XI

THE SAVIOUR FROM SIN

We have up to this point endeavoured to confine ourselves to that in the Gospels which is matter of pure record. It is impossible to keep the most significant facts or events quite separate from some explanation of their significance, but an attempt at least has been made not to anticipate the Christian interpretation of the distinctive facts of Christianity. The Gospels, as we have seen, — at least the Synoptics, are to a very successful degree strictly reportorial. But even in them there is the beginning of that interpretation which eventually shapes itself into Christian doctrine and dogma. How much of this interpretation is the result of reflection after all the facts it is hard to say. Let us, to be sure of being fair with ourselves, concede that it all is, that every trace of later Christian doctrine that appears in the earlier Gospels is at least of their latest matter and belongs only to their latest form. There will still, of course, remain the difficulty of determining in many particular cases what is of pure record, and what of later interpretation, but we can do our part to reduce this to a minimum.

We saw at the close of the previous part that from a mere record of the earthly life of Jesus, His words

and acts, it is difficult to obtain a single definite conception of what we call His work, by which we mean the thing He was on the earth to do and the thing which He actually accomplished by His life and death. I propose to show that Christian interpretation began upon this question at the very earliest possible, and that it pursued it with undeviating consistency to its successful answer. We shall first trace its history, and then discuss its meaning. And we may anticipate the concurrent conclusion of the New Testament upon the point in what was perhaps its latest expression of it: We know that He was manifested to take away sins.

The most significant and characteristic expression of the result of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is contained in the words, The Remission of Sin. Remission, or the putting away, of sin, includes two ideas, or perhaps more correctly two stages of the same idea. It means a real putting away by the New Testament process of sanctification. But it also means the provisional putting away by the equally New Testament act of divine pardon or forgiveness. Each of these two conceptions plays an important part in the drama of redemption or final deliverance and freedom from sin. And the complete meaning of each and perfect relating of both is no small part of New Testament doctrine. In tracing that doctrine through the three earlier Gospels, we shall take those Gospels as they stand in their critical integrity, but we will remember that, for example, the parts relating to the infancy are the latest, and that whatever there is in them of true record there is also a decided beginning of later reflection. And even of the

ministry of John the Baptist, while the historical fact of the intimate connection with it of the career of Jesus is of much clearer record, yet we must admit that the form it has insistently taken in every one of the records shows the determined shaping, as we shall see, of the final doctrine. But there are the Gospels as they stood in their first complete forms, and if some of the interpretation of the facts by the Church has been read back into what we think should have been a naked report of the facts, it does not follow that it is not true interpretation. It does go far to prove that that was the Christian understanding of the facts from the first.

The first page of the Gospels as they stand reports the fact that Jesus was so named because He it was the expected one- who should save his people from their sins. His mission and power to do so is explained by a Messianic relation to God so intimate that He may be called Immanuel, God with us. In the-in this part quite independent—account of St. Luke, the announcement of the birth is in the words, Unto you is born this day a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. And what He was to be saviour from has already been declared in the prophecy uttered upon John the Baptist, Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to make ready His ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto His people in the remission of their sins. When John entered upon his preparatory ministry, the one burden of his preaching, the one significance of his baptism, was repentance unto the remission of sin. We might not attach so much importance to this burden of John's, which was the burden also of Jesus', ministry, but for

its so solemn iteration in the very last utterance of our Lord Himself upon His departure from the earth, Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations. When the Spirit had descended and the Church entered upon the mission in which Jesus was to be with it to the end of the world, what was first of all the message of St. Peter? Him did God exalt with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance and remission of sins. And again, To Him bear all the prophets witness, that through His name every one that believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins. St. Paul takes up the burden: Be it known unto you, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you the remission of sins. In his account of his conversion, he repeats the words of our Lord in sending him to the Gentiles, To open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive remission of sins, and an inheritance among them that are sanctified in me. In all this long and consistent line of thought, or sequence of truth, as we have followed it through the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, we shall see how deeply rooted is the entire system of salvation which St. Paul so wonderfully elaborates in his epistles. It might all be summed up in the words, In Christ the remission of our sin, and the grace and power of our holiness, our righteousness, and our life. The writer to the Hebrews follows not one whit less explicitly: At the end of the ages hath