03 The Lamb in the midst of the Throne

Chapter 3 THE LAMB IN THE MIDST OF THE THRONE Thou whose ways we praise, Clear alike and dark, Keep our works and ways This and all Thy days Safe inside Thine ark.

Thou whose face gives grace As the sun’s doth heat.

Let Thy sun-bright face Lighten time and space Here beneath Thy feet.

Bid our peace increase, Thou that madest mom ;

Bid oppressions cease ;

Bid the night be peace ;

Bid the day be born.

One of the ground thoughts in the Book of Revelation is that Jesus Christ, who died upon the tree, sits upon the throne of the universe. We find the thought expressed in varying forms. For example, we are told that Jesus is the First and the Last, the origin and the goal of all things. We are told that He has the key of David, an expression signifying absolute power and irresistible will. We read that His feet are as fine brass, describing His sovereign march over the fields of life. But the clearest expression of the thought is the phrase which we have chosen as the heading for this chapter, in which Jesus Christ the Lamb as it had been slain, is represented as seated on the central throne of the universe, and receiving the praises of the various orders of creation. This great thought may be viewed under varying aspects, Jesus Christ rules the universe as Creator, Lord, and Reconciler.

I

He rules it as the Creator. All things, according to the uniform doctrine of Scripture, were made by Christ. Whether there be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers ; whatever orders of being may exist, these and the worlds they people came from His creative mind and His plastic hand.

He Himself was the anticipation of creation. In the remarkable prefiguration of Christ in the Book of Proverbs, Wisdom is made to say, " I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth." Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God in a sense which does not depend upon the Incarnation, and which does not vanish with earth or time, but which remains when the veils of flesh and sense are lifted, and we see face to face. The absolute invisible God no man can see, save as He is revealed in Jesus Christ. This Christ was the prophecy of creation, and He Himself fulfilled the prophecy. The creating power passes through Christ as its medium — "Without Him was not anything made that was made." All the products of nature are from His hand ; from Him all the terms of creaturely existence take their rise, and of all life in its lowest as well as in its highest forms. He is the Distributor and Giver ; so that in a manner, for all creatures, to live is Christ, whether they acknowledge it or not.

How much needed is this great and half-forgotten truth in days when men soar and roam through the universe, and find it empty of God, when everything spiritual and divine is said to be vanishing from the world before the march of Science. Nothing can be sadder than to wander through Nature and find it tenantless. But how different when we render to Christ the things that are Christ’s in it all. There is nothing created, said Goethe, so mean and trifling that it is not a thought of God. But the more beautiful and tender truth is that everything created is a thought of Christ, meant to lead us straight to him. We are, in spite of ourselves, swayed by the influences of our time. Nature often seems, even to the Christian, very stern and pitiless. It is blessed to be able to see’ in it all proofs of the thought and expressions of the mind of him who is not only Creator but Redeemer.

II. Not only is Jesus Christ the creator of nature, but He holds it together. By Him all things consist, and so of all the unconscious forces in the world. He is Lord ; and those who wrote over the grave of one killed on the Riffelhorn the words, " It is I, be not afraid," understood in whose hands are all the powers of the Universe that seem so blind and unrestrained. But, putting it more generally, Jesus Christ is the Lord of providence — the true King with plenary power. It is He who rules over the evolution of events and the disclosing of the epochs in the world’s history.

There is much to confirm the thought which has visited all in hours of gloom, that history is nothing more than a shifting phantasmagoria of passions and desires. Sometimes men seem to be flung together, a rude and chaotic mass of creatures, who fight and crawl over each other, and die, and are laid in the hopelessness of a beast’s grave. Sometimes history seems no more than a series of petty stage-plays, without connection, and leading to no issue. But even sceptical thinkers admit the organic unity of all history. Only to many each event is but a link in the long chain of the harmony of the universe ; to such " the organic development of history will mean the unbroken sweep of natural law, without one breath of the creative spirit from on high, while to a higher school of thought the one purpose of history is the purpose of everlasting love worked out in and through human personality by a personal redeeming God." We see above it all the throne where the King sits, who holds all things in His hand and guides them according to the purposes of changeless love. The true exposition and idea of history are to be found in the kingdom of redemption.

III.

Jesus Christ reigns as the Reconciler. Old divines were wont to distinguish between two kingdoms of Christ — the one inalienable, which He possessed as the eternal Son of the Father, and the other given to Him as Mediator by the Father, and delivered over to the Father in the end. The distinction is a real one, and is kept in view in what we say. Jesus Christ rules not only as Creator and Lord, but as the Reconciler of the universe to God.

1. In the full and deep sense, reconciliation can only be a reconciliation of men and spirits. Only spirits can love and hate, only spirits can be turned from hate to love ; and the great work that Jesus does as Reconciler — that which is most vital to us, and at the same time most intelligible — is the work which He does in bringing back those who were rent and sundered from God by wicked works to their soul’s true rest and home. The carnal mind is enmity against God ; not indeed that the enmity is always consciously felt, nor that it always expresses itself in blasphemy and defiance. Yet enmity it is, as all honest, thoughtful people will admit. At the very best, God is not in all our thoughts ; at the very best there is a deep dissonance between our thoughts and the thoughts of God ; at the very best we do not glorify Him in our bodies and spirits which are His. There is between us and Him a deep gulf — how deep and broad we cannot tell, only it seems deeper and broader the more we look into it ; and to bridge that gulf, and bring us back again to God is the work of Jesus Christ, the Lamb. As we saw, He reconciles us in the body of His flesh through death. It was part of the reconciling process that He should become man, and share in the experiences of humanity. But this alone was not enough. It was through death, through the bowing of His head to the last enemy, through His victory over death and the grave that He made it possible for the old fellowship between man and God to be renewed, and so in a great and noble sense He is King over the higher universe of redeemed souls — redeemed by His blood, who offer up to him intelligent and conscious allegiance, and who bear testimony that through His work they have been brought back to themselves and their Father.

