(1) The Teaching of Jesus. (a) The king dom of God as preached by Jesus was an order of things in which men should recognize their true relations to God, and enter into alliance with Jesus Christ by faith, constituting a new spiritual social organization.
This organization is properly called the king dom of God, because God is recognized in it as supreme; but though it is constantly called a kingdom. God is with equal consistency called the Father of those who enter into it, and his paternal care is portrayed, and especially manifested in his constant watchfulness over them and his love for them.
(b) The place of Jesus himself in the kingdom is that of the Revealer of the Father. He is the Messiah foreshadowed in the Old Testament. But the Messianic idea is altered, broadened, and uni versalized in the new dispensation. It includes, besides the conception, brought over from its his tory, of the headship of the Messiah over his peo ple, also that of the redemptive function.
(e) In performing the function of Redeemer, Jesus teaches that he must die in obedience to law, giving his life "a ransom for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. xvi :21-23; xx :28 Mark x :45).
Sin is a serious, even fatal, alienation from God. Jesus says nothing about it that could in any way soften or lessen the hatred due to it from the healthy soul. On the contrary, by his inter pretation of the old law, and by his strenuous efforts to rescue men from sin, he deepens the sense of abhorrence aroused by it. The sinful are the "lost." They are in a most miserable and perilous situation.
Yet, even though guilty and lost, the sinner is capable of salvation. In this view Jesus differed diametrically from the Pharisees, who looked upon sinful men as in a hopeless condition. He recognized a certain dignity in human nature, be cause of its relation to God both by creation and by the possibilities involved in it, if it should be redeemed.
(d) Man is an immortal being, because be is capable of sustaining a relation of love to God, such as that sustained by Abraham, Isaac. and Jacob. Man's immortality is associated with the resurrection of the body. But though this fact is distinctly involved in the teaching of Jesus. there is nowhere an effort to explain till difficulties connected with it. To secure his birthright as an
immortal being, and one possessed of capabilities of redemption from sin, man must enter into the kingdom of God by repentance and faith. Once a member he must live a life of humility, love, earnestness, and purity. He must secure a right eousness characterized by “twardness or depth and comprehensiveness or extent. The law of the kingdom is to be not more lax than the ethical laws already known, but more free, and at the same time more pervasive and effective.
(e) The kingdom of God thus constituted, with Jesus at its head, acknowledging the fatherhood of God as its source of life and the brotherhood of man as its law, is to have a course of natural development in the world ; and the consummation of it is to be a judgment day, in which all men shall be judged according to their character.
(f) The process of growth outlined for the kingdom is analogous to all organic growth, and is portrayed in parables drawn from vegetable life. The judgment is to be ushered in by Jesus himself in a second appearance on earth, and it is to issue in the separation of the righteous from the un righteous. The righteous shall enter into life; they shall inherit the kingdom ; they shall shine as the sun ; they .shall rule over cities ; they shall sit on thrones and share the joy of their Lord. The wicked shall be cast into outer darkness, or into fire, or into prison ; it had been better for them had they not been born.
(2) Teaching of St. Paul. Of all those who accepted Jesus as the Christ in the Apostolic gen eration, none was more influential in molding the thought of the Church than the apostle Paul. His ancestry and early life, his education, the manner of his conversion, and his first experiences as a missionary conspired to impress him with certain aspects of the new faith which lie embodied in his preaching and letters, alluding to the sum total of his teaching as "his gospel." (a) The kernel of this system of thought was carried over by Paul from the pre-Christian stage of his life. It consisted in the view that true religion is a mode of righteousness or judi cial standing before God, which, however, must work within its possessor a holy character, and must never be disconnected from this subjective side of it.