Глава вторая. Самосознание Иисуса Христа

§ 8. The narration of the Evangelist Luke from the history of the adolescence of the Lord Jesus From the history of the childhood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the gospels tell about the worship of the shepherds, His circumcision, His bringing to the church, the worship of the Magi and the flight of His parents with Him to Egypt. All these events, which are of deep interest in many respects, are of no importance for the philosophy of gospel history, because, firstly, it is nowhere to be seen that these events had any influence on the character of the public ministry of Jesus Christ, and secondly, and more importantly, the participation of the child Jesus in these events was not a matter of His consciousness and will: they were with Him, but His will was not in them. Something else needs to be said about the only event that is reported in the Gospel of Luke from the history of the adolescence of Jesus Christ. After these events in the childhood of Jesus Christ, His parents returned with Him to Galilee, to the city of Nazareth. From here every year they went to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday. When He was twelve years old, they came, according to custom, to Jerusalem to celebrate a feast with Him. When, at the end of the holiday, they returned, the youth Jesus remained in Jerusalem unnoticed by them. Having searched in vain for Him on the way, among relatives, and returning to Jerusalem, after three days they found Him in the church among the teachers, who talked with Him and marveled at His understanding and answers. “Son, what have you done to us? “Behold, Your father and I have been looking for You with great sorrow,” His mother said to Him. He answered them: “Why did you seek Me? or did you not know that I must be concerned with the things that belong to My Father?” They, the evangelist ends his story, did not understand the words He spoke, and upon returning to Nazareth He was in obedience to them. This event with the youth Jesus in Jerusalem is extremely significant because in it for the first time His self-consciousness was revealed, which determined His entire social activity. Since the self-consciousness of the Lord Jesus Christ lies at the basis of His calling and is necessarily presupposed, as fully formed, already at the beginning of His public ministry, the student of Gospel history should focus his attention on it before proceeding to explain the work of Christ, although His inner life was fully revealed only in His deeds and speeches during his public ministry. The study of His self-consciousness should be dated to the indicated event, in which Christ’s self-consciousness first manifested itself, because nothing is conveyed in the Gospels from the later life of Christ, before the beginning of His public ministry. § 9. The exclusivity of Christ’s self-consciousness through its union with God-consciousness The most general character, and at the same time the main feature of the human self-consciousness of Jesus Christ, is that it was united with the consciousness of God. By this nature, the human self-consciousness of Jesus Christ is the only fact in world history that does not repeat itself in its entirety. To understand the uniqueness of Christ’s self-consciousness and the deepest significance of this fact in the history of mankind, one must proceed from the idea that Christ was a real person. But being a real man, He was a stranger to the world. Just as every person, belonging to the physical world with his body, in his rationally free soul does not belong to external nature and is not part of it, so the Lord Jesus Christ, being one of the people in His soul-body life, was a stranger in the world of people in His divine spirit. He was “not of the world” (John 17:16). True, in the very nature of man there is still no basis for the confrontation that Christ encountered from people; the reason for this confrontation is human sin, which removed people from God and prepared in them hostility to the divine life that appeared in Christ, although participation in divine life was the purpose of the creation of the world. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and the world did not know Him” (John 1:10). But be that as it may, the world into which Christ came was alien to Him. People love human glory more than the glory of God, they receive glory from each other and do not seek the glory that is from God alone (John 12:43; 5:44), and Christ did not accept glory from men, did not seek His own glory (John 5:41; John 8:50), but sought only the glory of God. People are “from below,” but He was “from above” (John 8:23). In that respect, the Jews, who were Christ’s own in the sense of Old Testament history, in reality completely belonged to the world. “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). In any case, here is a historical fact: Christ recognized Himself alone in the world (John 8: 16. 