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Bible Dictionaries
Claim
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or CLAIM.—The term expresses a twofold relationship, either to a claim as advanced and enforced or as accepted and complied with. The assumption or imposition of a claim upon another is an act of authority, a relationship of established right and superior power; while the recognition and discharge of the same claim represent the corresponding social duty.
The narrative of the Gospels describes how Christ moved amid the social and religious relationships of the world into which He came. It tells how He knew all things in the heart of man (John 2:23-25), and occasionally drew the attention of His disciples to the real importance of certain personalities and actions (Matthew 16:6; Matthew 11:11, Luke 21:1-4), where a wrong impression might have been produced; but, as a rule, He does not take the initiative in criticising and condemning in detail the standards, methods, and institutions then prevailing in society. His kingdom is declared to be entirely distinct from that of the world, and it is only when challenged on a question of right conduct that He lays down the principle that whatever Caesar has an undisputed claim upon ought to be regarded as his, and whatever belongs to God should be rendered to Him only. On the ground of previous and higher claims, He expels those who had obtained the privilege of traffic within the temple area, inasmuch as the place had been dedicated to its Owner as a house of prayer (Matthew 21:13). The victims of masterful temptation and difficult surroundings (Matthew 11:19, Luke 7:37; Luke 18:13; Luke 22:61, John 8:11) are regarded with pity and hopefulness. His direct and indignant exposure is reserved for the attempt to give religious sanction to evaded duty (Mark 7:11), or where the name of religion is made unlovely by the proud and harsh claims of those who profess it (Matthew 6:2; Matthew 23:4-7; Matthew 23:23).
Otherwise Christ moves amid the relationships of common life and the claims of organized society, using them as the field of parable and the vehicle of His teaching concerning the kingdom that was at hand. Thus He refers to purchasers of property, money-lenders and interest, employers of labour and the rights of the labourer. Similarly, we have allusions to war, judicial punishment, parental authority, marriage and divorce, fasting and sumptuous living. With regard to all such relationships and connected claims Christ uses the vocabulary and valuation current in the world. The prodigal son declares that he has forfeited the right to which he had been born (Luke 15:19); Zacchaeus (Luke 19:9) and the woman bowed down with infirmity (Luke 13:16) have, as children of Abraham, a family claim that should shut out more distant considerations. This fact gives emphasis to the exceptional instances of Naaman and the widow of Sarepta (Luke 4:25-29). The Syro-Phœnician woman quite understands that local opinion as to race privilege does not allow her to share on equal terms with Israel (Matthew 15:27-28). The lineage of natural descent implies that of ethical resemblance (Matthew 23:31, John 8:39). Parental affection is the basis of the assurance that our Heavenly Father will act still more wisely and lovingly towards His children (Matthew 7:11 || Luke 11:13). It is after the fullest recognition of the beauty and power of family claims that Christ calls His disciples to an even more intense and constraining relationship (Matthew 10:37, Luke 14:26).
The claims of neighbourhood and hospitality are frequently alluded to. Lazarus, even in Abraham’s bosom, must be willing to serve one who had been an earthly neighbour (Luke 16:24). A neighbour can be put to any inconvenience on behalf of a stranger guest in their midst (Luke 11:5-8). The action of the woman who anointed Christ and bathed His feet with tears is shown to be right, inasmuch as the claim of a passing guest was greater than that of those who were always present (Mark 14:3, Luke 7:37-38, John 12:7-8).
By the same use of current language and thought, religion is a codification of things bound and free, prohibited and permitted (Matthew 16:19; Matthew 18:16). Its duties, as imposed by the scribes and Pharisees, are like the load on the submissive baggage animal (Matthew 23:4). John forbids those who taught in Christ’s name without having the qualifying claim of discipleship (Mark 9:38). With the formal appeal of a litigant, ‘Legion’ demands a proof of Christ’s right to interfere (Mark 5:7). Satan is another taskmaster with claims to be satisfied, and disease is the mark of his property and power (Luke 13:16). Rabbinical rules so far supersede the commandments of God that Christ can be condemned as an enemy to religion (Matthew 23:13-39, Mark 3:10; Mark 7:5; Mark 7:9; Mark 10:5; Mark 11:17, Luke 13:14). Afterwards, to one who understood it all, it was evident that attention to their own claims had blinded the religious leaders of Israel to the presence of the Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8), just as the worship of nature, degraded and degrading, had darkened and alienated from God the heart of the Gentile world (Romans 1:21).