2. But, as we are taught, there is a further reconciliation. Jesus Christ reconciles not only men, but all things on earth. The reconciliation is in a sense over and done with. It lies in the past, however it may be appropriated and worked out in the future. The universal reconciliation of all things in Christ affirmed by Paul, cannot be said to bear upon the question whether or not at some point in the future all intelligent creatures will consciously love and serve God. But it cannot mean less than this, that the influence of the cross, in ways we do not understand, is felt all over the creation — that the influence goes into heights and depths beyond our ken. It cannot mean less than this, that nature itself, over which a deep shadow has passed through the sin of man, shall find that shadow vanish to return no more. And here we are on ground where speculation is vain. We deal with matters in which Scripture is our only teacher, and we find in Scripture intimations which strangely recall the latest utterances of science about the imperfection and inadequacy of nature. " The creature was subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature also shall be delivered from the bondage and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God." And then the mystery which so shadows all its beauties will end, all things being reconciled.

3. Still more unfamiliar and strange is the thought that Jesus Christ the Lamb is the Reconciler of things in heaven. How can those who have never fallen, who have never left the light, need to be reconciled to a God from whom they have never been alienated ? And here again it is obvious that the word reconciliation is not used in its full sense. Still it is clearly taught that all orders of spiritual being are brought near to God through the work of Christ. The angels in their errands to the world have been perplexed by its misery and sin. The angels ministered to the Son of God in the days of His flesh, and sustained Him in His agonies. In the cross of Christ the very depths of the Divine nature have been unveiled — depths of yearning, self-sacrificing tenderness which never otherwise would have been revealed to angels; and thus we read that into the mysteries of redemption they desire to look. The word " look " means a penetrating intense gaze. It is the word used to describe the sharpened, eager wistfulness with which the women looked into the empty tomb, and the statuesque unwavering gaze of the cherubim on the mercy-seat. And now the way and the end of the Divine love have been made plain to them, and they stand nearer to God than ever before.

So, then, we perceive the cross of Christ is the centre of the universe ; and thus we read that the living creatures, the representatives of creation, the elders who represent the Church and the angels who represent the higher order of spiritual being, burst out together into the great shout of triumphal praise to the Lamb that was slain, who is worthy to receive power, riches, and honour, glory and blessing. And so all His many crowns encircle the wreath that wounded Him. The Lamb as it had been slain sits in the midst of the throne.

Another aspect of Christ’s kingly work, which we propose to treat in another chapter, is His punitive and destructive energy, which will end at last in the disablement and abasement of all hostile powers. They will be put beneath His feet. On the other side of the advent there may be a period of conflict with a succession of evil domination’s. How distant the issue may be we cannot tell, but that period too will close in His complete victory ; and then the revolt will be finally quelled, and the reign of Christ as Mediator will come to an end. " The Son Himself, also, shall be made subject to Him that did put all things under Him that God .may be all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)

Christ, as it were, had authority given to Him by His Father to go forth and quell the insurrection. So long as the rebellion lasts the Son of the King stands in the front of the fight. He leads the troops. He commands all operations till the final victory ; but when that comes He takes the kingdom He has won and gives it to His Father, not quitting the throne where God and the Lamb sit in indissoluble unity, but ruling as the Second Person of the Trinity with the Father and the Spirit, God being all in all.

We conclude with two practical reflections. We have seen that all the universe and its forces are being administered for purposes of redemption. The Lamb rules and He rules as the Lamb. How calming to feel this, to look up from the turmoil of this visible, flaring, and lying world — from the shows and shams and the tinted scene of the theatre ; from all in life that startles and appalls, to Him who sits above it all. From Him all things proceed, and to Him they return in circular flow. The shadows are all passing ; the reality is behind. Nothing lasts; our trials are all hasting away to oblivion; let the wind rave as it will, we look at the Christ who abides. How small all our conflicts and ambitions seem to be, how transient and easily borne our sorrows, when we look up as John looked from the rock and the wild waters to the serene King, against whose changeless purpose all the waves of time and circumstance break in vain.

We have seen Christ as the Reconciler moving by the influences that streamed from His Cross all the universe in its heights and depths. There is a sense in which we must be moved by that cross whether we will or no. Hostile or friendly we must yield to it. But what will it avail us to be laid prostrate beneath His feet in the day of a triumph which, had we willed it, we might have shared ? What will it avail us that all the universe is tied with blood-red silken cords to His Cross if we are trampled beneath His feet as ashes? Let us see that we crown Him as King by the willing and full surrender of heart and intellect, and conscience and life, to His command. "We are ambassadors for Christ ; and as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God."