The Authority of Christ

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:02, NKJV).

There are some who deny the Deity of Christ, and by deity I specifically mean those aspects of Godhead that most defy human understanding - His eternality (no beginning and no end), and His all-encompassing authority.

The Gospel of John and other New Testament writers address the first issue, but Hebrews, as much or more than any other book, attends to Christ's authority. And it does so in a surprisingly simple refrain - Christ's exalted position at the throne of God.

In Hebrews Chapter 1, the writer quotes God Himself: But to the Son He says: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom. (Hebrews 1:8, NKJV). Then in Hebrews 8 and here, he specifically mentions Christ being seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Throughout human history, the right hand of the king has signified his sovereign authority. It was the hand of honor, and of life and death.

One motion of the royal scepter, typically held in the right hand, rendered unquestionable judgment that could not be breached or rescinded.

To stand at the right hand of the throne was to serve, but to sit there was to be co-regent, equal in authority and power.

Humans in our natural state crave power and despise authority. The first is motivated by both sin and fear. The second primarily by sin alone - the desire to throw off the yolk of God's authority and to be our own sovereign.

Left unchecked, these dual impulses inevitably lead to violent anarchy, to mob rule of the most inhuman (but really quintessentially human) kind.

Given the totality of recorded history, it makes perfect sense to distrust authority as embodied by human rulers and human institutions. One of the brilliant protective aspects of our form of government here in the U.S. is that it was established by men who trusted God, but held men themselves as irremediably corrupt. 

Thus our system of checks and balances and the bedrock principle that abuse of power and authority WILL inevitably occur.

The prescription: three co-equal branches of adversarial government - the Legislature, the Supreme Court, and the Executive; all to protect the citizenry from ourselves AND overreaching authority.

But the authority of Christ is entirely different. 

Instead of being held in suspicion, His sovereignty should be embraced as a great comfort to us. We are His children and subjects by faith, and He has proven His undying and immeasurable devotion to us by His momentous act of Self-sacrifice that paid the price of our sin, and gives us eternal life.

I can think of no greater, nor eloquent, nor succinct summary of this then Paul's exposition in his letter to the Philippians.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery [something to be held onto or grasped at all costs] to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11, NKJV).

Note the three words the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to use regarding Christ's deity and humanity: form, likeness, and appearance. These are telling and immensely significant, and much more could be written than I intend here, but know this:

He whose form is God, took on the essential form of Man, putting aside for a time all the privileges and power of Deity in His own right. 

And taking on the likeness of men (the entirety of those existential aspects that make humans human), and in every way the appearance of a man (comprising everything in a person which strikes the senses, the figure, bearing, discourse, actions, manner of life, etc. - the habitus of a man, as Strong's so precisely puts it) - He humbled Himself, to come, not as a powerful King, but as a sacrificial Lamb.

Focus on that last thought especially and be amazed. For the eternal, all-powerful Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, purposely, voluntarily, and out of filial obedience to the Father, made Himself lowly in order to be killed in a most horrific manner so that we (His subjects) could live in Him.

And in His humility He was exalted by God the Father, and given authority over all flesh as a Man. That Man, Jesus (note the emphasis on His human nature), is the one to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, not to His own glory, but to the glory of God the Father.

Do you see the comfort and confidence these truths should instill in us?

All the perfection, power, holiness, righteousness, goodness and intelligence of God, embodied in a Divine Human ruler, who has already demonstrated His love for us beyond anything we could ask or think.

It conceivably could have been very different. Christ could have exercised His authority in a much less assuring way. He could have manifested Himself as that Divine Dictator, that Holy Terror, that the world so often mischaracterizes Him to be, who squashes rebellious humanity without mercy, and without any chance of redemption.

But instead, He surprised us with an unimaginable demonstration of His love - something we could not have anticipated were it not for God's Word, and the evidence of the Cross.

Thus, the ultimate and superior authority of Christ is a strong tower and a shelter for His children by faith.

