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Andrew Murray Difference between Anabaptists and Evangelicals Mysteries of the Kingdom of God Anabaptist Sermons by Eli Hofer The Writings of Ulrich Stadler |
THE JESUS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
By Eberhard Arnold
We cannot live our common life in any other way than oriented by the life, the word and the work of Jesus. "What is laid upon us is the love of Christ which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This love does not contain the unclarity of human thoughts or feelings. In Jesus' life it has been made completely and unmistakenly clear. Through the Holy Spirit the power of this life of Jesus was poured out on the first church in Jerusalem. This life was sealed as the revelation of God's heart by His death and resurrection. And through the Holy Spirit this sealing of the life of Jesus was communicated to the church so that it might follow Him and carry His life anew into this world.
Of
this Spirit Jesus foretold that He would remind the church of all the words
Jesus had spoken during His life. Within the church the Spirit would show this
same life of Jesus in the clearest light and through it reveals the whole future
of God's kingdom. Further, in the mission of the church, the Spirit would
convict and convince the world in regard to sin, righteousness, and judgment.
Jesus also said that these things, sin, righteousness, and judgment, would become visible in Him, in Jesus. Sin is to be shown by the Holy Spirit as the absence of belief in Jesus. Righteousness is to be shown by the Holy Spirit in the fact that Jesus has occupied the throne of God and that now from the ruling throne of God's kingdom He will bring the rule of righteousness on earth. Judgment is to be revealed through the Holy Spirit when the prince of this world, the spirit of the age that rules everywhere over all peoples, the god of this world, the spirit that is active in all unbelieving men, is judged by Jesus; judged, not through a powerful action of legions of angel princes over this violent Satan, but by the perfect love of Jesus Christ, revealed on the cross. Through this love He won the victory over Satan, not because He was more powerful and violent, but because He was better and more loving.
Jesus
was shown to be the best and most loving one who could ever be known. In His
living and in His dying, the goodness and love of God's heart was revealed in
such a way as it never could have been in any other place or at any other
moment. This means that from now on whoever takes Jesus' side and is gripped by
His perfect love will be free from the judgment on the spirit of the earth, the
spirit of the age, that rules this world as its god and its authority. But he
who wants to follow the prince of this world and the prevailing spirit of this
age that governs man, will be subject to the judgment together with the prince
of the abyss, the earth spirit. For he follows the injustice of Mammon, the
falseness and deceit and unfaithfulness of the evil spirit; he follows the
murderous spirit of the abyss, and therefore he stands under judgment, just as
the prince of this world is himself judged.
He Who
Follows Jesus All this is made known through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the church, just as it was made known by Jesus' actual life. The outpouring of· the Holy Spirit can bring with it no other content than the very content of Jesus' life. For Jesus is and remains the same, yesterday, when He was the Son of Mary; today, while He is being manifested to His church by the Holy Spirit; and tomorrow, when He will enter upon and prevail in His rule as King of God's kingdom. The life of Jesus in all His actions and all His words has disclosed the ultimate mystery of God as perfect love. First of all we have to recognize that the Son of Mary is himself perfect love. We have to recognize that His love is perfect love for God. Love can only come from where its source is. God himself is the source of all love. It is not we who loved Him first; He loved us first by giving His Son for all of us.
The
life and actions of Jesus and His completed work bring this love of God directly
to us. His life, being God's love, shows itself as love for God. God's love is
the love that proceeds from God; and it is the love of the believer for God
himself. Out of this love was born everything that Jesus said and did. That He
accepted the baptism of John and in this baptism consecrated himself to death
already shows clearly that He wanted to carry out God's whole righteousness out
of love for God, even to His sacrifice on the cross. And when He went out among
men He proclaimed that which alone moved and determined His heart: The
kingdom of God is at hand. What is important is God. God must come to the
fore. He alone must rule. He shall conquer all. Everything shall come into His
realm and under His sway. The kingdom of God is near! Before Jesus went out to make this call to the world, He had to fight the prince of this world. His love to God proved victorious in the threefold temptation of Satan. The spirit of the earth, being the prince of this world, offered Him the conquest of all the world's thrones, of all the great states, if only He would unite with Satan, with the spirit of Mammon, of lying and impurity and mass murder. Then He would not need to go such a long way through cross and resurrection, through outpouring of the Spirit and founding of the church, and the last judgment. Then the whole world could be taken over immediately by Jesus ruling in conjunction with the prince of this world.
