his humanity."
3. Plummer in loc.: "This joy is a divine inspiration. The fact is analogous to his being 'led by the Spirit in the wilderness,' (4:1)."
4. The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor. Ed. Heber, London 1828. II. p. 67:
Jeremy Taylor's object is to show that Christ is not imitable by us in everything; hence he proceeds at once: "But the declensions of our natures cannot bear the weight of a perpetual grave deportment, without the intervals of refreshment and free alacrity." This whole view of our Lord's deportment lacks justification: but it has been widely held from the earliest times. Basil the Great, for instance, in condemning immoderate mirth, appeals to our Lord's example, — although he accounts for his deportment on a theory which bears traces of the "apathetic" ideal of virtue so widespread in his day. "And the Lord appears to have sustained" says he
(Regulae fusius Tractatae. 17: Migne, PG. 31: p. 961), "the passions which
are necessary to the flesh and whatever of them bear testimony to virtue, such as weariness, and pity to the afflicted: but never to have used laughter, so far as may be learned from the narrative of the Evangelists, but to have pronounced a woe upon those who are held by it (Lk. 6:25)." Chrysostom
(Hom. vi in Matth.: Migne, PG. 57: p. 69) in commending a grave life by the example of Christ, exaggerates the matter: "If thou also weep thus, thou hast become an imitator of thy Lord. For he also himself. wept, both over Lazarus and over the city; and touching Judas he was greatly troubled. And this, indeed, he is often to be seen doing, but never laughing (gelonta), and not even smiling even a little; at least no one of the Evangelists has mentioned it."
5. Vie de Jesus, ch. 11: ad fin.; ed. 2. 1863, pp. 188-194.
6. Cf. the article "Foresight" in Hastings' DCG. See for example, A.
Julicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu. I. p. 144; Paul Wernle, Die Anfange unserer Religion, p. 65: "There was a time in Jesus' life, when a wholly extraordinary hope filled his soul. . . . Then, Jesus knew himself to be in harmony with all the good forces of his people . . . that was the happiest time of his life. . . . We only need to ask whether Jesus retained this enthusiastic faith to the end. To that period of joyful hope there succeeded a deep depression."
7. 'Ayalliaomai; see note 77 above.
8. Chara: consult also the use in parables of both chara, Mt. 25:21, 23; Lk, 15:10, and chairo, Mt. 18:13; Lk. 15:5, 32.
9. A. B. Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ,2 1881, p. 334: "Hence, though a man of sorrow, he was even on earth anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. . . . Shall we wonder that there was divine gladness in the heart of him who came into the world, not by constraint, but willingly; not
with a burning sense of wrong, but with a grateful sense of high privilege; and that he had a blessed consciousness of fellowship with his Father who sent him, during the whole of his pilgrimage through this vale of tears?" A.
E. Garvie, Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus, 1907, p. 318: "Although in his emotions, varying notes of joy or grief were struck by the changeful experiences of his life among men, yet the undertone was the sense of a great good to be gained by the endurance of a great sorrow." G. Matheson,
Studies in the Portrait of Christ,10 1909, I. pp. 274 sq.: "We speak of the 'Man of Sorrows,' yet I think the deepest note in the soul of Jesus was not sorrow but joy." C. W. Emmet, DCG. 2: p. 607 b: Christ "is the Man of Sorrows, yet we cannot think of him for a moment as an unhappy man. He rather gives us the picture of serene and unclouded happiness. Beneath not merely the outward suffering, but the profound sorrow of heart, there is deeper still a continual joy, derived from the realized presence of his Father and the consciousness that he is doing his work. Unless this is remembered, the idea of the Man of Sorrows is sentimentalized and exaggerated." F. W.
Farrar, The Life of Christ, 1874, 1: p. 318; 2: p. 103.
10. Hahn in loc.: "We see from this verse that Jesus had a distinct foreknowledge of his passion, as indeed he bears witness already in 9:22,
44. There meets us here, however, the first intimation that he looked forward to it with inner dread (Angst), though there are repeated testimonies to this later (Cf. 22:42; Jno. 12:2; Mt. 26:37)." Cf. Mt. 20:22: "Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?"; Mk. 10:38: "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"
11. Cf. Meyer on Mk. 10:38: "The cup and baptism of Jesus represent martyrdom. In the case of the figure of baptism . . . the point of the
similitude lies in the being submerged . . . Cf. the classical use of kataduein and, baptizein, to plunge (immerge) into sufferings, sorrows, and the like."
