Hebrews 10:12,13; Psalm 110:1
This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.
A Psalm of David. The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
THOMAS SCOTT (1747-1821): We are here informed of Jehovah’s eternal and unchangeable decree concerning the kingdom of Messiah, its extension, power, and duration. That Messiah should, after His sufferings, be thus exalted, was determined in the divine counsel and covenant, before the world began.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): The resurrection is followed by the ascension into heaven. Although Christ, by rising again, began fully to display His glory and virtue, having laid aside the abject and ignoble condition of a mortal life, and the ignominy of the cross—yet it was only by His ascension to heaven that His reign truly commenced.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): In these days of wide-spread departure from the faith, it cannot be insisted upon too strongly or too frequently that the Lord Jesus is none other than the Second Person of the blessed Trinity, co-eternal and co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): In Psalm 110:1, the divinity of Christ is plainly asserted…The Jews have taken great pains to explain it away: but their attempts are, and ever must be, in vain.
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (347-407): They are speaking inconsistent things, like drunken men, or rather, like men in the dark, running against one another.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836):Our blessed Lord Himself appeals to Psalm 110:1 in order to confound and silence His malignant adversaries. Both Pharisees and Sadducees had endeavoured to ensnare Him by difficult and perplexing questions: and, when He had answered, He put this question to them: “What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he?” And when they said, “The Son of David,” He asked them, “How then doth David in Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son?”
Then we are told, “No man was able to answer Him a word,” Matthew 22:41-46.
Had they been willing to acknowledge Christ as their Messiah, they needed not to have been at any loss for an answer; for they knew Him to be a son of David; and He had repeatedly declared himself to be God, insomuch that they had again and again taken up stones to stone Him for blasphemy. But this passage proved beyond all doubt that the Messiah was to be “the root, as well as the offspring of David,” Revelation 22:16—the Lord of David, as well as David’s son. And here it is worthy of notice, that we see in this appeal what was the interpretation which the Jews of that day put upon the psalm before us.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Indeed the ancient Jews themselves understood it thus; and that this was the known and received sense of it in our Saviour’s time, appears from what passed between Him and the Pharisees.
CHARLES SIMEON: They all understood it as relating to the Messiah: and all the attempts of modern Jews to put any other construction upon it are futile in the extreme.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): These questions of our Lord themselves contain the answers to the present-day critics who deny the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, and the Davidic authorship and Messianic application of certain Psalms; quoting from Psalm 110:1, our Saviour declared that these were the words of David, speaking “by the Holy Ghost,” Mark 12:36, concerning the Christ, the Messiah. This ought for ever to settle the question about the inspiration, authorship, and application of that Psalm at least.
CHARLES SIMEON: Our Lord speaks of the Holy Ghost as inspiring David—which none but Jehovah could do, to declare what Jehovah the Father had said to Jehovah the Son. If the doctrine of the Trinity had not been received among them, would they have been silent, and not known what to answer Him?
A. W. PINK: To which we may add an amazing, heart-thrilling fact—the Holy Spirit has also been pleased to reveal to us the first words which were uttered by the Father, when His Son returned to Him, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand.”
JOHN CALVIN: There is another thing, besides, deserving of notice—that David spake by the spirit of prophecy, and consequently prophesied of the future reign of Christ…it is plainly to be inferred that he had a reference to Christ’s future manifestation in the flesh, because He is the sole and supreme Head of the Church. From which it also follows, that there is something in Christ more excellent than His humanity, on account of which He is called the Lord of David His father. This view is strengthened by what is stated in the second clause of the verse. Earthly kings may indeed be said to sit at God’s right hand, inasmuch as they reign by His authority; here, however, something more lofty is expressed, in that one king is chosen in a peculiar manner, and elevated to the rank of power and dignity next to God—and as God’s right hand is elevated far above all angels, it follows that He Who is seated there is exalted above all creatures.
A. W. PINK: The Son of God Himself, though in our nature, was accorded the highest throne in heaven. It was a Person who was thus magnified. The whole Christ rose, and the whole Christ sits at God’s right hand…Now the foundation of Christ’s being David’s “Lord” lay in His being the Son of God, and it was the second Person in the Trinity, Who had taken human nature into union with Himself, that Jehovah the Father invited to sit at His own right hand. The throne belongs to Him both as God, and as man, see Psalm 45:6,7; John 5:27.
JOHN CALVIN: Being raised to heaven, He withdrew His bodily presence from our sight, that He might rule heaven and earth more immediately by His power; or rather, the promise which He made to be with us, even to the end of the world, He fulfilled by this ascension, by which, as His body has been raised above all heavens, so His power and efficacy have been propagated and diffused beyond all the bounds of heaven and earth.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): “Sit thou at my right hand;” This implies the possession of the utmost confidence, power, and preeminence. “Until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” Jesus shall reign till all His enemies are subdued under Him.
C. H. SPURGEON: It seems to me to be such a delightful thought to think that Jesus Christ is King today in the world. The Lord reigns—let the earth rejoice! Jesus Christ wears the crown of universal monarchy this day!—so that nothing happens now, but that which Jesus permits, ordains and overrules. Let empires go to pieces—it is Christ who breaks them with a rod of iron! Let conflagrations burn down cities and let diseases devastate nations! Let war succeed war and pestilence famine—yet still He rules all things well and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, that are called according to His purpose. The saints are in the world, but Christ reigns over the world for His Church, that it may be kept and preserved in the midst of an evil generation.
