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THE STONING OF CHRIST
By A. Prentice
PART FOUR
THE STONING PERSISTS
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Scripture references are to the King James
(Authorised) Version
ʻMany good works have I shewed you from my Father;
for which of these works do ye stone me?ʼ
– John 10: 32 –
Recap: The previous instalment analysed the exchange between Jesus and the mob that circles Him on Solomon's Porch. By asserting that ʻI and the Father are oneʼ Jesus claims an intimacy with the Most High that his hearers equate with blasphemy, and they threaten to stone Him. Though He escapes the stoning, He later receives a worse punishment at their hands. When at last they catch Him and turn Him over to Pilate for crucifixion, they accuse Him of saying, not ʻI am Godʼ, but that He is ʻthe Son of Godʼ. At length, deprived of a present Christ, the persecutors continue to hound Him by proxy, seeking out His followers those who also dare claim to be sons of God. This final instalment relates the experiences of the Gospel-Age elect Church the true representative of Christ towards the world.
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AS
JESUS WAS led through the streets of Jerusalem towards Golgotha, the crowds
followed Him, some sympathetic, some merely curious, as one might be about a
fallen celebrity. To the godly women who ʻbewailed and lamented himʼ, He cries,
ʻdaughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your
children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed
are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave
suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the
hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done
in the dry?ʼ (Luke 23: 28-31).
Jesus had previously forecast His own rejection and its dire consequences, weeping over Jerusalem for its failure to recognise Him as the Sent of God (Luke 19: 41-44; 21: 20-24). Even so, after His death, there ensued a relatively brief period during which principally Jewish converts were brought into the burgeoning Church (Acts 16: 5). With the conversion of the first Gentile, Cornelius, in 36, God’s exclusive favour began to pass from Israel and a door was opened for these non-Jews to join the fellowship.
The tree’s relative good health and prospects because of Christ's presence, depicts the nation’s ʻgreen’ (moist) state; its withering, the ʻdry’ phase. The national tree began to wilt over a period of about thirty-four years, from 36 to 70, by which latter date the Roman overlords had ringed Jerusalem with siege engines and all manner of military might, creating such conditions as Jesus had predicted. With that cruel assault national Israel entered its tinder-dry phase, a condition in which it remained for many centuries, until its restoration in 1948, following another cruel assault in the Second World War. See Appendix, Note 1, Siege of Jerusalem.
The Scriptures lay the responsibility for Jesus’ death at the feet of the Jewish leaders and their supporters, not the Romans (Acts 2: 23, 36, 37; 3: 13-15, 17). Although Rome practised crucifixion and later applied this barbaric punishment to many of the prisoners it took at the siege of Jerusalem, it was not the method of Christ’s death that constituted the real sin: it was that the righteous Son of God was judged as deserving of it.
The
Diaspora
In Luke 21: 20, 21, Jesus predicts that ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies. . . . Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries [environs, Ed.] enter thereinto.
Those Christians wise enough to have made their escape before the city was besieged and locked up tight, migrated to other towns in Judaea and the outlying provinces, taking their new-found faith with them. The communities in which they settled may have already had an established Jewish community and a synagogue. And they may also have encountered Christian congregations, the fruits of missionary work by the Apostles and their co-labourers of earlier years. In this way the Christian faith began a second phase of expansion.
The inevitable progress of the Christian faith was assured by the very fact of its existence. For Jesus having appeared in ʻdue timeʼ according to the divine prophecies could never have died in vain. That is to say, no accident of history nor unexpected occurrence would have derailed God's purposes, for with God nothing is unexpected. Which is why at His ascension Jesus could with complete confidence tell His disciples to go to the ends of earth and make converts. Not that the entire world has been won for Christ; but that was never the object in view (Luke 24: 46-48).
Of these Christian settlers, it was said that they dwell nowhere in cities by themselves [isolated, Ed.]; they do not use a different language, or affect a singular mode of life. They dwell in the cities of the Greeks, and of the Barbarians, each as his lot has been cast; and while they conform to the usages of the country, in respect to dress, food, and other things pertaining to the outward life, they yet show a peculiarity of conduct wonderful and striking to all. They obey the existing laws, and conquer the laws by their own living. [Neanderʼs History of the Christian Religion (1856), p. 70.]
At first despised by Jew, Roman and Greek alike, these believers gradually won many to the cause, especially those of the humbler sort those whom Christ had predicted would take to His message.
Celsus, the first writer against Christianity, jeers at the fact, ʻthat wool-workers, cobblers, leather-dressers, the most illiterate and vulgar of mankind, were zealous preachers of the gospel, and addressed themselves, particularly in the outset, to women and childrenʼ. [Ibid.]
Collisions between this unworldly religion and the pagan culture of the day were inevitable. Abiding Jewish resentment against the faith rested as it always had on the perception that these Christ-ians were undermining Mosaic Law. Nonetheless, the congregations grew in number. Even before the Scriptures were compiled and canonised the epistles were circulated to the churches and read out in the congregation. In this way the brethren grew in grace and understanding.
The One-ness of Christ
and His Church
That former arch-hounder of the early Christians, Saul later Paul witnessed first-hand the one-ness of Christ with His people. On his way to Damascus to round up another batch of hapless victims, Saul a fire-breathing Pharisee is startled by a blinding light from heaven and knocked off his steed. The voice of Christ asks him, Why do you persecute me? (Acts 9: 4; 1 Cor. 15: 8, 9).
The question provides a template for understanding the persecution of the Church. For as the world hated Jesus, so it would hate those who represented Him. And just as it persecuted Him, so it would persecute those who belonged to Him (John 15: 18-20). The elect Church is also styled a ʻlittle flockʼ, whose calling was a heavenly one (Luke 12: 32; 2 Peter 1: 4). It belonged to no one particular sect. Its members comprised the Body of which Christ is the Head.
Throughout Christian history the Church has preached the Word of God and rebuked the world for unrighteousness, naturally attracting vilification. Though Christ Himself was not stoned in the literal sense, some of His followers certainly were. Stephen was killed this way (Acts 7: 58-60) and the Apostle Paul on one of his missionary journeys was stoned and left for dead (Acts 14: 19; 2 Cor. 11: 25). The Lord's people have been killed in a variety of brutally ingenious ways.
When the pure teachings of Jesus and the Apostles became distorted by error and novel orthodoxies which departed from the apostolic faith, the Church was punished for failing to submit to the new regimes. Like their Master, they were stoned in a metaphorical sense. In being rejected they have thus suffered for Christ and died with Him daily (1 Cor. 15: 31), figuratively carrying His cross (Gal. 5: 24; 6: 14), being baptised into His sufferings (Rom. 6: 3; 1 Cor. 12: 13, 14; Gal. 5: 24). See Appendix, Note 2, Church in the Wilderness.
A Hostile
Takeover
Genesis 3 (NIV-UK, 1984)
14. So the LORD God said to the serpent . . . ‘Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’
The ‘serpent’ probably is the snake, and stands in for Satan. For his role in precipitating man’s sin and triggering God’s sentence of death on the human race, he is characterised by Jesus as a killer (manslayer; John 8: 44). For his crime he was stripped of his office and humiliated. Whereas previously he had been higher than Man as Man was lower than the angels now he was counted as less than the brute creation, grovelling, so to speak, on his belly. The thoughts and ambitions of Satan have, in their turn, infected humanity, bringing it low and far removed from the glories of its original creation.
This malicious and rebellious action by Satan suggests motive and a plan of action. It’s hard to imagine that he would have moved against heaven without some reasonable expectation of success. Unless you are recklessly mad, you do not blithely attempt to wrest power from the one in charge in this case, the Almighty without anticipating some sort of response. A bid for power involves motive the spur for the action; strategy a plan; and tactics the methods employed to ensure success. Satan’s motive is explained in Isaiah 14: 13, 14, under the figure of the King of Babylon:
13. [T]hou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north. 14. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.
That Satan could even contemplate such a usurpation offers a glimpse into the administration of heaven. It intimates that the angelic orders possess free will and operate with a wide freedom of action. Apparently, Satan took advantage of the cover provided by this latitude. But why he thought he could get away with it is not explained. Perhaps he failed to anticipate the means by which God would inflict the punishment on him and on the human pair whom he had enticed into disobedience. Regardless, once Satan had struck his blow, he pressed on, as wilfully stubborn persons usually do, hardening his heart against repentance. John Milton puts the following words into Satan’s mouth in his epic poem, Paradise Lost (Book 1, lines 261-263):
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in
Heaven.
