25. His hour had not yet come

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When Our Lord declared Himself to be the Son of God and One with His Heavenly Father, His enemies made attempts on His life. When He told His Apostles that He must be crucified and be a suffering Son of Man, they quarreled either with Him or among themselves for the first place in His Kingdom. 

Divinity and a suffering Savior were both repugnant to unregenerated men; Divinity, because man secretly wants to be his own god; suffering, because the ego cannot understand why a seed must die before it springs forth unto new life. The Son of God became a stumbling block when He humiliated Himself to the human level, taking on the form and habit of man. It is hard on the intelligentsia to believe that Greatness can be so little. On the other hand, the Son of Man became a scandal when He took upon Himself the weakness and even the guilt of man and did not use His Divine power to escape the Cross.

Several attempts were made on His life; most of them during one of the great feasts, but always after He had proclaimed His Divinity. The first attempt was in Nazareth. Every man has his own country, his own home, and his own kindred. It is among these that he would be loved and remembered. But as Our Lord hastened to His Cross, His speed was quickened by the rejection of His own home town.

NAZARETH

As the lengthening shadows of Friday’s sun were closing about the little village that nestled in the cup of hills, a blast from the trumpet of the master of the synagogue proclaimed the beginning of the Sabbath. The following morning Our Blessed Lord went to the synagogue, where He had often been as a child and as a young man. Very likely when He entered the synagogue this time, the news of the miracles at Cana and at the Jordan where the heavens proclaimed His Divinity had already brought the people to a high pitch of expectancy.

And Jesus came back to Galilee

With the power of the Spirit upon Him…

His praise was on all men’s lips.

LUKE 4:14

In the synagogue, He was given the Book of Isaias. The particular prophecy which He read dealt with the Suffering Servant of God.

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me;

He has anointed Me,

And sent Me out to preach the gospel to the poor,

To restore the broken-hearted;

To bid the prisoners go free,

And the blind have sight;

To set the oppressed at liberty, to proclaim a year

When men may find acceptance with the Lord.

LUKE 4:18, 19

This passage was familiar to the Jews. It was an Old Testament prophecy concerning the release of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity. But He did something unusual; He took this text woven out of the Exile, and wrapped it around Himself. He changed the meaning of the “poor,” the “enslaved,” and the “blind.” The “poor” were those who had no grace and lacked union with God; the “blind” were those who had not yet seen the Light; the “enslaved” were those who had not yet purchased true freedom from sin. He then proclaimed that all these centered in Himself.

But above all, He declared the Jubilee. The Mosaic code made provision for every fiftieth year to be one of special grace and restoration. All debts were remitted; family inheritances which had, by the pressure of time, been alienated, were restored to their original owners; those who had mortgaged their liberty were restored to freedom. It was a Divine safeguard against monopolies; and it kept family life intact. The Jubilee year was to Him a symbol of His Messianic appearance which He proclaimed because He had been anointed with the Spirit to do so. There were to be new spiritual riches, a new spiritual light, a new spiritual liberty, all centering in Him—the Evangelist, the Healer, the Emancipator. All who were in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on Him. Then came the startling, explosive words:

This Scripture which I have read

In your hearing

Is today fulfilled.

LUKE 4:21

He knew they were expecting a political king who would throw off Roman domination. But He proclaimed redemption from sin, not from military dictatorship. In this way alone they must expect the prophecy of Isaias to be fulfilled.

It was understandable that the people of Nazareth, who had seen Jesus grow up among them, were surprised to hear Him proclaim Himself the anointed of God, of whom Isaias spoke. They now had a double alternative before them: either they could accept Him as the fulfillment of the prophecy; or they could rebel. The privilege of being the home town of the long-awaited Messias and the One Whom the Heavenly Father in the Jordan proclaimed His Divine Son was too much for them, because of their familiarity with Him. They asked:

Is not This the carpenter, the Son of Mary?

MARK 6:3

They believed in God in a kind of way, but not the God Who touched their neighbourhood, entered into close dealings with them, and lifted hammers in the same trade shop. The same kind of snobbery that was found in the exclamation of Nathanael: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” now became the prejudice against Him in His own city, and among His own people. He was indeed the Son of a carpenter, but also of the Carpenter Who made heaven and earth. Because God had taken upon Himself a human nature, and had been seen in the lowliness of a village artisan, He failed to win the respect of men.

Our Blessed Lord “was astonished at their unbelief.” Twice in the Gospels, He is said to have “marveled” and to have been “astonished”: once because of a Gentile’s faith; a second time because of His townsmen’s lack of faith. From His own people He might have reckoned on some touch of sympathy; some predisposition to welcome Him. His wonder was the measure of His pain, as well as of their sin, as He told them:

It is only in His own country,

In His own home,

And among His own kindred, that a

Prophet goes unhonored.

MARK 6:4

In order to bring home to their souls that their self-esteem was wounded, and that if His own received Him not, He would take His salvation elsewhere, He placed Himself in the category of Old Testament prophets, who themselves received no better treatment. He quoted two examples from the Old Testament. Both were a foreshadowing of the direction that His Gospel was to take, namely, to embrace the Gentiles. He told them that there had been many widows among the people of Israel in the days of Elias when the great famine came over the land, and when the heavens were shut up for over three years. But Elias was not sent to any one of these; he was sent to a widow of Sarepta in the land of the Gentiles. Taking another example, He said that there had been many lepers in the time of Elias, but none of them except Naaman, the Syrian, was made clean. The mention of Naaman was particularly humiliating, because he at first had been unbelieving, but later he believed. Since both were Gentiles, He implied that the benefits and blessings of the Divine Kingdom were coming in answer to faith, not in answer to race.

God, He told them, was no man’s debtor; His mercies would flow to other people if His own rejected them. His townsmen were reminded that it was their earthly-minded expectation of a political kingdom that withheld them from the realization of the great truth that heaven had visited them in Himself. His own home town became the stage on which was trumpeted the salvation not of a blood, or a nation, but of the whole world. The people were filled with indignation, first of all because He had claimed to bring deliverance from sin in His capacity as the Holy Anointed of God; secondly because of the warning that salvation which was first of the Jews would, on rejection, pass into a mission to the Gentiles. Saints are not always recognized by those who live with them. They would cast Him out, for He had rejected them, and made Himself the Christ. Their violence was a preparation for His Cross.

Nazareth lies in a cup of hills. A short distance from it to the southeast was a wall of rock about eighty feet high which drops about three hundred feet to the Plains of Esdraelon. It is there that tradition places the scene where they attempted to cast Him off.

But He passed through the midst of them,

And so went on His way.

LUKE 4:30

The hour of His Crucifixion had not yet come, but the minutes were ticking off in a succession of violence whenever He proclaimed that He was sent by God, and that He was God.

BETHSAIDA

Another assault on His life came after the curing of the disabled man at Bethsaida. At this pool in Jerusalem, a number of sick, sorrowful, emaciated, and helpless gathered in the hope of healing. One poor man had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Our Lord saw him there, He asked:

Hast thou a mind to recover thy strength?

JOHN 5:6

When the powerless man expressed confidence in His power, Our Lord said to him: 

Rise up, take up thy bed, and walk.

JOHN 5:8

With the commandment came the bestowal of power. Whenever man attempts to do what he knows to be the Master’s will, a power will be given to him equal to the duty. As St. Augustine said, “Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.” As soon as the man was cured, he went to the temple. Later the same day, Our Lord found him there, as the cured man had been telling everyone that it was Jesus Who had made him whole. Trouble started brewing, because this was the Sabbath day. When the leaders of the people had found the man who was cured they said to him:

It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for thee

To carry thy bed.

