The Son of Man.

THE fundamental axiom of all Christian thinking is the existence of God—a God who is infinite, eternal, transcendent in glory, wisdom and power, dwelling in light ineffable, light so bright as to be 'thick darkness.'   'Canst thou by searching, find out God?  Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?  It is as high as Heaven; what canst thou do?  Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know?  The measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than the sea' (Job 11. 7-9).
The poet echoes these words of Job when he exclaims:

Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere,
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.

The mysterious infinitudes of the personality of God are inaccessible to the self-efforts of men, and had God chosen to remain unrevealed, we had remained of all men most miserable.  There is penetrating wisdom in the statement of Paul the Apostle when writing to the Ephesians, 'having no hope, and without God in the world' (2. 12).
But God has chosen to reveal Himself.  The work of His hands in nature, the panorama of variegated beauty throughout the changing year tells of an architect whose wisdom and power are alike without parallel.  The writer to the Hebrews speaks of creation as a garment to be folded up, but in which God shows His power to men (Heb. 1. 11, 12).  He is might, say the mountains sure and true and dependable.  He is unfathomable, saith the ocean.  His ways are past finding out; tireless energy and infinite patience is He.  Stillness and silence, say the stars.  He is glorious, radiant and life-giving, says the sun.  The wonder of sunrise and sunset reveal Him, the intimate excellence of spring's carpeted beauty, the exquisite perfection of every flower that grows—all these unite in testimony to the reality of their Creator.
Moreover, to those who have eyes to see, history discloses Him.  No one is so bigoted as to think that history is a mere accumulation of events.  For at any one moment of time, millions of events are taking place in the universe, whose sole significance in history is the part they play in unrolling the canvas of God's purposes for men.  In the truest sense, history is His story, and far from causing dismay to the hearts of Christian men, the tumultuous happenings of our times are evidence of the superintendence and sovereignty of God. The fact that much is clothed in mystery is a challenge to faith.
The Scripture further teaches that God has been pleased to reveal His mind and purpose through chosen human vessels.  The Old Testament introduces us to men whose importance is that for the time being, they were the media of Divine Truth.  God spake in time past by the prophets, so that we hear Him as the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, while in the New Testament, He is seen in Christ as the God of love, of grace and of peace.
All this is preparatory to the main theme.  The only complete revelation of God is in His Son.  There is the final answer to man's quest. The stoop of Deity into humanity's garb.  Matchless wonder!

That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty
Wherewith He wont at heaven's high council table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and here with us to be
Forsook the courts of everlasting day
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

