 |  |
MARK.--Christ is set forth as SERVANT. "Behold My Servant" (Isa. 42: 1).
Christ is set forth as the BRANCH.
"Behold I will bring forth My Servant, the Branch" (Zech. 3: 8).
Christ, as a servant, needs no genealogy.
Christ, relatively, presented as in the lowest earthly position, a SERVANT.
LUKE.--Christ is set forth as MAN. "Behold the Man" (Zech. 6: 12).
Christ is set forth as the BRANCH.
"Behold the man whose name is the Branch" (Zech. 6: 12).
Christ's genealogy is traced back to Adam.
Christ, intrinsically, presented as the MAN.
JOHN.--Christ is set forth as GOD. "Behold your God" (Isa. 40: 9).
Christ is set forth as Jehovah's BRANCH.
"In that day shall Jehovah's Branch be beautiful and glorious" (Isa. 4: 2).
Christ, as God, can have no genealogy. He "was" in the beginning.
Christ, intrinsically, presented as "GOD", mediatorially as the "WORD",
and savingly as "JESUS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD",
"THE WORD MADE FLESH".
#3.
The Logos, in Philosophy and in Revelation.
pp. 92 - 99
When the Apostle was confronted with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers at
Athens, he did not use words of scorn or derision, but rather of sympathy. The Jew in
him, as well as the Christian, abominated the sight of idols, and we read that "his spirit
was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry" (Acts 17: 16).
Nevertheless, when he was arraigned before these philosophers, he did not alienate them
by ridicule or contempt, but rather used the local conditions as a starting point for his
speech:
"I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD, Whom, therefore,
ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you" (Acts 17: 23).
It is in much the same spirit that John, at Ephesus, surrounded by Greek and
Alexandrian philosophy, opens his Gospel with the title Logos. There is no introduction
to the title, no leading up to it, but simply a statement with which he expected most of his
hearers to be in agreement. After the prologue of 1: 1-18, the title Logos is never again
used of Christ, the whole object of the Gospel being to prove that the Messiah, the Son of
God, fulfils all and more than all that the ancient philosophers, or the writers of the
Hebrew Wisdom literature, ever conceived.
We referred above to Paul's attitude at Athens, which is actually recorded, as an
illustration of what was probably John's attitude at Ephesus, which is left to be inferred.
Let us now acquaint ourselves a little further with the position at Athens. The