JOHN 5:11

Then they began to arouse ill will against Jesus “for doing such things on the Sabbath.” Our Lord had healed men on all days, but Sabbaths were high days of grace on which six miracles have been recorded: He cast out an evil spirit; He restored the withered hand of a man; the woman who was crippled He made straight; He cured the man with the dropsy; and He opened the eyes of the blind man.

Many answers were made to the leaders of the people about healing on the Sabbath. He recalled the teaching of the prophets that holy things were of secondary importance compared with the benefit of God’s people; afterward, He appealed to the Law, to show that the Sabbath was secondary to the work of the sanctuary. The implication was that there stood among them One greater than the sanctuary. Again He said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. On another occasion, He asked:

What, you hypocrites, is there any one of you

That will not untie his ox or his ass

From the stall and take them down to water,

When it is the Sabbath?

LUKE 13:15

But instead of rendering thanks to God because a sick man had been cured, or rejoicing like the prophetess Anna because they had looked upon the Redemption of Israel, they protested because the man was carrying his bed on the Sabbath. When they sought to kill Him because He had done this on the Sabbath, He answered them:

My Father has never ceased working,

And I too must be at work.

JOHN 5:17

It is true that God rested on the seventh day from His creative work, though the seventh day was not necessary for His recuperation. But it was necessary for man to rest and sanctify the seventh day, because work tires; and under the present dispensation work is also a penalty. But the Savior here said that though God had rested from His creative work, He did not rest from His Providential work of supplying the needs of His creatures. As St. Chrysostom said:

How doth the Father work, Who ceased on the seventh day from all His works? Let Him learn the manner in which He worketh, what is it? He careth for, He holdeth together all that hath been made. When thou beholdest the sun rising, the moon running in her path, the lakes, the fountains, the rivers, the rains, the course of nature in seeds, and in our own bodies and those of irrational beings, and all the rest, by means of which the universe is made up, then learn the ceaseless working of the Father.

To think of God as not operative in the universe is to imply that He has no interest in it. Evolution and the natural unfolding of things are neither self-explained nor self-operative. They are neither apart from God, nor opposed to Him. After the first creation God did not enter upon an inaction. Since there was evil in the world, the Spirit that moved on formless matter must now begin to move among men.

But the Master was saying more than this, and those who heard Him knew that He was. He was affirming a unique affiliation and oneness with the Father. If the Father was working now in a spiritual realm, so was He; if all things were created “by the power of the Word,” now “the Word became flesh” if the Father ministered to the needs of His creatures on a Sabbath, then it must also be the right of His Son to engage in works of mercy on the Sabbath. Thus did He unequivocally claim absolute equality with the Father. The Father’s work and His were the same. The deep sense of His Divine Sonship thrilled through His human nature. The leaders of the people accepted His words as affirming His own Divine Sonship, and the Gospel says that the leaders became

More determined than ever to make away with Him,

That He not only broke the Sabbath,

But spoke of God as His own Father,

Thereby treating Himself as equal to God.

JOHN 5:18

Hostility increased in direct ratio to the affirmation of His Divine authority. They passed over the miracle, and made resolute plots against His life. He was on His way to the Cross, not because He had faults but because of His Divinity and the high purpose of His coming. His Cross would be a witness against their folly, as the Resurrection would be a witness to His Divinity. The Cross was at the end of His life from the point of view of time; but it was at the beginning of His life from the point of view of His intent to offer Himself as a ransom for man.

JERUSALEM

Another attempt on His life was made at Jerusalem during the Feast of the Tabernacles. He had been questioned about how He knew so much.

How does this Man know how to read?

He has never studied.

JOHN 7:15

There was no human accounting for His knowledge. The secret fountain of it was His unique relation to the Godhead, which He explained thus:

The learning which I impart is not My own;

It comes from Him Who sent Me.

