Seizing the High Ground

From Lesson 155 of the Biblical Framework Series

Charles Clough

Eph. 1:20-21 is another section of Scripture. Let’s observe this text, “which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead,” there’s resurrection, by the way, now that we’ve studied the cross of Christ and the resurrection, and now we’re studying the ascension and session. He says the Father raised the Son “from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand” some place, called “the heavenlies” or the spiritual area.

Verse 21 qualifies what those “heavenlies” are, so here we go again, this strange area. In verse 20 when it says “He raised Him from the dead” are we talking about Jesus deity or His humanity? His humanity, we’re talking about a physical body. What’s the implication then about location? It has to be located somewhere. Jesus’ body has to be located at some point; it’s not an infinitely big body. Jesus may have been less than six feet tall, that’s all we’re talking about here, a body that may be 5’11”, and it’s located some place and it’s still 5’11”, it’s not 5,000 feet, it’s still the same body, resurrection body, located somewhere.

That’s the problem, we can’t see where it’s located, but Paul describes the scene, he says it’s “at His right hand,” so wherever this is, it’s in the very throne room of God, the place surrounded by the rainbow, signature for the Noahic Covenant, He’s at the Father’s right hand, verse 21, “far above,” wherever this place is, notice its locus, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.” Isn’t that pretty encompassing? What is that saying? It’s saying that above all powers and principalities and angels and everything, about all the creation Jesus Christ is now in the high ground.

In the military, one of the objectives always in a battle is to take the high ground. This is why there was such trauma when I was going to college, and I never will forget the evening when Sputnik went up. The funny part was that very evening the head of NASA was going to come, we had all the student body at MIT in the auditorium and this guy was supposed to speak on America’s space program. If you’re old enough to remember, you remember that we had some very bad failures because we had this thing, the Viking rocket, etc. and we had it on the pad in Florida and the thing got off the pad and blew up. I mean, America’s space program was a real problem, and all of a sudden bam, here comes Sputnik, which by the way was observed first at Aberdeen Proving Ground about 500 feet from my building, so now all of a sudden Russia has taken the high ground. There was such an air of depression when that happened, I can remember it, it was just like the day Kennedy got shot, it was that kind of an emotional upheaval that oh, man, communism has got the high ground. So we fought to get back into the space race.

The space race is a military race; it’s a race to who controls the high ground. And the same thing, you can go into the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, who controlled the high ground. It’s always that, again and again, the high ground. Keep that in mind it’s going to come up again and again in the session of Jesus Christ, and here in verse 21 it’s part of the high ground, that in this battle, and this is where the Church Age, I’m taking you through this slowly because I’m laying the foundation for this Church Age thing, this inter-advent between the First and Second Advent of Christ, the Church and what the Church is all about, and what we’re all about as individuals.

But we’ve got to get the cosmic setting, there’s something new that happens in verse 21 that was not true in the Old Testament. We have a human being at the Father’s right hand, we never had a human being at the throne of the universe, ever before! Jesus Christ, in His humanity, sits at the helm of the universe. What a cosmic picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. And “far above all rule and authority,” yes Satan is here, yes there are evil powers, yes Daniel saw them as the demons that control Persia and the demons that would control Greece and the great empires, the principalities and the powers of darkness. But the high ground has already been taken by a member, not of the angelic creation, but a member of the human race that was made lower than the angels.

Are you starting to see there was a revolutionary thing being proclaimed here? This is the first time in history that the creation under the angels is now above the angels, a transform has happened. Verse 21 goes so far as to say “not only in this age,” but for all time Jesus Christ is Lord. When we say Jesus Christ is Lord, by the way, here is a picture of what the Lordship is talking about; He out ranks every creature in the humanity of Jesus Christ.