Note: [¹⁴1,¹5, Herner remarks (p. 42): “The Epistle of James knows the expression ‘ The Lord Jesus Christ (1¹ 2¹) and, therefore, uses κύριος of Christ. Since this is the case, we do not venture definitely to deny that Christ is meant in the expression ‘ the coming of the Lord (5⁷ €d), although Peter’s remark on the advent of the day of God (2 P 312) makes such an ascription unlikely, and it is to be noted that in the preceding and following verses (5¹⁰,¹1) κύριος is used of God.” ³ Bengel, Bassett, Mayor.

The attitude of Jude is precisely the same. He does indeed speak of Christ in the address of his Epistle Jn by the simpler formal title of Jesus vive tro Christ, but in accordance with his description of himself at that point as the “slave” of this ‘ Jesus Christ,’ he tends to multiply reverential titles in speaking of Him elsewhere. To Him our Lord is always our Lord Jesus Christ (17, 21), Jesus [Christ our Lord (23), four only Master (δεσπότης) and Lord, Jesus Christ (4)—a phrase, this last one, so strong that many commentators balk at it and wish to render it ‘ the only Master, viz., God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.³ But we cannot feel surprised that one who pointedly calls himself in the first verse of his Epistle “slave” of Jesus Christ, should apply the correlative of that term, Despotic Master and Lord” to Jesus Christ, three verses later. No doubt “no Jew could use” such a phrase without thinking of the one Master in heaven”;⁴ but that is only evidence that this Jew thought of Jesus who was his ‘ Lord and whose ‘” slave” he recognized himself _ as being, as, in this eminent sense, his Masteriin heaven” (cf. 2 P 2¹). Obviously it is the testimony of these two Epistles that Jesus was conceived by His first disciples as their divine Lord and Master.

The designations of our Lord in 1 Peter are notably simple, but none the less significant. Peter’s favorite designation for Him (as it is Paul’s) is the simple ‘Christ,’ used, ordinarily at least, as a proper name, though of course not without its appellative significance still clinging to it and in one or two instances (1¹¹,¹¹) becoming prominent (¹¹,¹¹n 21 gi5teas 45 glory, Next to the simple Christ Peter uses by predilection the simplest of the solemn compound names, Jesus Christ (1¹,²,³,⁷,¹³ 2⁵ 3²¹ 4¹¹), In the address to the Epistle he sets this designation in its place in the trine formula of Father, Spirit and Jesus Christ, with the effect of suggesting the Threefold Name, that is to say, with underlying implication of the Trinity.⁵ Similarly in 1¹¹ where the Spirit of Christ,” that is, most naturally, the Spirit which proceeds from and represents Christis spoken of as having resided in the ancient prophets, the preéxistence of Christ is assumed.⁷ Besides these proper names, Peter speaks of our Lord by the designation ‘ Lord (2³,¹³ 3¹⁵, cf. 2²⁵ and Bigg in loc. and p. 109) and in doing so applies an Old Testament text to Him in which Lord stands for Jehovah,’ and thus assimilates Him to the divine Being. By a combination of this great title and the solemn Messianic name of ‘ Jesus Christ,” he calls Jesus ‘ our Lord Jesus Christ (1³);⁶ and it is noticeable that it is by this significant title that he designates Jesus when he is speaking of God as not only His Father but His God —having reference doubtless to “ the days of His flesh” (Heb 5⁷), that is to say, to His humiliation.⁷ No other titles are applied to our Lord in this Epistle, except that in 2 He is spoken of as the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls,’ and at ³,⁴ as Chief Shepherd,’ modes of description in which the soteriological rather than the ontological element is prominent.

