The One Who ‘Came Down’, ‘Laid Down’ and ‘Sat Down’

Unless otherwise stated, scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version of the Bible

Many will be familiar with the closing words of the short spiritual song, ‘Lord, I lift Your name on high’:

‘You came from heaven to earth to show the way,
From the earth to the cross, my debt to pay:
From the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky
Lord, I lift Your name on high’.¹

Personally, I enjoy linking three expressions from that song with three sayings of the Lord Jesus recorded by the Apostle John (two in his Gospel and one in his book of the Revelation) - each of which uses the word ‘down’.

First, I link the expression, ‘You came from heaven to earth’ with the Lord’s words in John chapter 6, ‘I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me’.²

Then, I link the expression, ‘from the earth to the cross’ with His words in John chapter 10, ‘I am the good shepherd I lay down My life for the sheep I lay down My life No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself [“of My own accord”]’.³

And, finally, I link the expression, ‘from the grave to the sky’ with the words of the risen Lord in Revelation chapter 3, words addressed to the angel of the church in Laodicea, ‘To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne’.⁴

First, ‘I have come down from heaven’. The Apostle Paul spoke of the Lord Jesus as the One who ‘descended’,⁵ and ‘descend’ He most certainly did; who, though He had been immeasurably rich, for our sakes became abjectly poor. ‘You know the grace [the undeserved favour and kindness] of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes [“because of you”, literally] He became poor’.⁶

We bow in wonder anew when we consider that, such was His amazing condescension, He, God’s ‘only begotten Son’,⁷ deigned to become Mary’s ‘firstborn Son’⁸ that He exchanged the exalted throne of the Lord of hosts⁹ for an animal’s feeding trough.¹⁰

On one occasion, the Saviour Himself spoke of seeing Satan ‘fall . . . from heaven’¹¹ and the town clerk of Ephesus is on record in Acts chapter 19 as having spoken of the image of the Greek goddess Artemis which supposedly ‘fell down from heaven’.¹² But the Lord Jesus did not ‘fall down from heaven’; He ‘came down from heaven’.¹³ What a breath-taking - what a stupendous - stoop!¹⁴

John records in chapter 5 of his Gospel how, when Jesus told the Jews, ‘My Father has been working until now, and I have been working’, they ‘sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God‘.¹⁵ And then, in chapter 10, John further reports the words of the Jews to the Lord Jesus, ‘For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God‘.¹⁶

The irony lay in that, whereas the Jews asserted that He, ‘a Man’, was making Himself out to be ‘equal with God’ - yea, to be ‘God’ Himself - the truth was that He was only in the world at all because He, who ‘was [and had always been] God‘, having refused to cling to His position of splendour as One on equality with God, had become a man!¹⁷

In a well-known passage in the book of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher stated, not only that there is a time to be born, but that there is a time to die.¹⁸ This was true, of course, of men in general, but it was no less true of our Lord Jesus.

For that reason, our Lord made it clear, not only that He had come down from heaven, but that He would, of His own accord, as He said, lay down His life - that for Him, not only had there once been a manger, but the time would come when there would be a cross.

The Apostle John certainly got the point. Years later, he wrote, ‘By this we know love [“this is how we know what love is”], because He laid down His life for us’.¹⁹ The cross of Jesus was many things, but among the many, it was the pulpit from which He preached His boundless love to us.

We rejoice to know that, when that time came, the self-same One who so willingly had ‘come down’ from His heavenly glory, then steadfastly refused to ‘come down’ from His shameful cross.²⁰

And we thank God that our Lord’s death was not the end of the story.

For, as the Apostle Peter declared concerning Him on the great day of Pentecost, ‘whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it’.²¹ For his part, the Apostle Paul assures us that the One ‘who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens’.²²

Then the One who ‘came down’ from heaven and who ‘laid down’ His life, ‘sat down’ with His Father ‘on His throne’ . . . at God’s right hand - the place of supreme dignity and honour.²³

Speaking of the Jewish priests of Old Testament days, the writer to the Hebrews pointed out that, ‘every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God’.²⁴ That is to say, the Jewish priests never dared sit down in the presence of God for the simple reason that their work was never finished. But our Lord Jesus took His place, seated at God’s right hand, as sure and certain evidence that He had forever completed the work He had come to do.

This is not to say, of course, that our Lord is inactive today. Far from it. In the words of the Apostle Paul, ‘It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us’.²⁵

We delight to know that, just as the resurrection of the Lord Jesus provides us with the supreme demonstration of the power of God, so the cross of the Lord Jesus provides us with the supreme demonstration of His love.

But we rejoice also in the knowledge that our Lord’s cross did not exhaust His love - that, though He died, His love did not - that He loves us still²⁶ - and that, at this very moment, He is actively engaged in representing every last one of us before the face of God.²⁷

Let us thank God, then, that the One (i) who ‘came down’ from heaven (who ‘came from heaven to earth’) and (ii) who ‘laid down’ His life (who went ‘from the earth to the cross’), is now ‘sat down’ at God’s right hand (has gone ‘from the grave to the sky’).