At the outset, we are confronted with a miracle.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a virgin mother, but there is more than that.  He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. What happened was a divine creative act.  Every other birth is the creation of a new personality.  It was not so with Jesus.  There was a Divine Person already existing, but now entering upon a new mode of existence.  The great Christological passage in Philippians 2 bears this out in clear language.  The words 'was made' are the translation of a verb meaning 'to become.'  'The tense of this verb is ingressive aorist which signifies entrance into a new state.  Our Lord entered into a new state of being when He became man.  But His becoming Man did not exclude His possession of Deity' (Wuest).  A miracle alone could effect such a wonder. Great is the mystery of Godliness.  God was manifest in flesh.  The fact of the virgin birth is vital to a correct conception of the Person of Christ.  To deny it, makes necessary a miracle of some other sort to explain the deeper meaning of His Person and the efficacy of His work.  'His absolute preexistence, His relation to the cosmos, His eternal power and Godhead do not seem to be congruent with the manner of birth that is common to men.  He bears a name that no one knows but Himself' (McIntyre).
Two facts are crystal clear to the devout reader of the New Testament.  First, the humanity of Jesus was real, genuine and true, naturally or physically like that of all men; and second, His humanity was perfect morally, possessing the quality of sinlessness, unlike that of any other man.
To go back through successive stages of man, boy, child and babe, and question the essential reality of His manhood is impossible.  No one who knew Him doubted this. He was known as the carpenter's son.  We may picture Him in the workshop, on the desert road and by the lakeside, or on the cobbled streets of the towns and villages of the ancient land.  He calls Himself man—'a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God' (John 8. 40).  He experiences the effects of purely human emotions.  He was ‘an hungered' (Matt. 4. 2).  He was sometimes grieved and angry (Mark 3. 5).  Weary and thirsty, He sat thus on the well (John 4. 6).  After a day of unremitting toil, they took Him even as He was in the ship (Mark 4. 36).  And anon, He slept, pillowed on the helmsman's cushion, the sleep of unutterable weariness. The tempestuous billows might bring alarm to the disciples, but they could not disturb the slumber of this blessed Man, tired to the point of exhaustion.  One day He stood beside the grave of Lazarus, and down His human cheeks there coursed human tears, mute but eloquent symbol of His identification with human sorrow (John 11. 35).  Moreover, He suffered and died. He Himself spoke thus: 'My soul is exceeding sorrowful' (Matt. 26. 38).  'Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit' (Luke 23. 46).  Then after the resurrection, He showed to His disciples the reality of His risen body (Luke 24. 39).
The apostles argue, He was true man.  Peter in his address at Pentecost, calls Jesus of Nazareth a Man approved of God (Acts 2. 22).  In Athens, Paul declares, 'God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained' (Acts 17. 31).  In 1 Tim. 2. 5 (R.V.) the same apostle bases the rightness of Christ's mediational office on the reality of His manhood.  'For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, Himself Man, Christ Jesus who gave Himself a ransom for all'.  When we come to the Epistle to the Hebrews, the whole intricate argument for His perfect priesthood, built with logical precision, pivots round the certainty of His true manhood (2. 14, 17; 5. 8, 9).  In addition to these witnesses, the Apostle John writes at a later date ere the first Christian century closes, and asserts that to deny 'that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh' is the mark of a deceiver and an antichrist (1 John. 4. 2; 2 John 7).  It is clear he was combating a heresy of those days that Jesus was a superhuman being but was not really man at all.  His answer is categorical, and the Incarnation has brought eternity into the confines of human life.
