The quotation from Psa. 45 was most distinct and conclusive. No Jew then, if now, could doubt that the psalm refers throughout to the Messiah introducing and maintaining His kingdom on earth in association with the godly Jewish remnant. Christ is seen as King, not Head of the church (though godly Jews are now anointed as His partners, before He appears in His royal glory). But the one object for which it is cited is to prove that God recognizes the Messiah as God. It is not men only nor angels, nor Jews nor Gentiles. It is “God,” the divine title, not of special earthly relationship, but of essential nature in contrast with the creature. What an answer to reproach and rejection!
It might be supposed impossible to find any ascription beyond this in honor of Christ; but it is not so: the next witness exceeds. Here is another and higher testimony to the Son from the fourth book of Psalms (102:25-27): “And, Thou in the beginning, Lord, didst found the earth, and the heavens are works of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou continuest; and they all shall grow old as a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou roll them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail” (ver. 10-12).
The “and” simply connects this fresh quotation with the former as said to the Son. But the divine title differs. It is the name which every Jew owns as incommunicable and supreme. “God” may be used subordinately in peculiar circumstances of those who represent His authority, as kings or judges. Compare Ex. 21; 22, Psa. 82. But Jehovah, in the LXX. translated “Lord” as here used, is never applied otherwise than to God in the highest sense, and this in special or covenant character of relationship with Israel, as the Everlasting and Immutable.
The force of this application of the closing words in the psalm is immense. It is Jehovah's answer to the prayer of the Afflicted, the humbled, cast off, and suffering Messiah, and especially to His petition in ver. 24. No language can more thoroughly show Him man when overwhelmed and pouring out complaint before Jehovah, yet the Holy One of God, so born and so sustained under unparalleled temptations in unbroken dependence and obedience. In ver. 1-1 Messiah spreads out His distress, His heart smitten like grass, His enemies' reproach, Himself taken up and cast down because of Jehovah's indignation and wrath, certainly not against Him but for Israel's sake, so that His days were as a shadow. Then from ver. 12 He contrasts Jehovah's permanence and fidelity to His covenant as the security of Zion, whatever her desolations even in the set time to have pity on her, with the results sure and blessed not only for the generation to come, but for the peoples and kingdoms and nations in that day of fearing and
Christ on His throne in the age of His display, no angel will ever be. Angels were made to serve, not to reign: they never did, nor will. Dominion was given to Adam, the type of Him that was to come. God ever had the kingdom in view from the foundation of the world. Of this kingdom Christ is the destined King. But as He will have in His grace the changed saints to reign with Him, so also He will have saints unchanged set on His right hand and despisers on His left, when He sits on His throne of glory and judges all the nations according to their treatment of His messengers (His brethren) sent forth just before He appears again.
Never will the church sit where Christ sits now, nor any members of it, apostle or prophet. It is peculiar to God Who calls Christ there: because Christ also is God and Jehovah, as we have seen, no less than He Who sent Him, Christ sits there. During the Apocalyptic period judgments from God fall successively and with increasing intensity on guilty man, especially in Christendom, and at length, when His enemies are set a footstool, Christ personally appears to tread them down. Then when in association with His ancient people Jehovah sends the rod of His strength out of Zion, and He rules in the midst of His foes. But such no longer are the Jews, who once constrained the Gentiles to crucify Him; they offer themselves willingly in the day of His power. He will have then the dew of His youth, the generation to come. “Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children.” Men corrupt themselves more and more, whatever they vaunt of progress. Nevertheless under Christ there will surely be the best wine for the earth kept till then. And then will the blessedness be shown of Jehovah's oath about the great Melchizedek; for though Christ is so now as to order, only then will it be exercised. He will bring out the bread and the wine for the victors in all their meaning, blessing man on the part of God most high, and blessing God on man's part. For indeed will it be the good age, and every one and thing in its due place, which He only can accomplish. No doubt that clay will open with wrath, as we know it will close with judgment when time melts into eternity.
But then again the aim of the Spirit is not to open out the coming glory for the earth, but to demonstrate the singular dignity proper to Christ at God's right hand, in contrast with angels who at best are all ministering spirits sent forth on service for those that are to inherit salvation. Higher than this they never rise. Christ might and did become David's Son; but He was also David's Lord, as our Lord Himself put the case to the Jews and unanswerably, because their lips were held fast in unbelief. But faith here answers at once. He was God equally with the Father. Where else then should He sit but at God's right hand? Surely none the less because man or Israel would have none of Him. The first of Israel's royal line, the father (after a long succession then to come) of Him Whose is that kingdom everlasting, though yet awaiting it, owns his Son, by the strangest reversal of nature, as his Lord: a thing unaccountable, unless He were God, the Root as well as Offspring of David. The holy angels are sustained of the Lord. It is ours to know salvation, whether as now seen complete in Christ (as in Eph. 2, &c.) or as completed in AB at His coming and therefore future (as here and elsewhere).