Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

10. The Exaltation of Christ

The Old Testament Scriptures hold a riddle that the Jew cannot solve. They looked for — and still look for — a glorious Messiah, the Son of David, but there are many arresting passages in these Scriptures that tell of One who should come in great humility and suffering, who should not be glorious in the eyes of men, but who should in fact be despised and rejected by them. Who could He be? They revelled in such exhilarating prophecies as, “My Servant shall deal prudently, He shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high;” even the disciples of the Lord looked earnestly for the out shining of that glory, but what could be the meaning of “His visage was more marred than any man, and His form more than the sons of men”? It was easy enough to discern the voice of Israel’s Deliverer and God in the words, “I clothe the heavens with blackness and I make sackcloth their covering. At My rebuke I dry up the sea” but Who is it that says, “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheek to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting” (Isa. 50)? Of course, we find the key to the riddle in the New Testament; we know and believe that it is Christ and Him crucified; but this to the Jew is a stumbling-block; he will not have a suffering Messiah and abides in ignorance and unbelief.

It is clear from all Scripture that since man became a sinful, self-centred creature, and death lay upon him as God’s judgment, the way to the glory is through suffering; it is “he that humbles himself that is exalted.” I should hesitate to apply the saying, “No cross, no crown” to the Lord Jesus personally, for all the crowns were His according to His rights as the Creator Son and Heir of all things, yet having descended from the place of His eternal glory and become man for God’s glory and our redemption, even He could not reach the joy that was set before Him apart from enduring the cross. He took the downward way of suffering to do the will of God and became obedient to death even the death of the cross; it was the only way to the crown.

The disciples of the Lord were as blind to the fact that the way of suffering was the only way to the glory as the rest of the Jews, for when He told them that He “must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests and scribes and be killed and raised again the third day. Peter took Him and rebuked Him, saying, “Be it far from Thee, Lord, this shall not be to Thee.” He had no conception of God’s way, though he understood it afterwards when he wrote of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.

The exaltation of Christ cannot be separated from His humiliation. It is God’s answer to all that He suffered in a world dominated by the devil, and as a sacrifice for sins. His own words to His disciples unfolded the story that we love to tell, and which indeed, had been the burden of all Scripture, “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things,” He said, “and to enter into His glory,” and Peter took up the same theme and enlarged upon it in his Pentecostal witness, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God has made that same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” And Paul gives the full measure of that exaltation, as the consequence of the descent from Godhead glory to the shame of the cross. “Wherefore God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name that is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow: of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).

That Christ is in heaven, a real living man, raised up from the dead, is fundamental to our faith and must be maintained and proclaimed. The Scriptures are so definite about it, that it may seem needless to stress it, but the fact is that multitudes have no knowledge of it at all, they think of Him as a spirit, and not as a man having flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). A young man, a true but unstable Christian, said to me after we had listened to an address on the exaltation of the Lord, “I never knew that Christ was a real, living man in heaven before, I always thought that He was a spirit.” I need not say that the knowledge he gained that day changed his life. I think it would be right to say that even as the disciples of the Lord during His life with them thought only of the glory, and in spite of His own words had no thought of the sufferings, for they were “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken; so now many sincere Christians think only of the sufferings and do not realise the glory to which Christ has been exalted; they sing, “Simply to Thy cross I cling,” and have a very feeble conception of Christ “crowned with glory and honour” at the right hand of the Majesty on high. But our faith is not complete without this, it is the crown of it, and a full, robust and joyful Christian life is impossible if it is not known.