12. Sunecho: see G. Heine, Synonymik etc., 1898. p. 149: "sunechomai, affligor, laboro." Cf. Plummer in loc.: "How am I oppressed, afflicted, until it be accomplished! Comp. 8:37; Jno. 5:24. The prospect of his sufferings was a perpetual Gethsemane: cf. Jno. 12:27." Weiss in loc.: "And how I am afflicted (bedrangt) until it be accomplished! Expression of human anxiety in prospect of the sufferings which were to come, as in Gethsemane and Jno. 12:27."
13. The heos hotou emphasizes the whole intervening time: "I am straitened through all the time up to its accomplishment."
14. Zahn in loc., (p. 509) : "The essential content of this incident, narrated by John alone, is the same that the Synoptics record in the prayer-conflict in Gethsemane, which John passes over in silence when his narrative brings him to Gethsemane (18:1-11)."
15. See note 3.
16. This prayer is frequently taken as a continuation of the question. So, e. g. Zahn. (p. 507): "to the question ti eipo, the words which follow: pater, swson me ek tas hopas tautas cannot bring the response; for the prayer is at once corrected and withdrawn (alla ktl), and replaced by an absolutely different one (verse 28). The first prayer shares therefore in the interrogatory inflection of ti eipo and is to be filled out by an ara (or n) eipo derived thence, with the new question, 'Am I to say, perhaps: Father save me from this hour?' "Against this, however, Westcott forcibly urges "that it does not fall in with the parallel clause, which follows: 'Father glorify Thy
Name'; nor with the intensity of the passage, nor yet with the kindred passages in the Synoptics (Mt. 26:39 and parallels)."
17. Zahn (p. 509) : "Into the world of Jesus' conceptions the possibility of going another way than that indicated by God could intrude; that was his temptation; but his will repelled it."
18. Tarasso: see Schmidt, Synonymik etc., 3:1879. § 739. 8. p. 518: Heine, Synonymik etc., 1898, p. 149.
19. Cf. Calvin Com. in Harm. Evang., on Mt. 26:37: "And whence came to him both sorrow and anxiety and fear, except because he felt in death something sadder and more horrible than the separation of the soul and body? And certainly he underwent death, not merely that he might move from earth to heaven, but rather that he might take on himself the curse to which we were liable, and deliver us from it. His horror was not, then, at death simpliciter, as a passage out of the world, but because he had before his eyes the dreadful tribunal of God, and the Judge Himself armed with inconceivable vengeance; it was our sins, the burden of which he had assumed, that pressed him down with their enormous mass. It is, then, not at all strange if the dreadful abyss of destruction tormented him grievously with fear and anguish."
20. Thus Mrs. Humphrey Ward reports a conversation with Mr. Gladstone ("Notes of Conversation with Mr. Gladstone," appended to the second volume of Robert Elsmere, Westmoreland ed. 1911): "He said that though he had seen many deaths, he had never seen any really peaceful. In all there had been much struggle. So much so that 'I myself have conceived what I will not call a terror of death, but a repugnance from the idea of death. It is the rending asunder of body and soul, the tearing apart of the two elements of our nature, — for I hold the body to be an essential element as well as the soul, not a mere sheath or envelope.'"
21. lnstitutes. II. 16:12: "If anyone now ask, whether Christ was already descending into hell when he prayed to be delivered from death, I reply that this was the exordium, and we may learn from it what diros et horribiles cruciatus he sustained when he was conscious of standing at the tribunal of God, arraigned on our account." "It is our wisdom," Calvin remarks in the context, "to have a fit sense of how much our salvation cost the Son of God." Cf. the discussion in the same spirit of Thomas Goodwin, Works. 5: pp. 278-288: "For it is God's wrath that is hell, as it is his favor that is heaven" (p. 281).
22. 'Agonia: see G. Heine, Synonymik etc., 1898, p. 189: "Contest, quaking, agitation (and anxiety of the issue?) Lk. 22:44; Luther, 'he grappled with death,' Weizsacker, 'he struggled,' Bengel; 'supreme grief and anguish. It properly denotes the anguish and passion of the mind, when it enters upon a conflict and arduous labor, even when there is no doubt of a good issue:"
Plummer in loc.: "Field contends that fear is the radical notion of the word.
