7. The authority of Jesus as God
Conclusion: who is this preacher?
(Matthew: 7:28, 29)
Many people—including adherents of other religions and of none—tell us that they are prepared to accept the Sermon on the Mount as containing self-evident truth. They know that it includes such sayings as ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,’ ‘Love your enemies,’ ‘No one can serve two masters,’ ‘Judge not, that you be not judged’ and ‘Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.’ Beautiful! Here, they say, is Jesus of Nazareth the moral teacher at his simplest and best. Here is the core of his message before it became encrusted with the worthless additions of his interpreters. Here is the ‘original Jesus’, with plain ethics and no dogmas, an unsophisticated prophet of righteousness, claiming to be no more than a human teacher, and telling us to do good and to love one another. ‘The Jesus of dogma I do not understand,’ a Hindu professor once said to Stanley Jones, ‘but the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and the cross I love and am drawn to.’ Similarly, a Muslim Sufi teacher told him that ‘when he read the Sermon on the Mount he could not keep back the tears’.
But this popular explanation of the Sermon cannot stand up to serious examination. It is mistaken on two counts—first in its view of the teacher and secondly in its presentation of his teaching. For when we look more closely at both, something very different emerges. We considered in the last chapter the distinctiveness of his teaching, his sketch of the Christian counter-culture and his summons to radical discipleship. It remains for us now to consider the uniqueness of the teacher himself.
What we shall find is that it is impossible to drive a wedge between the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and the Jesus of the rest of the New Testament. Instead, the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount is the same supernatural, dogmatic, divine Jesus who is to be found everywhere else. So the main question the Sermon forces upon us is not so much ‘What do you make of this teaching?’ as ‘Who on earth is this teacher?’ This was certainly the reaction of those who heard the Sermon preached.
And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, 29 for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes.
What struck the first hearers of the Sermon (the crowds, as well as his disciples, 5:1) was the preacher’s extraordinary authority. He did not hum and haw, or hesitate. He was neither tentative nor apologetic. Nor again, on the other hand, was he ever bombastic or flamboyant. Instead, with quiet and unassuming assurance he laid down the law for the citizens of God’s kingdom. And the crowds were astonished, even—for the Greek verb is a strong one—‘dumbfounded’. ‘After nineteen hundred years,’ comments A. M. Hunter, ‘we are astonished too.’
It should be profitable, then, to try to analyse this ‘authority’ of Jesus, as displayed in the Sermon. On what was it grounded? What was his own self-awareness which led him to speak in this way? What clues does the Sermon itself give of how he understood his identity and his mission? We do not have far to seek in order to find answers to these questions.
1. Jesus’ authority as the teacher
The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them with authority. Yes, he presented himself first and foremost as a teacher, and he amazed his listeners by the substance, the quality and the manner of his instruction. But of course there had been thousands of other teachers in Jewry and elsewhere. Many were his contemporaries. What then was so special about him?
He somehow assumed the right to teach absolute truth. He was a Jew, but his message was not Jewish. He was interpreting Moses’ law, but in such a way as to show that it was God’s. What he had to say was not culturally conditioned in the sense that it was limited to a particular people (Jews) or a particular place (Palestine). Being absolute, it was universal. So he spoke as one who knew what he was talking about. ‘We speak of what we know,’ he said in another context. He knew who would be great in God’s kingdom and who least, who was ‘blessed’ in God’s sight and who was not, which way led to life and which to destruction. With complete self-confidence he declared who would inherit the kingdom of heaven, who would inherit the earth, who would obtain mercy, see God and be fit to be called God’s children. How could he be so sure?
Commentators have searched for language adequate to describe this peculiar flavour of Jesus’ teaching. I have collected some of their attempts. They have tended to depict Jesus as either a king or a law-maker. ‘He spoke royally,’ wrote Spurgeon, with ‘royal assurance’ or with ‘sovereignty’. Gresham Machen’s expression was that ‘he claimed the right to legislate for the kingdom of God’, while James Denney combined the pictures of king and law-maker in writing both of his ‘practical sovereignty over man’s conscience, will and affections’ and of his ‘supreme moral authority, legislating without misgiving, and demanding implicit obedience’. And Calvin said the crowds were astonished ‘because a strange, indescribable and unwonted majesty drew to him the minds of men’.