29 cf. 16:32), just as the first man felt alone in nature. He generalized Himself only with those people who were messengers of God, generalized precisely in this regard to the messenger from God, saying in this case: “we” (John 3:11) 23. But outside of this external relationship and precisely because of the peculiarities of His internal exclusive relationship with the Heavenly Father, He invariably recognized Himself as separate from the society of people, even from its best part: He did not say to them: “Our Father, our God,” but: “My Father and your Father,” My God and your God” (John 10:17; Matt. 10:20; John 2:16, etc.). That this feature of the consciousness of Jesus Christ was real, and not illusory, not self-deception, is evidenced by history - by the hatred that the world had for Him and could not help but feel, and the only reason for which was that He was not of this world and the world could not accommodate His words (John 7:7; 15:18-19; 17:14, etc.). The reason why Jesus Christ recognized Himself as a stranger to the world was the divine life that He had in Himself. To understand the face of Jesus Christ means to learn to see in Him, in His human life, the Heavenly Father 24: His work was that He showed us the Father in Himself (John 14:7-9). He could do this because He Himself experienced the divine life, that He, being in appearance a man, lived by the Heavenly Father (κἀγὼ ζῶ διὰ τόν πατέρα - John 6:57): He recognized the divine life through His life. There was no mediation between His human life and the life of the Heavenly Father: He had the life of the Father, true eternal life, in Himself (John 5:26). Therefore, He had such an experienced knowledge of divine life, knowledge of the Heavenly Father, which no one else had or could have: it was not an external “from the outside,” or mental, perception of divine truth, but His knowledge of God coincided with self-knowledge. “All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and to whom the Son wants to reveal it” (Matthew 11:27). “I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me” (John 7:29). He knew His Father, as everyone knows himself, and even could not help but know Him, just as everyone cannot help but know himself. “If I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you” (John 9:55). He alone of all people could say about Himself: “no one ascended into heaven except the Son of man who came down from heaven and is in heaven” (John 3:13): He carried heaven in Himself. His disciples had a similar knowledge of the Spirit of truth when they received His Spirit into themselves and He abided in them (John 14:17). Therefore, further, His words were not His words, and His works were not His works, but were the words and works of His Father. He did not speak from Himself. “My teaching is not Mine, but of Him who sent Me. Whoever wants to do His will will know about this teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak from Myself” (John 7:16-17); “I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, so I speak” (John 8:28); “I do not speak from Myself; but the Father who sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what to say and what to say. What I say, I say, as the Father spoke to Me” (John 12:49–50); “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. The words that I speak to you, I do not speak from Myself; The Father abiding in Me, He does the works. The word that you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me” (John 10:28). And, in fact, His works were the works of God (τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ - John 9:3), the works of the Heavenly Father (τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πατρός μοῦ - John 10:37), in His activity He He showed the works of His Father (John 10:32). Just as He could not help but know His Father, so He could not help but do the works of His Father; He could not do anything of Himself (John 5:30). Not only in the sense of obedience to the will of the Father, but in the proper sense of the unity of His life with the life of the Heavenly Father, He spoke about Himself: “I and the Father are one,” “I am in the Father and the Father in Me” (John 10:30; John 14:10, etc.). § 10. Revelation in Christ of the divine life for all people Since Christ lived a divine life, His life, which people could see, hear and touch, was a revelation of the life of the Heavenly Father. In Him and through Him people could know the Heavenly Father. “He who sees Me sees Him who sent Me. I have come as light into the world, so that whoever believes in Me will not remain in darkness” (John 12:45. 46;9:5;12:35; cf. 8:19; 14:7). In Him was life, and this life was the light of men (John 1:4); it was the true light (John 1:9), because it was the light of life (John 8:12). He revealed the name of God to people, He gave them the truth (John 17:6;8:31. 