3. How pleasing to God is the redemption of man! Christ's glorious
is advanced to the right hand of God, sits upon the throne with God.
The angelical nature is below the throne, stands about it, but is not advanced to sit upon it. Our nature hath not only now a dominion over the beasts, as at the first creation, but a principality above and over the angels, Eph. 1:21. By creation we were made a little lower than the angels; by this union of the divine, and the exaltation of the human nature of the Son of God, our nature is mounted above theirs.
It was then made as low as earth, it is now advanced as high as heaven; yea, above the heavens. Our nature was before at the foot of the world, the world is now at the foot of our nature.
3. How pleasing to God is the redemption of man! Christ's glorious advancement speaks a fragrancy in his satisfaction to God, as well as a fulness of merit for men. There was a good pleasure in his mission, there was a sweet savour in his passion; for since he is crowned with glory upon a throne, that so lately suffered ignominiously upon a cross, what can the consequence be but that his obedience to death was highly agreeable to the mind of God, and afforded him a ravishing delight! For without his receiving an infinite content by it, it is not possible to imagine he should bestow so glorious a recompence for it. We have his word for a testimony of his delight in the service he designed: Isa. 42:1, 'Behold my servant, in whom my soul delights.' We have his deed for an evidence of the pleasure he took in the service he performed, by putting the government into the hands of the Mediator, and giving him power over the angels, and setting him at his right hand as his Son. He hath testified what a ravishing sense he hath of the redemption he wrought, and of that death whereby he completed it. He took more pleasure in him as the Redeemer than in all the angels in heaven. The apostle challengeth all to produce any one angel to whom God spake so magnificent a word, 'Sit thou at my right hand, till I make thy enemies thy footstool,' Heb. 1:13. 'To which of the angels said he so at any time?'
He is proclaimed to the angels as an object of worship as he is brought into the world, Heb. 1:6, as he is the heir appointed as well as he is the heir begotten; as 'he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.' He hath now a glorious empire over the