In comparison with 1 Peter, 2 Peter makes use of more elaborate designations in speaking of Christ. eee smd Not only does the simple Jesus’ not occur in this Epistle, but not even the simple Christ’: and the less complex compound Jesus Christ occurs in its simplicity only once—in the formality of the address. The simple ‘ Lord,” on the other hand, seems to be used of Christ in a few cases (3⁸,⁹,¹⁰,¹⁵),⁸ and a number of more or less sonorous combinations of it occur: Jesus our Lord (1²), “our Lord Jesus Christ” (1⁸,¹⁴,¹⁶), “the Lord and Saviour (3²), our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1¹¹ 2²⁰ 3¹⁸), with the last of which may be connected the great phrase our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ (1¹). Two things that are notable in this list of designations are the repeated use of Saviour of our Lord, and the clear note of deity which is struck in their ascriptions. Saviour itself a divi lat ferred to Christ h is a divine appellation transrerred to rist:” to whom it is applied fifteen times out of the twenty-three in which it occurs in the New Testament. In 2 Peter The day of the Lord, however, will come as a thief (v. 10). In verse 15 the course of thought in verse g is repeated, and the reader is exhorted to account the long-suffering of the Lord salvation. This interpretation has in its favor that the expression our Lord (v. 15) can be referred to Christ. Apart from Rev 4¹¹ 11¹⁵ (2 Tim 1⁸) it is the constant rule in the N. T. and in this Epistle (1²,⁸,¹¹,¹⁴,¹⁶ 3²⁰ 3¹⁸) that the pronoun ἡμῶν is adjoined to κύριος only when κύριος refers to Christ; and already on this ground κύριος in v. 15 can scarcely designate God. The declaration in v. 8 that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, causes no great difficulty, since it is no unwonted occurrence in the N. T. that a statement made of Lord Jehovah is referred to Lord Christ, wholly apart from the circumstance that the statement in question is scarcely an Old Test. citation. On the other hand, our explanation is rendered uncertain by the expression in Vv. 12, the coming of the day of God. Since v. 12 speaks of the day of God,’ the day of the Lord is commonly explained in connection with it; and as ultimate result there emerges that nothing assured can be attained concerning the meaning of 3⁸9¹⁰,¹5.”

Note: Cf. Isaiah 43¹¹, “I, even I, am the Lord and beside me there is no Saviour”; Is 43³, “The Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour,” cf. 45¹⁵,²¹ 49²⁶ 60¹⁶ 63⁸, Jer 14⁸, “O thou hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in time of trouble; Hos 13⁴, “Beside me there is no Saviour” (cf. 1 Sam 10¹⁹ 143⁹, 2 Sam 22³, Ps 710 177 106²¹). But cf. Is 19²⁰ where the Lord promises to send “a Saviour and a mighty one”: and such passages as Judges 3⁹,¹⁵, where the Saviour sent is a man raised up by God for the purpose (cf. Judges 6³⁶, 2 Kings 13⁵, Neh 9²). The O. T. term for Saviour is the Hiphal participle of ישע, viz, ID

it occurs five times, always of Christ, and never alone, but always coupled under a single article with another designation, and so forming a solemn formula. In this respect the two phrases, ‘ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1¹¹ 2²⁰ 3¹⁸) and ‘ our God and Saviour Jesus Christ (1¹) are perfectly similar and must stand or fall together. Not only, however, is the deity of our Lord openly asserted in the direct naming of Him here ‘ our God and Saviour.⁹ It is almost equally clearly asserted in the parallel phrase, ‘ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” And it is implied in the conjunction of God and ‘ Jesus our Lord in 1² as coobjects of saving knowledge (cf. 1 2²⁰ 3¹⁸), and in the ascription to ‘ our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ of an eternal Kingdom (1¹¹).¹⁰ Besides these designations, our Lord is called by Peter, as by Jude (4), our ‘ Master (δεσπότης) with the same high implications (2¹);¹¹ and the declaration of God the Father at the transfiguration that He is ‘ God’s Son,” ‘ God’s Beloved,’ is cited (1¹⁷) with profound and reverential satisfaction.¹²