The
tempter went further and demanded that Jesus proclaim His own greatness, that He
show how great He was as the Son of man, that He manifest himself in a powerful
supremacy over the laws of nature. Satan wanted Jesus to triumph over the laws
of nature in front of all the people as the greatest man of all. He wanted Him
to use the weapon of demagoguery to win the people by impressing them with His
power and might. This power of suggestion over the people was to be exploited
further by giving them plenty of bread, in a place where there was no bread at
all. All this He was to do through an inner union with the spirit that worked
against God in this world, both before and after the coming of Jesus. But Jesus loved His Father above all else. He was not concerned with the rulership of any kingdom; He was not concerned with having the whole earth at His command. He was not concerned with winning a huge following among the masses. His concern was not to win men for himself. His sale concern was love to God. So He put Satan to flight. Away with thee, Satan! I will serve none but God alone. Man lives not only by bread and food for the body; he lives much more by every fiery word born of God's breath, which has its life from God's loving heart.
It was
to bring this word of God's heart in among men that Jesus came. To represent and
spread the worship and honor of this heart of God among men - this is why He
wanted God's kingdom. This story of the temptation shows most clearly what
fearful dangers prowl around each human heart, and in particular every human
heart that has been met by a higher call. Before Jesus proclaimed, "The kingdom
of God is at hand," men had to be called to repent, to change their whole way of
thinking, to overthrow completely their entire previous lives. Change your lives
radically in every way, prepare for the coming Kingdom, by turning upside down
everything you have hitherto felt, thought and done. You are constantly under the powerful influence of the beast of prey that prowls around you pretending to be an angel of light, claiming that on its way everything will become gradually better. Therefore you must change your thinking, change it completely, so that you cannot succumb to this seductive influence. You must be able to believe only in one sole message of joy and utterly reject every other. You shall believe only in this one joyful news: God is near! His rule breaks in! You cannot expect any good of anything else. This is your new thinking, this is the change in the whole direction of your lives. Believe in this message, this news, this gospel!
Jesus
not only proclaimed the gospel in these brief words of the call to repentance.
Nor did He only bring it home to people by a wealth of parables. Nor did He only
present in symbolic deeds and miracles its actual presence among men. He also
represented the substance of this message in clear, unequivocal language. We are
to know with certainty that the Spirit of God is coming, that His rule is
approaching. In the talk with Nicodemus at the beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus says that to recognize, to behold this Kingdom, to become incorporated into it, is possible only through a complete new beginning of human life. When a child is born, something completely new comes into our midst. This child was not there. We know nothing about this child yet except that it is here now and beginning its life. This is exactly how the new beginning should be which is necessary in order to behold and enter the kingdom of God. The individual must be so renewed that he begins his life right from the start, like a newborn child. He must be born quite new. This new birth takes on a definite meaning. Just as a child is born into a family, and here into a church community, like the little baby born today, so the new birth of the spirit, the rebirth of man, means that man is born into the kingdom of God. The surroundings into which he is born, that which he sees from the hour of his new birth, is God's kingdom and nothing but God's kingdom. Do not be surprised that you have to be born again; for without this new birth you cannot see the kingdom of God. Without this new birth you cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is at stake in this new birth is the kingdom of God. That which is most subjective is here the most objective.
In the
Gospel of Matthew the mystery of this new birth, the vision of this new world
into which the child is born, is most clearly described. At the beginning of
this Gospel comes the Sermon on the Mount, which shows us the nature and
character of this new life of rebirth for the kingdom of God. It shows what one
actually sees and beholds when one gains the new life; it shows what kind of
world one is born into if one is truly reborn. The new life brings a justice
that cannot be compared with any human morality, any human social order or human
theology. The new life of rebirth brings a justice that is nothing but the
goodness of God, nothing but the good heart of God. This justice is therefore
better than anything ever thought, felt, willed, or said by men; for this new
justice is God's own doing. The new righteousness is the outpouring of God's Spirit. The new righteousness is the essence of His innermost life. It is the blazing up of His coming light. The new righteousness is the saltiness of salt. It is God's nature, His essence and substance, His basic working; and so it is the most vital life, the freest mobility and activity. For this new righteousness is life born out of God and therefore utterly opposed to every kind of self-righteousness, every kind of human righteousness. Self-righteousness and human righteousness begin with self-confidence, with making claims and demands for human justice. But divine justice - the new righteousness - begins by becoming a beggar, becoming poor and being judged; it begins by extinguishing all claims to possessions, all rights and privileges.
Further, the new justice begins by taking on the load of all the need and
suffering of the whole world. It is the beginning of the new justice when
suffering lies, with all the heaviness of the world, on the human heart, on the
believing heart. True, human justice also knows something of compassion with
the world, but this justice immediately turns into hatred, bloodthirsty hatred
against those who have caused that suffering. Thus it becomes injustice, because
among the guilty - and in fact all men are guilty - it seeks out a group of
particularly guilty people to fight against them with fierce hatred. The justice of the new kingdom of Jesus Christ desires God's universal peace in the midst of lovelessness and unpeace. It desires the goodness and the love which has a heart for all men, including the guiltiest. It feels mercy for all men, even for those who have sinned most severely against peace and justice. For this new righteousness, this righteousness of God, reveals itself as the heart of God which is ready for sacrifice, ready for death. It is the will that does not want to kill the guilty but rather to be killed for the guilty, so that they may become innocent by grasping the deepest meaning and value of this sacrifice of love; by recognizing and experiencing God and His heart in this readiness for sacrifice till the last drop of blood. God can be found only if one is prepared to suffer death for His righteousness and His kingdom. Our physical life, the last thing we men have and try to cling to, even this last right and privilege must be ready for sacrifice. Only then are we truly reborn for the kingdom of God.
At
the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus opened the way to the
understanding of the kingdom of God. The rest then follows as it must follow
out of this root which is the innermost nature of God: Now, enemies are loved.
For love's sake one surrenders the last possessions, one gives the last coat,
the last cloak, the last shirt. Now one does not pay back force with force. One
does not resist evil by responding with evil. Here is faithfulness, and in
faithfulness purity, including human physical and emotional relationships. Here
is the only good, the truly better righteousness; it is the revelation of
perfect love, of eternal loyalty in love, and therefore also in the inviolable
marriage between two people. You shall in your way be as perfect as the Father
himself is perfect. In your words too you shall be perfect, in that you say
nothing superfluous, but speak the truth simply, clearly, and to the point.
There is no other truthfulness than that of love; there is no other perfection
than that of love. In Jesus' next words it becomes clear what is the nature of the things that thwart and destroy love. It is Mammon. You cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. You cannot serve ownership and love at the same time. Nor can you serve material worries and at the same time serve trusting love. Whoever heaps up property or holds on to even the smallest private property for his own interest, while his brothers and fellow men are hungry and cold and can't keep a roof over their heads, has no love. Therefore Jesus says, do not gather property, have nothing at all belonging to yourselves, have no hidden treasures or reserves anywhere. But do not worry about your livelihood, either. This fear about being provided for, seeks just as anxiously to preserve the material basis for life as the man who wants to hold on to his bank account or his real estate. All this belongs to Mammon just as much as the retaining of property. Grey, foggy worry is born of the spirit of Mammon just as much as golden, glittering money. Therefore do not worry. Learn from nature, which you should love because it is God's creation. Look at the birds and flowers. Believe in the loving Father, who sets their table for them and gives them their feathers and colorful raiment. The righteousness of the kingdom of God, the renewal of the reborn heart, means singleness of heart, an eye concentrated on God alone. The heart of man can be compared to an inner eye which is focused and concentrated on one single object, an eye of concentric vision. The focus of this inner eye is God alone.
