Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/306

 God? He who will read the whole conversation with Nicodemus, will see clearly that it could not mean anything like that. It means precisely what the words themselves mean: the Son of man (meaning by “son” himself as man, or man in general) must be lifted up like the brazen serpent of Moses. By what manner of reasoning can one come to the conclusion that it means the death on the cross, or, more wonderfully still, the redemption?

The next passage adduced as a proof is the one where John says: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh the sin of the world (John i. 29). This passage runs in Greek as follows: ἴδε, ὁ ἀμνὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ αἴρων τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τοῦ κόσμου. This cannot be translated otherwise than: The lamb which lifts off, takes away the sin of the world. And this passage is translated by “taketh,” to which the new translations add “upon himself.” And this interpolation is regarded as a proof. The next proof is this: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many (Matt. xx. 28).

How can this verse mean anything but that the man, he himself, or man in general, must give his life for men, for his brothers?

Farther: The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I lay down my life for the sheep (John x. 11, 14, 15).

The shepherd gives his life for his flock, just as I am doing. How does the redemption follow from that? When they ask a sign from him, similar to the manna, he says: I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world (John vi. 51). Continuing his comparison, he says that he is the only bread that men ought to eat. And this bread, that is, his example