His hearers naturally compared and contrasted him with the many other teachers with whom they were familiar, especially the scribes. What struck them most was that he taught them as one who had authority and not at all as their scribes. For the scribes claimed no authority of their own. They conceived their duty in terms of faithfulness to the tradition they had received. So they were antiquarians, delving into commentaries, searching for precedents, claiming the support of famous names among the rabbis. Their only authority lay in the authorities they were constantly quoting. Jesus, on the other hand, had not received a scribal education, scandalized the establishment by sweeping away the traditions of the elders, had no particular reverence for social conventions, and spoke with a freshness of his own which captivated some and infuriated others. A. B. Bruce summed up the difference by saying that the scribes spoke ‘by authority’, while Jesus spoke ‘with authority’.
If he did not teach like the scribes, he did not teach like the Old Testament prophets either. They did not share the scribes’ addiction to the past. They lived in the present. For they claimed to be speaking in the name of Jehovah, so that the living voice of the living God was heard through their lips. Jesus also insisted that his words were God’s words: ‘My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.’ Yet there was a difference. The commonest formula with which the prophets introduced their oracles, namely ‘Thus says the Lord’, is one Jesus never used. Instead, he would begin ‘Truly, truly I say to you’, thus daring to speak in his own name and with his own authority, which he knew to be identical with the Father’s. This ‘Truly, I say to you’ (amēn legō humin) or ‘I tell you’ (legō humin) occurs six times in the Sermon on the Mount (5:18; 6:2, 5, 16, 25, 29). On six more occasions, namely in the six antitheses of chapter 5, we find the even stronger assertion with its emphatic egō, ‘But I say to you’ (egō de legō humin). Not that he was contradicting Moses, as we have seen, but rather the scribal corruptions of Moses. Yet in doing this he was challenging the inherited tradition of the centuries and claiming to replace it with his own accurate and authoritative interpretation of God’s law. He thus ‘stood forth as a legislator, not as a commentator, and commanded and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on his own bare word’.
So certain was he of the truth and validity of his teaching that he said human wisdom and human folly were to be assessed by people’s reaction to it. The only wise people there are, he implied, are those who build their lives on his words by obeying them. All others by rejecting his teaching are fools. He may even have been applying to himself those words of personified wisdom which occur in Proverbs 1:33, ‘He who listens to me will dwell secure.’ It is by paying heed to him who is the wisdom of God that man learns to be wise.
2. Jesus’ authority as the Christ
There is evidence in the Sermon on the Mount, as in many other parts of his teaching, that Jesus knew he had come into the world on a mission. ‘I have come,’ he could say, just as elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel he referred to himself as having been ‘sent’. In particular, he had not come, he insisted, ‘to abolish the law and the prophets’, but he had come ‘to fulfil (plērōsai) them’.
The claim sounds innocent enough until one reflects on its implications. What he is asserting is that all the adumbrations and predictions of both law and prophets found their fulfilment in him, and that therefore all the lines of the Old Testament witness converged on himself. He did not think of himself as another prophet or even as the greatest of the prophets, but rather as the fulfilment of all prophecy. This belief that the days of expectation were now over and that he had ushered in the time of fulfilment was deeply imbedded in the consciousness of Jesus. The first recorded words of his public ministry were: ‘The time is fulfilled (peplērōtai), and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ In the Sermon on the Mount there are five direct references to God’s kingdom. They imply—though with varying degrees of clarity—that he himself had inaugurated it, and that he had authority to admit people into it and to bestow on them its blessings. All this means, in a word, that Jesus knew himself to be the Christ, God’s Messiah of Old Testament expectation.
3. Jesus’ authority as the Lord
We have already had occasion to observe that the ascription to Jesus of the title ‘Lord’ does not necessarily imply a recognition of him as the divine Lord. As N. B. Stonehouse put it: ‘The flexibility of the Greek word “Lord” must indeed be recognized: not every instance of its use implies a consciousness of divine authority. Not everyone who addressed Jesus as Lord clearly chose this name as the equivalent of deity; it could as a polite form of address mean little more than our “sir”.’ Nevertheless, in some contexts Jesus seems deliberately to have accepted the fullest implications the title could bear, as when he associated it with his other and favourite title ‘Son of man’, who in Daniel’s vision would receive universal dominion, and with David’s ‘lord’ who would sit at God’s right hand.
