Priest of our profession to do in the temple made without hands, eternal in the heavens. This is set forth with all clearness in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
3. It was expedient, our Lord said, that He should go away ; " for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you." (John xvi. 7.) It was necessary that redemption should not only be acquired but applied- Men if left to themselves w^ould have remained in their sins, and Christ had died in vain. The great blessing which the prophets predicted as characteristic of the Messianic period, was the effusion of the Holy Spirit. To secure that blessing for the Clmrch his ascension was necessary. He was exalted to give repentance and the remission of sins ; to gather his people from all nations and during all ages until the work was accomplished. His throne in the heavens was the proper place whence the work of saving men, through the merits of his death, was to be carried on.
4. Again our Lord told his sorrowing disciples, " I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John xiv. 2, 3.) His ascension, therefore, was necessary for the completion of his work.
§ 3. Sitting at the Right Hand of Grod.
This is the next step in the exaltation of our Lord. He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God ; that is, was associated with Him in glory and do- minion. The subject of this exahation was the Theantliropos ; not the Logos specially or distinctively ; not the human nature exclusive!}^ ; but the theanthropic person. When a man is ex- alted it is not the soul in distinction from the body ; nor the body in distinction from the soul, but the whole person.
The ground of Christ's exaltation is twofold : the possession of divine attributes by which He was entitled to divine honour and was qualified to exercise absolute and universal dominion ; and secondly, his mediatorial work. Both these are united in Hebrews i. 3. It is there said, that Christ " sat down on the right liand of the Majesty on high ; " first (wv, being, i. e.), because He is the brightness of the Father's glory and his express image, and sustains the universe by the word of his power ; and secondly, because by the sacrifice of Himself, He made purification for our sins. So also in Philippians ii. 6-11, where we are taught that it was He who existed in the form of God and was equal with God, who humbled
636 PART m. Ch. Xin. — exaltation of CHRIST.
Himself to be obedient unto death even the death of the cross, and therefore, for those two reasons, " God also hath 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 things in earth, and things under the earth." In Ephesians i. 20-22, it is said, God raised Christ from the dead " and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all princi- pality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is n;i!ne(l, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come ; and liath put all things under his feet." This latter passage, taken froni the eighth Psalm, is repeatedly quoted to prove the absolutely universal dominion of the risen Saviour, as in Hebrews ii. 8 : *' In that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him." And also 1 Corinthians xv. 27, when it is said, " All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is ex- cepted, which did put all things under him." No creature there- fore is excepted. This also is what our Lord Himself teaches, when He says, " All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." (Matt, xxviii. 18.) Heaven and earth in Scriptural lan- guage, is the whole universe. In 1 Peter iii. 22, it is said, " Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God ; angels and authorities and powers (z. e., all rational creatures) being made sub- ject unto him." In the prophetic books of the Old Testament it was predicted that the Messiah should be invested with this uni- versal dominion. (See Ps. ii., xlv., Ixxii., ex. ; Isa. ix. 67 ; Dan. vii. 14, etc.) That such authority and power could not be in- trusted to a mere creature is plain from the nature of the case. Divine perfections, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, as well as infinite wisdom and goodness, are requisite for the effectual and righteous administration of a dominion embracing all orders of beings, all creatures rational and irrational, extending over the reason and conscience as well as over the external world. On this point the Scriptures are explicit. They teach expressly that to no angel, i. e., to no rational creature, as the tei'm angel includes all intelligences higher than man, hath God ever said, " Sit on my right hand." (Heb. i. 13.) All angels, all rational creatures, are commanded to worship Him.
This universal dominion is exercised by the Theanthropos. It is vain for us to speculate on the relation of the divine and human natures in the acts of this supreme ruler. We cannot understand the relation between the soul and the body in the voluntary exer- cises in which both are agents, as when we write or speak. We