Many read scripture and commentary as if they are speed readers. Even the best speed readers cannot absorb all the information without an interval of contemplation — to meditate on the Word of God. Christian meditation is not blanking out anything but the world, and is considering the Word of God, as is written, “I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:12).
Scripture must be pondered about and thought upon, and nobody
should do that in haste. As such, when words are read, think upon the meaning.
Today, consider an oft quoted verse, underlined within this passage:
55 But he (Stephen), being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, 56 And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. (Acts 7:55-56)
The crowd did not want to hear that, let alone ponder or consider it. They did not want to hear the truth! They literally censored the inspired word of God from their minds and would not even consider that the now dead Jesus would be standing at the right hand of God!
Stephen was recounting the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, and made Him out to be Jesus and that Jesus, although once dead, was still alive. The implication that Stephen made was that he had seen Jesus in the realm of God and on God’s throne. That was blasphemy to their ears.
That Jesus was the “Face” of God violated their first commandment, literally in the Hebrew, to not have other gods in God’s Face (Exod 20:3). Stephen had put the Face of Jesus onto the never before seen, face of God, at least by those who never knew Jesus. Some had surely seen Jesus, even crucified, but they had not seen God.
Luke had seen God face to face, for he wrote, at His baptism by John, "the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape” (Luke 3:22). The repentant thief, Dismus, has seen that as well when Jesus gave up the Ghost (Mark 15:37).
What was the crucifixion all about? Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh. Even though Pilate never saw that theretofore, he understood that when he spoke the truth: “I find no fault in this man” (Luke 23:4). He considered Jesus, His claim to be God, added to what he knew about Him and essentially agreed that Jesus is who He says He is — that is God in the flesh.
Pilate pondered the claim and meditated on the mighty deeds of Jesus just as the psalmist wrote and concluded that Jesus was the Son of God and with that, the Face of God.
Now ask yourself, Have I read this too quickly? Have I missed the point? I missed the point for years until I saw the truth by pondering all those things.
About Stephen, it is written,
8 Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people… 15 And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel. (Acts 6:8,15)
Stephen was an “angel” but not in the sense that he was an angelic being, but a messenger. He had seen Jesus and understood all the Old Testament scripture. He reviewed the Hebrew scripture with them and ended it by declaring that Jesus and the Father are One Being.
That declaration was that Jesus was at the right hand of God. To the casual reader, that would appear that there are two gods on the throne in Heaven, one sitting on the throne, and another sitting on a subservient throne to the right.
Since God is three substances, that would suggest that the Holy Ghost sat on the left side of the Father. In fact, some see the Holy Trinity as three different persons upon one throne. The doctrine of United Pentecostals is based on misunderstanding that passage. They believe that trinitarians have a “three-headed god” much like a precept of Greek mythology.
So, what does the right hand to do with God?
Although Luke wrote, “standing,” Paul wrote, “sitting” — “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Col 3:1). Whether sitting or standing the position is the same… Jesus is at the right hand of God… always.
The psalmist helps to understand that precept, “…thy right
hand is full of righteousness. (Psalm 48:10). Jesus is the right hand in that
He is full of righteousness. The implication, and think on it, is that Jesus is
not literally sitting or standing with God but that the Man/God Jesus is full
of right-ness. He has the full “Virtue” (dynamis in the Greek) of
God. John helped with that idea when he wrote:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The Same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:1-3)
Thus, Jesus is not apart from Father God but the manifestation of Him. In the beginning He was the Dynamis whose Power made things happen through the Virtue emanating from the Father.
The apostle John wrote about God, “…that He should be made manifest to Israel” (John 1:31), and also wrote what the Baptist saw, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him” (John 1:32).
Luke saw the Ghost of Jesus descend on Jesus, and His Ghost looked like Him because it was Jesus in another substance.
John the apostle saw God manifest Himself to Israel at His baptism. It was not another “person” in Heaven nor descending from Heaven but God transforming (transfiguring Himself) to reveal His three substances as One. “They” were all there together, and not apart. The Mind of God remained in Heaven, the Spirit of God descended, and the Person of God was the “Cup” as Jesus called His innermost Being, the Soul.