The passages in which it occurs in LXX confirm this view. . . . It is therefore an agony of fear that is apparently to be understood." It would be better to say consternation, appalled reluctance.
23. The discussion of the language employed, by John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed, (New York, 1843), p. 288, note †, is very penetrating.
24. 'Adamoneo: see Heine, Synonymik etc., 1898, p. 148: "pavesco, anger."
Cf. Lightfoot, on Phil. 2:26: "The primary idea of the word will be loathing and discontent." "It describes the confused, restless, half-distracted state, which is produced by physical discouragement, or by mental distress, or grief, shame, disappointment, etc." Lagrange on Mk. 18:33: "seized with
despondency." Thomas Goodwin (Works. 5:278): "so that we see Christ's soul was sick and fainted," "his heart failed him."
25. Aupeomai: see note 38.
26. 'Ekthambeomai: see Hastings' DCG. 1: p. 48, article "Amazement"; G.
Heine, Synonymik etc., p. 149: It "is used of those whose minds are horrorstruck by the sight or thought of something great or atrocious, not merely because it injects fear, but because the mind scarcely takes in its magnitude." Weiss in loc.: "ekthambeisthai cannot designate the dread
(Angst) but only the horror (Erschrecken) which attacks Jesus at the thought of the sufferings which stand before him." Thomas Goodwin (Works, 5: p.
275): "It signifies 'to be in horror."'
27. See note 3.
28. Perilupos. J. A. Alexander: "Grieved all round, encompassed, shut in by distress on every side." Morrison: "The idea is, My soul is sorrowful all round and round."
29. Swete's "a sorrow which well-nigh kills" is too weak: the meaning is, it is a sorrow that kills. Thomas Goodwin (Works. 5: p. 272) distinguishes thus: "A heaviness unto death, not extensive, so as to die, but intensive, that if he had died, he could not have suffered more."
30. On Jno. 12:27. The evidence derived from the conflict of wills in this prayer that these emotions had their seat in our Lord's human nature is often adverted to, — e.g. by J. R. Willis, Hasting's DCG. 1: p. 17a: — "The thrice-repeated prayer of Jesus in which he speaks of his own will as distinct from but distinctly subordinate to his Father's adds to the impression already gained, of the purely human feelings exhibited by him in this struggle."
31. Cf. the description of this "agony" in Heb. 5:7: "Who, in the days of his flesh, having offered up, with strong crying and tears, prayers and supplications unto him that was able to save him from death."
32. Calvin, Commentarius in Harmoniam Evangelicarum, on Mt. 27:46:
"And certainly this was his chief conflict, and harder than all his other torments, because he was so far from being supported in his straits by his
Father's help or favor, that he felt himself in some measure estranged. For he did not offer his body only in payment for our reconciliation with God, but in his soul also he bore the punishments due to us; and thus became in very fact the man of sorrows, as Isaiah says (53:3). . . . For that Christ should make satisfaction for us, it was necessary that he be sisted as guilty before the tribunal of God. But nothing is more horrible than to incur the judgment of God, whose wrath is worse than all deaths. When, then, there was presented to Christ a kind of temptation as if he were already devoted to destruction, God being his enemy, he was seized with a horror in which a hundred times all the mortals in existence would have been overwhelmed; but he came out of it victor, by the amazing power of the Spirit" . . . Also
Institutes II. 16:11: "And certainly it is not possible to imagine a more terrible abyss than to feel yourself forsaken and abandoned (derelictum et alienatum) by God, and, when you call upon him, not to be heard as though he had conspired for your destruction. Christ we see to have been so dejected (dejectum) as to be constrained in the urgency of his distress
(urgente angusta) to cry out, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' "Calvin adds with clear insight that though it is evident that this cry was ex intimi anima angore deductam, yet this does not carry with it the admission that "God was ever either hostile or angry with him." "For how could he be angry with his beloved son, in whom his soul delighted, or how
could Christ appear in his intercession for others before a Father who was incensed with him?" All that is affirmed is that "he sustained the weight of the Divine severity; since, smitten and afflicted by the hand of God, he experienced all the signs of an angry and punishing God."
33. That his death was due to psychical rather than physical causes may be the reason why it took place so soon. Jacobus Baumann in a most distressing book (Die Gemutsart Jesu, 1908, p. 10) appeals to the rapidity with which Jesus succumbed to death as evidence of a certain general lack of healthful vigor which he finds in Jesus: "With this liability to easy exhaustion, his quick death on the cross agrees — a thing which was unusual."
