1. The Keys.-The key has, from of old, been the symbol of authority (Is. xx. 22) and power (Job 12:14; Rev. 3:7). In this sense, a mountain-pass, or a strait of the sea, is sometimes, even in modern language, called the key of a kingdom. Possess it, and the whole that lies within is yours. There is harmony of ideas, too, in applying it to a house; he that has the key of a house is the master. But there seems no congruity, no sense, in applying it to the human body. In it the head has all the directive power; and in that spiritual body, of which Christ is the Head, it is so also.
2. A creature, as such, ought to keep its first estate, as assigned to it by God. No creature, because a spirit, had the right to leave its first estate (Jude 6) any more than had Adam to leave his. When the Creator sets what He has created in a given sphere, that is its estate. But the Son of God had the right and title to leave any sphere, for He is God. Yet when (Phil. 2) He left the divine glory on high, it was in the perfect character of one, taking a new sphere, as entirely subserving the glory and will of God and the Father. His having the right to leave the divine glory on high, to become seed of the woman, proved that He was God; and the object with which He left it, and His whole way afterward proclaimed the same.