Christ In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 07. Chapter 7: Christ Vanquishing the Vicious Circle as the Son of Man
Christ In His Suffering, Trial, and Crucified by Klaas Schilder: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial: 07. Chapter 7: Christ Vanquishing the Vicious Circle as the Son of Man
TOPIC: Schilder, Klaas - Vol 2 - Christ on Trial (Other Topics in this Collection) SUBJECT: 07. Chapter 7: Christ Vanquishing the Vicious Circle as the Son of Man
Christ Vanquishing the Vicious Circle as the Son of Man
Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
—Mat_26:64.
CHRIST’S speaking and silence, Christ’s teaching and actions, Christ’s instruction at the pulpit of His passion and His maschil, Christ’s self-revelation and His self-concealment, in short, everything which Christ Jesus is, was bandied to and fro by those who had to judge Him, within the circumference of that circle which is exceedingly vicious, the circle of earthly, of mundane scope. It all took place within that circle which God had never touched upon, the circle of carnival, and of the knowledge of vanity.
As the Messiah He pointed out that circle;[1] thereupon He condemned it;[2] and finally we observed that He patiently bore the wrath which came to Him when He wished to break it,[3] when He wanted to vanquish the wrath which the unregenerated life fostered against Him because of its extreme love for the viciousness of the circle.
[1] If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil, but if well why smitest thou me?
[2] Why smitest thou me? An allusion to the messianic problem.
[3] Insistence upon the maschil as a riddle, which has no solution yet; silence over against the distortion of the maschil by the false witnesses.
It was a beautiful sight to see Christ maintaining His maschil over against the fatigued but self-sufficient drifters, who are stretching their snares from one to the other wall of their vicious circle of life. A very beautiful sight, indeed. Surrounding Jesus were all those reliable lights of Israel, and underneath them was the Christ who has not the formulae either for His bright sunshine nor for what they call His Nazarene lamps of heresy. There stands the Christ, a poised and a calm judgment. He stands there with His riddle, but He holds the Book of Solutions in His hand. Why the riddle? In order that all those who can no longer sustain their lives within themselves might flee to Him from the narrowness of the vicious circle; and also in order that those who prefer the tedious movement of the vicious cycle of natural life to the vertical ascent of the Son of man, and who will be offended by the “folly” of the straight descent of the Son of God, might be made to appear what they are — betrayers of God, and asserters of themselves.
That, and that first, was the silent Christ. Thereupon Christ spoke. He spoke plainly and emphatically. He swore with a precious oath. He swore by God that He is the Messiah, the true intervention coming from above, and the One who at the right time will again ascend from below. Now when Christ confessed Himself to be the Messiah, He placed the whole problem which was being treated in the judgment hall of the Sanhedrin in its proper position. The oath of Christ discloses their Messiah to His judges. That Messiah is the revelation of God, the most special revelation of God, impinging upon and entering into the earth from heaven; and He is also the one who hereafter will again ascend from these depths of annihilation to heaven.
Both in the descent and the ascent He will move vertically, without meandering, without once tracing a “crooked line.” Thus does Christ, standing within the vicious circle, draw the straight line. He draws it from heaven to earth. The reaction will either be that of faith or that of unbelief.
Unbelief will say that this man must be reckoned with the malefactors. He is drawing a straight line, they maintain, which bisects our own. That is an atrocity of devastation, and it is done in the holy place where it should not be done. Take it away, remove it; whoever reads this, mark it: lectori salutem. But faith will rejoice. Now that Christ permits the straight line of His revelation coming from above and reaching down below, and rising from below and extending up to heaven, to bisect the accursed plane of the vicious circle, He is healing the world and redeeming mankind. Now He stands in the Sanhedrin, a living condemnation of all those who, prompted by the will of the flesh, choose to return to the vicious circle and to their condemnation; but He is also a living wonder of grace for every Nicodemus who would flee from the vicious circle which is luring Israel to its death, and who would flee from his own sombre narrowness to the Christ, even though in doing that he must endure the sight of the dead Jesus.
The fact that Christ by preaching the Messiahship does indeed conquer the distress of the captives of the vicious circle becomes plain to us from the words which He spoke. Mark what He says: Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God and coming on the clouds of heaven. Surely, these are words which do not harmonize with the dominant tone and prevailing style of the Sanhedrin. They fall like so many stones, so many unassimilable bits, into the meeting. But when Christ pronounces these words, He is as the highest Prophet and Interpreter of the words of God grasping the prophecy of the Old Testament and explaining it in terms of heaven.
This is the word of the New Testament — in His blood.
The first thing to strike our attention here is the fact that Christ prophesies. And it is but another evidence of the majesty of this most exalted Speaker of God that He pronounces a word pertaining to His kingship in the form of the ancient prophecies. We may not forget this element of prophecy in this speech which Christ makes before the Sanhedrin: to do so would be to make ourselves less worthy than that body. For when the Sanhedrin proceeds to mock and defy Jesus later on, their activity differs from that defiance which is heaped upon Christ in the presence of Pilate. Here, before the Sanhedrin, it is precisely the prophetic office which is being mocked. In Pilate’s presence Jesus is being mocked as a king: think of the reed, of the crown of thorns, and of the gorgeous robe. True, this same kingship is now being defied by the members of the Sanhedrin as they spit in His face and buffet Him, by way of asking: “Is this, perhaps, your ‘hereafter,’ your ascent to God and ascent with God, and can this, perhaps, be your share in His exalted glory?” Nevertheless the profoundest implication of their grim defiance does not consist of this. What they are doing especially is that they are mocking His prophetic office. Jeering and grinning the while they say: “Prophesy unto us O Christ, who is he that struck thee?” Very diabolical, this mockery. However, it has one thing in its favor. It proves that Israel’s leaders have understood that Christ was standing in the council of the Sanhedrin in a prophetic capacity. When He announces that He will come in His glory after a while as the Son of man, He is interpreting prophecy, a prophecy handed down in old time, and He is interpreting that by virtue of His authority as the first and best interpreter of the Scriptures.
We can find the prophecy which Christ is entertaining in His heart and explaining by His words in Dan_7:13. If we read the verses at the head of our chapter in connection with their context, we see that the same line of approach characterizes it which has characterized our previous chapters again and again. In other words, we hear the paean of victory which the history of redemption will sing because it has vanquished the fatal movement of the vicious circle of common grace as manifested in general history. We hear Daniel telling of the breaking through of the messianic kingdom. That kingdom, He tells us, will break right through the circle of natural, mundane life. Accordingly, we do well to pause as we watch the prophet Daniel delineating for us the lines of the future by means of a few deft strokes.
The seventh chapter of the prophecy of Daniel contains a vision, a dream, which the prophet received in the first year of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon. When his kingly father had gone into exile, Belshazzar had received jurisdiction over the Babylonian empire. Now in the first year of the epoch of the rising sun of Belshazzar of Babylon, God takes the spirit of Daniel and shows him how the confusion, the action and reaction, the swinging pendulum of forces active in the world are nevertheless always subservient to the steadfast law of God. Daniel himself was greatly comforted by this sublime vision, for he had suffered much because of this fatiguing vacillation of human life. The theme of Ecclesiastes was sung into his ears every day and was there developed in the manner of a fugue. Vanity of vanities, all that is here below! Vanity of vanities, that is the characterization the spirit of Solomon must assert as its plaint over the ruins of the ages. For what has remained of Solomon? His powerful realm has been destroyed. The pagan who in the days of Solomon had respectfully looked up to Israel’s great king had now moved against the kingdom of Solomon, broken its power, and destroyed its beauty.
Nevertheless, there is no distress now. The living prophet of today cannot weep eternally with the dead Solomon of yesterday. The prophet sees the morrow dawning. He sees how this process of perpetual vacillation, of needless action and futile reaction will some day be broken in two. True, this process of change and further change, this shuttlecock movement of events was going on in his day also. Hardly has the ruler who put Israel in bonds returned from his devastating work before he himself is sent into exile. Accordingly, the first year of the reign of Belshazzar had most conspicuously demonstrated the vanity of the vicious circle of life.
