Context No. 3699 of 4322 · Matthew

Matthew 22:41-46: in context

41Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “Of David.” 43He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, 44‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’? 45“If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” 46No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward.

Jesus turns the questioning on the Pharisees with a puzzle from Scripture. Whose son is the Christ? They answer, correctly, the son of David. But then Jesus quotes David himself, in the psalm, calling the Messiah Lord: the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. If David calls the Messiah Lord, how can he be merely David's son?

The Pharisees cannot answer. The answer, of course, is the mystery of the incarnation: the Christ is both David's son, human, descended from David, and David's Lord, divine, existing before David and reigning at God's right hand. Jesus is showing that the Messiah is far more than a human king in David's line; he is the Lord himself. This is the heart of who Jesus is: fully human, David's son, and fully divine, David's Lord. To know Christ rightly is to confess him as both, the man born of David's line and the Lord who reigns at the right hand of God.

Do I confess Jesus rightly as both David's son and David's Lord, fully human and fully divine, the King who reigns at God's right hand?

Sources

Matthew 22:45: "If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?"
Matthew 22:44: "The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."
Romans 1:3-4: "Concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh... declared to be the Son of God with power."