If
your inner eye is really concentrated on God alone, you cannot have any fortune,
nor can you have any worries either. Instead you will grasp that to call upon
God is to trust in His love; to call on God is to implore His rulership. It is
the doing of His will, the hallowing of His name. It is the gift of daily
bread, spiritual as well as temporal. With this single eye, you will have new
loving hearts, free from evil and the rule of violence, free from the temptation
that will shake even the last hour of this world. In this way call upon
God. This love to God means love to all men; for God loves all men and His heart is directed toward all men. He is merciful to all and lets His sun shine on all and gives His rain to all. Therefore a man who through the love of God has experienced new birth cannot judge any other man; rather he must have faith for all men. Jesus says, do not judge men; love them. Judgment means passing a final, conclusive verdict. This you must never do. Love's hope and faith's trust must always leave open the way to return home, to be saved for God's kingdom. For the sake of the love you have for God, however, beware of surrendering the holiest thing that lives in your hearts to men who are not ready for it. For then you would be abandoning true love to God in favor of a sham love. Speak to men as befits their inner receptiveness, in a way they can grasp; but do so without denying the least grain of the truth. Either of these would be a sin against love for God - to judge men, or to share indiscriminately what is holy with people who are unawakened. Either would be a sin against love, love to God and to men. Know that God's love is always greater than your judgment and your opinion. God's love is always purer and more inviolable than that which you call love. God alone knows the hearts of men; He knows the hearts of the guilty and the innocent in their depths. Therefore pray for the Spirit that comes from God's heart, so that in your dealings with men you may have that wisdom which you can never receive from yourselves. One piece of advice I must give you. Deal with all men as you wish them to treat you. You wish for yourselves that God may care for you in body, soul, and spirit. And what you expect for yourselves you should make possible for all men. And this should be done without exceptions. This is the new righteousness. You must not limit the good works of your love to people congenial to you; for God loves all men, no matter what they are like. Therefore you too, love all men with the love that is of God, and do to them everything that you wish done to you and yours.
The
genuine love, the new justice that is for all - this is the truth of
God's kingdom. The Biblical advice to treat all men as you would like them to
treat you and your family - this is the narrow gate through which you must
enter. This new justice is better than that of all the moralists and theologians. It is the narrow mountain path, the entry into the kingdom of God, the ascent to the city on the hill. Love men as you love yourselves; love them because you love God and because you have experienced that God loves all men. You accept that you are cared for in body and soul and spirit; therefore you must make the same possible for all men. Only then will you know the door to the kingdom of God; only then will you know the narrow path along the abyss, that leads up to the city of God.
There will be very few of you beginning now to go this way. Troublesome
spirits and violent hostile powers will oppose you. Their outward violence will
be able to do little harm to you, for it cannot kill your conscience or change
your will. More dangerous is false prophecy that joins forces with this violence
and tries to confuse the single eye. Therefore it is necessary for you to
recognize false prophecy. You will know it by its deeds, above all by this one
sign of its nature, whether it takes sides with the beast of prey or not.
Everything that is connected with the savage nature of Mammon, with unfaithful
physical passion, with the shedding of blood, with lying business methods, is
false prophecy. Everything that falls in with the rapacious nature of collective
egotism is false prophecy. Beware of the veiled nature of the wild beast. Love the true prophet. You will know him by what his love is. This love can ultimately be recognized in that the true prophet gives his life for his beloved brothers. The readiness to sacrifice one's own physical life, without injuring any other life - this is the mark of true prophecy. We have seen how Jesus disclosed in the Sermon on the Mount the character of the new way of life and the new kingdom; how He showed the nature of the new building of life that cannot collapse, that cannot be corrupted by any worldly power, how by the content of this Sermon He proclaimed the truth everywhere and ever again. Very soon a powerful enmity to Jesus arose. His opponents beset Him with cunning cleverness and sought to trip Him in intellectual discussions. They tried to bring Him to the point where they would have grounds for killing Him, grounds that would be valid in the eyes of the people and the government. For even the beast of prey has to be clever. Even the false prophets have to be clever. They must not allow evil directly to appear evil; they have to cloak it with goodness. Therefore they sought a cause which would be sufficient for the whole people and the conscience of the government to recognize Jesus as guilty and condemn Him to death.
The
leading classes of the people, and an increasingly large part of the common
people too, rejected Jesus more and more the longer He worked, especially after
He had sent out His twelve, two by two, and His seventy, two by two, giving them
mighty authority. After they had come back without having won the people of
Israel for the kingdom of God, Jesus made a tremendous decision. He withdrew to
His parables. These parables were meant to veil the truth to the obtrusive, in
order not to deliver what was holy to the beasts of prey. At the same time the
parables were to show the truth all the more deeply to those who really wanted
to hear. Those who wanted to hear something with false hearts only to be able to
contradict it afterwards were to run up against an impenetrable wall in these
parables. In fact, up to the present day no human theology, no false prophecy
has ever been able to understand these parables. To open hearts, however, the church was to be opened up. Here the ultimate meaning of the message of God's kingdom was shown. In the first place it was revealed in the parable of unity, that of the wedding and the supper - the deepest unity possible among men and the most inclusive and yet most intimate fellowship of the table possible among men. Complete uniting and the fellowship of many at one table - this is the mystery of the kingdom of God. But this wedding feast, this supper is seen in connection with the King and the King's Son, so that it may be recognized that this fellowship of God's kingdom among men is not a value in itself; it receives its value only because it is the King who holds this wedding and who invites people to this supper.
