'All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.' No words can
more absolutely express unconditional, unlimited authority and
sovereignty. Mark the variety of the gift--'all power'; every kind
of force, every kind of dominion is in His hands. Mark the sphere of
sovereignty--'in heaven and in earth.' Now, brethren, if we know
anything about Jesus Christ, we know that He made this claim. There
is no reason, except the unwillingness of some people to admit that
claim, for casting any sort of doubt upon these words, or making any
distinction in authority between them and the rest of the words of
graciousness which the whole world has taken to its heart. But if He
said this, what becomes of His right to the veneration of mankind,
as the Perfect Example of the self-sacrificing, self-oblivious
religious life? It is a mystery that I cannot solve, how any man can
keep his reverence for Jesus, and refuse to believe that beneath
these tremendous words there lies a solemn and solid reality.
Notice, too, that there is implied a definite point of time at which
this all-embracing authority was given. You will find in the Revised
Version a small alteration in the reading, which makes a great
difference in the sense. It reads, 'All power _has been_ given';
and that points, as I say, to a definite period. _When_ was it
given? Let another portion of Scripture answer the question--'Declared
to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead.'
_Then_ to the Man Jesus was given authority over heaven and earth.
All the early Christian documents concur in this view of the connection
between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and His investiture
with this sovereign power. Hearken to Paul, 'Became obedient unto
death, even the death of the Cross; wherefore God also hath highly
exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name.' Hearken
to Peter, 'Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.' Hearken
to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'We see Jesus crowned
with glory and honour for the suffering of death.' Hearken to John,
'To Him that is the Faithful Witness, and the First-born from the
dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth.' Look with his
eyes to the vision of the 'Lamb as it had been slain,' enthroned
in the midst of the throne, and say whether this unanimous consent
of the earliest Christian teachers is explicable on any reasonable
grounds, unless there had been underlying it just the words of our
text, and the Master Himself had taught them that all power was
given to Him in heaven and in earth. As it seems to me impossible
to account for the existence of the Church if we deny the
Resurrection, so it seems to me impossible to account for the faith
of the earliest stratum of the Christian Church without the
acceptance of some such declaration as this, as having come from the
Lord Himself. And so the hands that were pierced with the nails wield
the sceptre of the Universe, and on the brows that were wounded and
bleeding with the crown of thorns are wreathed the many crowns of
universal Kinghood.
But we have further to notice that in this investiture, with 'all
power in heaven and on earth,' we have not merely the attestation of
the perfection of His obedience, the completeness of His work, and
the power of His sacrifice, but that we have also the elevation of
Manhood to enthronement with Divinity. For the _new_ thing that
came to Jesus after His resurrection was that His humanity was taken
into, and became participant of, 'the glory which I had with Thee,
before the world was.' Then our nature, when perfect and sinless, is
so cognate and kindred with the Divine that humanity is capable of
being invested with, and bearing, that 'exceeding and eternal weight
of glory.' In that elevation of the Man Christ Jesus, we may read a
prophecy, that shall not be unfulfilled, of the destiny of all those
who conform to Him through faith, love, and obedience, finally to
sit down with Him on His throne, even as He is set down with the
Father on His throne.
Ah! brethren, Christianity has dark and low views of human nature,
and men say they are too low and too dark. It is 'Nature's sternest
painter,' and, therefore, 'its best.' But if on its palette the
blacks are blacker than anywhere else, its range of colour is
greater, and its white is more lustrous. No system thinks so
condemnatorily of human nature as it is; none thinks so glowingly of
human nature as it may become. There are bass notes far down beyond
the limits of the scale to which ears dulled by the world and sin
and sorrow are sensitive; and there are clear, high tones, thrilling
and shrilling far above the range of perception of such ears. The
man that is in the lowest depths may rise with Jesus to the highest,
but it must be by the same road by which the Master went. 'If we
suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him,' and only 'if.' There
is no other path to the Throne but the Cross. _Via crucis, via
lucis_--the way of the Cross is the way of light. It is to those
who have accepted their Gethsemanes and their Calvarys that He
appoints a kingdom, as His Father has appointed unto Him.
So much, then, for the first point here in these words; turn now to
the second.