Furthermore, our Lord called Himself Son of Man.  This was the designation He constantly employed of Himself, and His choice of this title in preference to more current ones, such as Son of David, King of Israel, is full of deep meaning.  Let it be remembered that the Messianic ideal fully accepted among the people, was that of a king whose power would deliver and whose setting up of a kingdom on earth would radically change their lot.  In identifying Himself with the title, Son of Man, our Lord is impressing upon them the need for a revolution in their expectations.  He is directing them away from the Son of David of the Psalms to the Son of Man of Daniel's visions. His life on earth will be a lowly one.  'For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many' (Mark 10. 45).  Suffering belongs to the very essence of His mission, but this suffering will be vicarious, a sufficing ransom.  It is no extravagant exegesis to see the development of this truth in the Gospel prophecy of Isaiah 53.  It is one thing to regard the suffering servant of that chapter as smitten of God and afflicted, and quite another thing to become aware that such suffering was not penal, but vicarious and expiatory.  He was wounded for our transgressions.  His soul was made an offering for sin.  Since this is so, the Son of Man will rise again the third day (Mark 9. 31; 10. 34) and will come again in clouds with great glory and power to establish the kingdom.
Everywhere our Lord uses this title.  He is man after the Divine pattern, embracing humanity in His own person.  It is enough to say with Canon Liddon: 'Nothing local, transient, individualizing, national, sectarian, dwarfs the proportions of this world-embracing character; He rises above the parentage, the blood, the narrow horizon which founded, as it seemed, His human life.  He is the archetypal Man, in whose presence distinctions of race, intervals of ages, types of civilization, degrees of mental culture, are as nothing.'
He adequately demonstrated the marks of perfect humanity which can be summed in two words—obedience and dependence.  What unbroken trust marked Him in all His ways.  He could say prophetically, 'Thou didst make Me hope when I was upon My mother's breasts' (Psa. 22. 9).  The whole tenor of that devoted life was in conscious dependence upon the Father.  What else is meant by these wonderful words, 'I live by the Father' (John 6. 57), and again, 'I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me' (John 8. 16)?  When He came to die, His last word was not for the sorrow-laden mother who stood by the cross, but for His Father in Heaven, 'Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit' (Luke 23. 46).  This is in close consistence with an early incident.  As a boy of twelve, He spoke of His Father; supremely conscious of whence He came, He listened to the remark of Mary, 'Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing' (Luke 2. 48), and with tender and courteous rebuke responded, 'Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' (Luke 2. 49).  A gentle but necessary correction.  And from the grave, the Saviour spoke, 'My flesh also shall dwell confidently in hope.  For Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption' (Psa. 16. 9, 10); (cp. Acts 2. 27).
Thus, the whole horizon of His human life was marked by trust in God, such as has never been evidenced in the life of any other human being.  If the first Adam was seduced into sin by distrust of God's Word, God's love and God's provision, this blessed One will restore that which He took not away, pillowing His whole life upon the will of God, for the complementary truth to this unalloyed dependence is resolute and unswerving obedience to the will of Him whom He so trusted.  That obedience brought Him into incarnation with its humiliation and compass of infirmities, led Him along the path of man's rejection through the temptations of the wilderness, past the short-lived acclamation of the crowd, the great renunciation of the Transfiguration Mount, from the upper room over the brook Kedron to the crisis of the garden glade of Gethsemane, where He sweat those great drops in the acutest throes of anguish, when He was sore amazed in the face of the staggering implications of His approaching sacrifice as sin-bearer.  Holy ground indeed!  Yet from the faith-lit confines of His spirit, there come those words, mysterious in their import, yet majestic in their triumph, 'Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt' (Mark 14. 36).  From Gethsemane, He goes to Golgotha where the perfect Servant became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.  And when once we have begun to plumb the awful depths of this word 'even,' then and only then, are we beginning to comprehend the mystery and significance of that infinite sacrifice, accomplished by Jehovah's obedient Servant.  'There went up from the depths of Christ's sinless humanity a perfect Amen to the righteous judgment against sin.'

