The Scriptures sing a number of melodic lines about Jesus. John Calvin identified three in particular as the munus triplex,1 the threefold dimension of our Lord’s ministry: Jesus is Prophet, declaring God’s glory; He is Priest, intervening to make atonement for sin; and He is King, ruling over God’s kingdom. The third of these—Jesus as the Divine King who governs His church and exercises “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18)—is a particular source of encouragement to Christians.
This melody begins as far back as Genesis, when Jacob prophesies that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah” (49:10), and it carries on through God’s promise to David of an eternal dynasty (2 Sam. 7:11–16), Isaiah’s anticipation of a righteous monarch (32:1), Zechariah’s prediction of a kingly procession into Jerusalem (9:9), and across the intertestamental divide to the angel’s promise about Jesus: “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:32).
Jesus’ status as the Divine King has radical implications for our salvation, for the cosmos, for the future, and for our everyday lives.
Jesus, the King of Salvation
Jesus came onto the spiritual battlefield in much the same way as David came out of the ranks of Israel as they cowered before Goliath, confronting the evil that faced his people (1 Sam. 17). There, the anointed one stepped forward as a representative; he conquered Goliath alone, but the victory belonged to the whole nation. Likewise, “great David’s greater Son,”2 Jesus, went alone to defeat the evil of sin and death on the cross, and He won a victory for all who come to Him by faith.
The cross is the epicenter of Christ’s reign. It is there that He declares, “It is finished” (John 19:30). It is there that He triumphs over His enemies. When we turn to Jesus, our triumphant King, we turn to “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). We are to be cross-oriented and cross-centered, week by week and day by day returning our attention to the cross, at which we find the power and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24). We are to remember that in the resurrection, the Father gave His “Amen!” to all that Jesus had done.
At the cross, our King won the battle with sin and death and saved us for His kingdom.
Jesus, the King of the Cosmos
Jesus is also the King of the whole cosmos by virtue of His creative power. As John writes, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (1:3). The theologian Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”3 Indeed, he holds the very molecules together by the word of His power (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). Isaiah 40:25–26 speaks to His sovereign reign as Creator:
To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name;
by the greatness of his might
and because he is strong in power,
not one is missing.
Yet Jesus is twice the Divine King of the cosmos, since He not only fashioned it but also secured its redemption by His victory on the cross. All our view of history, all our view of the world, is to be formed by and framed by His victory. Thus Paul is able to write that the whole cosmos “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). Even in its “travail” (Rom. 8:22 KJV), the world and everything in it is bending toward its Divine King.
The earth is not, in its present form, going to remain as it is, because the King is going to transform it. Conversations about environmental preservation may be godly to the degree that they bend their knee to the coming King, who has left the earth in our charge (Gen. 1:28). Yet we ought not to be consumed by temporal concerns, since we are waiting for a day when there will be “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).
Jesus, the King of the Future
Yet Jesus is not only King over eternity past; He is also King over all that is to come. God in Christ created time. He is the controller of time. All the days of our lives were written in His book before one of them came to be (Ps. 139:16). Therefore, we can put our heads on our pillows at night and rest content that He can and does care for our tomorrows.
We do not need to be unduly alarmed by the thought of the future. There’s little benefit in wringing our hands all the time and talking about the “good old days.” Instead, we should remind ourselves that Jesus Christ, the King of our future, has forged a path for us into resurrection glory: “As by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21–22).
Christ’s future reign throughout all of eternity is the perspective from which all of present history needs to be viewed. The events of today are worthy of our attention. We can and should walk carefully, “not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time” (Eph. 5:15–16). We ought always to be faithful in the places and times in which we find ourselves. Yet we don’t need to fret ourselves because of evildoers (Ps. 37:8). We can trust that God is working all things together for good so that we will be conformed to the image of the Son (Rom. 8:28–29) in the presence of the Son (1 John 3:2).
We can see the history of the world through a prism of four words: the good, the bad, the new, the perfect. God made the world good when He made it. We made the world bad through our sin. Jesus Christ has made a new start possible through the redemption of the cross. And one day, Jesus, the King of the future, will make everything perfect in His presence.
Thus, we can look to our tomorrows and say,
So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away;
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.4
Jesus, the King of Life
If the kingship of Jesus impacts the nature of salvation, if the kingship of Jesus impacts the reality of the cosmos, if the kingship of Jesus impacts all the issues of the future, surely the kingship of Jesus has something to say to each of us.
One day, Paul tells us, “at the name of Jesus every knee [will] bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11). That is not merely an expression of devotion. It is a statement of fact. And when we understand it, it is transformative.
Christ’s future reign throughout all of eternity is the perspective from which all of present history needs to be viewed.
We ought not to let all the skullduggery of our day drag us down. We must lift our eyes and look up. We can come to Him with all our fears, our hurts, our losses, and our failures—because “there’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one!”5
It is said of Katharina Luther that on one occasion when her husband Martin had persisted for some days in a sullen state, she put on her mourning clothes.
“Who has died?” Martin asked her.
“I believe God died,” she answered.
“Come now,” said Martin, “God cannot die.”
“Then why,” she said, “have you been acting as though He has?”
Jesus Christ is not dead. He is a risen, reigning King. He is the King of our salvation, the King of the cosmos, the King of the future, and the King of our lives. In this world, we may have trouble, but we can take heart, because He has overcome the world!
This article was adapted from the sermon “Divine King” by Alistair Begg.
John Calvin, Institutes 2.15. ↩︎
James Montgomery, “Hail to the Lord’s Anointed” (1821). ↩︎
Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader, ed. James D. Bratt (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488. ↩︎
John Ellerton, “The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended” (1870). ↩︎
Johnson Oatman Jr., “No, Not One!” (1895). ↩︎
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