Only the context can help us to judge how much dominion and deity may rightly be included in the word ‘Lord’. Take as an example the section in the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus referred to people who addressed him as ‘Lord, Lord’. He was not complaining that they chose this title, for he accepted it as appropriate. His point was rather that they were using it glibly and were not investing it with its true meaning. He was not just ‘Sir’ to be respected; he was ‘Lord’ to be obeyed. The Lucan equivalent makes this plain, as we saw: ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and not do what I tell you?’ Thus Jesus saw himself as more than a teacher, giving advice which people might or might not heed at their discretion; he was their master, issuing commandments, expecting obedience and warning them that their eternal welfare was at stake. Clearly, in all this Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. A Jewish rabbi’s pupils sat at his feet to study Torah. Jesus was also in one sense a rabbi, since he taught his disciples the true meaning of Torah. But his expectation was not just that they would absorb his teaching; it was that they would be devoted to him personally. This, no doubt, is why he was not content with the title ‘Rabbi’ on its own, for in fact he was their ‘Teacher and Lord’. This too is why they in their turn did not just become ‘rabbis’, guarding and handing on the tradition of his teaching; they were also, and even more, ‘Witnesses’ to him.
4. Jesus’ authority as the Saviour
It is plain in the Sermon that Jesus knew the way of salvation and taught it. He was able to declare who was blessed and who was not. He could point to the narrow gate which led on to the hard way which ended in life. And he was quite clear which kind of house would survive the storms of judgment, and which would founder.
But if we penetrate more deeply into his message, we find that he not only taught salvation; he actually bestowed it. Even in the beatitudes he appears in the role of one who virtually himself distributes blessedness and gives the kingdom. Professor Jeremias thus quotes with approval J. Schniewind’s insistence ‘that the beatitudes are concealed testimonies by Jesus to himself as the saviour of the poor, the sorrowing etc.’.
Or consider how Jesus appointed his hearers, that little group of peasants, ‘the salt of the earth’ and ‘the light of the world’. How could they possibly have a restraining and enlightening influence in the world? Only because they followed Jesus. It is because he himself was not ‘evil’ as he described the rest of mankind that he could impart to them some of his goodness and make them ‘salt’. It is because he did not share in the universal darkness but was himself ‘the light of the world’ that he could impart light to them and make them shine.
It is further significant that in Matthew’s Gospel the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5–7), representative of Jesus’ words, is followed by an account of his practical ministry (chapters 8 and 9), representative of his works. For here we see him claiming authority to forgive sins and actually bestowing forgiveness on a paralysed man (9:2–6), and then likening himself as the saviour of sinners to a physician of the sick (9:12).
5. Jesus’ authority as the Judge
The whole Sermon on the Mount was preached against the sombre background of the coming day of judgment. Jesus knew it was a reality and desired it to be a reality in the minds and lives of his followers. So he declared the conditions of salvation and warned of the causes of destruction, especially in his graphic portrayal of the two ways and their two destinations.
Much more striking than this emphasis on the certainty of future judgment was his claim that he himself would be the Judge. The self-centredness of the scene he described is quite extraordinary. Three times he used the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘me’. First, he would himself be the Judge, hearing the evidence and passing the sentence. For on that solemn day, he said, ‘many will say to me “Lord, Lord”… and then I will declare to them …’ Thus the accused will address their case to him, and he will be the one to answer them. No-one but he will decide and declare their destiny. Secondly, he will be himself the criterion of the judgment. People will bring forward as evidence their use of his name in their ministry, but this will be inadmissible as evidence. ‘I never knew you,’ he will say to them. The destiny of human beings will depend not on their knowledge and use of his name, but on their knowledge of him personally. Not service for Christ, but relationship to Christ will be the issue. Thirdly, the sentence he pronounces will be concerned with him also: ‘Depart from me, you evildoers.’ The terribleness of the ‘destruction’ and of the ‘ruin’ which he predicted is that it will involve banishment from his presence. No worse fate could be envisaged, he implied, than eternal separation from himself.
Thus did the carpenter of Nazareth make himself the central figure of the judgment day. He will himself assume the role of judge (and later in Matthew’s Gospel he describes in greater detail how he will ‘sit on his glorious throne’ to judge mankind). Further, the basis of the judgment will be people’s attitude to him, and the nature of the judgment will be exclusion from his presence. It would be hard to exaggerate the staggering egocentricity of these claims.
6. Jesus’ authority as the Son of God
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives us a comprehensive doctrine of God. He is the Creator, the living God of the natural order, who gives sunshine and rain, and supplies birds with food, flowers with clothing and human beings with the necessities of life. He is also the King, whose righteous and saving rule has irrupted into human lives through Jesus. But above all—again through Jesus—he is our Father. Addressing his disciples, Jesus constantly referred to him as ‘your Father in heaven’, whose children they were, whose merry they must copy, whose loving providence they must trust and to whom they must come confidingly in prayer, knowing that he will never give them anything but ‘good gifts’.
