for whom Jesus dies are those predestined to the Kingdom, since His death must at last compel the Coming of the Kingdom.
This thought Jesus found in the prophecies of Isaiah, which spoke of the suffering Servant of the Lord. The mysterious description of Him who in His humiliation was despised and misunderstood, who, nevertheless bears the guilt of others and afterwards is made manifest in what He has done for them, points, He feels, to Himself.
And since He found it there set down that He must suffer unrecognised, and that those for whom He suffered should doubt Him, His suffering should, nay must, remain a mystery. In that case those who doubted Him would not bring condemnation [1] upon themselves. He no longer needs to adjure them for their own sakes to be faithful to Him and to stand by Him even amid reproach and humiliation; He can calmly predict to His disciples that they shall all be offended in Him and shall flee (Mark xiv. 26, 27); He can tell Peter, who boasts that he will die with Him, that before the dawn he shall deny Him thrice (Mark xiv. 29-31); all that is so set down in the Scripture. They must doubt Him. But now they shall not lose their blessedness, for He bears all sins and transgressions. That, too, is buried in the atonement which He offers.
- ↑ Weisse and Bruno Bauer had long ago pointed out how curious it was that Jesus in the sayings about His sufferings spoke of "many" instead of speaking of "His own" or "the believers." Weisse found in the words the thought that Jesus died for the nation as a whole; Bruno Bauer that the "for many" in the words of Jesus was derived from the view of the later theology of the Christian community. This explanation is certainly wrong, for so soon as the words of Jesus come into any kind of contact with early theology the "many" disappear to give place to the "believers." In the Pauline words of institution the form is: My body for you (1 Cor. xi. 24). Johannes Weiss follows in the footsteps of Weisse when he interprets the "many" as the nation (Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, 2nd ed., 1909, p. 201). He gives however, quite a false turn to this interpretation by arguing that the "many" cannot include the disciples, since they "who in faith and penitence have received the tidings of the Kingdom of God no longer need a special means of deliverance such as this." They are the chosen, to them the Kingdom is assured. But a ransom, a special means of salvation, is needful for the mass of the people, who in their blindness have incurred the guilt of rejecting the Messiah. For this grave sin, which is, nevertheless, to some extent excused as due to ignorance, there is a unique atoning sacrifice, the death of the Messiah. This theory is based on a distinction of which there is no hint in the teaching ot Jesus; and it takes no account of the predestinarianism which is an integral part ot eschatology, and which, in fact, dominated the thoughts of Jesus. The Lord is conscious that He dies only for the elect. For others His death can avail nothing, not even their own repentance. Moreover, He does not die in orcier that this one or that one may come into the Kingdom of God; He provides the atonement in order that the Kingdom itself may come. Until the Kingdom comes even the elect cannot possess it.
