Song of the Reigning Man

“O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens...

...when I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet...

...O Lord, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1,3-6,9).

Today’s Psalm is not a song about the greatness of humanity, but the majesty of the One Who is fully human, Who is “our Lord Jesus Christ, God’s Son...both God and man. He is God, eternally begotten from the nature of the Father, and He is man, born in time from the nature of His mother, fully God, fully man, with rational soul and human flesh, equal to the Father as to His deity...and though He is both God and Man, Christ is not two persons but one, one, not by changing the deity into flesh, but by taking the humanity into God; one, indeed, not by mixture of the natures, but by unity in one person; for just as the rational soul and flesh are one human being, so God and man are one Christ” (Athanasian Creed).

Rejoice today in the reign of this humbled-then-exalted God-man, Jesus Christ, the only Savior and Lord of humanity:

“He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For [it is written in Psalm 8:6a] ‘He has put all things under His feet’” (1 Corinthians 15:26,27)

“...one testified in a certain place, saying [in Psalm 8:4-6a]:

‘What is man that You are mindful of him,
Or the son of man that You take care of him?

You have made him a little lower than the angels;
You have crowned him with glory and honor,

And set him over the works of Your hands.

You have put all things in subjection under his feet.”

For in that He [the Father] put all in subjection under Him [the Son], He left nothing that is not put under Him” (Hebrews 2:6-8).

Photo by Ben Jones