34. Calvin, Institutes 2:15:12 does not fail to remind us that even in our Lord's cry of desolation, he still addresses God as "My God": "although he suffered agony beyond measure, yet he does not cease to call God his Cod, even when he cries out that he is forsaken by him." Then at large in the Comm. in Harm. Evang., on Mt. 27:48: "We have already pointed out the difference between natural feeling and the knowledge of faith. There was nothing to prevent Christ from mentally conceiving that God had deserted him, according to the dictation of his natural feeling, and at the same time retaining his faith that Cod was well-disposed to him. And this appears with sufficient clearness from the two clauses of the complaint. For before he gives expression to his trial, he begins by saying that he flees to Cod as his
Cod and so he bravely repels by this shield of faith that appearance of dereliction which presented itself in opposition. In short, in this dire anguish his faith was unimpaired, so that in act of deploring that he was forsaken, he still trusted in the present help of God." Similarly Thomas Goodwin (Works.
5: p. 283): "And both these differing apprehensions of his did Christ
accordingly express in that one sentence, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' He speaks it as apprehending himself a son still united to God and beloved by him, and yet forsaken by him as a surety accursed."
35. Cf. the remarks of H. N. Bernard, The Mental Characteristics of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1888, pp. 257sq.
36. Cf. Heb. 2:13. In Jno. 2:24 we are told that Jesus "did not trust himself (episteusen)" to those in Jerusalem who believed on him when they saw the signs which he did. Cf. Lutgert, as cited, p. 63: "From this the relation of Jesus to God receives a two-fold form: on the one side it is absolute trust, a certainty of receiving everything, a wish and prayer directed to God, which leads to a complete exaltation above nature; but this side of his faith Jesus makes use of only for men. By virtue of this his confidence he fulfils the wish of all who ask him. In this use of his faith he expresses his love for men. The faith of Jesus has however also another side; it is bowing, renunciation and subordination to God. This side of his faith Jesus employs only for himself. The story of the temptation shows that Jesus uses this renunciation in order to glorify God." (Further, p. 89).
37. Cf. A. Schlatter, Die Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 1909, p. 317:
"Perfect love involves perfect trust, and is not thinkable without it. Yet though the disciples have declared that Jesus empowered them for faith and demanded faith of them, they have said nothing of Jesus' own faith. Even
John has said nothing of it although he has rich formulas for the piety of Jesus and speaks of faith as the act by which Jesus unites his disciples with himself. The notion of faith is introduced by him only with respect to Jesus' relations to men, 'He trusted himself not to them'; while, of Jesus' relation to God, he says 'He heard him, loved him, knew him, saw him,' but not,
'He believed on him' (Jno. 2:24, 8:26, 40, 11:10, 14:31, 10:15, 17:25, 3:11,
6:46, 8:35). As a rule for the conduct of the disciples toward Jesus is expressly drawn from Jesus' conduct towards the Father the formula
'Believe in me as I believe in the Father' might have been expected. But it does not occur."
38. 113. Mk. 1:35, 6:46, 14:32, 35; Mt. 14:23, 19:13, 26:36-39, 42-44; Lk.
3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18-28, 11:1, 22:41, 44. Cf. Lutgert, as cited, p. 90: "Also in the expression of his love to God, Jesus fulfilled, according to the Evangelists, his own commandment, not to exhibit his piety openly, but to practice it in secret. The Evangelists therefore designedly lay stress on Jesus' seeking solitude for prayer. The communion of Jesus with God, the 'inner life' of Jesus, falls accordingly outside their narrative. The relation of Jesus with God is not discussed, his communion with God remains a secret." This is spoken of the Synoptics who alone tells us of Jesus' habit of prayer (proseuchomai, proseucha, do not occur in John).
39. Cf. Heb. 5:7: "having been heard for his godly fear (eulabeia), " i.e. for his reverent and submissive awe, "that religious fear of God and anxiety not to offend him which manifests itself in voluntary and humble submission to his will" (Delitzsch in loc.). Davidson in loc.: "The clause throws emphasis on the Son's reverent submission." Humanitarian writers debate whether
"fear" of God is to be attributed to Jesus. Wellhausen (Israel. und jud.