And while it is of the greatest assurance to us who believe in Him, to those who remain in rebellion, it will be a source of the greatest possible fear.

As forewarned in Revelation, there will come a Day when …the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, [will hide] themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and [say] to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! “For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17, NKJV).

Submit to His authority now, while it may be done by faith, so that you will be spared when His authority is revealed as inescapable in the judgment that is to come.

Enduring the Unfathomable Pain of Redemption

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:02, NKJV).

I do not understand how, during His six hours on the Cross, Jesus suffered the eternity of punishment we deserve. But that He did is crystal clear from God's Word.

Perhaps, it has something to do with Who was suffering - along the lines of supposing that what would take each one of us forever to endure, Jesus, the sinless Son of God, withstood the equivalent in six earthly hours.

Or maybe the secret of the mystery lies in an Eternal Being's perception of time. 

Or, since He was the only One who has ever (so far) been completely separated from God, something of which He was completely unworthy, that separation of God from God was so monstrously unprecedented that the scales of justice were balanced.

Maybe, it was because sinlessness itself, becoming sin for us, paid the price for all sin for all time during that momentous day.

Like I said, I don't know how exactly, but I believe without the slightest doubt that He did. And that His suffering on the Cross propitiated God's righteous wrath against human rebellion for all who will believe.

Not that I would not some day like to understand it more fully. In fact, in that day when I find myself in His Presence, when asking for anything becomes appropriate, I hope to ask for a personally guided tour of redemptive history; to see the intricate and brilliantly tragic threads of human events from the divine perspective; to be taken by His nail-scarred hand and shown all of the truth that my finite mind can comprehend.

No doubt I would fall on my face in utter gratitude at His grace and mercy and love. And my devotion to Him would forever be deepened.

Until then, I will just have to wait, and be amazed that He did endure the cross on my behalf - that He and the Father inexplicably thought my own redemption was worth such unfathomable suffering.

I suspect that there must always be pain in redemption.

And each redeemed human heart feels at least a small inkling of this pain, with the shedding of the old self, and the labor pangs of birthing the new. There is the pain of seeing the world, in all its tragedy and loss, through the eyes of Christ and a regenerated spirit - the dour and deadening spectacle of brutality, sin and selfishness which has characterized human behavior since expulsion from the Garden.

And for those of us who came to Christ in later years. we feel the additional painful burden of a life lived in the deceitfulness of sin prior to our conversion. Not that we labor under unresolved guilt, that is done away with completely by the forgiveness offered through Christ's shed blood, but that we must see and experience the consequences of those past actions, and recall the pain and damage we have caused ourselves and others.

But it is this very pain that eventually burns away the last remnants of the old man, refining us in the flames of our God, who is a consuming fire.

Jesus, guiltless and undeserving of any suffering at all, suffered it all. For us.

He endured the public humiliation, the immense injustice, the indescribable loss of fellowship, for the first time in eternity from the Father, and the unknowable (at least for us) torture of becoming sin for us so that we could become His righteousness in Him.

I can only vaguely imagine what it must have been like to carry the guilt of every single heinous act of mankind, in all its unthinkably despicable variety, before and since, until the new Heaven and the new earth has come, and there will be no more sin, or pain, or sorrow or suffering or death.

But I know with unmistakable clarity that He despised the shame, yet did not despise us, the cause of all that shame.

The Bible describes it eloquently in this way:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. (Romans 5:8-11, NKJV).

For the Joy That Was Set Before Him

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:02, NKJV).

This is an astonishing verse in so many ways, not the least of which is the revelation that one of the motivations for Jesus going to the Cross was, amazingly, joy.

I can easily imagine grim resolve. Or determined obedience to the Father's will, facts that other texts clearly describe, but joy?

Shameless and perverse critics have used this verse and others to argue that the Bible, if it contains any truth at all, illuminates a blood-thirsty, sadomasochistic deity no better than the devil itself. 

