Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: June 7th

OUR COMMANDER’S AND OUR TRIUMPH

We have such a High Priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. - Hebrews 8:1

The new thing which accrued because of Christ’s Incarnation and sacrifice was that, as this text puts it with great emphasis, " Jesus sat at the right hand of the Throne "; or, to put it into other words, that the humanity of our Lord and Brother was lifted up to a participation in Divinity and the rule of the universe. That "sitting" expresses Rest, as from a finished and perfect work, a Rest which is not inactivity; Dominion, extending over all the universe; and Judgment. These three - Rest, Dominion, Judgment - are the prerogatives of the Man Jesus. That is what He won by His bloody passion and sacrifice.

And now what has that to do with us? We are to think of this triumph of the Commander as being a revelation and a prophecy for us. Nobody knows anything about the future life except by means of Jesus Christ. We have no knowledge of another world except as we believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His Ascension up on high. We may have dreams, we may have hopes, we may have forebodings, we may argue from analogy, we may get the length of saying " peradventure," "probably"; but we cannot say we know, unless we will consent to take all our light, and all our knowledge, and all our certitude, and all hope from that great Lord whose death and resurrection are to the whole world the only guarantee of the future, whose presence there is the only light in all the darkness.

In His exaltation to the Throne a new hope dawns on humanity. If we believe that the Man Jesus sits on the throne of the universe, we have a new conception of what is possible for humanity. If a perfect human nature have entered into the participation of the Divine, our natures, too, may be perfect, and what He is and where He is, there, too, we may hope to come. So this Epistle in the second chapter, quoting the grand words of the Psalm, which sometimes and in some moods seems more like irony than revelation: "Thou hast crowned Him with glory and honour; Thou hast put all things under His feet," comments: " We see not yet all things put under Him." Nay, much the contrary. Look at all this weary world, with its miseries and its cares. What has become of the grand dream of the psalm? Has it all gone into moonshine and vapor? "We see not yet all things put under Him." Weary centuries have rolled away, and it does not seem a bit nearer. " But we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour." He, and not all these failures and abortions of existing manhood - He is the type that God means us to be, and what we all may one day come to.