We’ve never witnessed an entire kingdom harness all its collective wealth and skill to put on a once-in-a-generation tribute to the glory of its leader. The extravagance communicates the importance of the person and his position. Royal weddings, no doubt, have their splendor, but the ascending of a new King to the throne, and that solemn moment of placing on his head the crown that signaled his power, is without equal.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . . (Hebrews 1:3)

Imagine that moment when Jesus first sat down on heaven’s throne.

Having taken on our full flesh and blood, lived among us, died sacrificially for us, and risen in triumph, defeating sin and death, he ascended to heaven, pioneering our way, as human, into the very presence of God his Father. Then Jesus stepped forward toward the throne, all heaven captive with history’s great coronation, a ceremony so glorious that even the most extravagant of earthly coronations can barely reflect it.

Most of us today don’t even have the categories for the kind of pomp and circumstance that accompanied coronations in the ancient world. We’ve never witnessed an entire kingdom harness all its collective wealth and skill to put on a once-in-a-generation tribute to the glory of its leader. The extravagance communicates the importance of the person and his position. Royal weddings, no doubt, have their splendor, but the ascending of a new King to the throne, and that solemn moment of placing on his head the crown that signaled his power, is without equal.

And yet all the majesty of history’s most grandiose coronations now have been dwarfed by the heavenly finale to which the greatest of earthly ceremonies were but the faintest of shadows.

Crown Him Lord of All

The first chapter of Hebrews gives us a glimpse into this coronation of Christ, this moment when the God-man is formally crowned Lord of all. First, the scene is set: “After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3).

Then Hebrews quotes from Psalm 2, which was a psalm of coronation for the ancient people of God: “You are my Son,” God says to the new king of Israel, “today I have begotten you” (Hebrews 1:5). It was on the day of his ascension to the throne that the new ruler of God’s people formally became his “son” in serving as his official representative to his people. The coronation was the day, so to speak, that God begat the human king as lord over his people.

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