Compromise and
Apostasy
From the beginning, Satan's plan was to eliminate the righteous, those who represented Christ's embryonic kingdom on earth. Failing that, he perverted their mission, adapting his tactics to fit the changing situation, using subterfuge and willing subordinates.
Jesus and His Church comprise the offspring (ʻseedʼ in the KJV) mentioned in Gen. 3: 15. Satan's role in the betrayal by Judas and the subsequent death of Jesus was a hollow victory: he inflicted merely a minor wound bruised the heel but in so doing guaranteed that he himself would one day receive a fatal blow to his head. Nonetheless, this great adversary of God's people could not be dismissed lightly. ʻBe sober, be vigilant,ʼ writes the Apostle Peter to a young Church, ʻbecause your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devourʼ (1 Pet. 5: 8).
In due course, ambitious persons, intermingled with the naive believers, began to overreach and usurp the privileges of the congregation. And so the virgin Church, modelled on the simplicity of Christ, was taken hostage to a system more sophisticated in its organisation, with a self-serving agenda and a grand vision of status and temporal power. This Apostasy has been thoroughly analysed in many volumes of church history. It is neatly summed up in the poem, The Church Walking With the World, by Matilda C. Edwards, from which the following is extracted:
Half shyly the Church approached the World
And gave him her hand of snow;
And the old World grasped it and walked along,
Saying, in accents low,
ʻYour dress is too simple to please my taste;
I will give you pearls to wear,
Rich velvets and silks for your graceful form,
And diamonds to deck your hair.ʼ
The Church looked down at her plain white robes,
And then at the dazzling World,
And blushed as she saw his handsome lip
With a smile contemptuous curled.
ʻI will change my dress for a costlier one,ʼ
Said the Church, with a smile of grace;
Then her pure white garments drifted away,
And the World gave, in their place,
Beautiful satins and shining silks,
Roses and gems and costly pearls;
While over her forehead her bright hair fell
Crisped in a thousand curls.
Centuries would pass before the elect Church was able to extricate herself from this impious and destructive relationship. But by fits and starts a reformation got under way and by the middle of the sixteenth century the movement toward religious liberty was unstoppable. Many doctrines which had been lost during the long dark period of papal dominance were reinstated, especially that of justification by faith alone, the bedrock of the gospel message.
It was an incomplete victory. The real Church made up of those consecrated believers ensconced within sectarian folds was now distributed across many denominations. Some denominations were more reformed than others, but each specialised in its favourite creed. With few exceptions all had imported the doctrines of hell-fire, immortality of the soul, and the Trinity, perpetuating errors installed centuries earlier by misguided prelates and councils. Nevertheless, the situation was far better than before: figurative Israel had finally been liberated from the more suffocating restraints of its Babylonian captivity.
Advocate, Mediator, and the Unity of God
1
John 2: 1
My little children, these things I write unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
1 Tim. 2:
5 [emphasis
added]
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
We now circle back to the contentious text with which this series began, John 10: 30: ʻI and [the] Father are oneʼ.
It is necessary to distinguish between (1) the role of Christ towards His Church and (2) the role of Christ towards the world. For the Church, Christ Jesus is an advocate [Gk., parakletos], speaking favourably on their behalf to the Throne of Justice. By faith, each believer is justified, and thus viewed by God as if he or she were without sin. Putting it another way, the advocate is partial to the believers and is unashamedly on their side. It is a different matter as far as the non-believing world is concerned.
The long-standing Scriptural promise is that Christ Jesus will return to establish a kingdom on earth. Under the administration of this kingdom mankind will be offered a (conditional) opportunity to be reconciled to God and to receive eternal life. But since mankind is unfriendly towards God, and God represented in His justice is unfriendly towards mankind, the situation calls for a mediator [Gk., mesites]. Therefore, Christ Jesus will then put Himself between God and mankind to effect reconciliation. Thus: GOD <Jesus> MANKIND
Moses fulfilled a similar role under the Law Covenant, acting as mediator between Jehovah and the nation of Israel. There is, therefore, a correspondence between Moses and Christ, as outlined in Heb. 12: 21-25. The wording of v. 21 obliquely identifies Moses as the mediator [Gk., mesites] of the Law Covenant (compare Heb. 9: 18-20). Thus: GOD <Moses> ISRAEL. In v. 24 Christ is identified as the mediator of the New Covenant.