JOHN 7:16

There was no mistaking His meaning. He was claiming to be God in the form of man. Their reaction was physical—another attempt on His life; and He quietly asked:

Why do you design to kill Me?

JOHN 7:20

Later on, there was another attempt. The immediate occasion of their resentment was His remarks concerning Abraham. The Pharisees, because Our Blessed Lord had spoken of His Father, told Him that Abraham was their father: thus did they distinguish themselves from the heathen, by affirming their lineage with the founder of the Jewish people. They were, indeed, children of Abraham, and their bond with him was witnessed in their flesh, through circumcision. Our Lord did not deny their affiliation with Abraham, but He affirmed another affiliation in the spiritual realm: there can be no true paternal relationship where there is opposition in conduct.

On the part of the Savior there was no desire to minimize Abraham. The memory of Abraham was held in such high honor among the Jews that to be reckoned among his children here below was to them an assurance of being carried into Abraham’s bosom. He was not only the father of their race, he was the fountainhead and channel through which the promise of the Messias flowed to his people. The great promise was also made to Abraham that he would be the instrument of blessing to all the world. It seemed impossible of fulfillment when he was an old man; yet he was led out of his tent under the starry heavens and told that as was the number of the stars, so his seed would be.

It was he who was commanded later on to take his son Isaac, his only son, with whom the promise was bound up, and offer him in sacrifice on Mount Moria. The command was clear: he was about to carry it into effect when his son was spared by God, and a lamb was provided. It might have been on that day that Abraham caught the first true glimpse of another Son, a willing Victim, Who would be offered by the Heavenly Father for the world’s sin and salvation. As Chrysostom said, “He saw the Cross of Christ when he laid the wood on his son and in will offered up Isaac.”

When the leaders claimed that their spiritual descent had to be from God, since their descent from Abraham was legitimate, the Lord answered that if their spiritual descent was from God, they would not be rejecting His message and seeking to kill Him, but would recognize and love Him.

If you were children of God, you would welcome Me gladly;

It was from God I took my origin,

From Him I have come.

I did not come of My own impulse,

It was He Who sent Me.

JOHN 8:42

They then asked Him:

Art Thou greater than our father Abraham?

JOHN 8:53 

Hast Thou seen Abraham, Thou,

Who art not yet fifty years old?

JOHN 8:57

Our Lord answered:

As for your father Abraham,

His heart was proud to see

The day of My coming; he saw and rejoiced to see it…

Believe Me, before ever Abraham came to be, I am.

JOHN 8:56–59

He intimated that Abraham had looked forward with joy to seeing what Our Lord called “the day of My coming.” Notice that he did not say “My birth.” When they challenged Him that He was not yet fifty years old, it was to indicate not so much His age as the physical impossibility of His ever having seen Abraham. Their assumption here was that He was just a man. Our Lord now used the same word that was used by God on Sinai: “I am Who am.” He did not say, “before Abraham was, I was,” but “before Abraham came to be, I am.” He was attributing to Himself not a simple priority over Abraham, but an existence from all eternity. A moment before, He had said that His Incarnate Life engaged Abraham’s most rapturous attention as he looked over the shoulders of the ages to catch a glimpse of the fulfillment of the promises. Long before Abraham’s age, He possessed priority of Being, not created being but uncreated, eternal and self-existent Being, not moving to greater perfection because already possessed of it. There was a time when Abraham was not, but there was never a time when the Son of God was not. Christ was not claiming that He had come into existence before Abraham; but that He had never come into being at all. He is the “I am” of ancient Israel, the “I am” without past or future; the “I am” without beginning and without end, the great eternal “now.” Because they understood that He was saying that He was God:

They took up stones to throw at Him;

But Jesus hid Himself,

And went out of the temple.

JOHN 8:59

The alternatives were worship or stoning, and they chose the latter. The stones were probably those that were lying about in a courtyard, for the temple was not yet completed. They had sought to kill Him before when He identified Himself with the Father; now they sought to stone Him because He said that He antedated Abraham, and Abraham in prophecy looked forward to Him Who possesses the eternal existence of God.

