Bible Dictionaries
Ideal

　　IDEAL.—The word ‘ideal’ does not occur in Authorized and Revised Versions of the NT, nor is there any term in the Gr. text which exactly corresponds to the general notion of the English word.*σκοπός)?’ This σκοπός is found in the NT is in the saying of St. Paul, ‘I press toward the mark (σκοπός of the long race. On that the Christian must fix his eyes, towards that he must constantly press, if he would attain to the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13 f.). See also Perfection (of Jesus).

　　iii. The realization of the Ideal through the constraining power of Christ.—We have seen that Christ in His teaching holds up an ideal, that He embodies this ideal historically in His own person, and sets it before us as an example which we must strive to follow. But to weak and sinful men and women this presentation by word and deed of a perfect moral ideal would be little else than a mockery, if Christ did nothing more than offer us an outward standard after which we were to strive. It is in a far deeper sense than this that He is the Christian ideal. In his famous theory of Ideas, Plato conceived of the Ideal Good as an archetypal essence which becomes an efficient cause, imparting to individuals a share of its own being, as the sun imparts ‘vitality, growth, and nutriment’ to the creatures on which its rays fall (Rep. vi. 509). And it is in this vital and archetypal manner that Jesus becomes the moral ideal of the human race. He gives what He commands, and so has a right to command what He wills. We have constant illustrations in the Gospels of this constraining power of the Ideal Goodness as it is presented to men and women in the person of Christ. The sinful woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50), Zacchaeus, the grasping publican of Jericho (Luke 19:1-10), Matthew, leaving the receipt of custom to become an Apostle (Matthew 9:9 ||), may serve as examples. The author of the Fourth Gospel sums up the whole matter for us when he says: ‘As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God’ (John 1:12). And to St. Paul, who brooded much over this mystery of Christ as it had been revealed to him in a profound personal experience, the secret of spiritual life and growth presented itself as an unfolding of the Christ-nature implanted by the agency of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s soul. ‘Christ in you,’ he says, ‘the hope of glory’ (Colossians 1:27); and again, ‘I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Galatians 2:20). And when in another place he describes believers as ‘foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren’ (Romans 8:29), he suggests a figure which helps us to understand how Christ the ideal is not merely an outward type but an inward archetype. The younger brothers of a house are conformed to the likeness of the firstborn not so much by personal imitation as by the operation of secret and vital forces which spring from the very fact of their birth as members of a particular family, and which lie far deeper than the workings of the individual will. And so it is as between Christ and His people. ‘For both he that sanctifieth,’ says another NT writer, ‘and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren’ (Hebrews 2:11).

　　Literature.—Besides the particular references given in the art., mention may be made of Newman Smyth, Chr. Ethics, pt. i. chs. i.–vi.; Martensen, Chr. Ethics, i. 147–343; Green, Prolegomena, bks. iii.–iv.; Shairp, essay on ‘The Moral Motive Power’ in Studies in Poetry and Philosophy.

　　J. C. Lambert.