Revelation 1:18

Revelation 1:18

I. How is the perpetuity of Christ in heaven connected with the work of our justification? The priesthood of Christ being perpetual, yet employing but a single sacrificial act, it must consist in a constant reference to that sacrifice of which His own blessed person stands in heaven as the undying memorial. The interests of the universe are dependent on His fiat, yet, amidst all those complicated interests, He is still a Man and busy for men. The human heir of eternal life is regarded as something altogether peculiar and consecrated. Angels look forward with eager interest to the hour when they who by so singular a connection are now "one in Christ" shall enter into the visible unity of His eternal kingdom.

II. But in relation to His overthrow of sin the eternal life of Christ is yet more distinctly the fountain of blessing to us in being the immediate source, not only of justification, but of holiness, not only of gracious acceptance into the favour of God, but of all the bright train of inward graces by which that favour effectuates itself in us. On Christ's life is suspended the prostration of moral evil in the universe. It shall continue to exist, but only as the dark monument of His triumph; it shall exist, but in chains of feebleness and defeat.

III. Christ is alive as the eternal Conqueror and Antagonist of sin and death. Christ, Himself exalted to glory, fixes the barriers to the energies of pain and death; annihilates not the foe, but imprisons him; makes him the accursed minister of His own dread vengeance, and publicly manifests to the universe that, if misery exists, it exists only as a permitted agent in the awful administration of God. He, the source of life, is still predominant over all and known to be so, known yet more deeply to be so as the life He gives is mantling around Him into intenser glory. Life and happiness again are one, for happiness is bound up in the very essence and nature of the life that Christ bestows; they are inseparable as substance and quality, as the surface and its colour.

W. Archer Butler, Sermons Doctrinal and Practical, 1st series, p. 164.

References: Revelation 1:18 . Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 894; J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 389; Preacher's Monthly, vol. vii., p. 220.