Christ and the Law

In the hour of their victory the people of God "sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb" (Rev. 15:3). There is a certain added interest to this fact in view of the present-day attitude in mod­ern theological circles toward the writings of Moses. Jesus, on the other hand, always linked up His position and status in a very definite way with the books and writings of Moses the lawgiver. Thus when the final hour of triumph dawns and the plagues are about to be poured out, the triumphant song of the redeemed of God is associated with the victory once achieved by earthly Israel under the leadership of Moses, and also with the victorious mission of the Son of God.

It is worth noting that most of the Old Testament revelation was written after Israel had been called from the abject slavery in Egypt. They had walked through the divided waters of the Red Sea, leaving on the vacated shore the drowned remnants of Pharaoh's ar­mies. Because of their cowardice, their repin­ings, and their failure to conquer lusts that had become obsessions, they had wandered for forty weary years through the wastes of the great Arabian Desert. During that time they had received the ten laws of God from the smoking summit of Sinai while the trumpet waxed louder and louder. Finally, only their children entered the Land of Promise. There were five major steps in the story. These might be summarized as follows:

1. The deliverance from bondage
2. The passing through the waters
3. The sojourn in the wilderness
4. The receiving of the law of God
5. The entry into the promised land of Canaan Some Parallels

These same five steps of victory are worked out in the relationship between Jesus and His people. At the time of His birth the angel de­clared, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21). He came to deliver His people from a far worse bondage than that of Egypt. At the beginning of His ministry He came to John to be baptized. John the Baptist's message was twofold in its nature. First, it was based upon the well-known Old Testament prophecy: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her appointed time is accomplished" (Isa. 40:1, 2, margin). His teach­ing was thus based upon the fact that pro­phetic time was fulfilled, and that in the full­ness of that time the predicted Messiah was about to appear. Second, and growing out of this thought, was the dual emphasis that a highway must be prepared for His coming. Social inequalities were to be leveled out. Crooked practices must cease. The soldiers must no longer oppress the people. The pub­lican must end his extortionate practices. The viperous brood of Pharisees and Sadducees must bring forth the evidences of repentance. Even the people must share their scant clothing and food with those who were in greater need than they.

What need, however, could Jesus have of John's baptism? His pure soul had never known the soiling touch of sin. No wonder that the desert prophet hesitated. "I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?" It is because of this setting that Christ's answer has the very highest importance. "Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15).

The fulfillment of which Jesus spoke had two points of major importance. First, it looked back to the past. Just as the multitude follow­ing Moses had passed through the waters of the Red Sea, out of the bondage of Egypt, so Jesus must go before His people through the waters, which would become the symbol of a death to the old life of servitude to sins and lusts, and the medium of entry into the new life of pil­grimage with God. But this action of Jesus also looked forward to the future. The Spirit of God abode upon Him in the form of a clove. In His identification of Himself with humanity He necessarily yielded Himself completely to me control of the Holy Spirit. Thus God the Father could dwell in Christ through the Spirit. As the apostle Paul said later, "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (2 Cor. 5:19). In the three and a half years that followed, Christ was implicitly guided and con­trolled by His Father working through the Spirit.

There is a happy diversity in the phrase­ology used by Mark and the other two evan­gelists with relation to the event that followed. Matthew and Luke write that the Spirit led Him into the wilderness. Mark states it more forcefully—"the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness." Both of these aspects taken to­gether give the full picture. Jesus was not be­ing driven as an animal is driven, yet there is more here than the thought of an impulse of God suggesting to Him that He go into the wilderness. Like a graceful ship in full sail that waits for the right winds to take it across the boundless wastes of water to its ultimate destination, so Jesus, fully surrendered, is driven forward by the winds of the Spirit into this wilderness experience and on into the fruitful ministry that followed those brief, eventful years.

His experience in the wilderness, however, was very unlike that of Israel of old. They yielded to the lusts of their flesh, and thus failed when they came to the crisis trial of their faith. But Jesus was gloriously trium­phant. Worn, emaciated, hungry, and weary to death, He withstood every temptation that Luci­fer could bring against Him. He could say in truth, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." Far from repining at the providences of God that had led Him to this pass, He could find it in His heart to utter those words of faith in repudiation of the devil's urgings, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He had seen no manna fall from heaven, but His faith could meet the test and bring Him through successfully. Thus there was a difference in the time of sojourning in the wilderness. Jesus was in that wilderness forty days, but they were there forty years, and only their children survived to see the Prom­ised Land. In Numbers 14:34 we find the rea­son: "After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years."

It was the same when He came to deal with the holy law of God. He did not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it to the uttermost. He was the living embodiment of it, the gra­cious and winsome expression of its highest teachings and of its most lovely fulfillment. The principles to which He gave utterance on the peaceful mountain above the shining lake were the principles by which He lived. The difference between the fiery summit of Sinai and the peaceful serenity of the mount of be­atitudes was symbolic of the difference that Jesus brought. Since the time of Moses the people had been content to leave the law upon the tables of stone. Now they saw it magnified, lighted up, in the life that Jesus lived. Jesus left no doubt that it was a law that would condemn their sins. He applied it even to their thoughts. But they saw it now in the light of His teaching and His life as something that would not only condemn their sins, but en­rich and beautify their characters. It was not only what that law meant to Him, but what it would mean to His followers as He lived out its precepts in their lives by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.