2. The words "hath been given" point to a definite time when this all-embracing authority was conferred. When was it given ? Let another portion of Scripture answer the ques- tion— "Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness 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 connexion between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and His investiture with this sovereign power. Listen to Paul : "Becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name." Listen to Peter : who " raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory." Hear the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews : " we see Jesus . . . for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour." Hearken to John : to Him " who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler 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
1 A. Plumruer.
ST. MATTHEW xxvm. 18-20 441
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 the text, and the Master Himself had taught them that all power was given to Him in heaven and on earth. As it seems impossible to account for the existence of the Church if we deny the resurrection, so it seems impossible to account for the faith of the earliest stratum of the Christian Church without the acceptance of some such declara- tion 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.
Tj The resurrection of Christ marked the acceptance of His work by the Father, and revealed the triumph in which that work ended. Death and all the power of the enemy were over- come, and victory was attained. But the resurrection of Christ was also His emergence — His due emergence — into the power and blessedness of victorious life. In the Person of Christ life in God, and unto God, had descended into the hard conditions set for Him who would associate a world of sinners to Himself. In the resurrection the triumph of that enterprise came to light. Now, done with sin, and free from death, and asserting His superiority to all humiliation and all conflict, He rose in the ful- ness of a power which He was entitled also to communicate. He rose, with full right and power to save. And so His resurrection denotes Christ as able to inspire life, and to make it victorious in His members.1
3. This claim means the success of His life purpose. He had told His disciples that He would build His Church; that He would lead it as an army in conflict against evil and its issues, and in victory over all, including the very gates of Hades ; that He would erect a moral standard, and make them, His disciples, His interpreters thereof, giving them " the keys of the kingdom of heaven." Immediately following this declaration of purpose, He had spoken to them of the necessity for the cross, and they, with faith faltering, had seen Him die. Notwithstanding all He had foretold them, they looked upon the cross as evidence of His failure to accomplish His purposes. From their standpoint of 1 R. Rainy, Bpistte to the Philippians, 239.
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observation, it was impossible for one who died to build a Church, and lead an army, and insist upon a moral standard. But now they saw Him in all the glory of resurrection life, and knew that therein He demonstrated His power to build a Church, having passed through death and become the firstborn from among the dead. They knew that He had the power to combat sin and overcome it, for He had taken hold of death, which is the ultimate of sin, and in His mastery of death had revealed His ability to deal with sin. He had lived in perfect conformity with His own ethical standard, and when His life resulted in His rejection by men and His being put to death, it had seemed as though the impossibility of obedience was proved ; but now, standing in the power of risen life, He claimed authority, and thereby suggested that His own victories vindicated His right to be the ethical Teacher of the world.
4. But in this claim we have not merely the attestation of the completeness of Christ's work, we have also the elevation of Man- hood 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 of bearing, that " exceeding and eternal weight of glory." In that elevation of the Man Christ Jesus, we may read a prophecy, which 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.