According to St. Mark 2:20, He realized at an early stage of the Ministry that it would not take this course; the Suffering Servant of the Lord,^[1] instead of a conquering prince of the House of David, would be His prototype.^[2]  Jesus believed He was the Christ;^[3] but could He retain this view in the face of a career which increasingly fulfilled the mission of the Suffering Servant?  His fiercest trials and temptations centred in this conflict of conceptions:^[4] ‘He trusteth on God; let Him deliver Him now, if He desireth Him: for He said, I am the Son of God’.^[5]  This was the taunt of the mocking priests at the Cross, but it went straight to the heart of the struggles of Jesus.  His faith never wavered; even with the thought of desertion by God in mind, in a final act of utter commitment, He commended His Spirit to the Father’s keeping.^[6]

The sinlessness of Christ is a condition of His redemptive work.^[7]  By it He realizes the Old Testament requirement of unblemished sacrifices;^[8] He is ‘the lamb without spot’.^[9]  In this connection the Epistle to the Hebrews is particularly interesting and suggestive.  Its author is a Christian Platonist, the first of a succession of thinkers who have applied Plato’s teaching to interpret the Christian Faith.  His argument is that earthly things are but copies of heavenly realities) and as such they are necessarily imperfect.  This is true of the Levitical system of the Old Testament) with its priesthood and sacrifice.  The Aaronic High Priest was a sinner, who entered once a year on the Day of Atonement into the Holy of Holies with the blood of animals) and there offered sacrifices for his own sins and those of the people.  But all this was only a ‘shadow of the good things to come’.^[10]  In Christ the heavenly substance which cast the shadow had come.  He is the perfect High Priest, ‘holy) undefiled, separated from sinners’, who once for all by the offering of His own blood became the Author of eternal salvation.^[11]