Another time is coming, however. The future belongs to the Messiah, and the prophet receives a vision in which everything on earth is placed in a higher light. He sees four animals arising out of the sea. Mark that word: the sea. Why the sea?
The sea, the sea rolls on in endless undulation,
The waves divide and then unite again,
They shift and move, returning to their source In myriad and changing formulation,
Singing a glad and plaintive song along their course. (William Kloos)
We can say therefore that the sea is especially typical of the vicious circle of our captive lives: they shift and move, returning to their source; the sea, the sea rolls on in endless undulation.
Thus the sea with its endless undulation, with its movement and counter-movement, with its ebb and flow, was a suitable figure expressive of the world of men. In Daniel’s prophecy, also, accordingly, the sea is the symbol of the forces which churn the world of nations into a tumult, and which whip the movements of culture into an endless ebb and flow.
Now Daniel sees four beasts arising out of this sea of nations. The four beasts are symbols of the four great powers, of the four great empires of the world. These four are: first, the Babylonian empire; second, the Medo-Persian empire; third, the Macedonian empire; fourth, the Roman empire. These four empires — the Lord tells him — are to follow each other in succession.
The message is a tragic one. It is tragic because it reveals that not one of the four powers will be able to accomplish the government of the world, or bring to rest the tumult of that sea of nations, that great expanse of restlessness. The one great power will but build its kingdom upon the ruins of the other.
There is the first beast. The first beast is a lion with the wings of a bird. However, the bird must lose its wings, and be transformed a little later from a four-footed creature into a biped. This is a striking image of the decay of the Babylonian power which began with a portentous strength but later perceptibly lost ground. This is but a repetition of the endless ebb and flow. Then there is the second beast, “like to a bear.” Three of the half-broken ribs of the opponent which he has made his prey still are caught between his carnivorous teeth. This violent beast, although ready to spring, will also lose his power after a while, and see that his passion for preying will come to nothing. The endless ebb and flow, again the endless ebb and flow. Then comes the third beast, a leopard with four heads and four wings. This beast also represents life’s tedious circle. For the Greco-Macedonian empire represented by the leopard is divided later on, and made into four parts, into four empires. This too represents the ebb and flow. Finally the fourth beast comes, representing the Roman empire. It cannot be compared with any other animal. This beast has huge iron teeth, massive legs, and ten horns. Nevertheless, dangerous as it may be, it does not escape any more than do the others from the fatal vacillation of the vicious circle of all mundane life. The sea, the sea rolls on in endless undulation. Into this each of these animals is thrown. This fourth animal is also bandied to and fro by the cyclical turn and return of natural life. In the midst of the ten horns a new and small horn arises, a horn ever growing. In order to make room for this horn, three of the others must be removed. This is also the endless ebb and flow.
Restlessness everywhere. The whole world is involved in a game of position and transposition, of planting and supplanting. We would almost feel like referring to an eternal recurrence, but . . . but? But God intervenes and lets another force enter into this world of the vicious circle, another influence impinges upon the sea of the nations, upon this graveyard of reciprocally carnivorous animals. This new influence, this new element, puts an end to the mutable and the ever-changing in the world, and substitutes for it an immutable, an unchangeable, and steadfast rule.
Who will teach us the songs of this immutable Kingdom? Praise be to God, for He teaches us those songs of praise. Praise be to God who, caught as our lives are in our vicious circles, permits His Christ to interfere with them. God lives, and in the Messiah He manifests Himself with a dazzling glory dawning over the sea, the sea. The prophet saw that everything in the sea of nations was in a state of endless undulation. Was there only one statement which could truthfully be said on earth: We are given a moving kingdom? But prophets look up. Daniel, too, being seized upon of God, learns to lift his tired eyes to the hills. And behold, over yonder, away up yonder he can see it. Whoever looks to the hills, whoever fastens his eyes upon heaven will come to the great discovery: We are given a kingdom which cannot be moved. The eternal God now makes His appearance upon the clouds. He presents Himself this time in the form of an old man, a venerable graybeard, who very calmly and far exalted above the restless ebb and flow of the world of nations, is seated upon His throne of fire steeped in the clouds of heaven.
