Psalm 110
“Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool”
Psalm 110.1 is one of the most quoted lines in the New Testament. The Davidic promise made in this psalm becomes a messianic expectation fulfilled in Jesus. Peter cites Psalm 110.1 in the very first proclamation of the gospel:
God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”’
“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”
Psalm 110 also sits behind descriptions of Christ's cosmic victory:
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Cor. 15.20-25)
In his book Saved By Allegiance Alone Matthew Bates makes the point that Christians often fail to tell the whole of the gospel story. We leave the narrative incomplete. We never reach the final chapter.
Specifically, we generally tell the story of the gospel by recounting the Incarnation, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus. These events--birth, life, death and resurrection--are the Good News.
Bates argues that this truncated telling of the gospel, ending with Easter, leaves out the final, climatic moment of the story. The culmination of the gospel is the Ascension, the moment envisioned by Psalm 110, Jesus being seated as Lord and King and coming to reign over his enemies. The entire point of the gospel story--as the culmination of Israel's story--is Jesus being enthroned as Ruler over the world and cosmos.
If we fail to finish the story, argues Bates, we never arrive at the definitive confession of the Christian faith, that Jesus is "Lord of all." And if we miss this, we miss the heart of the Christian life and community, confessing and swearing fealty and allegiance to the one, true king.
With regard to the verse that enjoins us to worship at his footstool, in EO that always refers to the Cross, where Christ's feet were nailed (to the tiny crossbar that only allowed a person to push up for a small gasp of breath while suffocating to death). Our God is the Crucified One.
Dana
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But I would suggest a necessary refinement to Bate’s analysis .
Yes, the Ascension is crucial. But Christ does not ascend to begin his rule. He returns to the Father who already reigns. The Ascension is not a coronation in the sense of a power transfer—it is a rejoining. The rule of Christ is not a new reality but the visible continuation of what the Father has always done. The Ascension does not make Christ King; it affirms that the Kingdom he preached—the reign of God—is now embodied in him, in glory.
And even more decisive than the Ascension, I would argue, is Pentecost.
Pentecost is the moment when the Trinity is revealed in full—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is not just the confirmation of Christ’s kingship, but the inauguration of a new kind of communion. At Pentecost, the Spirit descends not merely to mark Christ’s rule, but to create the Church, the body that carries that rule into the world. Without Pentecost, the Ascension would remain distant—cosmic but inaccessible. Pentecost makes the reign of Christ personal, communal, immediate.
So yes, let us not stop at Easter. But let us also not stop at the Ascension. The heart of the gospel is not only that Christ is enthroned—but that his Spirit is poured out. That we are invited not just to declare his Lordship, but to share his life.