Testimony 2 To His Words
Fairbairn, Rev. A. M. “Studies in the Life of Christ”. Chicago: W. P. Blessings Company, 1880. Pg 188
“Now here we have the point of view from which we must try to interpret His teaching as a transcript or explication of His own consciousness. His speech is the incarnation of His spirit, the mirror of His thought. His person is reflected in His words; the worth of the one explains the worth of the other.
His words do not expound a theology—they institute a religion. This is their essential and distinctive characteristic. In the Acts and the Epistles we have a theology: the disciples explain the mission and sayings of their Master, especially in their relation to the mind and will of God, and to the state and destinies of men.
But the Gospels simply record the words which reveal the consciousness of Jesus, which helps us, as it were, to stand within His spirit and know the Person who created our religion as He knew Himself. And it is because His words stand in this relation to His Person that they are so creative.
It is of far greater importance that we know what Jesus thought of Himself than that we know what Paul thought of Him; what the Son knew of the Father is of diviner worth to the world than what the disciples thought concerning Him.
Religion precedes theology; every theology runs back into a religion, and every spiritual religion into a creative personality; and so the Person and words of Jesus underlie alike the religion of Christ and the discourses and discussions of His apostles. It is more possible to interpret the theology through the religion that the religion through the theology.
Paul is inexplicable without Christ, but Christ is not unintelligible without Paul. The disciple explains the Master only after the Master has explained the disciple.
We can hardly approach the words of Christ without reverence. As we study them we almost feel as if we were overhearing His speech, or looking into His spirit, or watching the ebb and flow of emotion on His wondrous face.
Theologians of a certain school have almost resented the attempt to present Christ the Teacher, as if it were better for Christian thought to be busied with His work than with His words.”
