It would have been against the general rule of Scripture prophecies, and the intention of the revelation in Christ, that the first Christians should have been so influenced in their measures and particular actions, as they could not but have been by a particular foreknowledge of the express and precise time at which Jerusalem was to be destroyed. To reconcile them to this uncertainty, our Lord first teaches them to consider this destruction the close of one great epoch, or [Greek: aion], as the type of the final close of the whole world of time, that is, of all temporal things; and then reasons with them thus:—“Wonder not that I should leave you ignorant of the former, when even the highest order of heavenly intelligences know not the latter, [Greek: oud’ ho uhios, ei mae ho pataer]; nor should I myself, but that the Father knows it, all whose will is essentially known to me as the Eternal Son. But even to me it is not revealably communicated.” Such seems to me the true sense of this controverted passage in Mark, and that it is borne out by many parallel texts in St. John, and that the correspondent text in Matthew, which omits the [Greek: oud’ ho huios], conveys the same sense in equivalent terms, the word [Greek: emou] including the Son in the [Greek: pataer monos]. For to his only-begotten Son before all time the Father showeth all things.
Ib. p. 279.
But whether we can reconcile these words to our belief of Christ’s prescience and divinity, or not, matters little to the debate about his divinity itself; since we can so fully prove it by innumerable passages of Scripture, too direct, express, and positive, to be balanced by one obscure passage, from ’whence the Arian is to draw the consequence himself, which may possibly be wrong’.
Very good.
Ib. p. 280.
’We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.’—l John v. 20. The whole connection evidently shows the words to be spoken of Christ.
That the words comprehend Christ is most evident. All that can be fairly concluded from 1 Cor. viii. 6, is this:—that the Apostles, Paul and John, speak of the Father as including and comprehending the Son and the Holy Ghost, as his Word and his Spirit; but of these as inferring or supposing the Father, not comprehending him. Whenever, therefore, respecting the Godhead itself, containing both deity and dominion, the term God is distinctively used, it is applied to the Father, and Lord to the Son.
Ib. p. 281.
But, farther, it is objected that Christ
cannot be God, since God
calls him ‘his servant’ more
than once, particularly ‘Isaiah’ xlii.
1.
The Prophets often speak of the anti-type, or person typified, in language appropriate to, and suggested by, the type itself. So, perhaps, in this passage, if, as I suppose, Hezekiah was the type immediately present to Isaiah’s imagination. However, Skelton’s answer is quite sufficient.