Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 74:295 (Jul 1917)
Article: Contents Of The Consciousness Of Jesus
Author: David Foster Estes

BSac 74:295 (July 1917) p. 351

Contents Of The Consciousness Of Jesus*

David Foster Estes

It is hardly necessary to argue that Jesus of Nazareth was actually human. Since “it behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren,” he lived his life on earth as being ope of the sons of men, that he might indeed be the Son of Man. As we review his story, what that belongs to human life can we find to have been lacking? Born a babe and wrapped in the swaddling clothes common at the time, growing in size and knowledge like other boys, an obedient son in the Nazareth home, hungry with abstinence, wearied with toil till he sleeps amid the dangers of the storm, wounded with the lash, the thorn, and the nail, questioning, surprised, grieved, indignant, tempted, prayerful, submissive after intense spiritual struggle, Nazarene carpenter, Galilean field-preacher, prophet, reformer, friend, soul-physician, Messiah and Master only to the little circle of those who knew him intimately,—from the manger cradle to the rock-hewn tomb no one, so far as the records show, ever failed in any way to recognize his real and full humanity, no one, so far as we have any right to suppose, ever thought of him or spoke of him as other than a man.

Yet, when we consider further, we find that the claims of

* Copyright, 1917, D. F. Estes.

BSac 74:295 (July 1917) p. 352

Jesus, by their necessary implications, outrun and far transcend what would be possible for any other man. Over against the divine law of the past, no jot or tittle of which he declares shall fail, he sets himself not as an authorized expounder merely, but rather as an authoritative lawgiver, supplementing, completing, correcting with an “I say unto you.” Some other claims which he made have been summarized with much effectiveness by Denney thus: “Earlier messengers of God to Israel were only servants; he is the Son, only and well beloved. Other men are stricken with disease; He is the physician who has come to heal. Other men have consciences laden with guilt; He is the sacrifice whose blood is to be shed for the remission of sins. The lives of other men are forfeited; His is the one free life which is to be given as a ransom for them.”1 Thus he sets himself as the needed and efficient Saviour on the one hand, on the other he demands the supreme devotion of every soul. On the acceptance or rejection of him hang the issues of life or death; the loss of all else on earth is to be gladly accepted “for my sake”; “Happy are you when they reproach you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake”; the tenderest relations of life as well as its choicest treasures are to be sacrificed, if need be, “for...