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When our Lord had reached the end of His redeeming work He announced to His Church, "All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth." This explained the whole mystery of His life on earth, and connected it with His future reign in heaven. The text is an echo of the Saviour's final saying.

I. THE REDEEMER'S DOMINION OVER MEN. This is declared to be the end of His ministry on earth.

1. His death was a means to an end.

(1) This great intention pervades the Scriptures. It was the eternal purpose of the Trinity, the meaning of the first promise, the keynote of psalm and prophecy. When He came it was a King that angels worshipped. His miracles were wrought to illustrate His kingship, and His teaching was based upon it. In the agony of death He spoke in the spirit of a King.

(2) Without His death this dominion could not be reached. He might have come as the Son of God incarnate to assume His rightful sway, but that could only have been in wrath to vindicate His Father's violated law, and hence would have been the ruin of our race. But the government He came to obtain demanded that man should be redeemed from another power and then brought back to his lost estate of obedience and love.

(a) Sin had dominion over man in virtue of the penalty of violated law. The Redeemer died to atone for sin, to absorb its sentence in Himself, and thus to reign in the bestowment of pardon and peace.

(b) Sin had dominion over man through the law of evil ruling in his nature. By His atoning death the Redeemer obtained for man the Spirit of a new life making him free from the law of sin and death.

2. His resurrection declared that His end was attained, and that His empire was won.

II. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THAT DOMINION

1. Its extent. The words "Lord of the dead and living."(1) Place the whole race under Christ's feet.

(a) The phrase gives mankind its distinct definition. Elsewhere the Redeemer's dominion is the entire creation.

(b) It suggests the whole sad history of our ruin and wretchedness. We are a dying race, from generation to generation succumbing to our mortal enemy. But our Redeemer is ruling over our ruin and translating it into salvation. Our death His government turns to life.

(c) It is not, however, the living and the dead, but the dead and living. The dead must have the pre-eminence, for they are the bulk of our race, sanctified to our thought by their mystery and multitude.

(d) But it is the language of mortals. Christ has no dead subjects. All live to Him, as He told the Sadducees.

(e) It prescribes the limits of the Redeemer's lordship which is to last while mankind are made up of dead and living. When death is swallowed up in victory it will cease, and God shall be all in all.

(2) Distribute our Lord's dominion over two provinces.

(a) He is the Lord of the world of disembodied spirits. He entered this world and Death yielded Him the keys which had been His from the beginning, but now became His by another right. But here the light fails us, and the evangelical record which follows the Lord's passion to His final cry suspends its story till He opens His lips to Mary; and we do well to respect its silence. The same restraint is laid upon us when we speak of the nature of Christ's empire here. Concerning one great province, that tenanted by those who died without the gospel, all we can say is that Christ is their Lord. Concerning those who have sinned against all revelation, inward and outward, He is their Lord too, and only their Lord. Over the remaining province, paradise, Christ rules, but there He also is, and all who enter follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.

(b) We must now return to the living. He is their absolute Lord. It is the probation of every man who hears the gospel to accept or reject His sway. Rejection of that sway seals every man's fate; while acceptance is the foundation of personal religion.

2. Its character (ver. 7). The Lord to whom we have submitted has become —

(1) The director of our being. We live unto the Lord. His loyal subjects have renounced self, and taken Him to be their supreme Lord (ver. 6).

(2) The disposer of our being. We die to the Lord. Death is part of our sum of duty.

(W. B. Pope, D.D.)

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KJV: For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

WEB: For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself.