1 Timothy 6:15 – Christ's Preeminent Pedigree
13 I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, 14 that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, 15 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings…
Insists GK Chesterton in his biography of George Bernard Shaw, "We must always be casting back to concrete foundations with which we began."
Thus also insists the apostle Paul in his parting instructions to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:15. Having taken us back to Christ's encounter with Pontius Pilate, he continues to illustrate the aspects of Christ's superiority. Christ is the better Potentate, the consistent courtier with everlasting favor to exercise on behalf of His own. His commission, unlike Pontius Pilate's will not expire. Yet, Christ is more than an exalted functionary, although He likewise derives His authority from Another. Christ is, celebrates Paul, King of Kings. He is the most solid and ancient foundation for our present hope and His everlasting Kingdom.
A potentate, like Daniel or Joseph, can be superimposed on an alien people. A true king will be of one stock with those He rules, and two Gospels take genealogical pains to establish Christ's bona fides as kinsman-redeemer. As faithlessness is inherited with the Scriptural narrative of the Old Testament, so Christ, Son of David, comes able to redeem and reconcile all aspects of His people's heritage. In fact, as the Gentile Luke takes Christ's heritage all the way back to Adam, Christ reestablishes the dominion that was his as Eden's monarch.
We walk today, then, in a plan that has been generations in the making. If the human monarchs He ordained were advised in Scripture to write God's Word and learn it, this King of Kings is that Word made flesh. He spoke it, and he embodies it. He is its beginning and its end, and He is equally imprinted on the intervening pages of this age which are less clear in Scriptural detail.
True enough, kings, and presidents, and captains of industry, and purveyors of influence will take their turn at swaying the culture, and us as we are inevitably tied to it as we pass through this world. Their first effort after attracting a following with the shine of novelty will often be to attempt to scrub that veneer off and establish continuity with what has come before. They are, they will tell us, inevitable. Yet, they are not the King of Kings. The story they tell is selective and convenient. The story He tells, the story He lives as He forever makes intercession for us, is anchored in deep time. The rocks themselves could cry out His ascendancy.
Insists GK Chesterton in his biography of George Bernard Shaw, "We must always be casting back to concrete foundations with which we began."
Thus also insists the apostle Paul in his parting instructions to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:15. Having taken us back to Christ's encounter with Pontius Pilate, he continues to illustrate the aspects of Christ's superiority. Christ is the better Potentate, the consistent courtier with everlasting favor to exercise on behalf of His own. His commission, unlike Pontius Pilate's will not expire. Yet, Christ is more than an exalted functionary, although He likewise derives His authority from Another. Christ is, celebrates Paul, King of Kings. He is the most solid and ancient foundation for our present hope and His everlasting Kingdom.
A potentate, like Daniel or Joseph, can be superimposed on an alien people. A true king will be of one stock with those He rules, and two Gospels take genealogical pains to establish Christ's bona fides as kinsman-redeemer. As faithlessness is inherited with the Scriptural narrative of the Old Testament, so Christ, Son of David, comes able to redeem and reconcile all aspects of His people's heritage. In fact, as the Gentile Luke takes Christ's heritage all the way back to Adam, Christ reestablishes the dominion that was his as Eden's monarch.
We walk today, then, in a plan that has been generations in the making. If the human monarchs He ordained were advised in Scripture to write God's Word and learn it, this King of Kings is that Word made flesh. He spoke it, and he embodies it. He is its beginning and its end, and He is equally imprinted on the intervening pages of this age which are less clear in Scriptural detail.
True enough, kings, and presidents, and captains of industry, and purveyors of influence will take their turn at swaying the culture, and us as we are inevitably tied to it as we pass through this world. Their first effort after attracting a following with the shine of novelty will often be to attempt to scrub that veneer off and establish continuity with what has come before. They are, they will tell us, inevitable. Yet, they are not the King of Kings. The story they tell is selective and convenient. The story He tells, the story He lives as He forever makes intercession for us, is anchored in deep time. The rocks themselves could cry out His ascendancy.
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