'So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into
heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.'--Mark xvi. 19.
How strangely calm and brief is this record of so stupendous an event!
Do these sparing and reverent words sound to you like the product of
devout imagination, embellishing with legend the facts of history? To
me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of-factness, if I may
so call it, are a strong guarantee that they are the utterance of an
eyewitness, who verily saw what he tells so simply. There is something
sublime in the contrast between the magnificence and almost
inconceivable grandeur of the thing communicated, and the quiet words,
so few, so sober, so wanting in all detail, in which it is told.
That stupendous fact of Christ sitting at the right hand of God is the
one that should fill the present for us all, even as the Cross should
fill the past, and the coming for Judgment should fill the future. So
for us the one central thought about the present, in its loftiest
relations, should be the throned Christ at God's right hand. It is to
that thought of the session of Jesus by the side of the Majesty of the
Heavens that I wish to turn now, to try to bring out the profound
teaching that is in it, and the practical lessons which it suggests. I
desire to emphasise very briefly four points, and to see, in Christ's
sitting at the right hand, the revelation of these things:--The
exalted Man, the resting Saviour, the interceding Priest, and the
ever-active Helper.
I. First, then, in that solemn and wondrous fact of Christ's sitting
at the right hand of God, we have the exalted Man.
We are taught to believe, according to His own words, that in His
ascension Christ was but returning whence He came, and entering into
the 'glory which He had with the Father before the world was.' And
that impression of a return to His native and proper abode is strongly
conveyed to us by the narrative of His ascension. Contrast it, for
instance, with the narrative of Elijah's rapture, or with the brief
reference to Enoch's translation. The one was taken by God up into a
region and a state which he had not formerly traversed; the other was
borne by a fiery chariot to the heavens; but Christ slowly sailed
upwards, as it were, by His own inherent power, returning to His
abode, and ascending up where He was before.
But whilst this is one side of the profound fact, there is another
side. What was new in Christ's return to His Father's bosom? This,
that He took His Manhood with Him. It was 'the Everlasting Son of the
Father,' the Eternal Word, which from the beginning 'was with God and
was God,' that came down from heaven to earth, to declare the Father;
but it was the Incarnate Word, the Man Christ Jesus, that went back
again. This most blessed and wonderful truth is taught with emphasis
in His own words before the Council, 'Ye shall see the Son of _Man_
sitting on the right hand of power.' Christ, then, to-day, bears a
human body, not, indeed, the 'body of His humiliation,' but the body
of His glory, which is none the less a true corporeal frame, and
necessarily requires a locality. His ascension, whithersoever He may
have gone, was the true carrying of a real humanity, complete in all
its parts, Body, Soul, and Spirit, up to the very throne of God.
Where that locality is it is bootless to speculate. Scripture says
that He ascended up 'far above all heavens'; or, as the Epistle to the
Hebrews has it, in the proper translation, the High Priest 'is passed
_through_ the heavens,' as if all this visible material creation was
rent asunder in order that He might soar yet higher beyond its limits
wherein reign mutation and decay. But wheresoever that place may be,
there is a place in which now, with a human body as well as a human
spirit, Jesus is sitting 'at the right hand of God.'
Let us thankfully think how, in the profound language of Scripture,
'the Forerunner is for us entered'; how, in some mysterious manner, of
which we can but dimly conceive, that entrance of Jesus in His
complete humanity into the highest heavens is the preparation of a
place for us. It seems as if, without His presence there, there were
no entrance for human nature within that state, and no power in a
human foot to tread upon the crystal pavements of the celestial City,
but where He is, there the path is permeable, and the place native, to
all who love and trust Him.
We may stand, therefore, with these disciples, and looking upwards as
the cloud receives Him out of our sight, our faith follows Him, still
our Brother, still clothed with humanity, still wearing a bodily
frame; and we say, as we lose Him from our vision, 'What is man'?
Capable of being lifted to the most intimate participation in the
glories of divinity, and though he be poor and weak and sinful here,
yet capable of union and assimilation with the Majesty that is on
high. For what Christ's Body is, the bodies of them that love and
serve Him shall surely be, and He, the Forerunner, is entered there
for us; that we too, in our turn, may pass into the light, and walk in
the full blaze of the divine glory; as of old the children in the
furnace were, unconsumed, because companioned by 'One like unto the
Son of Man.'
The exalted Christ, sitting at the right hand of God, is the Pattern
of what is possible for humanity, and the prophecy and pledge of what
will be actual for all that love Him and bear the image of Him upon
earth, that they may be conformed to the image of His glory, and be
with Him where He is. What firmness, what reality, what solidity this
thought of the exalted bodily Christ gives to the else dim and vague
conceptions of a Heaven beyond the stars and beyond our present
experience! I believe that no doctrine of a future life has strength
and substance enough to survive the agonies of our hearts when we part
from our dear ones, the fears of our spirits when we look into the
unknown, inane future for ourselves; except only this which says
Heaven is Christ and Christ is Heaven, and points to Him and says,
'Where He is, there and that also shall His servants be.'