In all these sayings Jesus called God ‘your Father’. Then once he referred to ‘the will of my Father’. Never, however, did he include himself with his disciples and speak of God as ‘our Father’. Of course he taught them to pray ‘Our Father’, but he was not associating himself with them. Indeed, he could not. For although he gave his followers the privilege of addressing God by the same intimate title which he himself used (‘Abba, Father’), yet still he was deeply conscious that God was his Father in a sense altogether different, indeed unique. This he was later to express in a saying which Matthew also records: ‘All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’ This exclusive Sonship Jesus did not explicitly claim or state in the Sermon on the Mount, but it is already implicit in his precise use of the personal possessives ‘my Father’, ‘our Father’, ‘your Father’.
7. The authority of Jesus as God
I realize that, whenever we venture to enquire into the divine self-consciousness of Jesus, we are trying to take soundings in water too deep for us to fathom. That he knew God as ‘my Father’ is clear, and also that he knew his own Sonship to be unique. But now we can take a further hesitating step. For there is evidence that he thought of himself as being on a par with God, even one with God. It is not that he ever said this in so many words in the Sermon, but that his claim to exercise divine prerogatives and his ways of speaking of himself imply it. Three examples may be given.
The first concerns the final beatitude. It will be remembered that eight beatitudes are generalizations in the third person (‘Blessed are the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers,’ etc.), while a ninth changes to the second person as Jesus addresses his disciples: ‘Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.’ It is this analogy with the prophets which is arresting. The logic seems to be this: Jesus expects his followers to have to suffer for his sake (‘on my account’), and then likens their persecution to that of the Old Testament prophets. Now those prophets suffered for their faithfulness to God, while the disciples of Jesus were to suffer for their faithfulness to him. The implication is unavoidable. If he is likening his disciples to God’s prophets (and he did later ‘send’ them out as the prophets had been ‘sent’), he is likening himself to God. As Chrysostom put it at the end of the fourth century, ‘He here … covertly signifies his own dignity, and his equality in honour with him who begat him.’
A similar equivalent is implied in the two other examples. When he warned them that a person who merely addressed him as ‘Lord, Lord’ would not enter the kingdom of heaven, one would have expected him to go on ‘but he who submits to my lordship’ or ‘but he who obeys me as Lord’. And this is, in fact, what we find in Luke’s version of the Sermon, where calling him ‘Lord, Lord’ is contrasted with doing what he says. But according to Matthew 7:21 he continued, ‘but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven’. If, then, Jesus regarded obeying him as Lord and doing the Father’s will as equivalents, he was putting himself on a level with God. It is all the more impressive because Jesus was not going out of his way to make an assertion about himself. Such was not his purpose in the context. This token of his divine self-consciousness slipped out when he was speaking about something quite different, namely the meaning of true discipleship.
The same is true in the third example. It comes in the following verses which are about the day of judgment and have already been mentioned. Everybody knew that God was the judge. So did Jesus. He did not here advance a direct and specific claim that God had committed the judgment of the world to him. He just knew that on the last day people would appeal to him and that he would have the responsibility to pass sentence on them. And in saying so, he again equated himself with God.
Here, then, is your ‘original Jesus’, your ‘simple, harmless teacher of righteousness’, whose Sermon on the Mount contains ‘plain ethics and no dogmas’! He teaches with the authority of God and lays down the law of God. He expects people to build the house of their lives on his words, and adds that only those who do so are wise and will be safe. He says he has come to fulfil the law and the prophets. He is both the Lord to be obeyed and the Saviour to bestow blessing. He casts himself in the central role of the judgment-day drama. He speaks of God as his Father in a unique sense, and finally implies that what he does God does and that what people do to him they are doing to God.
We cannot escape the implication of all this. The claims of Jesus were indeed put forward so naturally, modestly and indirectly that many people never even notice them. But they are there; we cannot ignore them and still retain our integrity. Either they are true, or Jesus was suffering from what C. S. Lewis called a ‘rampant megalomania’. Can it be seriously maintained, however, that the lofty ethics of the Sermon on the Mount are the product of a deranged mind? It requires a high degree of cynicism to reach that conclusion.
The only alternative is to take Jesus at his word, and his claims at their face value. In this case, we must respond to his Sermon on the Mount with deadly seriousness. For here is his picture of God’s alternative society. These are the standards, the values and the priorities of the kingdom of God. Too often the church has turned away from this challenge and sunk into a bourgeois, conformist respectability. At such times it is almost indistinguishable from the world, it has lost its saltness, its light is extinguished and it repels all idealists. For it gives no evidence that it is God’s new society which is tasting already the joys and powers of the age to come. Only when the Christian community lives by Christ’s manifesto will the world be attracted and God be glorified. So when Jesus calls us to himself, it is to this that he calls us. For he is the Lord of the counter-culture.