In each process advocacy or mediation there are three separate parties involved. Christ is therefore not the Father. It strains reason to construe from these verses that God engages in advocacy or mediation with Himself.
Conclusion
It is noteworthy that the crowd which had threatened to stone Jesus on Solomon's Porch, were sufficiently conversant with the Jewish Scriptures that they could engage in debate on the point of heresy. This was also true in the controversies during the Gospel Age when exhaustive and closely-reasoned arguments between scholarly churchmen and those accused of heterodoxy would spend days expounding on the pros and cons of an abstruse point of doctrine.
In Britain we appear to have entered an era of illiteracy as far as the Bible and Christianity itself is concerned. Not so long ago a nodding acquaintance with the Scriptures was a necessary component of one's education. Conversation, conduct and culture were generally informed by biblical ethics, even among those who were not especially religious. But doctrinal arguments no longer score points, since the Scriptures are no longer widely accepted as a guide to personal or civic behaviour. Indeed, for one to advertise that he or she is a Christian is to invite cynicism and mockery, especially in a public forum. This is a discouraging turn of events in the Christian history of this land, though we ought not to exaggerate the implications nor shrink before them.
We may gather courage in our Christian work from the case of Elijah. When he moaned that he was being unjustly maligned and hunted, God pointed out that there were thousands of others of whom he was unaware who were just as faithful as he (1 Kings 19: 13, 14, 18). We can take heart that God's people will remain a force for good in society, no matter how small in number they may be. For when the Light came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ it came with a guarantee that it will never be put out (John 1: 9).
The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is his new creation
By water and the word:
From heaven he came and sought her
To be his holy Bride;
With his own Blood he bought her,
And for her life he died.
Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore opprest,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distrest,
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, ʻHow long?ʼ
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.
– S. J. Stone (1839-1900)
APPENDIX
Note 1: The siege of Jerusalem, 69-70
Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History (Tr., C.F. Cruse; Hendrickson Publishers; Massachusetts, 1998), 70, 71.
[A] number of calamities then overwhelmed the whole nation: the extreme misery to which particularly the inhabitants of Judea were reduced; the vast numbers of men, women, and children who fell by the sword, famine, and innumerable other forms of death; the numerous and great cities of Judea that were besieged; the great and incredible distresses that those experienced who took refuge at Jerusalem as to a place of perfect security; . . .
Winston's Josephus: Wars: Book V, Chapter XI (Ward, Lock & Co. Ltd.; London, 1907), 709, 710.
It was now a miserable case, and a sight that would justly bring tears into our eyes, how men stood as to their food, while the more powerful had more than enough, and the weaker were lamenting [for want of it]. But the famine was too hard for all other passions, and it is destructive to nothing so much as to modesty; for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants; and when those that were most dear were perishing under their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops that might preserve their lives; . . . [W]hen they were going to be taken, they were forced to defend themselves, for fear of being punished; as after they had fought, they thought it too late to make any supplications for mercy; so they were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. This miserable procedure made [General] Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews . . . their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.
Note 2: The Church in the Wilderness
Such mistreatment of the Church during the Gospel Age is prefigured by Elijah's exile from Israel, detailed in 1 Kings 17 to 19. (See James 5: 17, 18.) The same event is depicted in Rev. 12: 6 by the woman who ʻfled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of Godʼ to be nurtured there for 1,260 days. This period is equivalent to Elijah's wilderness experience of three-and-half years (360 days x 3-1/2). On the day-to-a-year theory, this works out to 1,260 (solar) years. The period roughly corresponds to the time when the elect Church was an outcast from the prevailing orthodoxy between the sixth century and the eighteenth.
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Attribution for
picture: The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by
the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70; oil on canvas, 1850 by David Roberts
(1796-1864).
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This article copyright February 2014 ukbiblestudents.co.uk
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