II. Now, secondly, look at Christ's sitting at the right hand of God
as presenting to our view the Resting Saviour.
That session expresses the idea of absolute repose after sore
conflict. It is the same thought which is expressed in those solemn
Egyptian colossal statues of deified conquerors, elevated to
mysterious union with their gods, and yet men still, sitting before
their temples in perfect stillness, with their mighty hands lying
quiet on their restful limbs; with calm faces out of which toil and
passion and change seem to have melted, gazing out with open eyes as
over a silent, prostrate world. So, with the Cross behind, with all
the agony and weariness of the arena, the dust and the blood of the
struggle, left beneath, He 'sitteth at the right hand of God the
Father Almighty.'
The rest of the Christ after His Cross is parallel with and carries
the same meaning as the rest of God after the Creation. Why do we read
'He rested on the seventh day from all His works'? Did the Creative
Arm grow weary? Was there toil for the divine nature in the making of
a universe? Doth He not speak and it is done? Is not the calm,
effortless forth-putting of His will the cause and the means of
Creation? Does any shadow of weariness steal over that life which
lives and is not exhausted? Does the bush consume in burning? Surely
not. He rested from His works, not because He needed to recuperate
strength after action by repose, but because the works were perfect,
and in sign and token that His ideal was accomplished, and that no
more was needed to be done.
And, in like manner, the Christ rests after His Cross, not because He
needed repose even after that terrible effort, or was panting after
His race, and so had to sit there to recover, but in token that His
work was finished and perfected, that all which He had come to do was
done; and in token, likewise, that the Father, too, beheld and
accepted the finished work. Therefore, the session of Christ at the
right hand of God is the proclamation from Heaven of what He cried
with His last dying breath upon the Cross: 'It is finished!' It is the
declaration that the world has had all done for it that Heaven can do
for it. It is the declaration that all which is needed for the
regeneration of humanity has been lodged in the very heart of the
race, and that henceforward all that is required is the evolving and
the development of the consequences of that perfect work which Christ
offered upon the Cross. So the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
contrasts the priests who stood 'daily ministering and offering
oftentimes the same sacrifices' which 'can never take away sin,' with
'this Man who, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever,
sat down at the right hand of God'; testifying thereby that His Cross
is the complete, sufficient, perpetual atonement and satisfaction for
the sins of the whole world. So we have to look back to that past as
interpreted by this present, to that Cross as commented upon by this
Throne, and to see in it the perfect work which any human soul may
grasp, and which all human souls need, for their acceptance and
forgiveness. The Son of Man set at the right hand of God is Christ's
declaration, 'I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,'
and is also God's declaration, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am
well pleased.'
III. Once more, we see here, in this great fact of Christ sitting at
the right hand of God, the interceding Priest.
So the Scripture declares. The Epistle to the Hebrews over and over
again reiterates that thought that we have a Priest who has 'passed
into the heavens,' there to 'appear in the presence of God for us.'
And the Apostle Paul, in that great linked climax in the eighth
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, has it, 'Christ that died, yea
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us.' There are deep mysteries connected
with that thought of the intercession of Christ. It does not mean that
the divine heart needs to be won to love and pity. It does not mean
that in any mere outward and formal fashion Christ pleads with God,
and softens and placates the Infinite and Eternal love of the Father
in the heavens. It, at least, plainly means this, that He, our Saviour
and Sacrifice, is for ever in the presence of God; presenting His own
blood as an element in the divine dealing with us, modifying the
incidence of the divine law, and securing through His own merits and
intercession the outflow of blessings upon our heads and hearts. It is
not a complete statement of Christ's work for us that He died for us.
He died that He might have somewhat to offer. He lives that He may be
our Advocate as well as our propitiation with the Father. And just as
the High Priest once a year passed within the curtain, and there in
the solemn silence and solitude of the holy place sprinkled the blood
that he bore thither, not without trembling, and but for a moment
permitted to stay in the awful Presence, thus, but in reality and for
ever, with the joyful gladness of a Son in His 'own calm home, His
habitation from eternity,' Christ _abides_ in the Holy Place; and, at
the right hand of the Majesty of the Heavens, lifts up that prayer, so
strangely compact of authority and submission; 'Father, I _will_ that
these whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am.' The Son of Man
at the right hand of God is our Intercessor with the Father. 'Seeing,
then, that we have a great High Priest that is passed through the
heavens, let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace.'