The
kingdom of God is compared with the royal wedding and with the royal supper.
Later parables show us that this unity consists not only in the joy of uniting,
but also in the creative activity of this uniting. Therefore Jesus likens the
kingdom of God to the work in the vineyard, and in another place to the worker
who does yes while saying no. Real unity and community are present only where
there is common work, for love is deed. And if we ask what this deed is, then
the parables of Jesus show us that this deed is utmost surrender; it is work
directed toward the future, work entirely dependent on the blessing of heaven.
The sower is likened to the kingdom of God, and so is the farmer who waits for
the right weather, and so is the field in which the crop is intermingled with
weeds deceptively similar to it. Total readiness for God's kingdom means work in united love and at the same time a believing and loving expectation of God, that He will bring all things to their completion. The new cannot be patched on to the old garment of old religious and social strivings. On the contrary, everything one had before must be given away for the one jewel - the kingdom of God. All earthly possessions must be sold and left behind. This is the only way to the kingdom of God. Even all old ideals must be left behind if we are to walk on the only road to the kingdom of God.
This
is a decision that is very hard for people to make. For at first the kingdom of
God works only like a leaven. The bread is the whole world of all peoples and
all men, and the leaven of truth is worked into the midst of these peoples of
all mankind. The kingdom of God is like a small grain of seed which is one day
to become a big bush but at present is still in process of growing, still
insignificant. One day there shall be a great world tree under which all will
find their shelter and dwelling. But now it is only a small, insignificant seed.
The significance of this seed is that it is really alive; it has the aliveness
of the tree of God, that mighty living tree under whose branches everything
shall be united and all may live and dwell. But opposing this growth there is a terrible enemy power which imitates everything that God allows to grow, sowing weeds among the pure seed. The true readiness of faith does not allow itself to be disquieted by this. It does not uproot the weeds; it does not allow itself to be rushed into any violent action. It lets both grow till the time of harvest, the hour when God himself will intervene. The faith of readiness never allows itself to be betrayed into an unbelieving zeal for violence. The kingdom of Christ never uses the means of the kingdom of Satan; it knows that it has to disarm Satan in his innermost chamber, where he develops his most secret power. This is the place of death and the place of sin, which is the weapon of death. The kingdom of Christ can never take into its own hands this weapon struck out of Satan's hands. It is free of all means involving violence and deceit. It is a kingdom of pure love and thereby a kingdom of complete victory. These parables show clearly something that was already evident in the Sermon on the Mount: the character which the comrades of God's kingdom, the citizens of the city of God, must have. The nature of their strength is their fundamental character. Like rocks and trees they are unshakable in all storms and all floods, and like fertile trees they bear abundant fruit. This fruit is ever the same - love and joy, unity and surrender in unity, innermost readiness and gathering for God's kingdom. It is made clear that the tree must not be unfruitful, otherwise it will be felled. The servant must not be merciless, otherwise he will be excluded from the household. Whoever in a loveless way tries to take the first place at the meal of unity, the fellowship of the table, must be sent out. Whoever does not want to wear a festive garment has to leave the dining room. Whoever is loveless to his fellow servants has to be put outside.
What
is decisive then, in the parables as well, is love to men and readiness for the
coming of God. This we see in the parable of the ten virgins - the five who were
completely ready, through the Spirit, and the other five who were only half
ready, without the Spirit. We see it also in the persevering calling and
pleading of the friend at the window, in the child who pleads with his father.