That same event occurred on the Cross when Jesus decried the Father forsaking Him, and the Holy Ghost departing from Him. Likewise, Stephen saw the three as One in Heaven with his bright spiritual “eyes.”
Jesus is the Person of God, the Holy Ghost is the Person of God, and the Father is the Person of God regardless of the “one in three Persons” doctrine that most have been taught. God is One Person with three Supra-natures in harmony each with the other (homeostasis).
Paul wrote about Christians and Jesus, “That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thes 2:2).
“At hand” has hidden meaning there. It appears to mean soon, but is there implied significance as well?
The Antiquities of the Jews, authored by Flavius Josephus, is not commentary but the history of the Jews. It was written by Josephus so that Roman Gentiles could understand the nature of the Jewish people, and that Roman civilization was not theirs, and Roman law not their Law. Likewise, that none of their gods were the Almighty God of the Jews.
Josephus even wrote commentary on doctrine and the Person, Jesus. He considered the Jewish God and seemed to have accepted the idea that their Invisible God was the One and the Same Visible God-Man Jesus. Hence, Jesus as the Son of Man and the Son of God punctuates the idea that Jesus is God in the Flesh, and that the Holy Ghost is God in Spirit.
Before 40 A.D. a group of Jews, led by Anileus were “pirates” among the Babylonians, and were thieving against the Parthians (Persians) who ruled them. Innocent people were slaughtered as never before. At that time the Babylonians were subject to the Parthinians and paid tribute (taxes) to them.
When brothers Anileus and Asineus became powerful in their roguery, they required the people to pay tribute to them or suffer the abhorrent consequences. The two men became powerful, and the Babylonians came to respect them because of their domination. The king of Parthia heard of their exploits and called for them.
The two Jewish brothers broke the Law and fought the
Parthinians on the Sabbath and won the battle. A message was sent to them wherein
the two brutish men were praised:
King Artabanus, although he hath been unjustly treated by you, who have made an attempt against his government; yet hath he more regard to your courageous behaviour, than to the anger he bears to you: and hath sent me to give you his right hand, and security; and he permits you to come to him safely, and without any violence upon the road: and he wants to have you address your selves to him as his friends, without meaning any guile or deceit to you. (ibid)
The key point therein is the significance of the right hand in the customs in 40 A.D. The right hand is a symbol of safety, or security. In this case, the King desired to be friends with the pretenders to his throne. “He also promises to make you presents; and to pay you those respects.”
Asineus did not go but sent Aninius to be admitted to the king’s presence. The right hand of friendship meant something that would never be broken, “For none of them will deceive you, when once they have given you their right hands; nor will any one doubt of their fidelity, when that is once given.” The right hand is symbolic of eternal fidelity.
Thus, when Jesus was at the “right hand of God” that was not positional at all but that He had fidelity to His Father. Jesus had been tempted by Satan but remained true to His Name. Even at His death, Jesus maintained His fidelity to His Father in Heaven. The man Jesus, as he gave up the Ghost asked, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” feeling the pain of abandonment as the Holy Ghost left His Person.
Jesus would have felt the “Right Hand” of His Father being removed from Him. That would be very painful because Jesus was always true to the standards of God. Although they were One in the Spirit, the Spirit had left Him, and the relationship may have seemed broken. No longer was Jesus at the right hand of His Father but alone in a tomb.
After Jesus was resurrected, something was missing. Before He suffered death, many touched Jesus and with that virtue left Him and healed them. After Jesus died, he warned Mary Magdalene, “Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.’” (John 20:17).
Perhaps as most would, the infirm believers would reach out their right hand and touch Jesus as an act of eternal fidelity. When they touched Jesus with their right hand, it would be the customary gesture that they would never leave forsake Jesus and of course, He would never leave nor forsake them (Heb 13:5).
