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then doth David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying,
The LORD said unto my Lord,
Sit thou on my right hand,
Till I put thine enemies underneath thy feet?
If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son?' The meaning of Christ's
question was, 'If the promised Messiah is David's son only—that is to say, if He
is merely a man,—then how is it that David, himself a prophet as well as a king,
was inspired to call him "Lord"?' The Jews could give Him no answer. The passage
shows by this title alone how much higher was the dignity of the promised
Messiah than that of David. But, besides this, it is clear that the person whom
God Most High seats at his own right hand cannot be any mere creature. The
answer to the question which the Lord Jesus asked cannot be given unless by
pondering well the passages which we have already quoted from the Old Testament.
But when we learn that the promised Messiah is entitled by the prophet Isaiah
'Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of
peace, Immanuel', and that His goings forth have been from of old, from
everlasting', then we understand that it is but fitting that, after suffering
death on the cross for our sins and rising from the dead for our justification,
He should return to share the glory which He had with His Father before the
world was. |
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PROOF OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST |
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Only when His Deity is admitted can this passage in Psalm cx be understood.
Besides these and other passages, there are many verses in the Old Testament
which speak of God Himself as appearing in a visible form to the ancestors of
the Israelites and to their prophets, as, for instance, to Abraham the Friend of
God
(خليل
الله), and to Moses who conversed with God
(كليم
الله). But we have already learnt from
the Gospel that God the Father is invisible; for it is written: 'No 1
man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him' Some explanation of this apparent
contradiction there must be. If we turn to the Jewish Targums we find that, in
many places where the Hebrew text, says, 'God appeared', these translations (or
rather paraphrases) have 'The Word
(מֵימְוָא) 2 of God
(كلمة
الله) appeared' This
enables us to see that the Divine Person
(اقنوم), who appeared to some of His
servants in the Old Testament and who sent the prophets, was the same Word of
God, who later was incarnated and was known as the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence from
the very beginning of the world it has been only through the Word of God
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