40 and many others). So, through Him people could become sons of light (νἱοι φωτὸς - John 12:36). But people could not only know the truth through Him and accept the light of life, but in Him and through Him the most divine life was given to them, more precisely, the knowledge of the truth revealed by Him could not be abstract, but was given along with the assimilation of His life. In Him and through Him, real divine life was given to the world: every person had only to come to Him and believe in Him in order to receive eternal life for themselves (John 3:14-15.36 and many others). He was the bread of life for the world, a source of living water flowing into eternal life (John 4:14; John 6:27 and many others). Is it possible to fully imagine the self-consciousness of Christ, Who carried such a great good for the world in Himself and offered to everyone?... He had in Himself life, without which the whole world is the kingdom of death, in which the only salvation of every person. What a real meaning in His mouth was the word good news, which He brought to the world!... And we must imagine this to the greatest extent possible in order to understand the power of the words of Christ, in which He expressed His meaning for the world. He said that it is only through Him that people can come to the Heavenly Father (John 14:6) and that the whole salvation of man, the whole work of God, is to believe in Him, to know Him, and through Him the Father (John 6:29; 17:3; cf. 7:19; 14:7) 25. He said that relationships with Him are relationships with divine life, with the Heavenly Father: to accept Him, to love Him means to accept and love the Heavenly Father, hatred of Him is hatred of the Heavenly Father (Matthew 10:40; Luke 10:16; John 13:20; 14:21.23; 15:23). He demanded from people in relation to Himself such self-denial, which can only be demanded in the name of divine life (Matthew 10:37-38; Luke 14:26-27). § 11. The self-consciousness of Jesus is more divine; His sinlessness But recognizing in Himself the divine life of His Heavenly Father, Christ distinguished Himself from the Heavenly Father to whom He prayed, distinguished Himself from Him, like a face from a face. In what form of consciousness of Jesus Christ was expressed this separation of His face from the face of the Heavenly Father, with the community of His life with the life of the Father? In the form of God-son consciousness: He was the Son of God (Matthew 11:27 and many others). Christ sealed the truth of His God-son self-consciousness with His death (John 19:7), thereby testifying to its significance. This consciousness in Him was not subjective, that is, it did not express only His mood without corresponding reality, but was objective and expressed the mutual relationship of Him to the Father and the Father to Him (Matthew 3:17 par.; 17:5 par.). In the light of this consciousness, Christ saw in His work the work of God, in His humiliation the love of the Heavenly Father for man (John 3:16). Then, this very consciousness of Christ expressed His attitude towards the Heavenly Father, which can be acquired by people through faith in Him and can make them sons of God. A person’s saving faith in Christ is precisely faith in Him as the Son of God: it is the Son of God who is the Savior of the world (John 3:17-18.36 and many others). Finally, in the form of this consciousness, the will of God determined the own free life of Jesus Christ: He fulfilled it as the Son of God, and therefore fulfilled it in accordance with the purposes for which man was created by God, and savingly for people. The Father was glorified in the Son. Therefore Christ is beloved to the Heavenly Father as the Son (Matt. 3:17 par.; 17:5 par. John 5:22-23; 8:35-36; 14:13; 17:1). In connection with the latter meaning of Christ’s God-son self-consciousness, the question arises about His sinlessness, i.e. the question of how He fulfilled the will of the Heavenly Father. Although He had the divine life in Himself, yet, being personally separate from the Father, He, as a man, had a natural human will, which He had to subordinate to the will of the Father. And He fulfilled the will of the Father in the way that is only possible for the Son of God - without sin. His life represents, firstly, external factual sinlessness and, secondly, a consciousness alien to sin. Both are facts that do not repeat themselves in world history. In order to form a concept of the externally factual sinlessness of Jesus Christ, more or less close to reality, one must proceed from the fact that He is the greatest teacher of morality, that in His teaching He depicted moral perfection to such a height that the requirement of the moral law has never reached in the minds of people. Thus He presented in His teaching the measure of morality that only we can think of. And so, applying this measure to His life, it is easy to see that He fully fulfilled the moral law and did not sin in anything. Eyewitnesses of His life, His disciples, testify that He committed no sin (1 Pet. 2:22; and John 3:5), and confess Him as a blameless and spotless lamb (1 Pet. 1:19). This testimony is important because they, as friends, knew His inner life intimately and judged moral perfection from the point of view of His own moral teaching. But even His enemies, who closely followed His outer life, could not convict Him of untruth (John 8:46) and recognized His justice and impartiality (Matthew 22:16 par.); they looked for false testimony against Jesus in order to put Him to death, but found none (Matthew 26:59-60 par.). His traitor confessed that he had betrayed innocent blood (Matthew 27:4). The Lord Jesus Christ was both sinless in a negative sense and morally perfect in a positive sense. He was innocent; lust in all its forms was completely absent from His heart; He felt a natural aversion to moral impurity. This was the impression of His entire life. But he was not only sinless: His life was a