Yes, once Immanuel's orphan cry
His universe hath shaken,
It came up single, echoless,
My God, I am forsaken.
It came up from the holy lips
Amidst the lost creation
That of the lost no soul might use
That cry of desolation.

One of the outstanding proofs of the true humanity of the Son of God is His unwearying resort to prayer, and it is no mere coincidence that the Gospel of Luke which portrays Him as Son of Man is the record which best unveils His prayer life. This is a study in itself—when He prayed; how He prayed; where He prayed.  Aside, apart, alone, when night had spread her dark wings over the earth, when others had sought their homes, the Blessed Man knelt in prayer.  We praise service.  Work kept Him from food.  Exhausted, He slept on a pillow; at eventide, they brought their sick; the speeding hours were occupied with service and ministry, yet the place of prayer was pre-eminent.
No man ever spake like Christ because no man ever listened as He did.  For Him to pray, was to delight in God.  It was bound to be so, for no one had ever a greater comprehension or appreciation of God.  He did not seek for gifts but for the Giver, and His hours of prayer were hours of direct strengthening.  The reasons which drive us to prayer were never present with Him.  Under the consciousness of failure and defeat, we seek for forgiveness; Christ never had sin to confess.  In moments of high resolve, we rededicate ourselves to God.  In that life of unbroken devotion to God's sovereign will, there never was any need for consecration anew, sanctified as He was to His Father.
He never joined His disciples in prayer.  His asking was of a completely different kind from theirs, and the taking was on a far higher plane, and was concerned with the inward needs of His soul.  As we trace those stainless steps and watch with ever increasing wonder that ladder of prayer to Heaven's inmost shrine, there breaks upon the spirit an overwhelming sense of adoration of this blessed peerless Man, God's most Holy Son, and with deep humility, we re-echo the request of those others, 'Lord, teach us to pray.'
The second fundamental aspect of our Lord's real humanity is His moral perfection, or what is commonly called the sinlessness of Jesus.  The New Testament indicates certain elements in this perfection.  First, He was of stainless nature.  This point has been noted earlier in emphasizing the virgin birth.  'That holy thing which shall be born of thee' (Luke 1. 35).  This gives the lie to teaching which asserts that Christ was possessed of a nature, sinful as other men, but that He overcame the sinfulness of it and lived a perfectly holy life.  Nowhere in the New Testament is there supporting evidence for such teaching, and it is essential that we hold with tenacity to the sinless nature of the incarnate Son.  It is integral to His fitness as Redeemer; if it is not true, how could He offer Himself without spot to God?
Second, He was of sinless life.  It is not only comparatively He sets Himself above us.  The rest of mankind stand in sharpest contrast. Jesus of Nazareth stands alone in His own order.  Like everything divine in its origin, His life becomes more splendid the more closely we investigate it.  The most searching scrutiny merely confirms the wonder of it.  He did not live and work in obscurity, but in the full blaze of public attention.  Those who were in closest intimacy, are most insistent in their praise.  They had the best opportunities of closely observing His life in its every varying phase, yet they unite in testimony. 'He did no sin,' said Peter (1 Peter 2. 22); 'He knew no sin' (2 Cor. 5. 21), was the witness of Paul, and 'In Him is no sin,' was the verdict of the beloved disciple (1 John 3. 5).  He never repented or confessed, nor felt unfitted for the great task to which He was called.  He it was who first established the fact that sin does not lie merely in the outward act, but in the motive behind the act.  With piercing and unerring discernment, he probed deep into the secret recesses, where character is born and cradled.  He went behind the impure act to the look and lust, and beyond the blow to the hate which gave it birth.  On nothing was our Lord more scathing in judgment than hypocrisy, for in His eyes, the worst fault of all was to conceal sin.  Yet He challenged His enemies, whose hearts were bitter towards Him, to bring home by proof to His conscience, one word or act which had in it the taint of wrong: 'which of you convinceth Me of sin' (John 8. 46).
There is a great gulf between external blamelessness and His sinless perfection. Herod (Luke 23. 15), Pilate (John 19. 4), Pilate's wife (Matt. 27. 19), the dying robber (Luke 23. 41), the centurion (Luke 23. 47) and Judas (Matt. 27. 4), bear individual yet concerted testimony to His blameless character.  But in the light of His own teaching, the only two valid witnesses to His sinlessness are God and Himself. We are told that we know so little of His early days, and we speak of the 'hidden' years at Nazareth.  And yet we know all there needs to be known, for at Jordan as He emerges from obscurity, the heavenly voice declares, 'This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased' (Matt. 3. 17), and thus the seal of Divine approval is placed upon the years of childhood, of youth, and of opening manhood.  On the Mount of Transfiguration, the teachings, testings and toils were searched in the light of God and approved: 'This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear ye Him' (Matt. 17. 5).  At the close of His public ministry, there was another heavenly testimony in answer to His prayer, 'Father, glorify Thy Name.'  There came therefore a voice out of Heaven, saying, 'I have both glorified it and will glorify it again' (John 12. 28).
