Seated at the Right Hand of the Father
May 9, 2011
Last night I preached on the themes in Lord's Day 19 of the Heidelberg Catechism where the issue is the session of the Son at the right hand of the Father. Two things struck me as I prepared.
First, there is always a temptation to see the Father-Son relationship in salvation in an adversarial fashion, as if the Son somehow has to persuade or cajole the Father to be gracious to his people. Most often theologians make this criticism with reference to the penal substitutionary view of the atonement where an angry Father is, perhaps against his own better judgment, appeased by the work of the Son; but it is easy to see how the same kind of criticism could be extended into heaven itself, as the Son makes intercession there for his people. Does he sit there are try, hope against hope, to get an angry Father to calm down and look with grace and mercy on a poor and sinful people?
This is where a rounded Trinitarianism is so important. If we look at God's works, they are always Trinitarian, always works of all three persons working in perfect harmony, and this applies to salvation as to anything else. Mark 1, for example, makes it clear that Father and Holy Spirit are both intimately involved in the office of Christ as Mediator: as Christ is baptized, the Father speaks of his pleasure in him; and the Spirit descends in the form of a dove and then `hurls' Christ into the wilderness. There is no hint here that either Father or Spirit have any hesitations about what the Son is to do. On the contrary, they are both involved in the very commission itself. This is just one of the many passages that show that the Mediatorial work of Christ can only be properly understood in a Trinitarian context; and this precludes any notion of the relationship between Father and Son being in any way adversarial in salvation.
Thus, when we turn to the intercession of Christ at the Father's right hand in the present age, we must not think of Christ as somehow begging, cajoling, or bribing the Father to be merciful. Rather, we should think of the heavenly session of Christ as involving the mutual delight of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the accomplished work of the Incarnate God and as rejoicing in the great work of salvation. The Father does not hear the Son's intercessions unwillingly or impatiently; he takes pleasure in hearing the Son and in granting his requests, for in a very real sense the intercessions of the Son are the deepest intentions of the Father as well. The very presence before him of the Son with his wounded hands and side is a source of immeasurable satisfaction, pleasure and joy. This should fill believers with confidence as they pray. We need no intermediary other than that which we already have in God Incarnate.
Second, HC Lord's Day 19 speaks eloquently of Christ's session at the Father's right hand being the basis for protecting us, here and now, from our enemies (Qu. 51); this will then be completed in the final consummation at the Second Coming, when all God's and our enemies will be judged.
This is hard teaching. Not simply for the usual reasons - that judgment is difficult to comprehend - but because `enemies' is such an attenuated, overused and debased term in the West where every blogger with whom we disagree is a `Nazi' and anyone who offends us is routinely denounced in language reserved in previous eras for chain saw killers and child murderers. Living in comparative comfort and in a world where the worst thing the church generally has to fear is yet another tiresome TV rant from a half-baked new atheist, we really feel little pressure from enemies in any immediate, dangerous sense. But seeing the anti-Christian riots in Cairo, hearing of the persecution of Christians in Eritrea and reading of the crackdown currently underway in China, it is perhaps easy to see why the judgment of enemies is so often a problem to us in the West but should be, as the Catechism declares, a source of comfort to the church as a whole.
The session of Christ at the Father's right hand, and his future return in glory to judge the quick and the dead, should be a matter of awe and of comfort to the saints here on earth.
First, there is always a temptation to see the Father-Son relationship in salvation in an adversarial fashion, as if the Son somehow has to persuade or cajole the Father to be gracious to his people. Most often theologians make this criticism with reference to the penal substitutionary view of the atonement where an angry Father is, perhaps against his own better judgment, appeased by the work of the Son; but it is easy to see how the same kind of criticism could be extended into heaven itself, as the Son makes intercession there for his people. Does he sit there are try, hope against hope, to get an angry Father to calm down and look with grace and mercy on a poor and sinful people?
This is where a rounded Trinitarianism is so important. If we look at God's works, they are always Trinitarian, always works of all three persons working in perfect harmony, and this applies to salvation as to anything else. Mark 1, for example, makes it clear that Father and Holy Spirit are both intimately involved in the office of Christ as Mediator: as Christ is baptized, the Father speaks of his pleasure in him; and the Spirit descends in the form of a dove and then `hurls' Christ into the wilderness. There is no hint here that either Father or Spirit have any hesitations about what the Son is to do. On the contrary, they are both involved in the very commission itself. This is just one of the many passages that show that the Mediatorial work of Christ can only be properly understood in a Trinitarian context; and this precludes any notion of the relationship between Father and Son being in any way adversarial in salvation.
Thus, when we turn to the intercession of Christ at the Father's right hand in the present age, we must not think of Christ as somehow begging, cajoling, or bribing the Father to be merciful. Rather, we should think of the heavenly session of Christ as involving the mutual delight of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the accomplished work of the Incarnate God and as rejoicing in the great work of salvation. The Father does not hear the Son's intercessions unwillingly or impatiently; he takes pleasure in hearing the Son and in granting his requests, for in a very real sense the intercessions of the Son are the deepest intentions of the Father as well. The very presence before him of the Son with his wounded hands and side is a source of immeasurable satisfaction, pleasure and joy. This should fill believers with confidence as they pray. We need no intermediary other than that which we already have in God Incarnate.
Second, HC Lord's Day 19 speaks eloquently of Christ's session at the Father's right hand being the basis for protecting us, here and now, from our enemies (Qu. 51); this will then be completed in the final consummation at the Second Coming, when all God's and our enemies will be judged.
This is hard teaching. Not simply for the usual reasons - that judgment is difficult to comprehend - but because `enemies' is such an attenuated, overused and debased term in the West where every blogger with whom we disagree is a `Nazi' and anyone who offends us is routinely denounced in language reserved in previous eras for chain saw killers and child murderers. Living in comparative comfort and in a world where the worst thing the church generally has to fear is yet another tiresome TV rant from a half-baked new atheist, we really feel little pressure from enemies in any immediate, dangerous sense. But seeing the anti-Christian riots in Cairo, hearing of the persecution of Christians in Eritrea and reading of the crackdown currently underway in China, it is perhaps easy to see why the judgment of enemies is so often a problem to us in the West but should be, as the Catechism declares, a source of comfort to the church as a whole.
The session of Christ at the Father's right hand, and his future return in glory to judge the quick and the dead, should be a matter of awe and of comfort to the saints here on earth.