Readiness means a persevering faithfulness, a watchful, steady call; this we
see also in the faithful steward and the loyal servant, in the administrators,
who must be persevering and alert in keeping faithfully the things entrusted to
them. We see it also in the parable of the talents, the entrusted goods. These
have to be held and utilized fully and faithfully. Everyone who is not faithful
and firm until the end will some day find a locked door. Everybody should know
beforehand that such a structure, such a campaign, can only be carried through
when one stakes everything for it, when all powers are used to finish the
building and to see the fight through to the end. The nature of the citizens of the city of God is that of active, persevering love. Here no one favors his own well-being. The parable of poor Lazarus shows us clearly, not that the rich man was an exceptional usurer; his only object was to enjoy his riches. Out of his abundance he gave plenty of alms to the poor, unhappy beggar lying on his door step. And yet he had nothing to do with the kingdom of God, because he enjoyed the greatest part of his riches for himself and gave away only a little of his surplus. That is impossible in the kingdom of God. Here is only the humble heart that surrenders everything it has and is; that lets itself be redeemed from its own conceit, from all that is self, as shown in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. Only the one who can say, "O God, have mercy on me, a poor sinner," belongs to God's kingdom. But if he is still able to say, "How happy I am that I am not like that man," he does not belong to God's kingdom any more than that foolish rich man who when he had filled up all his barns thought, "I had better build another barn," and in the same night he was dead. Wealth, both in material goods and in one's own morality, closes the door to God's kingdom. This is shown by the parables of the lost sheep, of the prodigal son, and of the coin sought so long in vain. The son who had gone astray and become quite poor was the very one who received the greater love when he returned, willing to surrender himself completely to the household, even in the lowest place. The lost sheep, dirtier and weaker than the others, was sought with special love and reincorporated into the community of the flock. The lost coin was sought for a longer time and was the cause of more concern than the others that had remained in the cash box.
All
this is said, not to raise the value of the individual, but rather to recognize
that even the most lost, the dirtiest, the loneliest, most isolated and
furthest away - all these shall be brought into the fellowship, into the kingdom
of God, into uniting, into usefulness for the whole, for all, before the door of
the father's house, the sheep pen or the drawer is closed. Ultimately it is not
a question of the one sheep, the one lost son, the one coin. What matters is the
return to the true flock, the uniting of the flock with the true Shepherd, unity
in the true pasture. Then real fellowship will arise, and love for the
individual and for the whole will be revealed as love for God. The whole mystery of God's kingdom is like a landscape or a big plantation where everything belongs together. It is organic unity and concord and community. This organic unity is like a vine, a plant, in which Christ himself and His Holy Spirit is the love, the power and the binding force of life. If we grasp the parables in this way, we will understand why Jesus also said those words about the splinter and the beam. People are always glad to tell someone else what he has done wrong; and we ought to help one another. But this is possible only if the big piece of wood is first removed from our own eye, so that the smaller piece of wood may also be removed. It is we ourselves who must be purified for the innermost character of God's kingdom. After these parables Jesus went to the attack once more.
The love of Jesus is complete love; just because of this it is not a
soft love. It rejects evil and fights it to the last, whether it be a
beam or a splinter in the eye. Therefore Jesus calls out His sevenfold "Woe!"
over the false prophets. For the same reason, in announcing the terrible
judgment He proclaims the catastrophe of the last days of this world. His last
speeches glow with the certainty that a fearful judgment of fire must come over
this earth and mankind because they do not allow themselves to be won by His
love, but persist in their heartlessness and enmity to God. It became evident
through Jesus' life that this was men's attitude. He was executed as an enemy of
men, an enemy of the best state and the best church. Everything that Jesus said, He did as well. The life of Jesus is the doing of His love and the living out of His entire proclamation. Everything He had proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount and in His parables He put into practice in gathering His twelve disciples into a community of goods and a fellowship of wandering, in the homelessness and loving surrender of this common life. And He further put it into practice in sending out these disciples of His who, as God's true ambassadors of the coming kingdom, were to represent the full authority and the complete love of the kingdom of God in their mission. Jesus proved His sustaining power and the wonder of His strength for community in the way He endured in community with His disciples, who were often so foolish, right to the end - until they fled while He was crucified. He proved it in the way He carried out this common life in faithful instruction and teaching of His disciples, passing on His truth to them until the end. The four Gospels, from which we have this understanding of Jesus' life, were written a long time after Jesus' death. But they were written as the outcome of the daily teaching of Jesus and of the: continuation of these teachings in the church of Jesus. These stories of Jesus Christ were told and retold whenever the church of Jesus gathered among the early Christians, later among the Waldensians, among our [Anabaptist] Brothers, and many others. Man needs reminders; his memory needs refreshing. Through this oral transmission of the stories of Jesus, through the joy of telling over and over again who Jesus was, what He did and said, the truth was carried from heart to heart, from one life into another. At the end of the Gospel of John, he says that Jesus did many other things, but that if they were all to be written down, the world could not hold the books that would have to be written. But those deeds which were recorded show us very clearly the inmost content of His life and all His authority. What He did within His own circle was nothing else than what He spoke and proclaimed. It was an expression of the love to which body, soul, and spirit alike give themselves. His deeds proved what that was to be which He proclaimed.
