CHAPTER II

THE REVELATION OF THE FATHER


It was characteristic of the ancient Jews that they had a vital belief
in the living GOD: and belief in GOD, and that of a far more real and
definite kind than the modern Englishman's vague admission of the
existence of a Supreme Being, was a thing which Jesus was able to take
for granted in those to whom He spoke. GOD to the Jew was the GOD of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, holy and righteous, gracious and merciful:
active and operative in the world, the Controller of events: having a
purpose for Israel and for the world, which in the process of the
world's history was being wrought out, and which would one day find
complete and adequate fulfilment in the setting up of GOD'S Eternal
Kingdom.

What Jesus did by His life and teaching was to deepen and intensify
existing faith in GOD by the revelation of GOD as Father, and to
revive and quicken the expectation of GOD'S Kingdom by the
proclamation of its near approach. The application to GOD of the term
"Father" was not new: but the revelation of what GOD'S Fatherhood
meant in the personal life and faith of Jesus Himself as Son of God
was something entirely new: while in Jesus' preaching of the Divine
Kingdom there was a note of freshness and originality, and a spiritual
assurance of certainty, which carried conviction of an entirely new
kind to the minds and hearts of those who listened.

All the more overwhelming must have seemed to the disciples the
disaster of their Master's crucifixion. It was not merely that the