Perhaps nothing is more notable in the designations of our Lord in these Epistles—James, Jude, 1 Peter, 2 Peter,—than the dropping out of sight of the title Son of God.” Only on ot in the single passage in 2 Peter in which the testimony of the Father in the transfiguration scene is appealed to, is the term Son applied to Jesus at all. The case is very different in the Johannine Epistles. Of them the application to Jesus of the title “Son of God,’ in one form or another, is preéminently characteristic¹³’ He is called, indeed, simply Jesus’ (1 Jno 2²² 4³ 4¹⁵ 5¹), and ‘ Christ without adjunct (1 Ino [2²² 51¹.¹⁷ 2 Ino 9); and alse Jesus Christ (1 πὸ 4² [4⁵] 5⁶ 2 Jno 7); and even Jesus Christ the Righteous’ (1 Jno 2¹);¹⁸ and He is described in the great phrases ‘ Word of Life (1 Jno 1¹), ‘ Advocate with the Father (2¹), Saviour of the World (4¹⁴). But the favorite designations applied to Him in these Epistles emphasize His divine Sonship. The most common formula employed is the simple Son standing in correlation with God or the Father (1 Jno 2222224 41014 5⁹,¹⁰,¹¹,¹², 5 ng 9); but the full form Son of God occurs also with some frequency (1 Jno 3⁸ 4¹⁵ 5⁵,¹²,¹³,²⁰) Vand quite ‘a variety of ex panded phrases appear by its side, such as ‘ God’s only begotten Son (1 Jno 4⁹ cf. 5¹⁸), ‘ Jesus, God’s Son (1 Jno 1⁷), ‘ God’s Son, Jesus Christ (1 Ino 1³ 3²

5²⁰), Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father (2 Jno 3). By means of this constant designation of Jesus as ‘ the Son of God,” John keeps before his readers His divine dignity. He is not of the world, but has come into the world (5²⁰) upon a mission, to destroy all that is evil (5⁸) and to save the world (1⁷ 4¹⁰⁻¹⁴ 5⁵), whereunto He was sent (4⁹,¹⁰,¹⁴), that all might have life in Him (5⁵,¹²,¹); for God has given unto us eternal life and this life is in ‘ the Son,” so that He who hath ‘ the Son hath the life (3¹¹,¹²). So closely is He associated with God the Father (1³ 3²³) that to deny Him is to deny the Father (2²³) and to confess Him is to confess the Father (2²³ 4¹) and to abide in Him is to abide in the Father (2²⁴, cf. 1³). Obviously to John the Son of God is Himself God; and what is thus implied in the current use of this title is openly declared at the close of the Epistle, where of ‘ the Son of God, Jesus Christ it is solemnly affirmed, This is the True God and Eternal Life” (5²⁰).

In this remarkable concluding paragraph the Apostle is encouraging his readers in view of the sin which is in the world and which they feel to be True God Working in themselves. We know,” says he, ‘” that every one who has been begotten of God”—that is to say, every truly Christian man, who has been born of the Spirit— sinneth not”: not because he has of himself power to preserve himself pure, but because ‘” He that was begotten of God ”— that is to say, God’s own Son, Jesus Christ—“ keepeth him and the evil one toucheth him not.” This is but the Johannine way of saying what Peter says in his way when he assures his readers that Christians “ are guarded by “the power of God through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 P 1⁵). But John proceeds with his encouraging message. “” We know,” he adds, that we are of God and the whole world lieth in the evil one. And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ.” God is He that is true; and what is said is that if we are in His Son Jesus Christ, we are in God. Why? Because Jesus Christ Himself, being His Son, is Himself just this God that is true; and therefore it is just this that the Apostle adds: “This is,” he says with the emphatic demonstrative,—‘” this is the True God and Life Eternal (5²⁰). The upshot of the whole matier, then, is that those who are in Jesus Christ need have no fear in the midst of the temptations of earth: for to be in Jesus Christ is to be in the only real God, since Jesus Himself is this Real God,” and as such ‘ Eternal Life