complete manifestation of love, which the apostle calls the totality of perfection (Col. 3:14), - meek, humble, self-sacrificing love. He was filled with compassion for man, was meek and humble in heart, did not seek anything for Himself; He came not to be served, but to serve and to give His soul as a ransom for many, and thus showed a love greater than that which no one has. Having revealed to the world the most perfect teaching about love, He imagined its fulfillment in Himself and commanded His love to the apostles (John 13:34; 15:12). Being sinless in externally factual terms, Christ acted in everything according to the will of the Father, in the consciousness of complete harmony of His life with the will of God. From this side, the life of Jesus Christ is remarkable, firstly, for the continuous and unrelenting energy of the consciousness of the will of God and, secondly, for the consciousness of the complete fulfillment of the will of God. What is remarkable about Christ’s conscience towards the will of God is, first of all, that He continually and unremittingly wanted to do the will of God. “I must be concerned with the things that belong to My Father” (Lk. 2:49), He spoke to His parents at the age of twelve. “We must fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), He answered John the Baptist. “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34), He told His disciples. “I came down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me” (John 6:38), He taught the Jews. His entire life was determined by the consciousness of duty: “I owe it,” “owe it to the Son of man” (Luke 4:43; John 3:13 and many others). Even during the Gethsemane struggle, when the weakness of His human nature was most revealed, His desire to do not His will, but the will of the Father (Matthew 26:39. 42 par.) did not interrupt or weaken. And He truly fulfilled all the will of God for Himself. “I always do that which pleases the Father” (John 8:29): such was His continuous and unconditional consciousness. Teaching His disciples to always pray to God for the forgiveness of sins, He Himself, praying often, never turned to the Father with a prayer for the forgiveness of His sins: the prince of this world had nothing in Him (John 14:30) 26. § 12. His relation to the law and the prophets What was God's will for Christ? What was the Father’s “must” for Him? The general content of the Father's will for the Son was that He would give the world eternal life, which He had in Himself (John 3:16-17 and many others). In this content, the will of the Father completely coincided with the self-knowledge of Christ and even with His well-being. Just as it is natural for a person’s physical life to desire nutrition and procreation, just as it is natural for a person’s freely rational spiritual life to desire development and communication with others like themselves, so for the divine-spiritual life of Christ it was natural to desire the spiritual birth of the children of God, the gift of communication with her to people (cf. Matthew 23:37 par.). For Him it was essentially a desire for his own good, for the law of spiritual life is that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). In particular, the will of the Father, which determined the life of Christ, was expressed for Him in the law and prophets of the Old Testament. Having come to fulfill the will of the Father, Christ had to fulfill the law and the prophets. “Do not think,” He says, “that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Matthew 5:17). The attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Old Testament law and the prophets was such as it could only be: in the law and prophecies He saw the will of His Father and therefore attached immutable significance to them. Knowing how to distinguish in the law what Moses decreed due to the hardness of the Jews, from what expressed the true will of God, He spoke about the latter like this: “Truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle will pass from the law until everything is fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). But at the same time, we should pay primary attention to the fact that Christ considered it His duty not only to fulfill, or even not to fulfill the law, its instructions, but to fulfill the law and the prophets. Therefore, the immutable meaning of the law is limited by the limit: “until everything is fulfilled.” In other words, in His relation to the law and the prophets, Christ considered it important not only the subjective-moral side of the matter, but also the objective-religious one, not only that He fulfill the law, but also that “all that was written about Him in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms” (Luke 24:44). In this sense, “everything written” in the law and the prophets received complete certainty, constituted a specific task, and it was “due” not for anyone else, but precisely for Christ. The essence of “what was spoken in all Scripture” (Luke 24:27) boiled down to what had to be fulfilled and precisely had to be fulfilled by Christ: all Scripture turns out to testify about Him (John 5:39). To understand this meaning of the law for Christ, one must keep in mind that, according to Christ's explanation, not only the