Revelation 3:21 “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.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture our Lord reinforces the truth that those who will be granted the power to reign will be required to fulfil an added condition. In addressing the reward of reigning in this passage, our Lord speaks about the saint being granted to sit with Him on His throne. And the condition that our Lord attaches to the reward is that the believer must overcome as the Lord Jesus Himself overcame. So what does the Lord mean when He tells us that this reward is available to the saint who overcomes as He overcame? The scriptures teach us that God our Father exalted our Lord Jesus to His own right hand because Jesus learned to be obedient through suffering, even ultimately suffering the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8-11). In other words the Lord Jesus kept the commandments of God the Father to the end.
Romans 8:16-17 “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, (17) and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.”
In a similar manner to our Lord’s suffering, the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul teaches us in the above quoted passage of scripture that if we want to reign with Christ then the requirement is that we are going to have to suffer with Him. The suffering that Paul is referring to in this passage is the suffering that the saints incur when they keep the commandments of God in the midst of a perverse and wicked generation. Not all saints are willing to endure this type of suffering however, nevertheless for those who are willing they can be assured that they will receive the reward of being seated together with the Lord Jesus on His throne because they would have overcome just as He overcame. To be seated with Christ on His throne is the highest honour that God can bestow upon His children, and that is what the scripture means when it declares that we are joint heirs with Christ. God the Father has placed all things under the feet of Christ (Hebrews 2:8). And so as we sit together with Christ on His throne all things will be placed under our feet and we will reign with Him for all eternity. In this present age we reign with Christ in a very limited manner and we do so by faith, but in the age to come we will experience the full reality of being seated together with Christ on His throne and reigning together with Him.
Mark 10:40 “but to sit on My right hand and on My left, is not Mine to give, but it is for those for whom it is prepared.”
We have seen in this section thus far that the reward that the saints can earn on that day is the reward of authority to reign over the nations. Although the reward of being able to reign will be the same for every saint, the level of authority given will differ for each saint. So why is that? The reason there will be differing levels of authority given to the Lord’s saints on that day is because this reward is based on the works done by the saints in this life. The context of the above quoted passage of scripture is that James and John had asked the Lord Jesus that He would grant them to sit on His right hand and His left in His kingdom. Our Lord’s response to the request of His two apostles was that those particular positions of authority could only be given to those for whom the Father had prepared them. Clearly to be seated at the right and left hand of the Lord Jesus in His kingdom denotes holding positions of great authority, and so only those whom God has deemed worthy will be rewarded with that level of authority. And so we see that, based on the works done by the saints in this life, God decides which levels of authority each of His saints will be deemed worthy to receive on that day.
Michael E.B. Maher
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