It is not likely that the hiding to which St. John refers was in any way interposing anything between Himself and them. The hiding was rather from those who would not hear His truth, merely by making Himself invisible to those who sought Him. Once before He had done the same thing to the same people. His “Hour” was not yet come. Since no one could take away His life until He would lay it down of Himself, He retired from the way of His enemies. It was in the temple they attempted to stone Him. For the stoning of the Divine Temple, there would come a day when there would not be left a stone upon a stone in the temple made by human hands.

JERUSALEM AGAIN

Later on, He visited the last remnant of the old temple, which was known as Solomon’s Porch. The feast was that of the Dedication, the last great feast prior to the Passover. It was instituted by Judas Machabeus to celebrate the purification of the temple after it had been profaned by the Syrians. The feast lasted eight days. John in his Gospel noted that it was winter, which would indicate not only a climate but also a disposition of soul. His enemies, as always, gathered around Him asking:

How long wilt Thou go on keeping us in suspense?

If Thou art the Christ, tell us openly.

JOHN 10:24

Our Lord had openly proclaimed His Messias-ship, and confirmed it by works and miracles. But their ideas of a Messias did not correspond with God’s idea of a Messias. They were looking for someone who would break the Roman yoke, liberate the people and give them material prosperity. Therefore, they were anxious to know if He was going to purify the city of Jerusalem and its courts of Roman soldiers, Roman authority, Roman coins, and Roman magistrates such as Pilate. Had not Judas Machabeus done this, for which they were now celebrating the feast? If the temple had been purged of Syrian profanations, why could not the city be purged of Roman desecrations? If, therefore, He was to be the political Messias, let Him openly proclaim Himself.

He went on to tell them that there were moral conditions necessary for understanding the Messias-ship. He had worked miracles, but miracles would not coerce the will, nor destroy freedom of adhesion. But now He would let them know openly and clearly who the Messias was:

My Father and I are One.

JOHN 10:30 

I have told you that I am the Son of God.

JOHN 10:36

In the Greek, the word “one” is neuter, which means not one person but one substance, one nature. His Father, He the Son, and the Holy Spirit were one in the nature of God. The leaders of the people had been looking for a Messias sent to establish His Kingdom; but in the last few centuries, with the decline of prophecy, their hopes degenerated into a search for a political liberator. They were not looking for a real indwelling of a Divine Person among them. It was becoming clear to them that the Christ, or the Messias, was the Son of God Who shared the nature of the Father, though in His human nature, or as the Son of Man, the Father was greater than He. He was now reaffirming that He had been in Being before His human nature was formed; that He had come forth from the Father to assume a human nature; clad in it, He as a Divine Person was conscious of no change in His Divine nature; what had a beginning was His human nature appearing as “the Suffering Servant.” When He now affirmed His Divinity, they

Once again took up stones, to stone Him.

JOHN 10:31

He said to them:

My Father has enabled Me to do many deeds

Of mercy in your presence;

For which of these are you stoning Me?

JOHN 10:32

Their answer was that they could not conceive of the humiliation of God in the form of man. The world can understand a man divinizing himself, but it cannot understand a God becoming a man: hence they said the reason they stoned Him was

For blasphemy; it is because Thou,

Who art a man,

Dost pretend to be God.

JOHN 10:33

His answer was that though a mere man could not be God, God could become man, while still remaining God.

Thereupon once again they had a mind to seize Him;

But He escaped from their hands.

JOHN 10:39

Blasphemy was punishable by stoning. But the little cordon of men around Him, with stones in their hands, could not lay hands on Him: for “His Hour had not yet come.” It appeared so easy to take Him, and yet so difficult. When the moment would come, when He would deliver Himself over to them, the first thing that would happen to them was that they would all fall backward upon the ground.

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