Here, then, are two new descriptive epithets applied to Jesus, as the ‘ Son of God.’ He is ‘ Eternal Life, —which recalls the figurative designation of Him as ihe Life in the Gospel of John (14⁶ 11²⁵, ef. 1⁵,⁹, tt Jno 1², cf. 1. Jno 2⁸). And Hels the True) the Real, God,’ the God who corresponds in every respect to the idea of God, who is what God ought to be and is. There is only one true God,” John quotes his Master as declaring (Jno 17³), to know whom is eternal life: and now he tells us that Jesus Christ, because the Son of this only true God, is Himself this True God and this ‘ Eternal Life.”¹⁹ He then who ¹⁹ For the exposition of this passage see especially Weiss (Meyer, 1900), pp. 160, 161. But on the clause, “He that is begotten of God,” see Westcott, p. 185, column 1.

is in Him is in ‘ the True God and has ‘ the Eternal Life,— the Eternal Life that was in the Father and has been manifested in His ‘ Son Jesus Christ,” and is now declared by the Apostle in order that his readers, too, may enter into that fellowship which he was himself enjoying “ with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1³). The Epistles of John, also, thus culminate not only in calling Christ ‘ God,’ but in so calling Him God as to throw out into emphasis that He is all that God is. James calls Him the Glory’: Peter the great God: Paul God layer all’: John the Real God.’”¹⁴ It was because he so conceived Jesus as God’s unique Son (1 Jno 4⁹) that John is able to speak of the forgiveness of sins “ through His Name “(1 Jno 2¹²), and of faith “in His Nome securing eternal life (5¹³, cf. 3²³), and even (3 Jno 7) of the whole Christian course turning on loyalty to the Name,’ —that is, obviously, Jesus’ Name,—without further definition. Clearly, to him, the Name of Jesus’ was the Name that is above every name.¹⁵

Even a rapid glance like this over the designations applied to Christ in the Epistles written by Christ’s How Our Lord’s immediate companions will suffice to show that the estimate put upon His ¹personality by Paul has nothing in it peculiar to that writer. There may meet us, as we pass from Epistle to Epistle, varying methods of giving expression to the faith common to all: but it is common to all to look upon Jesus Christ as a divine

The Catholic Epistles i person. So far as appears it did not occur to anyone in the primitive Christian community to put a lower estimate upon His personality than that; and writer vies with writer only in his attempts to give his faith in his divine Redeemer clear and emphatic expression. If there was a more primitive conception than this of Jesus’ dignity it had died away and left no trace behind it before the Christian community found a voice for itself. Whether that can be conceived to have happened in the course of the few years which intervened between the public career and death of Jesus and the rise of a Christian literature,—say, in James, —or, say, in Paul,—or, say, in the evangelic documents,—each one must judge for himself. But in seeking to form an opinion on this matter, it should be borne in mind that there intervened only a very brief) period indeed between the death of Christ and the beginnings of Christian literature: that much of this or literature credibly represents itself as the product of _ actual companions of our Lord: and that it was all _ written in the presence of such companions, reflects _ their opinions, and was published under their eye.) That absolutely no trace of a lower view of the person of Christ is discernible in any portion of this literature seems in these circumstances not only a valid suggestion but a convincing proof that no such lower view had been prevalent in the Christian community: that, in a word, the followers of Jesus must be supposed to have been heartily convinced of His deity from the very beginning.

