than Egyptian bondage. For it is only as his spotless life is thus freely offered that he himself becomes the potent means and mediator of human salvation. The shedding of the blood of this paschal lamb has for its object, as Matthew (xxvi, 28) records it, "remission of sins." We cannot therefore with proper regard to the simplest suggestions of the language and its occasion divorce from the words of Jesus at the last supper the then current ideas of atonement through the sprinkling of blood. One may appropriately say, in the language of Isa. liii, 10, "It pleased Jehovah to bruise him and to make his soul an offering for sin." The institution of the new covenant of his gospel, like that of the old covenant of Mount Sinai, was accordingly ratified by the shedding of blood, and it was the blood of Jesus, the blood of the new covenant, shed for many because given for the life of the world. From all which it appears very evident that we cannot fairly or satisfactorily explain the teaching of Jesus touching his own divine mediation without admitting his obvious allusions to Old Testament ideas of atonement. In this fact we may also observe how the ritual of an inferior religious cult may prepare the way for something more spiritual and divine.

4. God's Great Love for the World. So far as the gospel of John sets forth the teaching of Jesus on the subject of his own divine mediation, it supplements and confirms the doctrine found in the synoptics. Perhaps the most noteworthy declaration in the New Testament touching the love of God as exhibited in the saving mediation of his Son is that which is written in John iii, 14-16: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life." It is an old question of exegesis whether all these are words of Jesus or an enlargement of his words made by the evangelist. The only trustworthy answer seems to be the general one that the teaching of Jesus had so thoroughly taken possession of the evangelist's thought and life as to find its true expression not in the exact terms employed by the Lord, but rather in the language and style of the disciple. Whether Jesus uttered these sentiments near the beginning or at the end of his ministry is a question of no essential importance to John. His aim is to present Jesus for all that he is worth to the believer (comp. xx, 31), and the words to Nicodemus in iii, 14-16, fairly interpreted, include the following truths: (1) The mediatorial offering of Christ has its origin in the love of God, which is a world-embracing love. (2) The offering involves the most affect

ing of all possible sacrifices, the giving of an only begotten Son' for the rescue and the eternal life of the perishing world of mankind. (3) The Son thus offered is in some sense a vicarious sacrifice for those who are liable to perish, but who, through faith in him, may have eternal life and be saved. (4) In the course of this divine procedure the Son of man is exalted before the eyes of men (comp. the pоεуρápη, openly portrayed, of Gal. iii, 1) "even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness" (comp. Num. xxi, 9). (5) In order to accomplish this salvation of the world it was somehow necessary (del) that the Son of man should be thus lifted up (vipwoña). This being lifted up refers most naturally to his being lifted up on the cross, and the voluntary surrender of himself to the death of the cross is the mode, according to John's gospel, in which the love of God asserted itself and became effectual for the salvation of the world.

5. Giving of his Flesh and Blood for the Life of the World. This giving of the Son of man for the life of the world is further set forth in the remarkable words of John vi, 50, 51, and what is written in connection with them. The figure here is not that of a sacrificial victim offered on the cross, but of living bread out of heaven: "I am the living bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: yea, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world." But the provision of such heavenly food necessarily involves the sacrifice of the life of the Son of man; for he goes on to say that, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." This is no doubt mystical language and is to be spiritually interpreted (comp. ver. 63), but it has the most vital relation to the doctrine involved in the words of the Last Supper touching the eating of his body and the drinking of his blood. The gracious provision of God in giving his Son that the world through him might be saved becomes effectual in the individual believer only as he personally accepts the wonderful gift of the Father's love, and inwardly appropriates the living bread from heaven. So "he that believeth hath eternal life" (ver. 47).

The offering of "the only begotten Son" may find some measure of its impressiveness in a conscious allusion to the offering of Isaac by Abraham in Gen. xxii, 2, 16.

Compare John viii, 28; xii, 32-34. In the last-named passage the writer understands Jesus to "signify by what manner of death he should die"; but the words, if I be lifted up from the earth (ÈK T75 yñs, out of the earth) are hardly compatible with the mere idea of being lifted up on the cross, and verse 33 has been suspected as an interpolation. But viii, 28, "When YE have lifted up the Son of man," indicates the crucifixion.

6. Dying for Others. The vicarious offering of his own life for the sake of others is also seen in John x, 11, 15, where Jesus declares himself the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The idea suggested in this illustration is not that of an expiatory offering for sin, but rather of an exposure to loss of life consequent upon faithful care of the flock. A similar thought is conveyed in the language of xv, 13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." A man may thus lay down his own life for the sake of his friends in one or another of many ways; and yet it is in keeping with the imagery of offering the blood of life upon the altar to speak of all such modes of giving up one's life for the sake of another as examples of vicarious sacrifice without which there could have been no salvation of the one that was rescued. This idea certainly pervades the gospel of John, and appears in the construction which the author puts upon the saying of Caiaphas, "That it was expedient that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not"; for he looked upon this utterance of the high priest as an inspired oracle, "That Jesus should die for the nation; and not for the nation only, but that he might also gather together into one the children of God that are scattered abroad" (xi, 50-52). The idea of sacrifice, even unto the laying down of life, appears also in the proverbial saying of xii, 24: "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit." This principle of sacrifice in order to reach some greater good is fundamental in the moral world, and the death of Jesus is its highest possible illustration.

