IN PREACHING Christ and him crucified, and presenting the gospel facts concerning Christ as both "the power of God and the wisdom of God," it will be found exceedingly helpful to give him his true place in revelation, and in the divine order of things, which, from the beginning, has looked forward to the redemption of the race from the power of sin and death. Where does Christ belong? Was he an interloper, interfering with the divine process of the moral and religious education of the race, or was his coming, character and mission, an essential part of that process? The people of his own nation crucified him, regarding his teaching as subversive of the law which they had received, instead of being its fulfillment. "He came unto his own and his own received him not." A large section of the people, even in the most enlightened Christian lands, have refused to receive him. Is this because he has no legitimate place in the divine plan for the moral enlightenment and spiritual regeneration of the world?
This cannot be. Whoever reads thoughtfully the literature of the Old Testament, from Moses to Malachi, cannot fail to discover anticipations, fore-gleamings, prophetic intimations, of a coming One, whose advent and reign were to be marked by wonderful outpourings of the divine blessing, and by new and startling revelations of God's will. Moses, the man of God, while giving laws for the moral government of the people of his time, was conscious of the transient nature of much of this legislation and looked for One to come after him whose requirements would be the reflection of perfect wisdom, and whose dominion would know no end. David sang of him in his most exalted strains, and Isaiah and the other prophets rose to heights of unparalleled sublimity when they foretold the glory and majesty of the coming King of kings, and of the splendid triumphs of his kingdom. Indeed, it may be said that the Old Testament is an index finger pointing forward to the coming of One who should fulfill in his own great personality the offices of Prophet, Priest and King--the three functions which had been found necessary for human needs under the former dispensation.
Where prophecy ends in fulfillment, history begins. The story of Christ, as told us in the four Gospels, is the most wonderful of which the human mind can conceive. Nothing foreshadowed by the Old Testament had prepared the world for such marvelous developments as began with the birth of Christ, and characterized his whole ministry, culminating in his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection from the dead. And yet, when the scenes are enacted, and the personality of Christ is thrown upon the canvas of history, it is clear that he was the fulfillment of the prophecies, fore-gleamings, and longing hopes of the holiest men and women of the old dispensation. It is manifest, too, that he must needs have come, and have suffered, and have risen again from the dead, to accomplish all that the prophets had foretold concerning his reign, and the blessings which would flow therefrom to the whole human race.
These considerations make it plain that Christ was not an accident, nor an afterthought, but that he "stood as a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." His coming had always been a part of God's infinite plan, and law and prophets and psalms were but preparatory for the great drama of human redemption enacted by Christ. One of the inspired writers of the New Testament, looking back at the whole process of God's unfolding plan, and its culmination in Christ Jesus, summed up the meaning of it all, when he said: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (John 1:17) The law was but a pedagogue to lead men to Christ, the world's great Teacher. God had a revelation for men which could not be adequately conveyed through lawgiver, priest or prophet, and so he sent his only begotten Son into the world that he might embody in his own personality, and show forth in his life and teaching, the true character and will of God.
Philip expressed a universal human desire when he exclaimed: "Master, show us the Father and we shall be satisfied." Jesus told him that he that had seen him had seen the Father, for the Father was in him, and he was in the Father. His chief business here in the world was to "show us the Father." That is the profoundest meaning of his incarnation, his doctrine, his deeds, his dearth on the cross for the sins of the world. This revelation of his Fatherhood, God could only make to man through his Son. Hence, Jesus Christ was the culmination of God's revealing process, and of his plan, which had been unfolding through the ages, for the redemption of mankind.
This, then, is the place of Jesus in God's revelation, and in the development of his plan for the world's salvation. How irrational to refuse the claims and the offered salvation of One who has come to the world to carry out God's beneficent purposes concerning us!