So much for the testimony of God the Father.  The most saintly believer cannot sit down at the end of one day and look into the face of God with the plea, 'I have glorified Thy name.'  But this perfect Man, whose standard of holiness far exceeded any human values, can confidently look into the face of God, after thirty-three years, twelve thousand days, conscious that between His soul and the stainless Throne, there had not come one shadow or cloud to dim their communion.  And so He is conscious of perfect rectitude.  This is the highest and strongest kind of evidence, for with such a knowledge of man and sin as He had, it is impossible either that He could be self-deceived, or that He could say what was not true.  He fulfilled all righteousness (Matt. 3. 15).  'He went about doing good' (Acts 10. 38).  He lived for the righteousness He loved and died for the lawlessness He hated.
A final witness to the spotless perfection of Christ is Christianity and the Christian Church.  'How was such a life recorded if it was not lived?  Where did such a conception of a perfect Christ come from?  Who could imagine or invent it?  Whence came the ideas of certain virtues and of such a character as our religion demands!  They were unknown till Jesus brought them.  The world before Christ did not know such virtues as humility, forgiveness and chastity.  It considered them not virtues at all, only weaknesses.  Who set up this standard?  Jesus did.  He is the source of Christian morality.  Will the source shame the stream?  Never.  The stream may be less pure than the fountain but never the reverse' (Prof. Laidlaw).
Here it seems opportune to examine the purposes of His incarnation.  Probably, there are four main lines of purpose.  The words of such a man are clothed with supreme authority.  His message as the prophet of God is worthy of all acceptation. He is unfaltering in His teaching about God, about sin, about immortality, about human sorrow and suffering, and the imprimatur of Heaven is upon His every statement.  These are realms of human speculation where man's philosophy and erudition come to a full stop, summarizing their conclusions in supposition or nebulous theory.  Not so with God's last Word to man, whose teaching is stamped with inward certainty. It is impossible to make too much of this central fact in the Gospel story.  The searchlight of His radiant life, everywhere consistent with His own doctrine, shines into the sin-conscious soul of man, and His words carry conviction to heart and mind, bringing him, if he be obedient, into the surging joy of Christian belief.  He is the Emperor of men's souls.  He has come to reveal the Father.  'If I say the truth, why do ye not believe Me? (John 8. 46).  Why, indeed! 'He that rejecteth Me and receiveth not My sayings hath One that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him at the last day' (John 12. 48).  A messenger from the court of Heaven has come bringing to us, not in word only but in the perfection of His holy character, the final and complete revelation of the Father. We do well to join voice with Peter: 'Lord, to whom shall we go?  Thou hast the words of eternal life.  And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God' (John 6. 68, 69, R.V.).
Further, He is the great Mediator, Himself man, Christ Jesus.  He came to bring God and man together.  The barrier between was sin, and the Daysman must Himself be without sin.  Few statements are more awe-inspiring than the words of 2 Cor. 5. 21, 'Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.'  There are mysterious depths of meaning here.  It is not so much the bare fact of Christ's sinlessness that is emphasized as God's knowledge of this fact, which rendered Christ a mediator.  Some attempt has been made to whittle down this statement by translating 'made sin' as 'made sin-offering.' Is it likely the same word can have two different meanings in the same clause?  Is it not contrasted with 'righteousness' in the following clause?  Surely, although we cannot comprehend the dread statement, that in itself is no reason for doubting it. Whichever rendering we accept, there is here postulated a reason for the coming of the Son of God into human form.  He came that He might die. In flesh, He could suffer.  Being God, He could satisfy.  God did not die, but He who died was God,
A corollary of this wondrous truth is stated in 1 John 3. 5, 'And ye know that He was manifested to take away sins, and in Him is no sin.' This is an echo of the words of the Baptist.  The stupendous task is committed to the Lamb of God's providing.  No other in all the universe of God could undertake this gigantic achievement.

Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace or take away one stain.
But Christ the Heavenly Lamb takes all our sins away,
A sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.
-I. Watts.

The fourth great truth resting upon His perfect manhood is the character and efficacy of His priesthood.  'Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God' (Heb. 2. 17).  'For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin' (Heb. 4. 15).  The writer wishes to preclude the common fancy that there was some peculiarity in Christ which made the temptation wholly different from ours, that He was a 'mailed champion, exposed to toy arrows.'  On the contrary, He has felt in His own consciousness, the suffering which comes from resisting.  Christ suffered, being tempted.  It is said that before a railway wheel is passed for service, it has to pass the most searching tests.  A weight of some ten thousand pounds is brought down upon it.  The design of such a test is not to break the wheel, but to prove it cannot be broken.  The glorious truth is that the victory of Christ in His conflict with sin and Satan, attests His fitness not only to be a priest in offering both gifts and sacrifices for sins, but His competence to supply mercy and the grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4. 16).

Touched with a sympathy within, He knows our feeble frame;
He knows what sore temptations mean, for He endured the same.
He in the days of feeble flesh, poured out His cries and tears
And though exalted feels afresh what every member bears.

We have hastened to Bethlehem to see a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.  We have trod the highways of Galilee in the company of the Incarnate God.  We have climbed the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha's sacred height where Divine love was telescoped into time, and Jesus died.  But if it be true that no living Christ ever issued from the tomb of Joseph, then that tomb became the grave not of a man, but of Christianity.  If Christ did not rise, His death is no longer a sacrifice but the saddest of earth's tragedies, the very midnight gloom of failure, and hope is a word to mock us.  But the flashing wonder is—He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and our Lord is alive in the perfection of His manhood.  'It was not possible that He should be holden of death’ (Acts 2. 24).  In this connection, it is interesting to note that the designation 'Son of Man' occurs only once in the Book of the Acts when the dying Stephen declared he saw the Heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (7. 56).  This is the only instance in the whole New Testament where the designation is employed by anyone except our Lord Himself.  This is at once Stephen's testimony to the greatness of His Lord in His Divine majesty, and a witness to the genuineness of the whole series of declarations attributed to our Lord in which He saw Himself in the Danielic vision, and declared on that basis His Messiahship in its earthly humiliation, and subsequent elevation to participation in Divine glory.
The full implications of this series of declarations would require a full chapter to themselves.  Suffice to mention the categorical statement of John 5. 27, 'The Father hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is (the) Son of Man.' The prerogative of judgment is associated with the humanity of Christ.  Matt. 25. 31-46 is for us the impressive picture of the great assize, the general judgment of the nations.  The Son of Man shall sit on the Throne of His glory.  Those arraigned before Him are acutely aware that He knows by experience the force of the temptations by which they have been beset.  Nevertheless, He is perfectly consistent with His character in so acting.  H. B. Swete points out that our English term and its cognates are forensic; they speak of law, with its rigid formalism, its externality, its occasional travesties of justice.  But the series of Greek words which we translate by ‘judge' and ‘judgment', strikes another note; it tells of the spiritual distinctions which exist between man and man and which must ultimately be brought to light. Whatever else happened to men in the presence of Jesus Christ, they were judged. They knew they were. The living Word of God was active and sharper than any two-edged sword.  'Come see a man that told me all things that ever I did,' says a woman (John 4. 29).  'Depart from me,' says Peter, 'I am a sinful man, O Lord' (Luke 5. 8).  None who encountered the Light of the world could remain neutral.  'The Person of Christ divides men now and will divide them in the end; here and hereafter He is the Judge. But when the Son of Man is revealed on the Throne of His glory, complete manifestation will take place.  Still is there a dividing line, echoed in the polar words—"Come"—"Depart.”  This tremendous passage in Matt. 25. 34, is the only time that the Lord Jesus calls Himself the King.  His every act and word had proclaimed it, but not till now does He use the title.  But if He speaks in regal glory, the test of discipleship is the attitude of men to those linked with Him forever in His humanity, embracing every people and tribe and nation—'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me' (Matt. 25. 40).
After the Resurrection, our Lord was changed, yet the same.  He was no longer subject to the material order.  He appears; He vanishes; closed doors are no effective obstruction to His movement.  Yet He eats of broiled fish.  He reveals the marks of His passion to Thomas in such a way as to humble him to adoring worship. To Mary, the cadences of the well-loved voice echo in one word, and recognition is immediate.  He is the same yet changed.  'In Him, soul and body in the indissoluble union of a perfect manhood, are seen triumphant over the last penalty of sin' (Westcott).  It is a glorious, thrilling fact.  The Saviour lives in ascended power, still in His perfection as Son of Man.
In the Ephesian letter, Paul tells us more.  In a passage which echoes the grandeur of Psalm 24, he depicts for us the hierarchy of power, dignities, and principalities in the vast angelic realm.  Like some guard of honour, they await the coming of the King of Glory.  The challenge reverberates across the vaults of Heaven, 'Who is the King of glory􀃆'  The answer is immediate, 'The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, the Lord of Hosts, He is the King of glory.'  And the serried hosts are hushed into awed silence for a brief space ere their praean of praise again bursts forth, for fresh from the conflict of the Cross comes the man Christ Jesus, still with the print of the nails.  And now He passes the exultant throng until He is 'far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come' (Eph. 1. 21).  These three glowing words, 'far above all,' picture unlimited sway and a name unequalled, in which every knee shall bow, proclaiming the Man of Calvary, Sovereign and undisputed Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
“The Faith – A Symposium” Frederick A. Tatford.