Q. 2. Is it true, as Canon Faussett says, that “Christ as the Son of God never gives up His session on the Father's throne"? X.
A. In both statements there seems no small confusion through inattention to scripture.
1. The Father and the Son, as such, do not appear in Psa. 110. It is wise to adhere to scripture. The true correlates here are Jehovah and Messiah. No doubt the persons may be otherwise and elsewhere so regarded; but beyond controversy what the Psalm reveals is Jehovah saying to David's Lord, the Messiah, Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. Nor in fact does scripture ever, that I remember, speak of the right hand of the Father, but of God, and avoids it pointedly as in Acts 2:3333Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. (Acts 2:33). Surely also the N. T. which speaks of “evangelistic work” connects it with the Son yet more than the Father. It was He, not the Father, Who came to seek and to save the lost. It is not said of “the Father,” but that “God so loved the world that He gave” &c. The truth is that in the O. T. Jehovah and His Anointed have perfect communion in “outward judgments,” as in the N. T. Father and Son have in “evangelistic work.” The Law, Psalms, and Prophets prove the former, as the Gospels and Epistles the latter, the Revelation bringing us round transitionally to the world-kingdom of the Lord and His Christ, and the eternal state which follows again confirming their fellowship in judgment as before in grace.
Nor can any interpretation be more egregious than that Jehovah's making Messiah's enemies to be Messiah's footstool means “converting grace.” Subjecting them to Christ it is, but this, as 1 Cor. 15 slums, for actively putting down and annulling all antagonistic power. Such is one of the main objects of “the kingdom,” which is as distinct from the gospel and the church as from eternity.
2. That Canon F. believes Christ will come again, we are assured. It is indeed the common creed of Christendom. This means that Christ will cease to sit at God's right hand, and on the Father's throne, in order to sit on His own throne. The divine intimation which tells us that He, the risen Man, sits there, tells us that He will leave it to tread down, and rule in the midst of, His enemies. His friends will then reign along with Him. When all things have been subjected to Him, then He delivers up the kingdom which is given Him for that purpose, that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) may be all in all. This is the eternal state, the new heaven and new earth (not in the incipient or millennial sense, but) fully and finally, all evil having been judged. But the coming of the Lord is not at the epoch of sitting on the great white throne which follows the millennium; for the earth and the heavens will then have fled, and no place be found for them. His coming, or rather appearing, the second time, is where He came and appeared the first time; and, therefore, as Rev. 19 and many other scriptures show, before the millennium begins. Of course the Father's throne will be left before taking His own throne.
A. Not so, though comparisons are odious; and it is the plain call of grace for the teacher to uphold the evangelist, as for the evangelist to give all honor to the teacher. Each fills up a different and all-important part of ministerial work, each a gift from Christ for the perfecting of the saints to the edifying of His body. But while the evangelist might be a babe, the teacher needs ripe spiritual intelligence. The truth, however, is that the apostle by ten thousand “instructors” in Christ does not refer to the teachers, but to the meddlesome talkers at Corinth, to whom he gives the rather slighting title of παιδαγωγοί. (as in Gal. 3:2424Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. (Galatians 3:24)). So was called the slave that led the child to and from school, a boy-ward, not his teacher. Paul had toward the Corinthian saints the affections of a father.