The Lord Jesus Christ is alone both God and man. He is the eternal God, who has become man; and as man, He has been exalted to the highest position in the universe. It is not difficult to understand that God is Lord of all, but it is not commonly known that the man Jesus is Lord as well. It is marvelous that a man has attained to such a position, that as a man Jesus Christ sits enthroned as the Lord of all (Acts 10:36). He is worth considering carefully: He is a man and therefore understands our condition, and He has been glorified and exalted and therefore makes the way open for us to enter into glory and honor with Him. If we see what He has accomplished and what He has attained and obtained through His incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, ascension, and enthronement, we can be saved not only from our fallen condition but more so into the realm of His glory. Because of His accomplishments, His attainments, and His obtainments we can be led into a salvation on the highest plane.
There is no other person in the universe like Christ. He is the eternal Son of God, who exists before time and outside of time. The Bible tells us that God is triune; that is, He is at the same time one and three. This is beyond human comprehension, but God is necessarily beyond comprehension. The Three of the Divine Trinity-the Father, the Son, and the Spirit-are eternally God, coexisting and mutually indwelling one another eternally. In His move according to His plan, or economy, God sent the Son to be a man (Rom. 8:3). This He accomplished through incarnation. The very God of the universe was conceived in the womb of a virgin (Luke 1:31) and was born as a genuine man. Because He was still God, He possessed the divine nature; but as a man, He had the human nature as well. This God-man then lived a unique existence on the earth, a life of the human mingled with the divine. We have all met persons who won our highest admiration, but none of us has ever witnessed the conduct of a God-man. Because of His mingled living, Jesus Christ has gained the admiration of all who have heard of Him and the lives of all who have believed in Him.
But unlike any other human being, Christ accomplished even more by His death than He did by His living on earth. In fact, for our situation His death is even more significant than His time on earth. When He died, He accomplished our redemption as the perfect man, paying the price for our offenses against God and reconciling us to God. And because He is God, the redemption He accomplished is an eternal one (Heb. 9:12). As He was in His human living, so He was in His death, accomplishing an eternal redemption through His divine and human existence.
Then He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:4). His divine nature energized His human nature and made Him the Son of God, not only in His divinity, in which He had been the Son of God from eternity, but also in His humanity, which now was designated the Son of God through His resurrection (Rom. 1:4). Now a man was the Son of God. As such, He has become the prototype of our salvation. We can certainly never participate in His position in the Godhead, but He has opened the way for us to enjoy with Him the status of men who have become the sons of God.
Christ Jesus rose from the dead as a man and ascended into the heavens as a man (Eph. 4:10). In His ascension He attained to the height of the universe, “far above all rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (Eph. 1:21). God raised Christ to the highest position in the universe, transcending time and space.
Of course, as God He is fully acquainted with the heavens, but as a man He brought humanity to a new plane, the highest plane. In His living on earth, He lived out the divine attributes in His human virtues, thus expressing what God is in humanity. Then in His ascension He brought humanity to the highest plane in the universe, uplifting it to the status of the Son of God that God might be expressed for eternity through humanity. Hence, He has attained for humanity the highest peak-the exalted human virtues expressing the divine attributes for eternity.
In His ascension the Lord Jesus Christ was seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:2; 1:3). There is a man upon the throne in this universe, and Christ will reign as both God and man on the throne for eternity (Rev. 22:1). He has obtained the throne, and He has obtained the glory and honor attendant to His status as the exalted Son of God. He is a man crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:9). His glory is the glory of God, the expression of His divinity through His humanity; and His honor is the honor that belongs to One of unique worth and dignity.
He has also obtained the highest name in the universe: “God highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should openly confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11). The highest name in the universe is that of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His name is the one name given by God through which men may be saved (Acts 4:12). When we confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, we are saved by God (Rom. 10:9, 12-13).
All who admit that there is a God will admit that God is the Lord, but the great news of God’s salvation is that through death, resurrection, and ascension, the man Jesus has been made Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). As God, He has always been the Lord; but through death, resurrection, and ascension, He has been made Lord of all in His humanity. Today our Lord is the God-man Jesus Christ.
Because He is the Lord of all, all things and all persons are under His dominion. He causes all things to operate for the accomplishment of God’s eternal plan, or economy, which includes our salvation and glorification. In the book of Acts, Peter told the Jewish leaders that God had raised Jesus from the dead and exalted Him to His right hand as Leader and Savior (5:30-31). His lordship is very much tied to His being the Savior, for in His administration salvation comes to those who believe and confess that Jesus is the God-man who has been exalted as Lord.
How marvelous that there is such a One as the Lord Jesus Christ. He is fully God and yet fully man, and as man He has been resurrected and exalted to the highest position in the universe. He is our Forerunner (Heb. 6:20), who has passed through death and entered into glory as a man. Because He has uplifted humanity to the highest plane, He has made it possible for us human beings to be saved to such an extent that we may dwell with God forever, being like Him (1 John 3:2) and therefore expressing Him. If we believe in Him, the God-man who has been made Lord of all, we will be saved from our fallen condition and led into the glory of the sons of God (Rom. 8:21). This is the great news of God’s salvation through Christ the Lord (cf. Luke 2:11).