Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of Those Things in the 110th Psalm Which Relate to the Priesthood of Christ, and in the 22d to His Passion.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 17.—Of Those Things in
the 110th Psalm Which Relate to the Priesthood of Christ, and in
the 22d to His Passion.
Just as in that psalm also where
Christ is most openly proclaimed as Priest, even as He is here as
King, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at my right hand,
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”1091
That Christ sits on the right
hand of God the Father is believed, not seen; that His enemies also
are put under His feet doth not yet appear; it is being done,
[therefore] it will appear at last: yea, this is now believed,
afterward it shall be seen. But what follows, “The Lord will
send forth the rod of Thy strength out of Sion, and rule Thou in
the midst of Thine enemies,”1092
is so clear, that to deny it would
imply not merely unbelief and mistake, but downright impudence.
And even enemies must certainly confess that out of Sion has been
sent the law of Christ which we call the gospel, and acknowledge as
the rod of His strength. But that He rules in the midst of His
enemies, these same enemies among whom He rules themselves bear
witness, gnashing their teeth and consuming away, and having power
to do nothing against Him. Then what he says a little after,
“The Lord hath sworn and will not repent,”1093
by which words He intimates that
what He adds is immutable, “Thou art a priest for ever after the
order of Melchizedek,”1094
who is permitted to doubt of whom
these things are said, seeing that now there is nowhere a
priesthood and sacrifice after the order of Aaron, and everywhere
men offer under Christ as the Priest, which Melchizedek showed when
he blessed Abraham? Therefore to these manifest things are to be
referred, when rightly understood, those things in the same psalm
that are set down a little more obscurely, and we have already made
known in our popular sermons how these things are to be rightly
understood. So also in that where Christ utters through prophecy
the humiliation of His passion, saying, “They pierced my hands
and feet; they counted all my bones. Yea, they looked and stared
at me.”1095
By which
words he certainly meant His body stretched out on the cross, with
the hands and feet pierced and perforated by the striking through
of the nails, and that He had in that way made Himself a spectacle
to those who looked and stared. And he adds, “They parted my
garments among them, and over my vesture they cast lots.”1096
How this
prophecy has been fulfilled the Gospel history narrates. Then,
indeed, the other things also which are said there less openly are
rightly understood when they agree with those which shine with so
great clearness; especially because those things also which we do
not believe as past, but survey as present, are beheld by the whole
world, being now exhibited just as they are read of in this very
psalm as predicted so long before. For it is there said a little
after, “All the ends of the earth shall remember, and turn unto
the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before
Him; for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He shall rule the
nations.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