But this God is not a Deus otiosus, who, highly exalted upon His throne, is unaffected by the world. Even less is this God a “being” who lives only in the hearts of men. No, this God of Daniel is united with the world and with the sea of men in an abiding covenant. He has entered into this covenant by means of one who is “like unto the son of man,” though a genuine human being. No, heaven is not exclusively a banquet and it is not exclusively a place of rest. The walls of heaven have not been set up as a partition shutting out the kingdom of heaven, circumscribing a luminous wall of festivity and revelry in which salvation antiphonally responds to salvation, and in which one chorus of angels antiphonally responds to another chorus. No, that circle of salvation seeks contact with the circle of perdition here below, in order to vanquish it and heal. Between the Ancient of days in heaven and the ferment of human beings here stands one who is called the Son of man. He may approach His God freely and frankly; for He knows that He is like God. But as the Son of man, He is also like men. Hence He is the Mediator, He is the Messiah. He effects the living relationship between the circle of salvation there above and the circle of condemnation here below. No, no, that circle of salvation in heaven is not vicious for us children here on earth.
God is no king resplendent on a throne,
Surrounded by a far-flung angel host
Who endlessly repeat a single boast,
While clarion notes in golden horns are blown;
Long bell-like chords from ringing cymbals roll;
Through all the sky the echoing sound is known;
While God directs the dance, and God alone
Conducts it unto heaven’s fartherest pole.
No, God is not such. Nor is His heavenly circle such. He presents the Son of man to us. The circle of His seventy-times- seven blessednesses enters into the circle of our misery, the vicious circle; it enters into our circle unto salvation, and vanquishes it. Hence God takes the Son of man, crowns Him with honor, pours blessing upon His head, lays His hand upon His heart, and places Him not in the midst of those angel choruses in order that He might be the center of . . . yes, of what? of a sublime festival in heaven, a festival in which the angels constantly “repeat a single boast,” antiphonally sing their praise in the endless cycle and ever-recurring vacillations of heaven’s imminent blessednesses? No, no. This Son of man is placed in the center of the earth. He relates the clouds which are God’s fiery chariots to the restless sea of the dull, dead life here below. In His own time He enters into the empires of the world, walks on the blood-soaked ground still shaking with the noise of war and of the four envy-fed beasts, establishes a kingdom for Himself and us whose authority indeed comes from above and whose florescence will indeed be for the praise of the Ancient of days. But it will be a kingdom, nevertheless, which will maintain itself here on earth, among men, and within the pale of the vicious circle. Thus will He establish contact, and a living and powerful contact lasting forever, between the Eternal one there above and those who are the captives of time here below. Thus He will establish the contact between the self-sufficiencies of heavenly blessednesses, and the futile and vain movements and counter-movements of the world empires here below. He will reveal an immovable and steadfast kingdom here on earth by virtue of the power of heaven. To that end He is now being authorized by the Ancient of days, by God Himself. With this authorization in His hand He steps down to the earth and receives the honor of all people whom the new man shall have to bring forth for His new kingdom.
Have you observed all these particulars very carefully from the Scriptures of Daniel? If you have noted his writing very painstakingly, you will discover in Daniel 7-13 a powerful prophecy of the Messiah, who steps into the presence of God iure suo, who comes to the world with heavenly authority, and who consequently will break the vicious circle by putting an end to the perpetual transpositions of the empires of the world, by putting an end to the four beasts who prey on each other, and by substituting for it the steadfast, immutable, eternal, and vertically ascending messianic fellowship. This will be a fellowship in which the Messiah will also include those who in Daniel’s prophecy are given a glorious name: “But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and forever” (Dan_7:18).
If you are still able to do so, turn back from Daniel’s prophetic chair to Christ who is standing before the chair of the judge. Lord my God, is the Son of man here? Is He here so far removed from the chariots of Israel, so far beyond the sight of all their horsemen? Yes, the Son of man is here, and everything is against Him, everything is opposed to Him. Nevertheless, He knows Himself. He is singing a song in His soul, a very old song. It is the song of Daniel, the fugue of the Son of man. Mark, He is beginning the recitative, He is announcing the theme. Today, He tells the Sanhedrin, this prophecy is being fulfilled in your ears. When Christ preached in Nazareth for the first time He applied the prophecy of Isaiah to those who heard Him. Thus He now applies the prophecy of Daniel to Himself.
