By what they said, I perceived that he had been a great warrior, and had fought with and slain him that had the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), but not without great danger to himself, which made me love him the more—"Pilgrims Progress", Part I

The subject before us is one of the greatest difficulty. Why Jesus chose the cross has exercised the thought of the Christian world ever since he did so. He told his disciples beforehand of what lay before him, of what he was choosing, but it was long before they realized that he meant any such thing. The cross was to them a strange idea, and for a long time they did not seriously face the matter. Once the cross was an accomplished fact, Christians could not, and did not wish to, avoid thinking out what had meant so much to their Master; but it has mostly been with a sense of facing a mystery that in some measure eluded them, with a feeling that there is more beyond, something always to be attained hereafter.

A very significant passage in St. Mark (10:32) gives us a glimpse of a moment on Jesus\' last journey to Jerusalem. It is a sentence which one could hardly imagine being included in the Gospel, if it did not represent some actual memory, and a memory of significance. It runs something like this: "And they were in the way, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was moving on before them; and they began to wonder; and as they followed they began to be afraid." He is moving to Jerusalem with a purpose. They do not understand it. He is wrapped in thought; and, as happens when a man\'s mind is working strongly, his pace quickens, and they find themselves at a distance behind him. And then something comes over them—a sense that there is something in the situation which they do not understand, a strangeness in the mind. They realize, in fact, that they are not as near Jesus as they had supposed. And, as they follow, the wonder deepens into fear.

Anyone who will really try to grapple with this problem of the cross will find very soon the same thing. The first thing that we need to learn, if our criticism of Jesus is to be sound, is that we are not at all so near him as we have imagined. He eludes us, goes far out beyond what we grasp or conceive; and I think the education of the Christian man or woman begins anew, when we realize how little we know about Jesus. The discovery of our ignorance is the beginning of knowledge. Plato long ago said that wonder is the mother of philosophy, and he was right. John Donne, the English poet, went farther, and said: "All divinity is love or wonder." When a man then begins to wonder about Jesus Christ in earnest, Jesus comes to be for him a new figure. Historical criticism has done this for us; it has brought us to such a point that the story of these earliest disciples repeats itself more closely in the experience of their followers of these days than in any century since the first. We begin along with them on the friendly, critical, human plane, and with them we follow him into experiences and realizations that we never expected. It may be summed up in the familiar words of the English hymn,

    Oh happy band of pilgrims,
       If onward ye will tread
     With Jesus as your fellow,
       To Jesus as your head.

These men begin with him, more or less on a footing of equality; or, at least, the inequality is very lightly marked. Afterwards it is emphasized; and they realize it with wonder and with fear, and at last with joy and gratitude.

We may begin by trying steadily to bring our minds to some keener sense of what it was that he chose. To say, in the familiar words, that he chose the cross, may through the very familiarity of the language lead us away from what we have to discover. We have, as we agreed, to ask ourselves what was his experience. What, then, did his choice involve? It meant, of course, physical pain. There are natures to whom this is of little account, but the sensitive and sentient type, as we often observe, dreads pain. He, with open eyes, chose physical pain, heightened to torture, not escaping any of the suffering which anticipation gives—that physical horror of death, that instinctive fear of annihilation, which nature suggests of itself. He took the course of action that would most severely test his disciples; one at least revolted, and we have to ask what it meant to Jesus to live with Judas, to watch his face, to recognize his influence in the little group—yes, and to try to win him again and to be repelled. "He learnt by the things that he suffered" that Judas would betray him; but the hour and place and method were not so evident, and when they were at last revealed—what did it mean to be kissed by Judas? Do we feel what he felt in the so-called trials—or was he dull and numbed by the catastrophe? How did he bear the beating of triumphant hatred upon a forsaken spirit? How did the horrible cry, "Crucify him! crucify him!" break on his ears—on his mind? When "the Lord turned and looked upon Peter" (Luke 22:61), what did it mean? How did he know that Peter was there, and what led him to turn at that moment? Was there in the Passion no element of uneasiness again about the eleven on whom he had concentrated his hopes and his influence—the eleven of whom it is recorded, that "they all forsook him, and fled" (Mark 14:50)? No hint of dread that his work might indeed be undone? What pain must that have involved? What is the value of the Agony in the Garden, of the cry, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" (Mark 15:34)? When we have answered, each for himself, these questions, and others like them that will suggest themselves—answered them by the most earnest efforts of which our natures are capable—and remembered at the end how far our natures fall short of his, and told ourselves that our answers are insufficient—then let us recall, once more, that he chose all this.