prophets prophesied, but the law also prophesied (Matthew 11:13): the law symbolized and symbolically prepared the same thing that the prophets clearly predicted. Christ came to fulfill what was predicted by the law and the prophets, and actually fulfilled it. In His life the world was given that highest good, i.e. eternal life, which was promised to people by God and predicted by the law and the prophets 27. In the divine dignity of Christ, the basis was given both for the fact that He alone could and really could fulfill the promises of His Father, and for the fact that the canon fulfilled the law and the prophets. He fulfilled them not as a slave, but as a son, heir, master. What is most remarkable is that He did not need to study the law and the prophets in order to know them (John 7:15): He carried within Himself the fulfillment of them. And this must be accepted not only in a dogmatic sense, but also in a psychological one. For Him, fulfillment was given directly in His own life, and through this subjective illumination the law and the prophets appeared before Him. Therefore, the meaning of Scripture was given to Him in a simultaneous comprehensive illumination, and not in a gradual study; He could directly determine the most important thing in the law, feel that it weighs heavier (Matt. 23:23), He knew not only the letter of Scripture, but also the power of God (Matt. 22:29; Mark 12:24), He is alone, not only in contrast to the scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites (Matt. 5:20), but even unlike those best of the Jews whom He chose as His disciples, He alone knew the true meaning of the prophecies and could open the minds of people to the understanding of Scripture (Luke 24:45). Therefore, true prophecy is only that which was fulfilled in Christ, and this is not only in the factual sense, but also in the epistemological sense. Jesus Christ fulfilled the law and the prophets with perfect freedom, like the Son of God. To explain this freedom of Christ, let us take as an example a private prophecy about the forerunner of Christ, Elijah. “His disciples asked Him: Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first? Jesus answered and said to them, “It is true that Elijah must come first and arrange everything.” But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him as they wanted; so the Son of man will suffer from them. Then the disciples understood that He was speaking to them about John the Baptist” (Matthew 17:10‒13). In the immediate application of the prophecies to Himself, Christ usually had in mind the meaning and power of the whole Scripture, and not its individual texts, and some of His quotations from the Old Testament cannot literally be found in Scripture 28. In particular, the name Son of Man, by which He usually called Himself and to which He mainly referred the prophecies about Him, is not connected with any specific place of sacred Scripture, but expresses, hidden throughout Scripture, the general law of the revelation of divine glory in human humiliation - a law that He alone expressed in all clarity and complete freedom from ideas about the external glory of the revelation of divine life. § 13. Fulfillment in Him of the Old Testament promises. The basis of the necessity of suffering and humiliation in His self-awareness If we wish to properly understand this divinely filial dignity of Christ in His relation to the Old Testament prophecies, we must not stop at what has been said. Being the fulfillment of the promises of His Father, Christ recognized Himself as His Son and heir not only of His word, but also of His relationship to man. The Old Testament of Jehovah with the Jewish people was not just a verbal agreement, but it was a system of living relations between Jehovah and His people, chosen by Him from all nations in order to demonstrate His glory through them. By this election, the work of revealing the glory of God in the world was connected with the fate of the Jewish people. This living and active union of Jehovah with the Jewish people was expressed in the system of His living relations with the Jewish people: He was for the Jewish people a father 29, a king 30, a legislator and judge 31, a husband 32, a doctor 33, a shepherd 34, a master of the vineyard 35 and a savior 36. However, in the historical reality of Old Testament times, this care of Jehovah for His people did not provide him with the fullness of those benefits that were promised by God to man; These relations of God to the Jews, expressed under the image of a king, a husband, a shepherd, were not the full reality. If true good consists in “drawing closer to God” (Ps. 72:28), then complete good is possible with a change of heart in a person, with the instillation of a new spirit in him - the spirit of God (Ezek. 36:26-27). Until this happened, the Jews did not have the fullness of good and even suffered under the rule of pagan peoples, they were scattered, filled with ulcers and iniquities, like sheep without a shepherd, like a wife abandoned by her husband, like a sick person who does not know healing. Complete goodness, the true kingdom of God, perfect salvation was the subject of the promise. These promises were fulfilled in Christ Jesus 37 . Who, as the Son of