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| Jesus Christ in His Incarnation and Work a More Imitable Example Thereof.
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Chapter III.—Jesus
Christ in His Incarnation and Work a More Imitable Example
Thereof.
And this species of the divine patience
indeed being, as it were, at a distance, may perhaps be esteemed as
among “things too high for us;”9026
but what is that which, in a certain way, has been grasped by
hand9027
among men openly on the earth? God suffers
Himself to be conceived in a mother’s womb, and awaits the
time for birth; and, when born, bears the delay of growing
up; and, when grown up, is not eager to be recognised, but is
furthermore contumelious to Himself, and is baptized by His own
servant; and repels with words alone the assaults of the tempter; while
from being “Lord” He becomes “Master,” teaching
man to escape death, having been trained to the exercise of the
absolute forbearance of offended patience.9028
| 9028 I have followed
Oehler’s reading of this very difficult and much disputed
passage. For the expression, “having been trained,” etc.,
compare Heb. v. 8. | He
did not strive; He did not cry aloud; nor did any hear His voice in the
streets. He did not break the bruised reed; the smoking flax He
did not quench: for the prophet—nay, the attestation of God
Himself, placing His own Spirit, together with patience in its
entirety, in His Son—had not falsely spoken. There was none
desirous of cleaving to Him whom He did not receive. No one’s
table or roof did He despise: indeed, Himself ministered to the washing
of the disciples’ feet; not sinners, not publicans, did He repel;
not with that city even which had refused to receive Him was He
wroth,9029
when even the
disciples had wished that the celestial fires should be forthwith
hurled on so contumelious a town. He cared for the ungrateful; He
yielded to His ensnarers. This were a small matter, if He had not had
in His company even His own betrayer, and stedfastly abstained from
pointing him out. Moreover, while He is being betrayed, while He is
being led up “as a sheep for a victim,” (for “so He
no more opens His mouth than a lamb under the power of the
shearer,”)He to whom, had He willed it, legions of angels would
at one word have presented themselves from the heavens, approved not
the avenging sword of even one disciple. The patience of the Lord was
wounded in (the wound of) Malchus. And so, too, He cursed for the time
to come the works of the sword; and, by the restoration of health, made
satisfaction to him whom Himself had not hurt, through Patience, the
mother of Mercy. I pass by in silence (the fact) that He is crucified,
for this was the end for which He had come; yet had the death which
must be undergone need of contumelies likewise?9030
| 9030 Or, “yet had
there been need of contumelies likewise for the undergoing of
death?” |
Nay, but, when about to depart, He wished to be sated with the
pleasure of patience. He is spitted on, scourged, derided, clad foully,
more foully crowned. Wondrous is the faith of equanimity!
He who had set before Him the concealing of Himself in
man’s shape, imitated nought of man’s impatience! Hence,
even more than from any other trait, ought ye, Pharisees, to have
recognised the Lord. Patience of this kind none of men would
achieve. Such and so mighty evidences—the very magnitude
of which proves to be among the nations indeed a cause for rejection of
the faith, but among us its reason and rearing—proves manifestly
enough (not by the sermons only, in enjoining, but likewise by the
sufferings of the Lord in enduring) to them to whom it is given to
believe, that as the effect and excellence of some inherent propriety,
patience is God’s nature.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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