| 65. The Messianic Plan of Jesus. Indications of a Political Element. | ||||
The Baptist pointed io a future individual, and Jesus to himself, as the founder of the kingdom of heaven. The idea of that Messianic kingdom belonged to the Israelite nation; did Jesus hold it in the form in which it. existed among his contemporaries, or under modifications of his own? | ||||
The idea of the Messiah grew up amongst the Jews in soil half religious, half political: it was nurtured by national adversity, and in the tune of Jesus, according to the testimony of the Gospels, it was {P.308} embodied in the expectation that the Messiah would ascend the throne of his ancestor David, free the Jewish people from the Roman yoke, and found, a kingdom which would last for ever (Luke i. 32 f.68ff. Acts i. 6.). Hence our first question must be this: | ||||
Did Jesus include this political element in his Messianic plan? | ||||
That Jesus aspired to be a temporal ruler, has at all times been an allegation of the adversaries of Christianity, but has been maintained by none with so much exegetical acumen as by the author of the Wolfenb ttel Fragments, who, be it observed, by no means denies to Jesus the praise of aiming at the moral reformation of his nation. According to this writer, the first indication of a political plan on the part, of Jesus is, that he unambiguously announced the approaching Messianic kingdom, and laid down the conditions on which it was to be entered, without explaining what this kingdom was, and wherein it consisted, as if he supposed the current idea of its nature to be correct. Now the fact is, that the prevalent conception of the Messianic reign had a strong political bias; hence, when Jesus spoke of the Messiah's kingdom without a definition, the Jews could only think of an earthly dominion, and as Jesus could not have presupposed any other interpretation of his words, he must have wished to be so understood. But in opposition to this it may be remarked, that in the parables by which Jesus shadowed forth the kingdom of heaven; in the Sermon on the Mount, in which, he illustrates the duties of its citizens; and lastly, in his whole demeanour and course of action, we have sufficient evidence, that his idea of the Messianic kingdom was peculiar to himself. There is not so ready a counterpoise for the difficulty, that Jesus sent the apostles, with whose conceptions he could not be unacquainted, to announce the Messiah's kingdom throughout the land (Matt. x.). These, who disputed which of them should be greatest in the kingdom of their master (Matt. xviii. 1, Luke xvii. 24); of whom two petitioned for the seats at the right and left of the Messianic king (Mark x.35ff.); who, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, expected a restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts i. 6:)-these had clearly from the beginning to the end of their intercourse with Jesus, no other than the popular notion of the Messiah; when, therefore, Jesus despatched them as heralds of his kingdom, it seems necessarily a part of his design, that they should disseminate in all places their political Messianic idea. | ||||
Among the discourses of Jesus there is one especially worthy of pote in Matt. xix. 28. (comp. Luke xxil. 30.). In reply to the question of Peter, We have, left all and followed you; what shall we have therefore? Jesus promises to his disciples that in the mXt.yyevKoia,, when the Son of Man shall sit on his throne, they also shall sit ofi twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. | ||||
That the literal import of this promise formed part of the tissue of {P.309} the Messianic hopes cherished by the Jews of that period, is not to be controverted. It is argued, however, that Jesus spoke figuratively on this occasion, and only employed familiar Jewish images to convey to the apostles an assurance, that the sacrifices they had made here would be richly compensated in their future life by a participation in his glory. But the disciples must have understood the promise literally, when, even after the resurrection of Jesus, they harboured anticipations of worldly greatness; and as Jesus had had many proofs of this propensity, he would hardly have adopted such language, had he not intended to nourish their temporal hopes. | ||||
The supposition that he did so merely to animate the courage of his disciples, without himself sharing their views, imputes duplicity to Jesus a duplicity in this case quite gratuitous, since, as Olshausen justly observes, Peter's question would have been satisfactorily answered by any other laudatory acknowledgment of the devotion of the disciples. Hence it appears a fair inference, that Jesus himself shared the Jewish expectations which he here sanctions; but expositors have made the most desperate efforts to escape from this unwelcome conclusion. Some have resorted to an arbitrary alteration of the reading; others to the detection of irony, directed against the disproportion between the pretensions of the disciples, and their trivial services;:): others to different expedients, but. all more unnatural than the admission, that Jesus, in accordance with Jewish ideas, here promises his disciples the dignity of being his assessors in his visible Messianic judgment, and that he thus indicates the existence of a national element in his notion of the Messiah's kingdom. It is observable, too, that in the Acts (i. 7), Jesus, even after his resurrection, does not deny that he will restore the kingdom to Israel, but merely discourages curiosity as to the times and seasons of its restoration. | ||||
Among the actions of Jesus, his last entry into Jerusalem (Matt. xxi.1ff.) is especially appealed to as a proof that his plan was partly political. According to the Fragmentist, all the circumstances point to a political design: the time which Jesus chose, after a sufficiently long preparation of the people in the provinces; the Passover, which they visited in great numbers; the animal on which he rode, and by which, from a popular interpretation of a passage in Zachariah, who announced himself as the destined King of Jerusalem; the approval which he pronounces when the people receive him with a royal greeting; the violent procedure which he hazards in the temple; and finally, his severe philippic on the higher class of the Jews (Matt. xxiii), at the close of which he seeks to awe them into a reception at him as their Messianic king, by the threat that he will show himself to them no more in any other guise.{P.310} | ||||