Geschichte,5 p. 383, expanded in Skizzen and Vorarbeiten, 1:1884, p. 98) represents him as passing his life in fear of the judge of all: "He feels the reality of God dominating life, he breathes in the fear of the judge who demands account. of every idle word and has power to destroy body and soul in hell." Similarly Bousset (Jesus, 1904, pp. 54, 99, E. T. pp. 112, 203) speaks of him as learning by his own experience "that God is terrible
(furchtbar) and that an awful darkness and dread encircles him even for
those who stand nearest to him," and as "sharing to the bottom of his soul"
"the fear of that almighty God who has power to damn body and soul together," which he "has stamped upon the hearts of his disciples with such marvellous energy." Karl Thieme, however, from the same humanitarian standpoint (Die christliche Demut, 1:1906, pp. 109 sq.) repels such representations as without historical ground: we may historically ascribe reverential awe (Ehrfurcht) to Jesus but not fear (Furcht). "Of course he comprehended God in the whole overtowering majesty of his being, and adored his immeasurable exaltation in the deepest reverence (Ehrfurcht)."
But "we may maintain in Jesus' case an altogether fearless (furchtlos) assurance of God and self." "We cannot speak of a 'fear of the judge' in Jesus' case, because it does not well harmonize with his faith in his own judgeship of the world. But we can no doubt call the intensity of his obedience, the living sense of responsibility in which he made it his end, his whole life through, to walk, in all his motions, with the utmost exactness according to the will of God as the almighty majestic Lord, his fear of God." Lutgert (Die Liebe im Neuen Testament, 1895, pp. 88, 89) points to Jesus' turning to the Father in Gethsemane and on the cross, not as something terrible (furchtbar) but with loving confidence, as decisive in the case. On the place of 'the fear of God' in Christian piety, see Lutgert's article Die Furcht Gotten, published in the Theologieche Studien, presented to Martin Kuhler on 6 January 1905 (Leipzig, 1905, pp. 163 sq.).
40. 'Eucharisteo, Jno. 11:41; Mt. 15:36; Mk. 8:8; Jno. 6:11, 23; 26:27; Mk.
14:23; Lk. 22:17, 19; I Cor. 11:24. On the word, see Lobeck, Phrynicus, p.
18; Rutherford, The New Phrynicus, p. 69. 'Exomo logeomai Mt. 11:25; Lk.
10:21; R. V. mg. 'praise': so Meyer, Hahn, Zahn, also Kennedy, Sources of N. T. Greek, p. 118. Fritzsche: "Gratias tibi ago, quod." Better, Plummer:
"acknowledge openly to thine honour, give thee praise." Similarly J. A.
Alexander.
41. Thaumazo: see Schmidt, Synonymik etc., 4: § 185, pp. 184 sq.: "it is perfectly generally 'to wonder' or 'to admire,' and is distinguished from thambein precisely as the German sich wundern, or bewundern is from staunen: that is, what has seized on us in the case of thaumazein is the extraordinary nature of the thing while in the case of thambein it is the unexpectedness and suddenness of the occurrence." Cf. Art. "Amazement" in Hasting's DCG. I, pp. 47, 48.
42. 'Epithumia: see Schmidt, Synonymik, III, § 145, 3, 5; 146, 8; and of. J.
C. Lambert, art. "Desire" in Hastings' DCG, I, 453.
43. 'Epaischunomai: see Schmidt, Synonymik, III, § 140; Trench Synonyms, § § 19, 20. On Shame in our Lord's life cf. James Stalker, Imago Christi, p.
190, and Thieme, as above, p. 111.
44. When Wellhausen (Geschichte Israels,2 p. 346) says, "There broke out with him from time to time manifestations of enthusiasm, but to these elevations of mood there corresponded also depressions," — he is going beyond the warrant of the narrative, which pictures Jesus rather as singularly equable in his demeanor. Cf. Lutgert, as cited, p. 103.
45. Origen, for example, in his comment on Mt. 26:37 lays great weight on the words: "He began to be," in the sense that the implication is that he never completed the act. Jesus only entered upon these emotions, but did not suffer them in their fulness. He was subject to propatheia but not to the patha themselves. Similarly Cornelius a Lapide wishes us to believe that Christ instead of "passions" had only "pro passiones libere assumptae." For a modern writer approaching this position, see John Hutchison, The Monthly Interpreter, 1885, II, p. 288.
