CHRIST EXALTED – Charles Spurgeon
CHRIST EXALTED
“This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies are made His footstool.” Hebrews 10:12, 13.
Introduction: The Lord’s Table and Christ’s Exaltation
At the Lord’s table, we wish to have no subject for contemplation but our blessed Lord, Jesus Christ, and we have generally been accustomed to consider Him as the crucified One, “the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.” We have had before us the emblems of His broken body and of His blood shed for many for the remission of sins, but I am not quite sure that the crucified Savior is the only appropriate theme, although, perhaps, the most so. It is well to remember how our Savior left us—by what road He traveled through the shadows of death. But I think it is quite as well to remember what He is doing while He is away from us—to remember the high glories to which the crucified Savior has attained. And it is, perhaps, as much calculated to cheer our spirits to behold Him on His throne as to consider Him on His cross. We have seen Him on His cross, in some sense—that is to say the eyes of men on earth did see the crucified Savior; but we have no idea of what His glories are above. They surpass our highest thought. Yet faith can see the Savior exalted on His throne and, surely, there is no subject that can keep our expectations alive, or cheer our drooping faith better than to consider that while our Savior is absent, He is absent on His throne! And that when He left His Church to sorrow for Him, He has not left us comfortless—He has promised to come to us—that while He tarries, He is reigning and that while He is absent, He is sitting high on His Father’s throne!
I. The Completeness of the Savior’s Work
The Apostle shows, here, the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice over that of every other priest. “Every priest stands daily ministering and offering, oftentimes, the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins—but this ‘man,’ or Priest—for the word, ‘man,’ is not in the original—“after He had offered one sacrifice for sins,” had finished His work and forever, He “sat down.” You see the superiority of Christ’s sacrifice rests in this—that the priest offered continually and after he had slaughtered one lamb, another was needed. After one scapegoat was driven into the wilderness, a scapegoat was needed the next year, “but this man, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins,” did what thousands of scapegoats never did and what hundreds of thousands of lambs never could effect—He perfected our salvation and worked out an entire atonement for the sins of all His chosen ones!
We are taught here, in the first place, the completeness of the Savior’s work. He has done all that was necessary to be done to make an atonement and an end of sin. He has done so much that it will never be necessary for Him to again be crucified. His side, once opened, has sent forth a deep stream, deep enough and precious enough, to wash away all sin! He needs not that His side should be opened again or that His hands should any more be nailed to the cross. I infer that His work is finished from the fact that He is described here as sitting down. Christ would not sit down in heaven if He had more work to do. Sitting down is the posture of rest. Seldom did He sit down on earth. He said, “I must be about My Father’s business.” Journey after journey, labor after labor, preaching after preaching followed each other in quick succession. His was a life of incessant toil. Rest was a word which Jesus never spelled. He may sit for a moment on the well. But even there, He preaches to the woman of Samaria. He goes into the wilderness but not to sleep. He goes there to pray. His midnights are spent in labors as hard as those of the day—labors of agonizing prayer, wrestling with His Father for the souls of men! His was a life of continual bodily, mental, and spiritual labor. His whole man was exercised. But now He rests. There is no more toil for Him, now. There is no more sweat of blood, no more the weary feet, no more the aching head. No more has He to do. He sits still. But do you think my Savior would sit still if He had not done all His work? Oh, no, beloved! He saId once, “For Zion’s sake I will not rest until her glory goes forth like a lamp that burns.” And I am sure He would not rest, or be sitting still unless the great work of our atonement were fully accomplished. Sit still, blessed Jesus, while there is a fear of Your people being lost? Sit still, while their salvation is at hazard? No! And Your truthfulness and Your compassion tell us that You would still labor if the work were still undone.
Oh, if the last thread had not been woven in the great garment of our righteousness, He would be spinning it now! If the last particle of our debt had not been paid, He would be counting it down now! And if all were not finished and complete, He would never rest, until, like a wise builder, He had laid the topstone of the temple of our salvation! No. The very fact that He sits still rests and is at ease, proves that His work is finished and is complete! And then, note again that His sitting at the right hand of God implies that He enjoys pleasure. For at God’s right hand “there are pleasures forevermore.” Now I think the fact that Christ enjoys Infinite pleasure has in it some degree of proof that He must have finished His work. It is true, He had pleasure with His Father before that work was begun. But I cannot conceive that if, after having been Incarnate, His work was still unfinished, He would rest. He might rest before He began the work, but as soon as He had begun it, you will remember, He said He had a baptism wherewith He must be baptized and He appeared to be hastening to receive the whole of the direful baptism of agony! He never rested on earth till the whole work was finished. Scarcely a smile passed His brow till the whole work was done. He was “a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,” until He could say, “It is finished.” And I could scarcely conceive the Savior happy on His throne if there were any more to do. Surely, living as He was on that great throne of His, there would be anxiety in His breast if He had not secured the meanest lamb of His fold and if He had not rendered the eternal salvation of every blood-bought one as sacred as His own throne! The highest pleasure of Christ is derived from the fact that He has become the “head over all things to His Church,” and has saved that Church. He has joys as God—but as the Man-God, His joys spring from the salvation of the souls of men. That is His joy—which is full in the thought that He has finished His work and has cut it short in righteousness!
