with the Lamb. The seven Spirits of God are the Spirit of the Lamb just as the throne of God is the throne of the Lamb.

4. His Titles, Glory, Triumphs, and Worship. This "revelation of Jesus Christ" is remarkable for the number and variety of significant titles ascribed to him. He is "the Alpha and the Omega," "the first and the last," "the faithful and true witness," "the beginning of the creation of God," "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David," "the Word of God," "King of kings and Lord of lords," "the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star." He appears also in the visions as a mighty angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud and a rainbow, and "his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire" (x, 1). He is seen standing on Mount Zion with twelve times twelve thousand of his holy ones (xiv, 1), and also sitting on a white cloud, like a son of man, having a golden crown and a sharp sickle (xiv, 14). He appears also as a heavenly conqueror sitting on a white horse, followed by the armies of heaven, wearing many diadems, smiting the nations and ruling them with a rod of iron (xix, 11 ff.). Along with God he receives the worship of all the hosts of earth and heaven (v, 8-13; vii, 9, 10).

5. The Grand Total Impression of the Revelation. It is not necessary to put forward any theory or exposition of this remarkable Apocalypse in order to perceive its witness to the adorable personage, whose name stands at the beginning, and whose relation to the throne of God is made so prominent throughout. Nor need we enter here upon any discussion of peculiar verbal expressions, or of the various symbols employed by the writer. It is quite sufficient to appeal to the grand total impression which this apocalyptical revelation of Jesus Christ must needs make upon any appreciative reader. The transcendent personality, whom the author of this book adored, is exalted into heavenly splendor, is "in the midst of the throne of God," and receives ascriptions of blessing and honor and glory and dominion from "every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them" (v, 13). But it is his great purpose and desire to restore men to the tree of life and the "Paradise of God" (ii, 7). His messages to the churches are salutations of grace and peace, but he also executes judgment in righteousness. His ultimate aim is to make all things new (xxi, 5); hence his authority is over heaven and earth; he is seated on his Father's throne (iii, 21), and the kingdom of the world is to become his own (xi, 15). This doctrine of the Apocalypse is in essential harmony with Paul's conception of the rule of Christ, "He must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. xv, 25).

CHAPTER VII

THE PAULINE CHRISTOLOGY

1. Significance of Paul's Conversion. In the study of the Pauline portraiture of Jesus Christ we are impressed from first to last with the fact that the revelation of Jesus, which came to him at the time of his conversion, was a most decisive inner experience, and the memory of it ever afterward stood forth as a living vision in his soul. The reader should carefully study and compare the narratives in Acts ix, 3-9, 17-19; xxii, 6-16; xxvi, 12-20, with the statements of 1 Cor. ix, 1; xv, 8; Gal. i, 12, 16; and Eph. iii, 3. That revelation worked a radical crisis in his religious nature, and during all his subsequent life Paul seemed "determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. ii, 2). His uniform testimony was, "It is Christ Jesus that died, yea, rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us" (Rom. viii, 34). This revelation was like a voice out of heaven speaking in his soul with an authority he could never question. To his thought thereafter God was in Christ and Christ was a new and deeper revelation of God than he had known before. In all his epistles he associates the names of "God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." With slight variations we find these holy names thus placed together both in the salutations with which his epistles open, and in the benedictions with which they close. God and Christ are existing in one superior glory, and are the source of "grace and peace." In 2 Cor. xiii, 14, we have the trinitarian formula: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all." Unlike the formula of Matt. xxviii, 19, the name of the Lord Jesus here precedes that of God, the Father.

2. The Thessalonian Epistles. The Thessalonian epistles make prominent the coming of the Lord Jesus from heaven, and by various allusions they represent him as the Son of God, raised from the dead, having power to deliver men from the wrath to come, and to gather together all who have salvation in him and catch them away to meet him in the heavens (1 Thess. i, 10; ii, 19; iii, 13; iv, 14-17; v, 23). There is to be a "revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power in flaming fire,

rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus" (2 Thess. i, 7, 8; comp. Psa. lxix, 6; Jer. x, 25; Isa. lxvi, 14, 15). "He will take away the man of sin with the breath of his mouth (ii, 8; comp. Isa. xi, 4; Job iv, 9; Dan. vii, 11, 26), but he will glorify his saints, establish them, and guard them from the evil one, and direct their hearts into the love of God, and the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ" (ii, 14; iii, 3, 5, 16). From all of which it is evident that the Lord Jesus, as set forth in these earliest epistles of Paul, is Lord of heaven and earth, and exercises divine judgment and power in the administration of the kingdom of God. All this accords perfectly with the doctrine of the earliest apostolic preaching.

3. The Corinthian Epistles. At the beginning of the first epistle to the Corinthians we have "the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" presented as an object of worship to "all in every place who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints." Further on (vers. 23, 24) it is said that "Christ crucified is to the Jews a stumblingblock and to the Gentiles foolishness, but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, he is God's power and God's wisdom." To all such he becomes "wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (ver. 30). The gospel of Christ is "God's wisdom in a mystery," and they who have "the mind of Christ" have a knowledge of "the deep things of God" which worldlings cannot apprehend (ii, 6-16). "There is one God, the Father, of whom are all things; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (viii, 6), and "Christ is God's" (iii, 23). He would have the Corinthians know "that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God" (xi, 3). The spiritual rock that followed Israel in the desert was Christ (x, 4). This Lord Jesus Paul recognizes as his own judge, who searches him through and through (ó ávaxρivwv), and who in his own time will "bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts" (iv, 4, 5). For he has a day of revelation, and before his tribunal every man must be made manifest according to his works (i, 7, 8; iii, 13; comp. 2 Cor. v, 10; Acts xvii, 31). He is the second Adam, the man from heaven, a life-giving spirit, who is to abolish death, and subject all things to God (xv, 22, 24-28, 45, 47). In the second epistle we are told that "the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not yea and nay, but in him is yea. For how many soever be the promises of God, in him (i.e., Christ) is the yea: wherefore also

through him is the Amen, unto the glory of God through us"1 (i,19,20). In him the apostle and all saints find an unfailing source of inspiration unto every good word and work (ii, 12, 14, 17; xii, 19; xiii, 3, 4). His grace was shown in the fact "that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich" (viii, 9). He is the image of God reflected as in a mirror to the adoring saint, who is thereby "transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (iii, 17, 18). That is, as the immediate context shows, the Lord Christ is the illuminating Spirit, through whom the veil of spiritual darkness is taken from the heart, and men are permitted to behold in him the glory of God. For the apostle goes on to say that "the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God," is ready to beam on all such as do not permit their thoughts to be blinded through unbelief. "For it is God, that said, Out of darkness light shall shine, who shined in our hearts for an illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (iv, 4-6). The glory that shined from the face of Moses by reason of his speaking with God was so overpowering "that the children of Israel could not look stedfastly" thereon (iii, 7; comp. Exod. xxxiv, 29); how much more excessive must be "the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”! It is as true now as in the time of Moses that man may not see the face of God and live (Exod. xxxiii, 20), but the doctrine of Paul (as of John i, 18) is that God has graciously provided a heavenly illumination by means of "the gospel of the glory of Christ," in which gospel, as in a mirror, the glory of God as it shines in the face of Jesus Christ is reflected, and we all "with unveiled face," beholding in that mirror the glory of the Lord, receive along with the blessed vision "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God."

4. The Epistle to the Galatians. The epistle to the Galatians, aside from the salutation and the benediction, and a few expressions common to all the epistles, contains little that bears directly on the doctrine of the person of Christ. We may note the emphasis with which its author speaks of the indwelling Christ who enables him to "live unto God. With Christ I have been crucified; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me: and that which I now live in the flesh I live in faith which is of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (ii, 19, 20; comp.

1According to Meyer the distinction between the yea and the amen is that the yea denotes the certainty and confirmation objectively given in Christ, and the amen is the certainty subjectively existing, and which finds expression through the experience and ministry of the gospel. In Christ and through Christ are all God's promises certified so as to redound through us to the glory of God.

iv, 19). In iv, 4-6, he furnishes the definite concept of the Son of God as "sent forth," "born of a woman," "born under law," and providing that God might "send forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father."

5. The Epistle to the Romans. The epistle to the Romans, like the one to the Galatians, deals mainly with the saving mediation of Christ, but there are several passages which refer to the person of Christ in a way that demands our attention. At the beginning of this epistle the apostle declares himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ, whom he describes (vers. 3 and 4) as "born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead." Here, as in Acts xiii, 29-39, the humiliation of Christ and his exaltation by the resurrection are designedly contrasted. Paul, like Peter (comp. Acts ii, 29-36), loved to think of his Lord as the son of David and heir of all the promises; not permitted to see corruption in the tomb, but raised up from the dead, and enthroned at the right hand of God (viii, 34). Thus was the Son of God placed beyond the power and dominion of death (vi, 9) so as to be "Lord of both the dead and the living" (xiv, 9). He is descended from the Israelite fathers according to the flesh, and, according to a time-honored punctuation and interpretation of Rom. ix, 5, he is also "over all, God blessed forever." Through him "will God judge the secrets of men" (ii, 16). In v, 12-21, he is set forth as the great antitype of Adam through whom sin entered into the world, for through Jesus Christ shall "grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life." He is "God's own Son, sent in the likeness of sinful flesh" (viii, 3), but he pleased not himself, and submitted to reproaches that he might receive his redeemed ones to the glory of God (xv, 3-7). Paul as his minister unto the Gentiles has great "glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God" (ver. 17), and he visits the churches "in the fulness of the blessing of Christ" (ver. 29). He begs his brethren "by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit" to join with him in "prayers to God" (ver. 30).

6. The Epistle to Philemon. In the short epistle to Philemon we may note the warmth with which Paul twice (vers. 1 and 9) calls himself a "prisoner of Christ Jesus," and also mentions Epaphras as his "fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus" (23). He praises the faith which Philemon has "toward the Lord Jesus" (5), and prays that it may become "effectual unto Christ" (6), and that his own heart may be refreshed "in Christ." He would fain receive profit of Philemon "in the Lord" (20), and he trusts that he will receive Onesimus "no longer as a slave, but more than a