Thus, the customary gesture of the right hand may have been what sitting by the right hand of God meant, that never again would Jesus feel abandoned because thereon the throne, He and the Father were One again with the Comforter sent to the Earthly realm.
The King, after receiving Anileus, sent him to obtain his brother, Asineus, “when he had related to him the King’s good will, and the oath that he had taken.”
Now consider the symbolism therein. The King represents
Father God and Anileus and Asineus the two different natures. With that said,
there must be a Devil in the story. It turns out that there was!
He (the King) once shewed Asineus to Abdagases, one of the generals of his army, and told him his name, and described the great courage he was of in war; and Abdagases had desired leave to kill him, and thereby to inflict on him a punishment for those injuries he had done to the Parthian government; the King replied, “I will never give thee leave to kill a man who hath depended upon my faith: especially not after I have sent him my right hand, and endeavoured to gain his belief by oaths made by the gods.” (ibid)
Abdagases is the Satan figure who wanted to kill the “flesh”
of the brother Asineus. After sitting at his right hand, the King told Asineus:
“It is time for thee, O thou young man, to return home; and not to provoke the indignation of my generals in this place any farther. Lest they attempt to murder thee; and that without my approbation. I commit to thee the country of Babylonia in trust; that it may by thy care be preserved free from robbers, and from other mischiefs. I have kept my faith inviolable to thee, and that not in trifling affairs, but in those that concerned thy safety; and do therefore deserve thou shouldest be kind to me.” (ibid)
The king’s right hand of friendship was conditional for Asineus. He could no longer violate the right hand of friendship by doing mischiefs. In the case of Jesus, He would never do mischief although as a man, He was free to exercise His own will.
By 56 A.D. the two brothers “affronted and transgressed the laws of their forefathers, and fell under the dominion of their lusts and pleasures.” Asineus became the lover of a general’s wife. That general was killed in battle and the woman became the wife of Asineus, much like in the story of David and Bathsheba whose husband Uriah was killed for that very purpose.
The marriage of Asineus was made outside the Law of God. He had again not had fidelity to God. Not only that but he allowed the false gods of his wife into his household, and for that he deserved death. To make the story short, Asineus was killed because he broke the right hand of friendship by doing much mischief to the Parthians and to God.
Jesus could have done that, but He did not. He died without any mischief and remained true to the Law of God and to God. As such, Asineus was the “Satan” in the story who broke the right hand of friendship, to wit: “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me” (Psalm 41:9).
That referred to the Christ and His “friend,” Lucifer. No longer would Judas sit at the right hand of Jesus either in heaven or on Earth.
The end of the story is that Anileus caused much warfare as well and was sent away from Babylon by the Parthians. Perhaps Anileus is representative of another side of Satan who was in Judas. So, with that symbolism, Psalm 41:9 just may refer to Jesus’s familiar “friend” Judas who turned on Him in the end, and Judas who would turn on Him much later just as occurred in 66 A.D. when Anileus turned on the King.
Judas would never again, after the last supper, be at the right hand of God because he blasphemed what Jesus was about to do when he dipped the “Body” of Christ in the “Blood” of Christ.
All that to explain what the “right hand of God” means. The
translator of Josephus, William Whistom, summed it up well:
The joining of the right hands was esteemed among the Persians (and Parthians) in particular, a most inviolable obligation to fidelity, as Dr. Hudson here observes, and refers to the commentary on Justin,11.15 for its conformation. We often meet with the like is use of it in Josephus. (ibid; footnote in book 18, chapter 9)
“Inviolable” meaning that it should not ever be violated. It is that an obligation always must have fidelity to something. In the case of sitting (or standing) at the right hand of God, it means that Jesus would never sin against God and that He and the Father are One forever as He said, “If ye had known Me, ye should have known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him and have seen Him” (John 14:7). That pertains to then and now because Jesus remains truly the Father.
The idea that Jesus sits to the right of the Father implies that the two are separate. That should not be taken literally but customarily. Jesus’s custom has always been fidelity to His Father and was always God’s Most Righteous side.
(picture credit: alamy.com; Judas-Jesus)
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