46. It is not clear, for example, precisely what is meant by A. J. Mason (The Conditions of our Lord's Life on Earth, 1896, p. 46), when he says: "When
Christ is called 'a Man' it sounds as if he were considered only an incidental specimen of the race, like one of ourselves, and not, as he is in fact, the universal Man, in whom the whole of human nature is gathered up, — the representative and head of the entire species." What is a "universal man?"
And how could "the whole of human nature" be "gathered up" in Jesus, except representatively, — which is not what is meant — unless universal human nature is an entity with "real existence?" And if even Mason is unintelligible, what shall we say of a writer like J. P. Lange (Christliche
Dogmatik; Zweiter Theil; Positive Dogmatik, 1881, pp. 770-771): "The man in the God-man is not an individual man of itself, but the man which takes mankind up into itself, as mankind has taken nature up into itself. And so it coalesces with the divine self-limitation, as the Son of God unites with the human limitation. The man in the God-man embraces the eternal Becoming of the whole world as it goes forth from God according to the energy of his nature. So it is also radically the real passage of the Becoming through the perfected Becoming into the absolute Being, and therefore the proper organ of the Son of God according to his ideal entrance into the absolute
Becoming. It is the limited unlimitation which coalesces with the unlimited limitation of the divine man, who takes up into itself the human God." It is only fair to bear in mind, however, that this statement is partly relieved of its unintelligibility when it is read in connection with Lange's exposition of the ideas of man and the God-man in his Philosophical Dogmatics, which, in his system, precedes his Positive Dogmatics.
47. Cf. A. B. Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ,2 1881, pp. 262, and pp. 427428: "I see in him traces of strongly marked, though not one-sided
individuality . . . Generally speaking, the reality, not ideality, of the humanity is the thing that lies on the surface; although the latter is not to be denied, nor the many-sidedness which is adduced in proof of it by Martensen and others." Cf. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, ET, pp. 280 sq.
48. E. P. Boys-Smith, Hastings' DCG, II, p. 163a: "The fulness, balance, and unity of the Master's nature make it impracticable to use in his case what is the commonest and readiest way of portraying a person. This is to throw into the foreground of the picture those features in which the character is exceptionally strong, or those deficiencies which mark it off from others, and to leave as an unelaborated background the common stuff of human nature. Thus, by sketching the idiosyncrasies, and casting a few high lights, the man is set forth sufficiently. But what traits are there in the Lord Jesus which stand out because more highly developed than other features? Nothing truly human was wanting to him, nothing was exaggerated. The fact which distinguished him from all others was his completeness at all points. . . ."
49. T. B. Kilpatrick, Hastings' DCG, I. pp. 294b-295a: "Yet we are not to impute to him any unemotional callousness. He never lost his calmness; but he was not always calm. He repelled temptation with deep indignation (Mk.
8:33). Hypocrisy aroused him to a flame of judgment (Mk. 3:5, 11:15-17; Mt. 23:1-36). Treachery shook him to the center of his being (Jno. 13:21).
The waves of human sorrow broke over him with a greater grief than wrung the bereaved sisters (Jno. 11:33-35). There were times when he bore an unknown agony . . . Yet whatever his soul's discipline might be, he never lost his self-control, was never distracted or afraid, but remained true to his mission and to his faith. He feels anger, or sorrow, or trouble, but these
emotions are under the control of a will that is one with the divine will, and therefore are comprehended within the perfect peace of a mind stayed on God." There is a good deal of rhetorical exaggeration in the language in which the phenomena are here described; but for the essence of the matter the representation is sound: our Lord is always master of himself.
50. Com. on Jno. 11:35.
51. Fr. Gumlich. TSK, 1862, p. 285 note b, calls on us to "guard ourselves from" Calvin's statement that "his feelings differ from ours as a pure, untroubled, powerful but onflowing stream from restless, foaming, muddy waves." But do not his sinless emotions differ precisely so from our sinful passions?
52. Piscator enlarges upon it and applies it thus: "just as pure and limpid water when mixed with a pure dye if agitated, foams indeed but is not made turbid; but when mixed with an impure and dirty dye, if agitated, not only forms foam but is made turbid and dirty; so the heart of Christ pure from all imperfection, was indeed agitated by the affections implanted in human nature, but was soiled by no sin; but our hearts are so agitated by affections that they are soiled by the sin which inheres in us."
53. Westcott in loc.: "Even our human sense of fitness is able to recognize the complete correspondence between the characteristics of Christ as High
Priest and the believers' wants." Davidson, in loc.: "He suited our necessities and condition."