That first time when Christ said that prophecy was fulfilled in Him He placed the whole emphasis upon the fact that His messianic mission was amiable and comforting, that He came to comfort the meek and establish the miserable ones. But now, as He applies the prophecy of Israel to Himself for the last time, and points out how He is fulfilling it, He stresses the violence and the vehemence of His messianic office. He tells them that the power of a king is His. He tells them that this power of the king will become manifest very soon. Hereafter, He says, they shall see the Son of man. Hereafter. Christ does not leave the word of prophecy stranded in the future, where so many people would safely put it, in order very piously and with due anxiousness to leave its implications to their posterity. No, He applies the prophecy to this very moment. Hereafter, from now on, they shall see it; for the Son of man is here. He is now achieving His deepest depth, and in doing this He will prove to be very man. Together with all the other sons of men He will be bandied to and fro between the forces of death and life; He will be dashed to pieces against the hard wall of the vicious circle of all mundane activity. Consequently, in His death He will first prove to be the Son of man. However, when He enters into the deepest depth of His distress and passion, He will occupy a central place in it. He will be the Representative, and the Head, and the Bearer of all those oppressed people, who have arisen with Him out of the sea of the seasons and the times.
This is His first and His great fate; and this will begin at once. But, when He has entered into His deepest depths He will afterwards again feel free to walk into the presence of the Ancient of days as the Son of man. He will arise by virtue of His intrinsic qualifications. He will speak to God as the Son of man, in communion with men and unto their salvation; He will feel free to place His hand upon the throne and to desire that the crown be given to Him by the Ancient of days, the crown for His own human head.
This will take place at once. Hereafter, from now on. As Christ takes His own word into His mouth, He is placing His hand upon a milestone which He has reached on His way. Hereafter. Once He put it this way: Hereafter ye shall see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. When Christ said that, He manifested Himself as the Son of man situated in the depths of His passion. The angels, the subordinates, had to come to Him and watch for Him. Now that the deepest depth has almost been achieved, He — such is His authority — reverses the role, and points to the fact that He will transcend all angels, and feel free as the Bearer of the crown to make His appearance before God, ahead of all angels.
Hereafter ye shall see it. When Christ said that the first time He was subject to the law of heaven which permits the angels above to remain in contact with the earth below. God’s angels came to earth from heaven; they watched and paid attention to the Son of man, left Him and returned to heaven, and there told God everything about this exceeding great Child of God. The Child could not appear before the Father. Men bound the Son of man, even though they did not acknowledge Him at any time. Now everything will change. Now the Son of man will maintain contact with heaven in virtue of His own authority. He will make His appearance before His God, and the power of God will not consume Him. He can withstand the power of God, because that power of God is with Him. Thus, having the earth as His vantage point, and constantly maintaining communion with His people, He will communicate with the Father’s heaven. And in like manner He shall return to the earth in order to give His kingdom a place there, to give peace to the world of nations which now can find no peace, to put an end to its fatiguing vacillations by means of the steadfast character of His immutable kingdom, and in order to arrive at the day of days.
Consequently Christ does not prophesy the coming of the last day of judgment in a way which might suggest that He had an interest only in that last moment, when He shall return upon the clouds. For there is a continuous process of government and of the exercise of justice going on from the moment of the resurrection to the time of His return. And everything in this continuous process will culminate in that translucent final day.
This, then, is what Christ said. His word, His sublime word becomes a trumpet call, penetrating the world. They shall see it. The Sanhedrin also shall see it. They shall see it hereafter, from now on. No, not that the Sanhedrin will see it in faith. They will not see it as spiritual people in the right way, discerning aright. For they will overlook the real essence of the immovable kingdom to come.