He chose the cross and all that it meant. Our next step should be to study anew his own references to what he intends by it, to what he expects to be its results and its outcome. First of all, then, he clearly means that the Kingdom of Heaven is something different from anything that man has yet seen. The Kingdom of Heaven is, I understand, a Hebrew way of saying the Kingdom of God—very much as men to-day speak of Providence, to avoid undue familiarity with the term God, so the Jews would say Heaven. There were many who used the phrase in one or other form; but it is always bad criticism to give to the words of genius the value or the connotation they would have in the lips of ordinary people. To a great mind words are charged with a fullness of meaning that little people do not reach. The attempt has been made to recapture more of his thoughts by learning the value given to some of the terms he uses as they appear in the literature of the day, and of course it has been helpful. But we have to remember always that the words as used by him come with a new volume of significance derived from his whole personality. Everything turns on the connotation which he gives to the term God—that is central and pivotal. What this new Kingdom of God is, or will be, he does not attempt fully to explain or analyse. In the parables, the treasure-finder and the pearl merchant achieve a great enrichment of life; so much they know at once; but what do they do with it? How do they look at it? What does it mean to them? He does not tell us. We only see that they are moving on a new plane, seeing life from a new angle, living in a fuller sense. What the new life means in its fullness, we know only when we gain the deeper knowledge of God.

He suggests that this new knowledge comes to a man from God himself—flesh and blood do not reveal it (Matt. 16:17). "Unto you it is given," he says on another occasion, "to know the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven" (Mark 4:11), and he adds that there are those who see and do not see; they are outside it; they have not the alphabet, we might say, that will open the book (cf. Rev. 5:3). He makes it clear at every point in the story of the Kingdom of God that there is more beyond; and he means it. It is to be a new beginning, an initiation, leading on to what we shall see but do not yet guess, though he gives us hints. We shall not easily fathom the depth of his idea of the new life, but along with it we have to study the width and boldness of his purpose. This new life is not for a few—for "the elect," in our careless phrase. He looks to a universal scope for what he is doing. It will reach far outside the bounds of Judaism. "They shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God" (Luke 13:29). "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world," he says (Mark 14:9). "My words shall not pass away" (Luke 21:33). All time and all existence come under his survey and are included in his plan. The range is enormous. And this was a Galilean peasant! As we gradually realize what he has in mind, must we not feel that we have not grasped anything like the full grandeur of his thought?

He makes it plain, in the second place, that it will be a matter for followers, for workers, for men who will watch and wait and dare—men with the same abandonment as himself. He calls for men to come after him, to come behind him (Mark 1:17, 10:21; Luke 9:59). He emphasizes that they must think out the terms on which he enlists them. He does not disguise the drawbacks of his service. He calls his followers, and a very personal and individual call it is. He calls a man from the lake shore, from the nets, from the custom house.

In the third place, he clearly announces an intention to achieve something in itself of import by his death. There are those who would have us believe that his mind was obsessed with the fixed idea of his own speedy return on the clouds, and that he hurried on to death to precipitate this and the new age it was to bring. References to such a coming are indeed found in the Gospels as we have them, but we are bound to ask whence they come, and to inquire how far they represent exactly what he said; and then, if he is correctly reported, to make sure that we know exactly what he means. Those who hold this view fail to relate the texts they emphasize with others of a deeper significance, and they ignore the grandeur and penetration and depth of the man whom they make out such a dreamer. He never suggests himself that his death is to force the hand of God.

He himself is to be the doer and achiever of something. We have been apt to think of him as a great teacher, a teacher of charm and insight, or as the great example of idealism, "who saw life steadily and saw it whole." He lived, some hold, the rounded and well-poised life, the rhythmic life. No, that was Sophocles. He is greater. Here is one who penetrates far deeper into things. His treatment of the psychology of sin itself shows how much more than an example was needed. Here, as in the other chapters, but here above all we have to remember the clearness of his insight, his swiftness of penetration, his instinct for fact and reality. He means to do, to achieve, something. It is no martyr\'s death that he incurs. His death is a step to a purpose. "I have a baptism to be baptised with," he says (Luke 12:50). "The Son of Man," he said, "is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

In discussing in the previous chapter what he meant by the term "lost," our conclusion was that for Jesus sin was far more awful, far more serious, than we commonly realize. We saw also that so profound and true a psychology of sin must imply a view of redemption at least as profound, a promise of a force more than equal to the power of sin—that "violence of habit" of which St. Augustine speaks. If the Son of Man is to save the lost, and if the lost are in danger so real, it follows that he must think of a thoroughly effective salvation, and that its achievement will be no light or easy task. "To give one\'s life as a ransom for many," says a modern teacher, "is of no avail, if the ransom is insufficient." What, then, and how much, does he mean by "to save," and how does he propose to do it? When the soul of man or woman has gone wrong in any of the ways discussed by Jesus—in hardness or anger, in impurity, in the refusal to treat God and his facts seriously—when the consequences that Jesus recognized have followed—what can be done to bring that soul back into effective relation with the God whom it has discarded and abandoned? That is the problem that Jesus had to face, and most of us have not thought enough about it.