But people think and say a lot of mindless things.

No, the prospect of excruciation was not the source of joy, but the eternal benefit to us that His enduring that horrific death would yield. 

His death was our rescue. 

His death was setting us free from the eternal penalty of sin. 

His death was His indescribable gift to the Father, planned before the foundation of the world, that would redeem a helpless and hopeless fallen Creation, and present us without spot or blemish to the Throne of God.

His death was our eternal life in the Presence of God, attainable no other way.

That was the joy set before Him.

And unaccountably, we are the joy that was set before Him. That is, those of mankind who know, believe and live by the truth that is revealed in Jesus.

A common and willful misconception of the God of the Bible is that He is a tyrannical demander of worship and adoration and sacrifice. It is His way, or the highway to Hell.

Yes, he desires our adoration and worship, yet not for His sake, but for ours. He needs nothing from us, but knows that we become like what we worship. Either ourselves in this fallen state, headed inevitably and irretrievably toward eternal destruction. Or His perfect Son, through whom we have eternal life.

Yes, He has sovereign authority over His Creation, the "right of manufacture" as it is written about in some old Puritan texts, but authority only equates to tyranny when misused for evil. When an all-knowing, all-powerful, wholly good, utterly holy, and everywhere-present Deity exercises authority, it is the opposite of tyranny. It is, by definition, the epitome of "Beneficent Rulership".

And sacrifice? Of course, self-sacrifice is the ONLY antidote for our default state of hopeless self-obsession. Giving up something for yourself to provide good for another is noble and honorable, and know this: Jesus exemplifies this very principle - by becoming a Man, by showing the Way, and by voluntarily going to the Cross.

Listen to Christ's only self-description in the New Testament:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30, NKJV).

And read His only reason for doing the things that He did:

“for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:10, NKJV).

Understand this, beloved of God, no matter how you see yourself, the Father sees you through the eyes of His Son, and those eyes are the same ones that looked upon the very people who drove the iron spikes through His hands and feet, and asked, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” (Luke 23:34, NKJV).

As we are His joy, so He is ours.

Without Him and His enduring the Cross, our brief span of life on this earth is but a vaporous prelude to unending torment.

With Him, because of Him, we are granted full citizenship in Heaven.

Forever.

Author and Finisher

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:02, NKJV).

Scripture is so rich, so full of encouragement, hope and conviction (not condemnation) for the believer in Jesus Christ. It is truly the light of truth shining in the darkness, a beacon that illuminates our path through this life into the next. 

Its focus is primarily on three things: Israel as a witness to God's existence and intervention in human affairs; Christ as the longed-for fulfillment of the Father's promise of redemption and eternal life; and the church as the embodiment of faith and new life in Christ.

The citation above, as is all of Hebrews, is intended to expand on the superiority of Christ to everything that has gone before, or could be conceived of in the mind of man.

Faith itself is an invention and gift of God, through Christ, to circumvent our inherent inability to earn favor with a perfectly righteous and holy Being. It is by faith alone that we can please Him, and by faith alone that we are saved from the wrath of judgment to come. It is by faith alone that He empowers us through His Spirit to perform those good works that He prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

In addition then to being the object of our faith, this verse reveals Christ as both the instigator and guarantor of our faith. Like the Master Craftsman that He is, He has both wrought our faith by His creative power, and will do all that is necessary within us to ensure that our faith will be a masterpiece beyond compare, leading us into the blessedness of eternal life in intimate fellowship with Him and with the Father.

It is entirely conceivable that this would not have to be so. If, for instance, our representative forbear, Adam, had not rebelled, and had instead remained faithful to His Creator, then redemption would not have been necessary for the sorry race born of Adam.

Alternatively, if God had chosen not to display His long-suffering and forbearance, He could have condemned Adam instantly rather than mercifully cursing him and allowing his descendants to seek forgiveness through Messiah, the prophesied "seed of the woman" Eve promised in Genesis 3.

Or, rather than ordaining faith as the means to receive the gift of forgiveness, God could have made such entirely dependent on our perfect adherence to the Law, that, given the depth to which Adam's sin corrupted him, down to his very genetic structure, would have proven futile and impossible for both himself and all his descendants. 

Redemption would then have been held out as an irretrievable carrot forever out of reach due to the unbreakable stick of eternal damnation.

But God did none of these things. Instead He decreed the penalty of sin - death - and sent His Son to pay it on our behalf through crucifixion, declaring faith to be the means by which we appropriate that substitutionary exchange to ourselves.

Then with immeasurable grace, He gifts us with the very faith required.

Do you see the beauty of that? Can you begin to fathom the love and mercy that entails?

Yet, without fanfare or flourish the writer of Hebrews sums it up so succinctly with the characteristic brevity and eloquence of the Holy Spirit, saying only in this regard that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith.

If you are not astounded I am either unclear or you are not paying attention, for this foundation of our redemption is all of God, from beginning to end. From faith to faith, as the Apostle Paul tells us in Romans.

There is so much deception in the world, and in our own hearts, and thrown at us by the enemy of our souls, that it is very easy to lose sight of these magnificent truths in the Bible. That is precisely why this very thing is repeated often and in every conceivable way throughout all 66 books.

For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” (Romans 4:3, NKJV).

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Therefore remember… (Ephesians 2:8-11, NKJV).

Who Are You Looking At?

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:02, NKJV).

Choices, choices. Who or what to look at in this life.

We in the West live in an atmosphere of constant mental and visual stimulus. It has rightly been termed the Information Age. More data (accurate and inaccurate) about more things are available to more people more quickly than ever before. In fact, I suspect there will soon be a lengthy designation in the DSM V describing an officially recognized syndrome swirling around information overload.

The symptoms include shortened attention span, a frenetic need for distraction, and an inability to take a stand or form a rationally founded opinion for more than a few seconds. 

And embedded in all this freely flowing information is an immense volume of temptation to sin.

In some ways, it is harder now than ever before for a Christian to set his or her mind on things above because of the riotous cacophony and sheer volume of earthly intrusions. The list is endless, from social networking and gaming, to innumerable broadcast channels, to literally millions of websites within instant reach on the internet. 

And this connectivity is becoming increasingly portable with ubiquitous networks, tablets, smartphones, iPhones, smaller and smaller laptops, pc's, and other electronic conduits. There is almost no place to hide.

And this trend has increased exponentially over just the past few years, apparently fulfilling this Old Testament prophecy:

“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Daniel 12:4, NKJV).

If ever a period of human history could be characterized by increasing knowledge, ours is it. But in the increase of knowledge, there is no guarantee of a concomitant increase in wisdom, and that is equally clear today. For wisdom, even in the form of common sense, is an increasingly rarefied commodity.

Much of this avalanche of data is aimed against godly living, either directly or indirectly. Yet, like all things the world system intends for evil, God often uses for good, so that counterbalancing the tsunami of darkness is a constant and powerful flow of light and truth. God will always have His remnant.

So this brings us to the question, where is your focus predominantly centered? Is it the world or your circumstances or yourself, or where the Bible exhorts us to focus - on Jesus? There are so many indisputably good reasons for our focus to be on Christ, but to know them you must first put aside the distractions of this life, and delve deeply into God's Word.

In turn, to do this, you must - you MUST - set aside regular and frequent time immersed in God's truth, rather than in the overwhelming flood of worldly stimulus. This is often hard to do, but vitally necessary in order to live a life in accord with God's, rather than man's purposes.

Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:29, NKJV).

Job declared that "…I have treasured the words of His mouth More than my necessary food." (Job 23:12, NKJV).

Otherwise, even as a Christian, you forfeit so much that is good and strengthening and encouraging in this life. By looking unto Jesus rather than the raucous enticements and distractions of the world you may obtain that precious peace that passes all understanding. Your soul and your heart can remain steadfast and unmoved by the utter chaos of events, emotions, and tides of history roiling around you. You are able to hear that still small voice within directing you to follow the way of light and life and love.

This does not mean that you live cloistered or in isolation from the world. It does not mean that you sit idly by and let evil run rampant and unchecked. Instead, you live life as being fully in the world but not of the world, empowered by the Holy Spirit to be God's living witness to those in darkness around you. Understanding in all things what is real and true and important because you approve of, and are informed by, the very Author of truth Himself.

Looking unto Jesus is the ONLY way to accomplish this effectively, because only Jesus will never, ever disappoint, or leave you nor forsake you.

Only Jesus loved you so much that He paid the price for your sin on the Cross.

Only Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

Only Jesus can present you spotless and without blemish to the Father so that you become co-heirs with Christ, and reap all the immeasurable benefits of eternal life in the presence of God Himself.

The Apostle Peter displayed remarkable courage and faith when he stepped out of that boat on the raging Sea of Galilee and began to walk toward his Savior. As long as he gazed steadfastly at Jesus, he remained victorious over his circumstances.

But when he refocused on the wind and the waves, and on the seeming impossibility of what he was doing, he sank rapidly into the sea.

What more vivid a lesson could we be given than this episode? 

And though he failed to maintain his astounding moment of faith, even in his failure we are taught a way of escape. For what did he cry in his weakness?

"Lord Jesus save me!"

So here we have the means of a life lived as more than conquerors, and also the way of rescue when we inevitably fall short.

Both are centered on Jesus, where all of our focus and energy and devotion and worship should be.

The Light House

looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2, NKJV).

 

The Light House

Life is foggy. There may be a moment or two of clarity here and there when you have a fairly good sense of where you're headed, but most of the time you have no idea what you'll run into over the next hour, let alone the next day or week or year. It pays then to know where the Light House is, and to keep your eye locked on it, lest you find yourself torn apart on the rocks or tossed about in the wind and the waves of the rough seas of daily life and completely lose your way.

It is no accident that Jesus self-describes his purpose as the "light of the world." The Book of John is where He says it most.

Joh 1:4* In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Joh 1:9* That [Jesus] was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.

Joh 8:12* Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”

Joh 9:5* “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

Joh 12:46 “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.

He points us to Himself as the Light-bearer, the One who leads the way and destroys the darkness.

The word translated "looking" in the verse cited above above means "fix an unwavering gaze upon." It is an act of will based on faith. It is what enabled Peter, in a magnificent display of outrageous faith, to step out of the boat amidst the stormy sea and walk on water… until He took his gaze off the Lord and began to sink. Even then, he did the next best thing and cried out, "Lord! Save me!" And Jesus reached out His hand and pulled him up. That is what He desires to do for all of us.

Know too, as it says above, that Jesus, our light and life, endured the Cross "for the joy that was set before Him." We who need the light, and look to the light, ARE THAT JOY. His death on the cross in our place was not something He did grudgingly. It was, in fact, motivated by JOY. He did it out of love for us and the Father, and for JOY that in doing so, He would save us and give us the only antidote to eternal darkness, His light.

Given all that, and the fact the He is what enables us to escape from "blackness and darkness forever",  and knowing that with Him in view, guiding the way like that Light House firmly established and blazing forth from the shore, the fog of daily life is a piece of cake. No matter how rough the seas get.

Of course, you may need to get capsized a view times to take this seriously. Very often that is what the storms are intended to do, get you to realize how flimsy that boat really is, how bad a pilot you really are, and how big the waves can become. Being the blockheads we humans are, it's not surprising that we need to get knocked around a bit before we come to the end of ourselves. For a lot of us, it's the only way to get our attention.

Look, He gives us a choice. Focus on the wind and the waves and the fog that leads inevitably to darkness, or fix our gaze upon the One who desires with all His heart to lead us to safety.

“And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (Joshua 24:15, NKJV).