II. The Glory Which Christ Has Assumed
And now, our second point—the glory which He has assumed. “After He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God”—the glory which Christ has assumed. Now, by this you are to understand the complex person of Christ. Christ, as God, always was on His Father’s throne. He always was God. And even when He was on earth He was still in heaven. The Son of God did not cease to be omnipotent and omnipresent when He came wrapped in the garments of clay. He was still on His Father’s throne! He never left it, never came down from heaven in that sense. He was still there, “God over all, blessed forever.” As He has said, “The Son of man who came down from heaven, who, also,” at that very moment was, “in heaven.”
But Jesus Christ, as the Man-God, has assumed glories and honors which once He had not. For as man, He did not at one time sit on His Father’s throne. He was a man, a suffering man, a man full of pains and groans, more than mortals have ever known! But as God-man, He has assumed a dignity next to God. He sits at the right hand of God—at the right hand of the glorious Trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—sits the person of the Man, Jesus Christ, exalted at the right hand of the Majesty on High! From this we gather that the dignity which Christ now enjoys is surpassing dignity. There is no honor; there is no dignity to be compared to that of Christ! No angel flies higher than He does. Save only the great Three-One God, there is none to be found in heaven who can be called superior to the person of the man, Christ Jesus. He sits at the right hand of God, “far above all angels, principalities, powers and every name that is named.” His Father “has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and of things on earth and of things under the earth.” No dignity can shine like His! The sons of righteousness that have turned many to God are but as stars compared with Him, the brightest of the suns. As for angels, they are but flashes of His brightness, emanations from His own glorious self. He sits there, the great masterpiece of Deity— “God, in the person of His Son, Has all His mightiest works outdone.” That glorious man, taken into union with Deity, that mighty Man-God, surpasses everything in the glory of His majestic person. Christian, remember your Master has unsurpassed dignity!
III. Christ’s Expectations
And now, in the last place, what are Christ’s expectations? We are told, He expects that His enemies shall be made His footstool. In some sense that is already done. The foes of Christ are, in some sense, His footstool now. What is the devil but the very slave of Christ, for he does no more than he is permitted against God’s children? What is the devil, but the servant of Christ, to fetch His children to His loving arms? What are wicked men, but unwittingly to themselves, the servants of God’s providence? Christ has even now “power over all flesh that He may give eternal life to as many as God has given Him,” in order that the purposes of Christ might be carried out. Christ died for all and all are now Christ’s property. There is not a man in this world that does not belong to Christ in that sense, for He is God over him and Lord over him. He is either Christ’s brother, or else Christ’s slave, His unwilling vassal that must be dragged out in triumph, if He follows Him not willingly.
In that sense all things are now Christ’s. But we expect greater things than these, beloved, at His coming, when all enemies shall be beneath Christ’s feet upon earth. We are, therefore, many of us, “looking for that blessed hope; that glorious appearing of the kingdom of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” Many of us are expecting that Christ will come. We cannot tell you when. We believe it to be folly to pretend to guess the time, but we are expecting that even in our lifetime the Son of God will appear! We know that when He shall appear, He will tread His foes beneath His feet and reign from pole to pole and from the river even to the ends of the earth. Not long shall anti-christ sit on her seven hills. Not long shall the false prophet delude his millions. Not long shall idol gods mock their worshippers with eyes that cannot see and hands that cannot handle and ears that cannot hear— “Lo! He comes, with clouds descending!” In the winds I see His chariot wheels. I know that He approaches and when He approaches, He “breaks the bow and cuts the spear in sunder and burns the chariot in the fire.” And Christ Jesus shall then be king over the whole world. He is king, now, virtually. But He is to have another kingdom. I cannot see how it is to be a spiritual one, for that is come already. He is as much king, spiritually, now as He ever will be in His Church, although His kingdom will assuredly be very extensive. But the kingdom that is to come, I take it, will be something even greater than the spiritual kingdom. It will be a visible kingdom of Christ on earth. Then kings must bow their necks before His feet. Then at His throne the tribes of earth shall bend. Then the rich and mighty, the merchants of Tyre and the travelers where gold is found, shall bring their spices and myrrh before Him and lay their gold and gems at His feet—
“Jesus shall reign wherever the sun Does his successive journeys run— His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.”
Once more, beloved—Christ will have all His enemies put beneath His feet in that great day of judgment. Oh, that will be a terrible putting of His foes beneath His feet, when at that second resurrection, the wicked dead shall rise. Then the ungodly shall stand before His throne and His voice shall say, “Depart, you cursed.” Oh, rebel, you that have despised Christ—it will be a horrible thing for you, that that man, that gibbeted, crucified man whom you have often despised—will have power enough to speak you into hell! That the man whom you have scoffed and laughed at, and of whom you have virtually said, “If He is the Son of God, let Him come down from the cross,” will have power enough, in two or three short words—to damn your soul to all eternity—“Depart from Me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!”
Oh, what a triumph that will be, when men, wicked men, persecutors, and all those who opposed Christ, are all cast into the lake that burns! But, if possible, it will be a greater triumph when he who led men astray shall be dragged forth— “Shall lift his brazen front, with thunder scarred, Receive the sentence and begin anew his hell.”
Oh, when Satan shall be condemned, and when the saints shall judge angels, and the fallen spirits shall all be under the feet of Christ, “Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, He has put all things under Him.” And when death, too, shall come forth and the, “death of death and hell’s destructions” shall grind his iron limbs to powder, then shall it be said, “Death is swallowed up in victory,” for the great shout of, “Victory, victory, victory,” shall drown the shrieks of the past—shall put out the sound of the howling of death; and hell shall be swallowed up in victory! He is exalted on high—He sits at His Father’s right hand, “from henceforth expecting till His enemies are made His footstool.”
Charles Spurgeon