It is thus evident from the Gospel narratives that the Hebrew-Roman world, into which Christ came as the Son of Man, had reached a high stage of development with regard to social authority and obedience. The areas of privilege and exemption were carefully marked off from those of servility and compulsion. Legislated right and wrong, like guarding cherubim, faced each other at all the gates of public life. The rich and noble confronted the poor and unclassed, the strong and conquering had their counterpart in the subject and enslaved, the wise and enlightened stood out in relief from the ignorant and barbarous, the male had defined authority and predominance over the female, and free-born citizens exercised a jealous censorship over the admission of strangers and foreigners. The universal pressure of such claims and obligations gave sedimentary stratification to all that was highest and lowest in social order, and only the infusion and uplift of a new volcanic force could invert its masses and confuse such established lines of cleavage.
It was largely due to this prevalence of legal relationship that the first presentation of the gospel to the world took the familiar form of forensic process and judicial pronouncement. A similar desire to present afresh to the present age the mind of Christ and the spirit of His kingdom would in the West draw upon the discoveries of physical science, the principles of commercial expansion, and the incentives of political empire. In the East it would measure the following of Christ with the self-denial of the devotee, likeness to Him with the claims of caste, and turn towards our Heavenly Father the venerated claims of ancestor-worship.
There were, however, two great relationships in the Hebrew-Roman world that were strangely marked by aloofness and disruption, namely, spiritual fellowship between God and man, and the racial status of Jew and Greek. Among the Jews the voice of prophecy and of direct communication with God had ceased. The word of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37:11) had been fulfilled, ‘Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost.’ The message of religious teaching had dropt its preface, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ and had come to express the contention of a sect, the presentation of a view, the quotation of hearer from hearer. On this account the teaching of Christ arrested the ear as sounding a note that had become unfamiliar, the voice of original authority. In the Roman world, the most sincere and eloquent teacher of the age (Lucretius) had shown that there was no Divine care for man as had been once supposed, for in his vision of the opened heavens he had seen the gods in a happy seclusion of their own, undisturbed by the sound of human pain and sorrow (de Rer. Nat. iii. 18 ff.; cf. Homer, Il. vi. 41 ff.). In that jaded and disenchanted day the most popular and reasoned religion could only unite gods and men in the creed of avoided care.
With regard to the mutual recognition of Jew and Gentile, the antagonism was regarded on both sides as radical and permanent. The Jew despised the Gentile as ‘flesh and blood,’ humanity without religion; the Gentile saw in the Jew the negation of all social instinct, the genius of unnatural hate, religion without humanity. It must have been indescribably wonderful in such an age to learn that ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself’ (2 Corinthians 5:19). It was a great task that was soon to confront the gospel, for the Jew had to be convinced that the alien had been divinely provided for in the promises (Ephesians 2:19), and the Gentile had to learn that there was no place for pride where a wild branch had been grafted contrary to custom into a cultivated stem, and owed not only its sustenance but the higher quality of its new fruit to that incorporation (Romans 11:17-24). And yet in a quarter of a century after Christ’s death it could be stated as something that had passed beyond comment and controversy,—‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28; See Power). The Christian was thus a ‘new creature,’ and for him all things had become new (2 Corinthians 5:17); but this did not mean that he had any resident authority enabling him henceforth to please himself. Everything was in Christ Jesus. To come to Christ was to accept His yoke, and the spirit of bondage (Romans 8:15) had only been exchanged for a nobler constraint (2 Corinthians 5:14). Wherever there was freedom from the law of sin and death, there was the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2).
George M. Mackie.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Claim'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/c/claim.html. 1906-1918.