From whichever point we view the ways and counsels of God, whether for His own glory, the blessing of men, or the overthrow of all evil, we see that the exaltation of Christ is a necessity. Take these ways of God on their most simple and elementary ground, that of our blessing. The answer to the challenge, “Who can lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” is “It is God that justifies.” But everything that He does must be according to eternal justice, and how can He justify the ungodly The answer is “It is Christ that died” by His death a full expiation was made for all our offences. “Yea, rather, that is risen again” and His resurrection is God’s seal upon the value of His death, and the proof that the price paid in it was sufficient; had it not been, death would have held Him as its prey and even the power of God could not have raised Him. “Who is even at the right hand of God,” and His exaltation is the declaration of God’s entire satisfaction and delight in His work which He accomplished for us. The believer’s Substitute and Representative is at the right hand of God. Could He have been there if one sin had remained on Him? Impossible! Yet on the cross He was delivered for our offences; there He was made sin for us and the Lord laid upon Him the iniquities of us all. Nothing else could prove how completely He has borne away “sin’s heavy load” for us, like His exaltation to the Father’s right hand. The devil himself could not prevent that exaltation and can say nothing against it, and consequently he cannot bring any charge against us for whom Christ suffered and died. But further, “Who also makes intercession for us”. If He died and rose again for our justification, He lives and intercedes for us that we might live as justified people. It is in Christ that we have redemption; in Him we are justified from all things; in Him we are sanctified, and in Him we have an everlasting, inalienable acceptance with God, but it is in Him who is exalted and crowned in glory, beyond the reach of question or challenge. “This man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool” (Hebrews 10). The value of His death abides; His victory over death by resurrection abides; but He is in the glory and as glorified He is the measure and the pledge of our blessing.

The vindication of the Lord and the subjugation of all evil are involved in this exaltation. Let us consider the words of David in Psalm 110. “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.” The Lord used this great saying in His conflict with the Pharisees as a challenge and a warning, giving them thereby an opportunity of discerning who He was and repenting their enmity towards Him. The words declare His Deity, for they tell us that He was David’s Lord, but they also proclaim His exaltation consequent upon His humiliation and rejection by men. Peter takes them up in this way in his Pentecostal appeal to the nation, and his appeal was most powerful; he set two ways open to his hearers, the one was that of surrender to Him whom God had set at His right hand, but refusing that the other was to be crushed beneath His victorious feet. And it must be one or other for every soul of man.

One most precious feature of our Lord’s obedience to His Father’s will was His complete committal of Himself to the Father. No thought of self-vindication entered His mind, “He is near that justifieth me” was always the spirit in which He moved onward to the cross. When one of His disciples drew a sword to defend Him in the garden, He said to him, “Put up again thy sword into his place. … Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to My Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” And when at last His enemies had done their worst and He hung rejected and put to shame upon the cross, and the chief priest with the scribes and elders mocked Him saying, “He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him: for He said, I am the Son of God,” He sought no deliverance, and died apparently unheard by heaven. But He was heard. “Thou hast heard Me from the horns of the unicorns,” and His exaltation to God’s right hand is God’s answer to that complete obedience and perfect trust.

In His life of humiliation He proved Himself worthy to command all things for God; and the father has given all things into His hands. He has set Him “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and has put all things under His feet, and has given Him to be head over all things to the church.” And woe be to those who refuse to own His supremacy, be they men or devils. God’s will and purposes shall be carried out to the last letter of them and all are centred in Christ in the glory of God.

It is clear that God created the earth as we know it for man’s habitation, for His delights were with the sons of men, and He crowned Adam as the head of it, giving him a glorious dominion which he was to hold in fief for God. How soon he handed over his dominion to the devil and lost his crown and became subject to death, and every member of his race is like the head of it. Struggle as they may to regain the lost crown, and no matter how great their ambitions and powers, they cannot do it, all their efforts are brought to naught by death, and the crown lies beyond death. Was then God’s purpose that man should have this dominion to be frustrated? That could not be; but we must look away from the first man to the Second, from the first Adam to the Last Adam, even as God has done. And we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels: for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour. He has gained the crown, but He could only do it through death. By the grace of God He tasted death for everything He came down into a ruined creation, groaning beneath the curse and the power of death to remove the mortgage that was on it; He became man to stand in the place of man who had ruined himself, and to take up all his liabilities and to taste death in all its bitterness that He might remove it; and having humbled Himself to the lowest point He has been raised to the highest and all things have been put in subjection under His feet. But not yet is this manifested. This is the “not yet” period, the period of faith. But faith has eyes that see things that are to come, and is assured that they must be, and has the present pledge of them in Jesus crowned with glory and honour.