First of all, how far does Jesus understand salvation to take a man? The ancient creed of the Church includes the article of belief in "the forgiveness of sins." There are those who lightly assume that this means, chiefly or solely, the remission of punishment for evil acts. This raises problems enough of itself. The whole doctrine of "Karma", vital to Buddhism and Hinduism, is, if I understand it aright, a strong and clear warning to us that the remission of punishment is no easy matter. Not only Eastern thinkers, but Western also, insist that there is no avoidance of the consequences of action. Luther himself, using a phrase half borrowed from a Latin poet, says that forgiveness is "a knot worthy of a God\'s aid"—"nodus Deo vindice dignus".[31] But in any case escape from the consequences of sin, when once we look on sin with the eyes of Jesus, is of relatively small importance. There are two aspects of the matter far more significant.

We have seen how Jesus regards sin as at once the cause and consequence of a degeneration of the moral nature, and as a repudiation of God. Two questions arise: Is it possible to recover lost moral quality and faculty? Is it possible for those incapacitated by sin to regain, or to enjoy, relation with God?

When we think, with Jesus, of sin first and foremost in connexion with God, and take the trouble to try to give his meaning to his words, forgiveness takes on a new meaning. We have to "think like God," he says (Mark 8:33); and perhaps God is in his thoughts neither so legal nor so biological as we are; perhaps he does not think first of edicts or of biological and psychological laws. God, according to Jesus, thinks first of his child, though of course not oblivious of his own commands and laws. Forgiveness, Jesus teaches or suggests, is primarily a question between Father and son, and he tries to lead us to believe how ready the Father is to settle that question. Once it is settled, we find, in fact, Father and son setting to work to mend the past. The evil seed has been sown and the sad crop must be reaped, the man who sowed it has to reap it—that much we all see. But Jesus hints to us that God himself loves to come in and help his reconciled son with the reaping; many hands make light work, especially when they are such hands. And even when the crop is evil in the lives of others, the most horrible outcome of sin, God is still in the field. The prodigal, when he returns, is met with a welcome, and is gradually put in possession of what he has lost—the robe, the shoes, the ring; and it all comes from his being at one with his Father again (Luke 15:22ff.). The Son of Man, historically, has again and again found the lost—the lost gifts, the lost faculties, the lost charms and graces—and given them back to the man whom he had also found and brought home to God.

Let us once more try to get our thoughts Theocentric as Jesus\' are, and our problems become simpler, or at least fewer. God\'s generosity in forgiveness, God\'s love, he emphasizes again and again. Will a man take Jesus at his word, and commit himself to God? That is the question. Once he will venture on this step, what pictures Jesus draws us of what happens! The son is home again; the bankruptcy, the hideous solitude, the life among animals, bestial, dirty and empty, and haunted with memories—all those things are past, when once the Father\'s arms are round his neck, and his kiss on his cheek. He is no more "alienated from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18; Col. 1:21), "without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12), an "enemy of God" (Rom. 5:10); he was lost and is found, and the Father himself, Jesus says, cries: "Let us be merry" ("Euphranthomen"). If we hesitate about it, Jesus calls us once more to "think like God," and tells us other stories, with incredible joy in them—"joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." We must go back to his central conception of God, if we are to realize what he means by salvation. St. Augustine (Conf., viii. 3) brings out the value of these parables, by reminding us how much more we care for a thing that has been ours, when we have lost it and found it again. The shepherd has a new link with his sheep lost and found again, a new story of it, a shared experience; it is more his than ever. And Jesus implies that when a man is saved, he is God\'s again, and more God\'s own than ever before; and God is glad at heart. As for the man; a new power comes into his heart, and a new joy; and with God\'s help, in a new spirit of sunshine, he sets about mending the past in a new spirit and with a new motive—for love\'s sake now. If the fruit of the past is to be seen, as it constantly is, in the lives of others, he throws himself with the more energy into God\'s work, and when the Good Shepherd goes seeking the lost, he goes with him. Christian history bears............