For Christian believers, it is very easy to see that God is King. The Creator of this world is of course also the King of it—He rules and presides over His creation. He is King by virtue of the very fact that He is God. And when we recognize Jesus as being not only human but also God, it is obvious that He is King according to his divinity. As God says through the prophet Isaiah: “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool.”
What may not be as obvious, though, is that Jesus is King also according to His humanity. Jesus is a human King. He is King according to the royal line of David, who was the image and a foreshadowing of Christ’s Kingship.
Jesus has risen and ascended to His throne in heaven, where he is seated and present to all of His creation, but He continues to rule as a human King. That means that we can relate to Him as a person would relate to a human king: we can approach Him as our King, and can converse with Him in the manner that a subject, or a soldier or knight, would come before his king to place himself at the king’s service.
This approach to personally relating to Jesus has largely been lost to us as modern people. I think in some way it has also been robbed from us.
It has largely been lost because we no longer have many kings in the world today. For someone accustomed to modern democracies, relating to Jesus as a human King probably does not come nearly as naturally as it would have to a Christian living in the Medieval era. On top of that, living in the United States we grow up with and are taught to have a strong distrust in the idea of monarchy as a form of government. Our nation’s founding was based on the rebellion against monarchy: it’s in our blood to distrust it.
But even if it has been obscured from us, Jesus is our human King. That is the reality. His title as King according to the line of David is not an arbitrary title—it is a living truth. And if it is a reality, then it is something that is offered to us: something that can be received, taken hold of, and entered into. Let me be a little more clear about what I mean.
As I have started to realize Jesus’s human Kingship recently, it has changed my life of prayer and devotion. Being raised Catholic, when I have entered into a church, I have always genuflected before Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle. But when I do that now, I try to keep in mind that I am bending the knee before my King whose throne I have approached. I try to keep that in mind, because that is actually what is happening. That is the reality. For most of my life I was oblivious to Christ’s human Kingship when I entered into a church, but now I try to enter into the reality of it, keeping in mind that I am a subject of the King and consciously bending the knee before His throne as I enter into His presence.
It has started to change my life of prayer, too. If I am seeking to know God’s will for me, or what He wants me to do in a situation I am facing in life, I can kneel before Him in prayer, taking hold of the reality that He is present before me on His heavenly throne, and simply ask Him: “My King, what is it that You want me to do?” I can kneel before Him, placing myself at His service, and ask Him what mission He has created me for and how He wishes me to serve Him.
Beginning to realize the reality of Christ’s human Kingship has been a game-changer in my spiritual life, because it is completely uncharted territory for me. And I think it probably is for many of us. It is a hidden treasure that has been laying under our feet the whole time, waiting to be taken hold of.
The reality of Jesus’s Kingship can transform our understanding of sin and repentance, too. When I sin, it is an infidelity to my King. I fail Him, whether by betrayal, or straying from Him, or simply by not serving Him with all of my heart. Sin is a failure of loyalty and obedience to our King. And when I repent, whether in prayer or Confession, I come before the throne of my King and admit my faults to Him, begging Him for His mercy and for Him to receive me back into His service if I have strayed grievously, knowing that He will always gladly forgive one that comes to Him with a contrite heart.
It also sheds a new light on the sin of apostasy. When someone loses the Christian faith they once had, we tend to say that they “left the Church” or “left the faith.” And that is true. I was once guilty of it myself. But in the light of Christ’s human Kingship, we can see that there is much more to it than that. Apostasy is the sin of treason. To leave the faith and the Church is to abandon the King and our service to His Kingdom, going over to the Enemy to join his forces instead. It is to change our loyalties from the Kingdom of Light to the kingdom of darkness.
The Church has always taught this, and Christians before us probably had an easier time understanding it. Christians on earth are the Church Militant. We are the soldiers of Christ, members of the army of God, and it is our task to remain loyal to the King under whose banner we must fight to the death. And we really are the soldiers of Christ—it isn’t a metaphor or a figure of speech.1
For shining examples of this and for their heavenly aid, we can look to the martyrs. Christian martyrs are those soldiers whom the Enemy had surrounded and assaulted, subjected to hellish torments and pressured to renounce their loyalties and turn sides. But they did not turn, because the Love of God, blazing fiercely in their hearts, is stronger than death, and God graced them with glorious loyalty unto death.
There is a war between the two kingdoms, and there is no neutral ground. The Gospel of Christ calls us to choose our loyalties and to not be lukewarm. He took flesh and became Man that He might reign in human hearts, and that those whose hearts He is enthroned in may go out into the world and win other hearts for His Kingdom. For the Enemy holds those in his own camps in bondage and misery, and Christ has come to liberate the captives and drive the Enemy down into the pits of hell.
Is this fact that we are at war not obvious in our own day and time? An all-out assault is being waged on everything that is true and good and beautiful in this world. We are witnessing the murder of babies in the womb by the thousands each day, and the diabolical robbery of childhood innocence through leftist grooming in our classrooms and in drag shows. We are being encroached upon by a kingdom of deceit and corruption and downright lunacy. And the propaganda in media and entertainment has for a few years been becoming sometimes overtly satanic.
We are under a hellish assault, but where are our leaders to marshal the troops and call us to battle?2 How rare it is in the Church today to even hear things spoken of in these terms! And the faithful are starving for it! Young men in particular are starving for it. They are like sheep without a shepherd, waiting for the bishops of the Church, the generals of Christ's army, to rouse them with a call to honor and glory.3
But we have an eternal Shepherd, a mighty King, and a Lord of hosts. And our King does not sit idly on the throne while his soldiers go off and fight. He is a King who leads from the front lines, who goes before us into battle and fights by our side. In great movies or books, like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings, the scenes where the commander runs before his troops into battle cannot fail to stir the soul. These scenes can move us to the depths, because these characters are images of Christ, the King who leads his army from the front. It is the reality that we long for.
Saint John tells us this himself in the book of Revelation (19: 11-16), and we will let him have the final word:
Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:
KING OF KINGS AND
LORD OF LORDS.
All human armies of the nations are images of the one heavenly army: it is not that God’s army is kind of like a human army, it is rather that human armies are kind of like the army of God. The army of God is the real thing, the reality, the archetype; human armies are only images and shadows of the real thing.
This is the same principle that applies to many aspects of the Christian faith. Four examples: 1) Relevant to our topic, human kings are images and shadows of the Human King, who is Christ. 2) It is not that we call God our Father because he is kind of like a father. It is rather that human fathers are kind of like God the Father. He is fully and really Father; human fathers are images of Him, not vice versa. 3) It is not that the marriage between Christ and His Church is kind of like human marriage. It is rather that human marriage is kind of like the marriage between Christ and His Church, because it is the image of it. Saint Paul tells us this himself. 4) When Saint Paul in his letter to the Ephesians tells us to put on the armor of God, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, it is not that these things are kind of like physical shields and helmets and shoes and swords. It is rather that physical armor and weapons are images of the real things which Saint Paul lists. He isn’t using metaphors or figures of speech.
I am speaking of engagement in spiritual battle, not physical battle, though physical battle has its place too under the right circumstances.
Some bishops are, and I do not mean to be overly critical.