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| Why Jesus Had to Go to Jerusalem.
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20. Why Jesus Had to Go to Jerusalem.
“Then began He to show;”5685
and probably afterwards when they were able
to receive it He shewed more clearly, no longer beginning to show as to
those who were learning the introduction, but already also advancing in
the showing; and if it is reasonable to conceive that Jesus altogether
completed what He began, then, some time, He altogether completed that
which He began to show to His disciples about the necessity of His
suffering the things which are
written. For, when any one apprehends from the Word the perfect
knowledge of these things, then it must be said that, from a rational
exhibition (the mind seeing the things which are shown,) the exhibition
becomes complete for him who has the will and the power to contemplate
these things, and does contemplate them. But since “it
cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem,”5686
—a perishing which corresponds to the
words, “He that loseth his life for My sake shall find
it,”5687
—on this
account it was necessary for Him to go to Jerusalem, that having
suffered many things in that Jerusalem, He might make “the
first-fruits”5688
of the resurrection
from the dead in the Jerusalem above, doing away with and breaking up
the city upon the earth with all the worship which was maintained in
it. For so long as Christ “had not been raised from the
dead, the first-fruits of them that are asleep,”5689
and those who become conformed to His death
and resurrection had not yet been raised along with Him, the city of
God was sought for below, and the temple, and the purifications, and
the rest; but when this took place, no longer were the things below
sought for, but the things above; and, in order that these might be set
up, it was necessary that He should go unto the Jerusalem below, and
there suffer many things from the elders in it, and the chief priests
and scribes of the people, in order that He might be glorified by the
heavenly elders who could receive his bounties, and by diviner
high-priests who are ordained under the one High-Priest, and that He
might be glorified by the scribes of the people who are occupied with
letters “not written with ink”5690
but made clear by the Spirit of the living God, and might be killed in
the Jerusalem below, and having risen from the dead might reign in
Mount Zion, and the city of the living God—the heavenly
Jerusalem.5691
But on the
third day He rose from the dead,5692
| 5692 Or (putting a
comma after Jerusalem), but that on the third day He might rise. | in order that
having delivered them from the wicked one, and his son,5693
| 5693 See xi. c. 6, p. 434,
note 2. | in whom was falsehood and unrighteousness
and war and everything opposed to that which Christ is, and also from
the profane spirit who transforms himself into the Holy Spirit, He
might gain for those who had been delivered the right to be baptized in
spirit and soul and body, into the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, which represent the three days eternally present at
the same time to those who by means of them are sons of
light.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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