If Jesus’ profound learning was confined to the scriptures and everyday life, then God the Father will only have expected him to pronounce on the scriptures and on everyday life, insofar as these reflected his own personal experience.
So it is inconceivable that God should have expected Jesus to preach a salvation which embraced this world, because that would have meant pronouncing on matters of which he knew little. Jesus therefore had to preach an other-worldly kingdom, to remain within the world in which he had authoritative knowledge. But he could still preach about a world in which character would mature and grow. And in fact he did; one of the last things he said was that his followers should carry on from where he left off. There followed his final prayer, Gethsemane and the final conflict. Now we are in a different position from Jesus; society has changed out of all recognition, and our problems are very different from his. So it would not be surprising if our solutions too had to be very different. We do understand something about the organisation of society: enough to grasp that we have reached that stage in evolution when evil, if unchecked, can subvert the whole world. And the Second World War should teach anyone, who bothers to read his history books with any attention, that you either submit to evil, or fight it tooth and nail. It is useless trying to appease evil, except to gain time when you have previously wasted it.
So what does God expect of us in the present world situation? In principle, the same as He expected of those people who met Jesus in the flesh: to use our eyes and to use our judgement. And if this means taking up arms, then we must take up arms. And if Clausewitz was right: that war is the continuation of political intercourse by other means; then we may have to resort to War. Weapons are now so terrible, that many people think the only justification for war is survival; yet only when you have looked into the abyss of defeat and seen what that involves, as Churchill did, can you decided if it is worth while fighting. In the same way, it is only when you have contemplated that Jesus may have been mistaken, and peered into the abyss of a world without a Saviour, that you begin to understand who he was, and to have a true measure of his greatness. The man in the street, who leaves the pews empty, may say he has done this; but does he want to live in a world where evil always triumphs? If Jesus taught us one thing more clearly than any other, it was that you surrender to evil only if you want to do so. You can always sacrifice your life for others. If the man in the street relegates Jesus to the past, then it looks as though he has made up his mind to surrender to evil, to any extent that evil says is necessary!
Was God satisfied with the outcome of Christ’s Ministry? If the resurrection happened, presumably he was. But did it happen? It is always dangerous to base a system of belief on an historical event, because if someone disproves the event the system crashes. Yet for better of worse, Christianity does it, and has done it for 2000 years. However many faults orthodoxy had, it clung to the resurrection; and was right to do so. And it is no more difficult believing in the resurrection, than it is making up your mind what God wants you to do today. Even if you make up your mind that you have a vocation, this too may be the wildest fantasy. There can never be any proof that it is wisdom. There is never any safety from self-deception: you can only believe. Even after it is all over, you may be in the same position as Jesus on the cross, wondering whether it was not all a ghastly mistake.
One gets great insight into human nature, watching power getting its hold on men. When a man is first given power, whether it be a little or a lot, he may seem so reasonable, he may be so reasonable; yet when he is asked to let go that power, he may cling to it ever more desperately. You see it in judges when they are not up to the job. Their bad habits get worse, and worse, and worse. We are all affected to some degree. When someone is up to the job, his self-confidence grows with experience; yet all too easily is he caught off guard and brought down. It is impossibly difficult to be lowly in one’s own eyes, and confident in the world of affairs; as difficult as it must have been for the contemporaries of Jesus to believe in him in defiance of most public opinion. Creation was not designed to make life easy.