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Footnotes

1. We must not press, however, the ignoble connotations of “slaves” to our modern minds: entire subjection is all that is imputed. Cf. Mayor on Jude 1. ↩

2. Sven Herner, op. cit., thinks that Lord is used of Jesus only at 5⁷,⁸, Mayor on 1⁷ thinks it probable that it is used of Jesus also at ↩

3. See on the passage, Bigg and Mayor iz loc. ↩

4. The phrase is Mayor’s (iz loc.): who notes also the use of the word δεσπόσυνοι by Julius Africanus (Eus. H. E., i. 7) to denote the kinsfolk of Jesus, and justly remarks that this implies a current earlier emblovment of δεσπότας of our Lord. ↩

5. Cf. Hort in loc. (pp. 17, 18): “The three clauses of this verse beyond all reasonable question set forth the operation of the Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son, respectively. Here, therefore, as in several Epistles of Paul (1 Cor 12⁴⁻⁶, 2 Cor 13¹⁴, Eph 4⁴⁻⁶), there is an implicit reference to the Threefold Name. In no passage is there any indication that the writer was independently working out a doctrinal scheme: a recognized belief or idea seems to be everywhere presupposed. How such an idea could arise in the mind of St. Paul or any other Apostle without sanction from a word of the Lord it is difficult to imagine: and this consideration is a sufficient answer to the doubts which have, by no means unnaturally, been raised whether Mt 28¹⁹ may not have been added or recast in a later generation. St. Peter, like St. Paul, associates with the subject of each clause, if one may so speak, a distinctive function as towards mankind: on their relations to the Divine Unity he is silent.” ⁷Cf. Bigg in loc. (p. 108), “The words to ἐν αὐτοῖς πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ must be accepted quite frankly. Christ was in the prophets, and from Him came their inspiration.” ↩

6. Cf. Hort in loc., p. 30, who has a long, analytical discussion of it. ↩

7. Cf. Bigg in loc. ↩

8. Bigg on 3⁹: “The Lord is certainly Christ”; on 3¹⁵: “Our Lord must undoubtedly signify Christ, to whom alone the doxology in verse 18 is addressed.” Less decidedly, Sven Herner, op. cit, pp. 44, 45: 5 Peter has some passages about which, in our opinion, no clear decision can be come to. According to 3³ sed. scornful mockers shall come and say, Where is the promise of His coming?’ It is almost the universa judgment that the reference here is to the coming of Christ. Against the scorn of the mockers the Apostle suggests that a day with our Lord is as a thousand years (v. 8), and therefore there can be no talk of slackness. The Lord is not slack with His promise, but is longsuffering to us-ward and not willing that any should perish (v. 9). ↩

9. That the passage is to be taken so is convincingly argued by Spitta, von Soden, and especially Bigg. Cf. Lightfoot on 1 Clem 2, where some of the patristic parallels are noted. ↩

10. The phrase “eternal Kingdom” is found here only in the N. T.; but cf. Mart. Polyc., 20, Clem. Hom., viii. 23; x. 25; xiii. 20, etc. ↩

11. Spitta, von Soden, etc. (cf. Wetstein) take the δεσπότης here of God the Father; Mayor hesitates. But cf. above on Jude 4. ↩

12. Cf. the statement of the christology of the Epistle by Bigg, p. 23s. ↩

13. Cf. Westcott, Epistles of St. John, p. 131: “The title the Son in various forms is eminently characteristic of the first and second Epistles, in which it occurs 24 (or 25) times (22 or 23-2), which is more times than in all the Epistles of St. Paul.” ¹⁷ In these two passages the Christ is an appellative. ¹⁸ The designation Lord does not occur in these Epistles. Cf. Westcott, Epistles of St. John, p. 131: “It is remarkable that the title Lord (κύριος) is not found in the Epistles (not 2 Jno 3). It occurs in the narrative of the Gospel, and is frequent in the Apocalypse. It occurs also in all the other Epistles of the N. T. except that to Titus. The absence of the title may perhaps be explained by the general view of the relation of Christ to the believer which is given in the Epistles. The central thought is that of fellowship.” ↩

14. Dr. Westcott in an additional note on 1 Jno 3²³, p. 129 seq., gives a careful study of the names of our Lord in 1 John. Cf. also p. 189 seq., where he discusses the term the Christ. ↩

15. Cf. Westcott, Epistles of St. John, pp. 129 and 232. ↩