In
the driving out of demons and diabolic powers it is shown most powerfully that
the rule of God's kingdom is present when devils are driven out of human bodies
by the finger of the Holy Spirit. So too, the healings of the sick show that
death and its root in sin were eliminated by the coming of Jesus and the
approach of God's kingdom. For the spirit of death is the ultimate enemy of the
spirit of life. Death is the last enemy of God. Therefore Jesus heals the sick. He heals those who suffer from dangerous skin diseases, from leprosy, those who have lost one of their faculties, such as the blind and the deaf. He heals those who have lost their life strength because of internal disease. He heals paralytics who as a consequence of licentious living have lost the strength of their bones. He heals persons with a withered arm or with fever. He makes the deaf hear again and the dumb speak again. He lifts up stunted bodies and heals sick people who have been waiting in vain for years for a miraculous healing. Once He healed someone whose physical health had been impaired by one of His own disciples. He also healed a relative of His disciple Peter, his mother-in-law, who was suffering from a fever. He heals people with dropsy, people who are dying. By all this He proves that the power of the devil is not a purely emotional matter. By these healings of the sick Jesus wants to show that the devil is a power that infects and destroys - and this includes the body. Wherever Jesus intervenes, this destructive power is beaten back and bodies are regained for the honor of God and the holiness of His name. Therefore Jesus cannot stop even before death; for death is the most severe sickness, and all other sicknesses are nothing but the pains that precede death. Death is the last weapon of the satanic power. Therefore Jesus turns to people who have died. He even raises back to life persons whose bodies were already in a state of decay. He touches corpses. The dead are awakened through the intervention of Jesus Christ. He had to prove the power of life against death itself. Without resurrection, without the raising of the dead, the news of God and His life would be null and void. Therefore the fact of Jesus' power to awaken is a central reality of His life and His gospel.
But
Jesus does not stop with the things that concern human bodies. His deeds go
further. When He fed the four thousand and the five thousand, and when He
created wine at the wedding of Cana, these were still ways of helping men's
bodies. So was the miraculous fishing in the Lake of Gennesaret. But when Jesus
stilled the storm that raged over this same lake, when He made the fig tree
wither, He showed that all the other elements of creation, too, must be touched
by His breath and the approach of His kingdom. He showed that He rules all the
elements of creation; that everything must be transformed into that completely
new thing which is coming. Everything Jesus did in His full authority points toward the end of days and to the beginning of God's kingdom. His deeds show that when God and His rule approach, a final miracle is to happen to the nature of the first creation too, to the bodies of men created and born. They show that God's love turns not only toward the inner man's soul, but just as much to his outer being, to the structure of nature as a whole. Certainly it is decisive what happens in an inner way to the individual; for otherwise the individual has no part in the renewal of all things. But God's great interest is directed toward all creation, the entire nature of all worlds, so that they may all be included in this new creation which is the kingdom of God. Certainly the individual shall and must stop doing evil when his body is healed. Certainly the authority to forgive sins will become visible; the removal of evil in each individual will come into force, if the healing of the body and the proclamation of God's kingdom are to be his. The power of evil must be cleared out of the human heart. But this shall not happen so that the individual can be saved, but so that he can become free from himself for the mighty work which comes to this earth and takes hold of all in the approach of God's kingdom. The works of the devil shall be destroyed. The creation, which through the evil influence of Satan was spoiled, shall be restored to the full aliveness God intended from the very beginning. Everything that happens is a sign and a symbol of the greatness that is to come when the invincible life of the second creation shall be manifest; when even death, the last enemy, shall be vanquished; when God shall rule as the creative Spirit of the new nature. This mystery had to be revealed in Jesus himself. For this He truly rose and was revealed as the living one. He, the Risen One, is present in the church through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. The experience of this pouring out of the Spirit in the church is the fulfilment of the words: I am with you always, till the end of the world. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Here, in the Holy Spirit, the King of the coming kingdom is present. The Spirit of the church is the presence of the King who conquers all worlds for God. The Holy Spirit, being the substance of life in the church, is the certainty of the joyful gospel that Jesus shall come as the King of the final kingdom.
And
so we close with this last vision of the church in the Revelation of John, in
which the voice from heaven reveals the end: Blessed and holy is he who partakes
of the first resurrection; over him the second death has no power. |