God, was the heir of God's relationship with the Jewish people, making this relationship a complete reality. Without appropriating the name of the Father, Christ, as the Son of God, was a king (Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3; John. 18:37), and with His first appearance, with the first word of His preaching, the kingdom of God truly approached man, and His very preaching was the gospel of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14-15 par., etc.). He was a legislator with divine authority and with divine freedom in relation to the Old Testament law, to which He gave perfect expression, making it a perfect spiritual law: “You have heard what was said to the ancients, but I speak to you” (Matthew 5:21, etc.). He was a judge. “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son; that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (John 5:22‒23 and many others). Therefore His time was a time of judgment. Od had the power to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6 par.). As legislator and judge, He was the only teacher, just as there is one Father who is in heaven (Matthew 23:9-10; John 13:13); He taught as one who had authority, and not like the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 7:29; Mark 1:22; Luke 4:32); He was Lord and Teacher (John 13:14). He was the bridegroom, and His time, being for some a time of terrible judgment, for others, especially for the wedding guests, was a joyful time in which they could not fast (Matt. 9:15; Mk. 2:19; OK. 5:34); He was the son of the owner of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-41; Mark 12:1-9; Luke 20:9-16) and the king’s son, for whom the king held a wedding feast (Matthew 22, cf. 25; Luke 12:30), while His disciples were the sons of the bridal chamber, and John the Baptist was the friend of the groom ( John 3:28‒29). He appeared as a true physician of souls and bodies, a healer of all diseases (Luke 13:32 and many others, cf. 4:23), a good shepherd (John 10, cf. Matthew 26:31 par.), a savior (John 3:17 and many others). What was the significance for the self-awareness of Jesus Christ of His inheritance of the Old Testament relationship of His Father to the Jewish people, His calling to establish a new covenant of God with people? Let us delve into the meaning of the Old Testament relations of Jehovah to the Jewish people. This relationship was a matter of His condescension towards people. The relationship of the father, king, and shepherd of the Jews did not bring external glory to the name of Jehovah, but outwardly humiliated it. The very election of the Jewish people presupposes the condescension of God: a small people was chosen as the bearer of the glory of God (Deut. 7:6-8). But not only were they a small people; the Jews were stiff-necked, they betrayed their God and for this they gave themselves over to the pagans, so that the name of their God was dishonored among the pagans (Isa. 52:5). This condescension of God towards Israel was especially clearly expressed in the image of the relationship of a husband to his wife. In Chapter XVI. The book of St. Ezekiel depicts in bright colors the desolation and unattractiveness of the “daughter of Jerusalem” with whom the Lord “entered into an alliance”: she was thrown into the field and was despised. The Lord raised and adorned her, and she achieved royal grandeur and perfect beauty. But then she “began to commit fornication, and squandered her fornication on everyone who passed by, giving herself to him,” and dishonored the name of “her husband.” Thus, the Lord, as a husband, took upon Himself the shame of Israel. Even more, He took upon Himself the burden of his sins, as his physician and savior; He said to Israel: “You have troubled Me with your sins, you have burdened Me with your iniquities” (Is. 43:24)... But this dishonor and difficulty for Jehovah was only an external dishonor to His name; dishonor did not extend to God’s own being and did not cause Him real suffering; it was a symbol of the future suffering of the Son of God. Jesus Christ, having inherited, as the Son of God, the Old Testament relationship of His Father to Israel, bore upon Himself, and, moreover, in the full reality of suffering, the condescension and humiliation that were contained in the images of the king, the judge, the husband; doctor, shepherd, savior. So He was the “servant of God” about whom Isaiah prophesied (Is.52; Is.53). This is what the inheritance of the old covenant meant for His identity and His work. The necessity of suffering and humiliation was given to Him along with His self-consciousness 38 . The researcher of gospel history should pay special attention to this. In Christ, the Son of God, the love of God for man became a full reality - meek, humiliated, suffering love: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Christ was the bearer of this divine love: He abided in the love of the Father (John 15:10). Therefore, His love, in the name of which He laid down His life for his friends (John 15:13), was not only a moral force, but it had a religious and objective meaning, it was a revelation of the Father’s love, a revelation of His being (1 John 4). To manifest the divine life, to open the being of God to Christ meant to manifest that love, which no one has more, to manifest it in humiliation, suffering, and complete self-denial. The inheritance of the Father's relationship to Israel, the relationship of king, judge, doctor, spoke to Christ with complete certainty about His suffering and humiliation. In saving, He gives His soul (Matthew 20:28 par.); healing, He takes upon Himself our infirmities and illnesses (Matthew 8:17); as a shepherd, He lays down His life for the sheep (John 10:11). That is why He is the heir of the Old Testament relationship of the Father as the Son of man, humiliated and suffering, all divine powers were granted to Him, the Son of God, precisely as the Son of man: the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins (Matthew 9:6 par.), the Son of man is the lord of the Sabbath (Matthew 12:8 par.), the Son of man is the sower of the good seed (Matthew 13:37), the Son of man coming in the kingdom (Matt. 16:28), the Son of man came to save the lost (Matt. 18:11 par.; Matt. 20:28 par.)... The name Son of man Christ most often applied to Himself, with it He connected all His sufferings, with it He connected the revelation of divine glory in His humiliation. The meaning of this name introduces us to the depth of Christ's self-awareness. To summarize everything that has been said about the self-awareness of Jesus Christ, we answer the question: “What do you think about Christ?” We can briefly answer this: He is the Son of man – the Son of God (Matthew 16:13‒16). The name Son of God denotes His dignity in which He dwells in us and is assimilated by us; in the name of the Son of Man the most secret matter of His personal humiliation is revealed. That is why only He called Himself by the name Son of Man (with the only apparent exception of Acts 7:56); we glorify Him as Christ, the Son of the living God. To believe in Christ means to see in the Son of man the Son of God (Matt. 16:13-16), as the centurion believed who stood at the cross of Jesus and exclaimed after His death: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk. 15:39; cf. Acts 8:37). In this regard, Jesus Christ generalized Himself even with the Jews, as God’s chosen people, as opposed to the non-Jews (John 4:22, although here one can see a simple correspondence with “you” v. 20). This was precisely His impression on the Jews, who said to Him: You, being a man, make Yourself God (John 10:33). In view of this, isn’t it strange the opinion of those who think of having Christianity without Christ?! Isn’t it strange also for those who think that messianic self-consciousness was formed in Christ only accidentally and gradually, such as Schenkel (Das Charaklerbild Jesu), E. Renan with his “plus on croyait en lui, plus il croyait en lui-meme” (Vie de Jesus). This feature of Jesus Christ cannot be denied even by such negative scientists as Strauss, op. With. S 208, Keim, "Der geschichtliche Christus", 2 AufI. 1865, S. 43, 108 – 109. But in this character of Christ’s fulfillment of the law and the prophets—precisely in the fact that He fulfilled them—lies the basis that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), that He, along with the fulfillment, abolished them, that after this the law ceased to have force as an Old Testament law, and the prophecies ceased to have meaning in the sense of prophecies: the prophets and the law prophesied before John, and after John the kingdom of God itself came. This is also the basis for the fact that the execution of the law could be at the same time a violation of it, which is discussed below. So Deut. 32:6 Moses says to the people of Israel about the Lord, “Is not this your father, who adopted you, created you, and formed you?” Therefore, by departing from God and worshiping other gods, the Jewish people became a rebellious and corrupt generation (v. 5). Therefore, the Jews, who asked Samuel to set a king over them, like other nations, thereby rejected the Lord so that He would not reign over them (1 Sam. 8:5. 7). However, from the time of David, pleasing to God, the visible kingdom became the symbol and organ of theocracy (2 Sam. 7). Also Isa. 33:22. Therefore, the service of the Israeli people to other gods was fornication in relation to Jehovah (Jer. 2 ff.; Ezek. 16; Hos. 1-3). So already in Marah God sweetened the waters for Israel and said to him: “If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and listen to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, then I will not bring on you any of the diseases that I brought on Egypt; for I am the Lord your healer” (Ex. 15:25‒26). This was evidenced by the constant deliverance of Jews from enemies. As the fulfiller of the promises, Jesus is the Christ (Luke 4:18–22) whom the Jews were waiting for. But the name Christ does not indicate either the essence of Christ (Matthew 22:41-45 par.), nor the image of the fulfillment of the promises. False expectations of the Jews were associated with this naming. The opinion (held by W. Baldensperger, “Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu im Lichte der mess. Hoffn. seiner Zeit,” 1892 S. 214–282, esp. 238, 243) that Christ from the very beginning of His work did not have a clear idea of ​​its outcome is completely false. You might be interested in: