The course of our Lord Jesus Christ had been clearly predicted in the prophecies of the Old Testament. He was to come to Israel, and be rejected of them, suffering for sin, then to enter into His glory. Before appearing in glory, He was to sit at the right hand of God, according to Psalm 110:1, invited to this place by God, until His enemies were made His footstool. The Lord, who was the Man of God’s right hand would “strike through kings in the day of His wrath” (Psalm. 110:5), but He would also be the Saviour of His people Israel, turning them to God, and bringing them into blessing (Ps. 80:17–19).
Christ Set Down at God’s Right Hand
When the Lord Jesus had confounded the Pharisees and the Sadducees by answering their questions with a wisdom greater than Solomon’s, He asked the Pharisees, who were gathered together, this question, “What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?” and they had no difficulty in answering, “The Son of David” (Matt. 22:42). When, however, He asked them, “How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool? If David then call Him Lord, how is He his son?” they were utterly confounded.
This Scripture clearly showed that David’s son was also David’s Lord, but it required a revelation from the Father to discern in Jesus the One who was both God and Man, and this God did not give to men who were so filled with hatred to His Son, and who had rejected His testimony in Jesus, and who were about to join with those who crucified Him. It was not to the religious leaders of Israel that God vouchsafed His revelations, but to those who were despised by them, the disciples of the lowly Nazarene.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter brought forward the words of Psalm 110 to show that the resurrection of Jesus had been foretold in the Old Testament. Psalm 16 is first adduced to show that it was impossible for Christ to see corruption, then Psalm 110 is recalled to show where Christ now is. It was God’s right hand of power that had exalted Jesus, and it was to God’s right hand He had been exalted (Acts 2:24–35). If Jesus was not now seen by the world, it was because He was in heaven at God’s right hand, a solemn proof of the controversy God had with Israel and with the world.
In Ephesians 1:20 God’s Christ is seen at His right hand as the Man of His counsels, the One in whom all His pleasure is found. Christ at God’s right hand is the evidence of the “exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe,” the power that will give effect to all that God has purposed for His own glory, for the honour of Christ, and for the blessing of all who believe in Him. In Psalm 110 the enemies of Christ are to be put under His feet, but here the whole universe is brought under His Headship, and the church shares with Him His place of glory in the coming day.
Hebrews 12:2 gives God’s answer to all that the Lord Jesus suffered on the cross, both the judgment of the cross that brought glory to God and infinite blessing to those who believe, and the shame of the cross, all that the wicked heart of man, energised by Satan, devised to humiliate the One who had humbled Himself to bring to them the rich grace of a Saviour God. If men gave His Son a shameful cross, and if the Saviour was willing to endure the judgment of God to secure all His will, God has given a suited answer by setting Him upon His own throne in the place of authority and power.
Christ Presented as at God’s Right Hand
Before the leaders of Israel, the Lord Jesus was adjured in the Name of the living God by the high priest to tell them whether He was “the Christ, the Son of God” (Matt. 26:63), to which Jesus answered, “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Jesus gave a simple and clear testimony as to who He was, and to the place He was about to occupy in heaven before coming to bring judgment upon a guilty world.
Not only would Jesus occupy the right hand of the throne of God, but those who so shamefully, and unjustly, that day rejected His testimony, would see Him there. How awful it must be for these leaders of Israel, with all their religious pretension and responsibility, to realise, as they see Jesus on God’s right hand, that they had refused the solemn warning of the Son of God as He stood in meekness before them, while clearly testifying as to who He was, and therefore of their guilt in rejecting Him with contempt and scorn.
God in wondrous grace had given through Jesus the testimony as to who He was to Israel’s leaders, and in spite of their guilt He gave them another testimony by the Holy Spirit through Stephen. Arraigned before the high priest, and the council, as Jesus had been, Stephen, “being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56).
Israel’s leaders had been told by Jesus that He would be found as Son of Man at God’s right hand, and Stephen gave the witness of the Spirit of God to them that what Jesus had said was now fulfilled. In spite of this double testimony by the Son of God, and the Spirit of God, the leaders of Israel showed what they thought of God by sending Stephen after his Master with the words, “we will not have this Man to reign over us.” In the martyrdom of Stephen they sealed their own doom.
The Epistle to the Romans presents Christ to us as having died, and as risen from the dead, and faith in Him dead and risen brings to us the salvation of God. There is however one mention of Christ in heaven, “It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us” (Rom. 8:34). How wonderful is the contemplation that the One who was rejected by men is occupied in His present place at God’s right hand with intercession on behalf of those who have trusted Him. On the cross He interceded for sinners; on the throne He intercedes for those who have believed on Him.
Christ, sitting on the right hand of God, is the object of His saints, so that we are exhorted by the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3:1, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God.” If Christ has interests on earth, He has given to us interests in heaven, and all are centred in Himself upon the throne of God. Our interests on earth are Christ’s interests, for His people and His Gospel should ever concern us, but our hope is to be forever with Him in heaven, and to come out of heaven with Him to share His glory in the coming day (Col. 1:5, 27).
Peter joins with Paul to tell us of Jesus at the right hand of God, where he writes, “Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him” (1 Peter 3:22). The Apostle had been writing of Christ once suffering for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God; then he sees Him “quickened by the Spirit,” and then in the place of supreme authority with all the great intelligences of heaven subject to Him. Such is the greatness and glory of the One Peter knew on earth as a lowly Man, and who died to put away our sins.
Christ Sets Himself Down at God’s Right Hand
Mark, in his Gospel, presents Jesus as the Servant of God, and having faithfully, and perfectly, completed all that God had given Him to do, “He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19). What a wonderful reception must Jesus have received on His entry into heaven! Angels must have wondered to see their God in the form of Man, and as a Servant among men; and how must the mystery of it all have deepened as they saw Him taken by wicked man to be crucified and slain. Now He has returned to heaven, but still as Man, the whole angelic host subject to Him as Man.
The right hand of God was rightly His, and it is as Man He sits there. What a sight for the angels to see a Man sit down on the right hand of God, to take the highest place in heaven, a place given to Him by God, yet taken by Him because He had the right to take it.
When we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews we again see Jesus taking His place, as rightly His, “on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). The opening verses of this Book show the divine glories of the Son of God, the creator, the upholder of the universe, the One in whom God is expressed, and who was able by “Himself” to make purification for sins. Having wrought this great redemptive work, the Son of God, in the rights of His Person and glory set Himself down where none but He could sit. The “majesty on high” is the throne of God, the greatest place in the universe, and when Jesus, God’s Son, had accomplished the great work that secured the glory of the throne, He sat down upon the throne.
Moreover, the value of the sacrifice of Christ is of infinite value, and one that requires no repetition. There was the perpetual offering of sacrifices under the Levitical system, all pointing forward to the one great sacrifice of Christ that would meet every claim of the throne of God regarding sin, and having offered this sacrifice of infinite and eternal value, the Son of God sat down in perpetuity “on the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:12). There is no need for Him to rise again to offer for sins, this work has been done once for all, so that He sat down, no more to rise so far as His sacrificial work is concerned.
Therefore in the Hebrews we see Jesus sitting down on the right hand of God, on account of the greatness of His Person, by reason of the greatness of His priesthood, and because of the greatness of the sacrifice He has offered for the glory of God, and to enable His people to enter the very presence of God to worship there.
R. 25.6.68