Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

244 Luke II. 32.
over the whole human race. In the light of this plain assertion,
therefore, we may judge of the former passages in which such expectations
were set forth. Their seeming limitation to Israel, and
their reference to earthly relations, form but the one aspect of the
idea of the Messiah, which we must complete by the other, even
where it is not expressly mentioned. The Messiah's most immediate
relation is certainly to Israel, but thence the vivifying influence of
his Spirit extends to all nations ; and though his agency commences
in the depth of the soul, yet it thence influences ex-
• ternal relations also ; so that, in the most proper sense, the human
race, as such, in all its members, and in aU its external and internal
relations, is the subject on which the Messiah exercises his saving
and sanctifying power. As this relation of the Messiah's work
to the entire human race, even to the most distant nations, is just
the doctrine of the Old Testament also (see Gen. xii. 3 ; xviii. 18 ;
xxviii. 14 ; xlix. 10 ; Psalm Ixxxvii.; Isa. xi., xix., xlii., and other
passages), we are the more obliged to presupj)Ose this correct view
in the pious at the time of Christ, in that they appear as living in the
spirit of the Old Testament. That its connexion with their own
nation, however, and their deliverance from bondage to the heathen,
should occupy the foreground with them, is perfectly accounted for by
their circumstances. The same form of representing the subject is
sanctioned by the Old Testament, which never permits the Mes-
siah's relation to the nation to degenerate into bigoted exclusiveness,
nor its hopes of external good to be without a moral and
religious foundation. But the contrary was the case with the con-
ceptions of the gross and sensual multitude, who rejoiced in excluding
aU heathen, as such, from the blessings of the Messiah, and who,
with their carnal dispositions, and without true change of heart,
hoped to be allowed at once to follow the Messianic King, as their
general, to a war of extermination against the heathen. That such
gross conceptions are not to be confounded with the noble views
which were preserved in the circles of the pious at that time, is
shewn by ver. 38, where those who waited for redemption are
spoken of as a special class. But the expectations of a Messiah
were, as already intimated, a common property of the nation at the
time of Christ ; if, therefore, those which were current among the
multitude were acknowledged as the true ones, then the waiting for
redemption could not have been used as characteristic of a certain
class of men. (In verse 30, as in i. 71, the abstract is put for the
concrete person, oiOTi]ptov = ao^^rrjpia for Goj-ijp. It is called " God's
salvation," both because it springs from God, and because it is
agreeable to his nature ; and these two coincide, since only what is
godlike comes from God. 'Eroiiid^etv = -rrpoopl^eLv [Kom. viii. 29,
30] marks the relation towards the heathen, as founded on God's