The Fundamentals - 1917: Vol.2

66

The Fundamentals So likewise He is superior to human intercession. He never asks even His disciples; nor His nearest friends, and certainly never His mother Mary, to pray for Him. In Geth- semane He asked the three to watch with Him, He did not ask them to pray for Him. He bade them pray that they might not enter into temptation, but He did not ask them to pray that He should not, nor that He should be delivered out of it. Paul wrote again and again, “Brethren, pray for us”— pray for me.” But such was not the language'of Jesus. It is worthy of note that the Lord does not place His own people on a level with Himself in His prayers. He maintains the distance of His own personal dignity and supremacy between Himself and them. In His intercession He never uses plural personal pronouns in His petitions. He always says, “I ” and “me,” “these” and “them that thou hast given me ;” never “we” and “us,” as we speak and should speak in our prayers. THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 5. The sinlessness of the Saviour witnesses to His moral glory. The Gospels present us with one solitary and unique fact of human history—an absolutely sinless Man! In His birth immaculate, in His childhood, youth and manhood, in public and private, in death and in life, He was faultless. Hear some witnesses. There is the testimony of His enemies. For three long years the Pharisees were watching their victim. As another writes, “There was the Pharisee mingling in every crowd, hiding behind every tree. They examined His disci­ ples, they cross-questioned all around Him. They looked into His ministerial life, into His domestic privacy, into His hours of retirement. They came forward with the sole accusation they could muster—that He had shown disrespect to Caesar. The Roman judge who ought to know, pronounced it void.” There was another spy—Judas. Had there been one failure in the Redeemer’s career, in his .awful agony Judas would have remembered it for his comfort; but the bitterness of his de-

Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker