In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
In its second paragraph, the Apostles’ Creed goes step by step through the mighty acts of our Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf for our salvation. Each step has a particular, powerful significance: He was “conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”
Now we look at what is called Christ’s heavenly “session,” his sitting on the right hand of God the Father almighty – from which place he shall return to judge the living and the dead. During his ministry, in controversy with his enemies, Jesus noted that David, inspired by the Spirit in Psalm 110, wrote, “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Jesus asked those critics: “If David calls Christ his Lord, how then is Christ David’s Son?” The enemies could not answer Jesus.[1] But Psalm 110 speaks of God’s right hand, where God’s Anointed One, placed in honor equal to the LORD God himself, reigns over his enemies as though they were a stool for his feet.
Christ’s victory was not a worldly military conquest.[2] It was a different kind of battle, fought to the death – Christ’s own death. And his death was his victory, actually his glorification. When he was lifted up on the cross, he drew the whole world to himself for judgment. Jesus said this, “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” His resurrection on the third day sealed that victory, and his empty tomb and his appearances to his disciples certified his risen life. After those appearances were concluded, he ascended into heaven, so that what was accomplished in his life and death, especially his glorification on the cross, was exalted, enthroned, at the right hand of the Father, the glorious majesty of God in “the highest place that heaven affords.”
The right hand is the Lord’s place of equal dignity with his Father as God the eternal and only-begotten Son. And this means, since Jesus’ ascension, that our human nature, in perfect union with the divine Son, is also exalted to that same right hand – in the words of the hymn, “to the throne of Godhead, to the Father’s breast.”
In Holy Scripture as well as in the parlance of the world, the right hand is the hand of action, especially of combat. Left-handed warriors were rare; but there is a memorable story in the Book of Judges of the left-handed hero Ehud who waged war accordingly. The left and right hands in Scripture complement and contrast. But because it is a predominantly right-handed world: the right hand, indeed the thumb of the right hand in anointing, performs ceremonial gestures. Father Fletcher is left-handed. He uses his right hand for the priestly ceremonial gestures. But there are priests who are so left-handed that they do these gestures with the left hand. I digress in the name of even-handedness. The right hand in any case is the traditional hand of justice, of righteousness, of pronouncing right judgment.[3]
Now as for sitting at God’s right hand, we have still more significance. Christ’s sitting indicates that his work of redemption is finished, and now he presides, sits in glory, oversees his Church and indeed the whole world, and already judges.[4] Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his seat. Mercy and truth go before his face. The British monarch addresses Parliament while sitting. Bishops in the early Church still on occasion sit while addressing a congregation. Popes, patriarchs and archbishops often do this. Jesus, when he began the Sermon on the Mount, sat down and taught, like Moses, from a seated position, which is a sign of solemn authority. So it is that the Lord of glory sits in majesty now at the right hand of the Father, high above all heavens, in the heart of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.
There is a notable exception in the Acts of the Apostles. At the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the “proto-martyr” of the early Church, in which Saul of Tarsus, the future Saint Paul the Apostle, held the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen, Jesus was standing at the right hand of God. Stephen saw the Lord standing while suffering his martyr’s passion for Christ. Good commentators[5] think that this exception is made because Jesus identifies with and honors his martyr – and in due course, during the conversion of Saul the persecutor into Paul the apostle, Jesus will say to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Jesus and his Body, the faithful Church bearing witness, are one.
The right hand of the throne of grace at the Father’s side is the spiritual place and focal point of all adoration and prayer. It is the place we go when we say we pray “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We mean, literally, that our prayer goes to the heart of God through the crucified, risen, ascended, reigning humanity of Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man. We pray with confidence, “Our Father,” because Jesus, the Father’s only-begotten Son from all eternity, has take our human nature and has called us to be adopted children, his brothers and sisters. So we approach his throne of grace with “boldness,” with the confidence of a child in the presence of a loving Father: Seeing we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God…let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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[1] St. Luke 20:41-44; St. Matthew 22:41-45; St. Mark 12:35-37.
[2] Because of Jesus Christ, his followers understand that we win by losing, we live by dying, we reign by serving; for God is Love, and Love conquers all. “The cross he bore is life and health though shame and death to him; his people’s hope, his people’s wealth, their everlasting theme.”
[3] “Right (Hand)” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, Geoffrey Bromiley, ed. (Eerdmans), p. 191.
[4] I owe much here to a conversation with my old friend, now departed, the distinguished Anglican evangelical theologian and biblical scholar, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes.
[5] Such as Soren Kierkegaard, for example, to whom I owe this insight from his journals.