Would Jesus have said to his disciples, “You are guilty of crucifying me, because sin like yours will land me there”? Peter may have denied him; but he did not crucify him, except in some theologian’s mind. The disciples fled; they did not bring about his death. How difficult it is even to discuss the problem, save with those with imagination enough to look through Jesus’ own eyes.
Still fewer men can imagine what it would be like to have to save the world oneself. If you are one of those few, you must at least have a clear idea of what you would want to save the world from. One man may know that Jesus saved him from leading an insignificant life. But whilst this may be true for him, another man may say he was saved from hardness of heart and lack of charity, which poisoned all family intimacy. A third may say that without the indwelling spirit of God, he could not have conceived anything beyond a parochial existence. A fourth may be unable to see that he needs to be saved from anything; and only a Christian pedant able to find fault with his way of life. How do you reconcile a multitude of differing accounts? It is not easy: there are so many strands, that no theory can conceivably be adequate to accommodate them all. But through Jesus’ own eyes things looked quite different. If one puts oneself into his shoes, even for a moment, it is obvious that he could not afford to fail. Failure would dishonour God; and there could be no second attempt. The only thing he could do was reveal the nature of God, and leave men to make of it what they would. He could not tailor his Ministry to the needs of individual men.
So how was he to behave? The means available to him largely dictated how he should behave. If he were simply to be a good man inspired by God, he would be doing no better than the prophets before him. God dwelt in them; they had to prophesy truthfully, not adding one word of their own, or the penalty was death. So he must not indulge in egotism for one single moment. He knew this was the rule for prophets; and he was amongst other things a prophet. Even if Christ was suddenly aware he had super-natural power, and had to decide how to use it, because all the temptations were concerned with the abuse of power; so had Elijah and Elisha according to tradition. The indwelling spirit of God was nothing new. The difference was that Christ announced, like John the Baptist, that the Kingdom of Heaven had come; whereas the prophets only said it would come. It had come, because as he explained to John, the blind received their sight, the lame walk, the lepers made clean, the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the poor have the gospel preached to them. And the good news was of a return to the tradition of a theocratic kingdom, with himself as king, within the envelope of the Roman peace. He never challenged Rome; and the laws of his kingdom were laws of love, breach of which was only punished in the day of judgement.
What he could not do was believe merely that he should submit to the will of God; he had to decide how to act. And it is fair to say once he had begun, he acted with the most amazing consistency of purpose. Merely to submit to God’s will, is to be bankrupt of any idea how to save the world; and it is best then not even to think of beginning. God does not rejoice in men behaving like submissive doormats; to do his will, you need the same ruthless fixity of purpose and tenacious mother-wit, as you do to accomplish any great action; and which I would say Jesus had. God does not want to be represented by men too frightened to act.
Jesus was spared any knowledge of science, both the terrifying scale of the Universe, which Pascal found appalling, and the amazing advances of science which have remoulded society. He decided to save the world by restoring men’s faith in God. He did the only thing he could do: demonstrate the power entrusted to him by God, and therefore his relationship with God, and hope that men would see that this same relationship should exist between God and the human soul, and willingly share in it.
Albert Schweitzer ends his book on J.S.Bach by agreeing with the view that an inner integrity is necessary to play Bach properly; not only in the main performers, but in every performer; not only technically but in spirit too; not only to start with, but throughout. It high lights the difference between Bach and his son. Dazzling, popular, and successful, C.P.E.Bach had no soul as compared with his father, which is obvious when one listens to his music.