Yes, they will not know whence the wind cometh, but they will hear the sound thereof. The source of the four winds of the earth they will be able to name. These are the winds which blow in the circumference of the vicious circle of nature. These are the winds which Daniel knew by name when he explained the storms of the great sea of nations in terms of the four winds of heaven (Dan_7:2-3). Yes, indeed, the people will know whence the wind conies on this day, the wind which blows over the great sea of the world; tomorrow they will know as much about the wind of the morrow; and each day will be sufficient unto itself, and will have enough of worldly wisdom within itself to predict the weather and the wind.
But the wind which is to blow hereafter will have its origin in the deep treasure-room of heaven. This will be the messianic wind. Of that wind they will hear the sound, but they will not know the origin.
They will hear its sound; the storms of Pentecost will be heard; the spiritual evolutions of the church will not pass over the world imperceptibly. Hereafter they will see it. Even they will see it.
Plainly, these were sublime words on the part of the Son of man. They were hurled into the face of the Sanhedrin as a judgment. This prophecy of Christ manifests its majesty by the very fact that it does not support itself by any kind of evidence. The self-testimony of Christ is even more sober on this occasion than when He once explained Himself for John, His harbinger. When Christ assures the Baptist who loves Him that He is indeed the Messiah, He points him, by way of supporting the wavering man, to the signs which He has done to the blind, the deaf, the poor, and the dead. But now that He manifests Himself to this Sanhedrin as the Messiah, He does not refer to His past. He does not authenticate Himself by any signs. For a sign is a sign only to the man who believes. In His sovereign way, Christ points only to His future. He tells the judges of His people that He will exercise His might.
That must suffice for them.
Accordingly, Christ speaks differently about His future now than the people have been speaking of it during this week when they drew Him into the city of the fathers. We have previously pointed out[1] that the crowds then honored the Christ because of the many mighty deeds which He had done. Especially the powers which they had “seen” became the substance of the hosannas which they sang to the Son of David. Now it is true that Christ Himself again emphasizes the element of might, of power, in His prophecies. They shall see Him, He says, at the right hand of the power of God. However, by relating His Messiahship with a cross (“hereafter”), He also introduces the element of offense into His messianic preaching, and makes this element tangible: hereafter . . . Thus He Himself appropriates that which His people did not know of Him and could not confess about Him. He appropriates, He assumes, the humiliation as the way to exaltation; He undertakes the course of the depths as a condition for achieving the way of the heights. He accepts for Himself all the viciousness of our world-circles by way of pressing upwards out of and above the crooked line of the circle of our captive lives the straight line of ascent to God. “I ascend to my Father and your Father, brethren; hereafter I shall ascend. The way is a straight way, it is the shortest way which God could mark out.”
[1] Christ in His Suffering, p. 123. [Chapter 8, “Christ Welcomed — and Travestied”]
We can say, then, that the statement of Christ is a sublime turning aside from vain hosanna-shouters. He invites all those who sing hosannas under the vine of His blood, first of all, and under the fig tree of His cross, next. The vine is a burning bush, the fig tree is a thorn. By thus confessing His kingship as one which must be achieved by means of death He sets Himself against the whole of the Messiah-expectation of His day. Surely, the Jews will laugh about His statement: hereafter. As far as they are concerned, they would not use that word until a strong man should come who could throw down the gates of Rome and raise his flying banners above the restless sea of the world, and that at once, understand.
However, Christ pays no attention to the gate of Rome. In fact, He allows the guardians of that gate to cast Him out. He gives the same privilege to the watchmen upon the gates of Jerusalem. His kingship definitely awaits the sentence of the Sanhedrin and of Pilate. After all, His vindication lies behind the clouds. This malicious Sanhedrin may say that He is a false Messiah, and that His death will be well pleasing in the eyes of the judge of heaven. Over against that judgment, however, Christ puts His own: I am the true Messiah; My death is the fulfillment of My messianic calling.
We do not say that Christ did not in another sense pay attention to “the gate of Rome.” On the contrary, Daniel himself had already said that the unchangeable kingdom of the Son of man would put an end to the reciprocal animosity of the four beasts. Hence, this is the hour for the fourth beast for Rome, and for the Son of man. Christ’s kingship spells the decay of the Roman empire. But that fourth empire will not decay because of the fact that the kingdom of the Son of man will conform itself to the manner of war employed by the “beasts,” but because of the fact that He, as the Son of man, will release a spiritual and eschatological power on earth, which will raise His kingdom above all that is “flesh” and all that is bound by the limitations of time. This fleshly, mundane life is busy at Rome adorning itself with gold. In this respect, Rome becomes a type of the dazzling Antichrist. But the judgment of Christ comes upon Rome from above; it does not come from below; it does not issue from the restless sea of the world. The sea of the world will wash up the figure of the Antichrist later; he is the small horn of Daniel’s prophecy. But he will be thrust down by a judgment which comes from above, because the Son of man who has come up out of the sea of the world with us could not be held captive by it. The “little horn” and the “branch” (Dan_7:8; Isa_11:1), the “little horn” and the “rod,” these will ever remain two things. The first is the Antichrist; he can only grow among the other horns, and on an undecapitated head, the head of the fourth beast of Daniel. But the Branch and the Rod is the Christ of God. He is born by a wonder; for He can flourish out of the stem, and out of the dry ground. His growth is not a phenomenon of nature, or a manifestation of history; it does not spring from the vicious circle. Hence the origin of the Branch already guarantees the destruction of the “little horn,” the late florescence of the realm of Rome. “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace.” “Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” “For our God is a consuming fire” — in His Son of man (Heb_12:26-29).
Thus Christ spoke to the Sanhedrin. He made foolishness perfect and offense infinite. For just as Christ was talking of His kingdom, which should descend to the earth upon the clouds of God’s power, hereafter, the cock crowed. The curse of Peter shattered the air. “I know not the man.” That was the answer to the mighty hereafter.
Nevertheless, hereafter this will take place. By passing through denial and humiliation Christ will achieve the glory of the Son of man which makes itself the subject and the object of all Christian prophecy and which makes the cursing Peter a witness on the feast of Pentecost, testifying to the great powers of the world to come.
Let us not, however, abandon this discussion, until we have given some attention to the completeness, to the adequacy, of Christ’s confession spoken to the Sanhedrin. By this spoken word He broke the vicious circle. And He will vanquish the vicious circle again by His accomplished deed. This much for His spoken word. He took His precious oath and said: I am the Messiah. This He did by way of proclaiming that He was the Messiah, “the Father of eternity,” amidst those witnessings and inquiries, amidst those fantasies and critiques and humanly fabricated comparisons which bandied Him to and fro between the powers of the earth. Thus He introduced His word, and the high service of the Word into the vicious circle to which you and I are captive, and thus He vanquished that vicious circle. Next to the word, however, is the necessity of the deed. For He is to assume the power of God, and by the power of God to triumph over the confusion of the world. By means of His word and deed, then, Christ vanquishes the vicious circle of the world, the crooked cycle of our uncertain lives. Thus was the judgment and the blessing set free in the world.
For that crooked line about which the Ecclesiast spoke so often and persistently has a double function. On the one hand, it is a hindrance to the curse which came upon the world for the sake of sin, a hindrance to keep it from conducting the life of the world straight down to eternal death. In this sense, therefore, the crooked line is a postponement and a moratorium of the death sentence which would have thrust a cursed world into the depth of hell by the straight route of death itself. In this sense, too, we can accordingly speak of the circle of common grace, regarding it negatively as restraining the full power of curse and death.
On the other hand, however, that crooked line is also a postponement of the true and boundless life which would soar straight up to God and to full and unrestrained blessedness. For the cycles of our temporal life have by God’s redemptive will been inserted between the first sin and the final penalty. These consequently are a moratorium; they represent a postponement of the punishment, in order that by means of it He might cancel the penalty and prepare the way for a breaking through of grace in Christ. These cycles will therefore continue until the process of redemption, of the most special activity of the special revelation of history, the continuous Christological work of the “day of the Lord,”[1] shall be complete. Thereafter that “great day of the Lord” will see the new life, which cannot yet fully unfold its capacity for blessedness and glory, nor triumph or soar directly to perfect blessedness. Accordingly the vicious circle which we have been called upon to deplore so often will always remain vicious, for it would never have existed if it had not been for sin. If evil had not entered the world, the world of the alpha described in the first chapter of Genesis would gradually but certainly have developed until it had reached the omega of completed things. Hence the circle which fatigued the Ecclesiast is vicious; it is vicious because it is the effect of sin.