7. Intercessory Prayer in Chapter xvii. But in no portion of the fourth gospel do we find a more impressive self-revelation of Jesus Christ as Mediator between God and man than in his highpriestly prayer in chapter xvii. With a sublime self-consciousness of oneness with the Father, and at the same time of oneness with the men who are given him out of the world, he stands as a great high priest who has already virtually passed into the heavenly places and "appears before the face of God for us" (comp. Heb. ix, 24). He is conscious of having come forth from the Father, of having glorified him on the earth, of having accomplished the ministry of his incarnation, and of having arrived at the crucial hour of leaving the world and being glorified with the glory which he had with the Father before the world was. He has manifested the Father's name and given his word to the disciples; and now, as he is about to leave them and go unto the Father, he prays for them that they may be kept and guarded from the evil of the world, and sanctified in the truth. As he had sanctified or consecrated himself

in willing sacrifice, he prays that they also may be consecrated in a freewill offering of themselves in the truth. And finally he prays that they and those who should thereafter believe on him through their word "may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovest them, even as thou lovest me." And so the one great Mediator pleads, desiring that those who are thus united in holy fellowship "be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." This remarkable intercession is equivalent to a declaration on the part of Jesus that he came forth from God as a divinely appointed Revealer of the Father's grace and glory, and as a Mediator divinely consecrated to effect the perfect union and fellowship of God and all them that are sanctified in the truth. He alone can say to the Father, "They are thine: and all things that are mine are thine, and thine are mine: and I am glorified in them." After the manner of Heb. ii, 13, and its context, we may here behold the sanctifier and the sanctified "all of one," and we see the author of their salvation, made perfect through suffering, leading many sons into glory, and saying, "Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me."

8. Words of Jesus on the Cross. At this place it seems most fitting to notice the sayings of our Saviour on the cross. Matthew and Mark inform us that "about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Luke says nothing of this, but he reports three other sayings: (1) "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"; (2) "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise"; (3) "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." In John's gospel there is no mention of any of these sayings, but three others are recorded: (1) "Woman, behold thy son! Disciple, behold thy mother!" (2) "I thirst"; (3) "It is finished." All reverent readers and expositors have felt the marvelous height and depth and breadth of these seven words. The cry of abandonment and agony is a citation of the first words of the twenty-second psalm. It expresses an awful sense of loneliness, and may be compared with the language of the mighty conqueror who speaks in Isa. lxiii, 3-6, and declares that he found no arm to help him in the terrible struggle with his foes. That conqueror was sprinkled with the lifeblood of his enemies whom he had trampled in his wrath; but the agony of Jesus on the cross, as well as in Gethsemane, was not a wrestling with

These seven sayings appear in Matt. xxvii, 46; Mark xv, 34; Luke xxiii, 34, 43, 46; John xix, 26, 27, 28, 30.

flesh and blood, but rather with powers invisible. He had come to the last and supreme struggle of giving up his life as a ransom for the world of sinful men. If his soul was "exceeding sorrowful, greatly amazed, and sore troubled" in Gethsemane (Mark xiv, 33, 34), it is probable that there was even deeper anguish on the cross. But his God did not forsake him, and in his uttermost sense of vicarious suffering he revealed the Father also. For God was even thus in Christ, loving the world, yearning in unspeakable desire to save the world, "making intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered," and thus disclosing his holy passion to "reconcile the world unto himself." The prayer for the forgiveness of them that crucified him accords with the greatness of his dying love; the promise of paradise to the penitent soul that shared with him the ignominy of the cross enlarges our vision of the heavenly places prepared by the Christly Mediator for all them that believe on him; and his commending his own spirit at death into his heavenly Father's hands is an example which every one of his disciples may follow. The three sayings preserved in John's gospel show him to be very tenderly affectioned and human to the last, and the exclamation Teréλɛoral, it is finished, expresses the calm, superhuman, godlike consciousness of one who is more than a conqueror. Had we no other sayings of our Lord aside from these uttered on the cross, we should still possess the elements of a sevenfold gospel of the Son of God.

1

1 Harnack observes the fact that those who looked upon the death of Jesus as a sacrifice "soon ceased to offer God any blood-sacrifice at all. Wherever the Christian message subsequently penetrated, the sacrificial altars were deserted and dealers in sacrificial beasts found no more purchasers. If there is one thing that is certain in the history of religion, it is that the death of Christ put an end to all blood-sacrifices." Das Wesen des Christentums, p. 99. Eng. trans., p. 169.