[1] For the concept “day of the Lord” see Christ in His Suffering, Chapter 18.
On the other hand, however, the compassion of God proclaims aloud against the judgment. There are struggles of grace in the fatigue and weariness of the world’s vacillation. The cycle to which our lives are captive represents a postponement of heaven but also a postponement of hell. It represents a delay (by virtue of the “common grace” and the “common judgment”) for eternal death as well as for eternal life.
Hence Christ is very terrible and mighty when He presents Himself before the Sanhedrin as the conqueror of this vicious circle. Standing in His own place, in the place where He belongs (see Mar_14:61-62), He releases both judgment and blessing. He opens the doors of hell and the doors of His own festive chambers. True, Christ is here suffering the judgment of men; but He who for our sake allowed Himself to be sacrificed together with the other captives of the vicious circle is at the same time the Judge of heaven and of earth. Jesus’ “hereafter” is a striking revelation of His perfect self-awareness. From this time on this shall take place. The moratorium has been recalled. Hereafter every man is duty bound to conform himself not to common but to special revelation. Hereafter any prophecy derived from common grace unattended by a sincere desire for special grace is but a rejection of the Christ into the vicious circle of this hopeless life. It is to take one’s place in the electric chair in which Caiaphas today has tied himself. All moratoria have been recalled: hereafter, from now on.
Yes, indeed, from now on they shall see that Jesus is the Christ. To me, too, the world must disclose the fact that Christ is not only an angel, being wafted up and down in the skies, occasionally casting a glance upon the earth, proud and important but cold and without redemption. To me, too, the world must disclose the fact that Christ is the Son of man who has emancipated the original qualities of humanity in the life of His kingdom and of His free, sovereign self-existence by means of fellowship with the living God.
Hereafter the circle of this wearisome life will be broken. Hereafter nature will be vanquished by grace. Hereafter the dead will rest from their restless work, because of the fact that the Sabbath has come and the vacillation of the world has been put at rest by the Son of man. The great labor is accompanied by the great rest, hereafter.
Hereafter I shall take up the cup of salvation and preach His name. His name is not God only but Lord also. The question was once asked and the voice of the questioner was the voice of the tired Ecclesiast: “Behold the work of God: for who can make straight that which He hath made crooked?”
No one could do that. God Himself cannot do that. For God Himself has in His great compassion made the crooked lines. He — to summarize the whole matter — drew a crooked line between Adam’s first sin and Adam’s straight descent into the realm of death, in order that He might cause that history to be born which brings about the interchange of day and night, of death and life. In this history, which interposes itself between the breaking of the line of Paradise represented by the first world, and the straight line of the development of the curse, on the other side, God makes room for Christ and for the history of redemption. The crooked ways — alas, from our point of view they are very vicious, for they do not suffice to bring heaven or hell near. They cannot be bent straight, and they keep hell and heaven back from breaking through. But, observed from God’s point of view, these crooked lines are luminous. God’s will to grace projected them in order to save the world through the peace of Christ.
Therefore, behold the work of the Lord, the work of Jaweh, the covenant God, the God of special revelation. For who can make that straight which He hath made crooked? I can, Christ Himself says, in this sublime moment of the might of the Son of man. I alone can do that. I am doing it already; hereafter ye shall see it; ye shall see your vicious circles broken. Behold the work of Jehovah again, for who can ever make that crooked which He just now has bent straight?
Hide yourself now, and flee, for the time of the breaking through has come. This ministration of the word of Jesus Christ in the presence of Caiaphas has a more than volcanic power. It casts every human being in front of the gate of hell, or portentously hurls him before the gate of heaven.
O Man of sorrows, O Lord of sorrows. These are overwhelming joys. I see abysses and hear the sound of a volcano. Presently the veils must be rent, for all moratoria, all postponements of blessing and of curse, have been recalled today.