Messiah, the Man (Thoughts On Psalm 8)

by Joel Settecase

This Psalm, written by David, highlights the lowly natural state of mankind, as well as the great position granted him by God. And it all points remarkably to Jesus.

Stardust or Gods?

We tend to forget what the Bible teaches about what it means to be human—that we are creatures created with dignity and bearing the image of God—and we, as a species, vacillate between two extremes. On the one hand, we say that we are nothing, a clump of cells (that infamous phrase used by pro-abortionists about human life in the womb), or that we are stardust (which I suppose is supposed to sound awe-inspiring, but actually is rather discouraging and demeaning when one thinks about it for awhile). On the other hand, we make ourselves out to be gods, declaring our autonomy and looking to ourselves (or our human representatives in civil government) to be our saviors from all of life's dangers and pains.

This passage clearly conveys that, while we are more than merely dust, we are certainly less than gods. It is dignifying and humbling simultaneously. And like a mirror it reflects our own failure to see ourselves rightly.

So our efforts to be our own saviors are futile; in fact we don't even properly diagnose our truest and deepest problem. It isn't our political impotence, or our inability to live out our fullest potential, or even our cosmic insignificance. Our deepest problem is sin and its resultant wage, i.e. death (Ro 6:23), and for that we need a salvation from outside ourselves.

Enter Jesus.

Jesus is the God referenced in verses 1-3 of this passage. His name is magnificent. He covered the heavens with his majesty. his fingers made the heavens and their luminaries—yet he became a man. (Notice the delicious way this speaks to the previous secular doctrine that we humans are made of stardust. In that belief, stars became men. Yet in truth, as beautifully told here, it is the Creator of the stars who became man).

The Incarnation of the Son of God confronts us at once with three realities: (1) the awesomeness of Christ's incomprehensible majesty, (2) the magnanimity of his transformation into a man (though he lost none of his divine nature), and (3) the absolute appropriateness of his being given dominion over all creation (Ps 8:5b-8).

After all, not only did he (being God) create it all in the first place, and therefore does he enjoy the rights of authorship thereof, but (having become man) he also redeemed it for humanity. We humans had lost our original status and relationship to creation when, in Adam, we fell into Sin (cf. Ge 3:18-19). Jesus re-won this for us via his atoning death on the cross, burial, and resurrection, by all of which he conquered sin and death.

So, as Messiah, the Man—the Son of Man, as he loved to call himself—Jesus has been exalted over all creation and exercises full Lordship over it all (Mt 28:18). He is the one beneath whose feet God has placed creation (see the brilliant explication of this Psalm 8 passage in Hebrews 2:7).

Now, what about us, his followers?

He has not left us in our fallen state. In Christ Jesus, we too have overcome death (1 Co 15:55). And we too enjoy a certain kind of dominion and freedom. In him, we experience a kind of humanness which is like what we originally had, but lost, but which I would argue is also even better.

We, if we are believers in Jesus, have been commissioned to expand the dominion of the Messiah. Having been filled with the Holy Spirit, we have power enabling us to boldly go anywhere in creation and tell anyone the Good News to anyone (Ac 1:8).

Good News for Stardust

Remember the false beliefs about humankind we mentioned earlier? The Good News speaks to them both.

We are not stardust, though creatures formed from the dust. God created us with dignity, and we have beclouded that dignity through our disobedience of God.

Neither are we gods, though we were set above the animal and plant kingdoms and given stewardship of them both. We were made to reflect God's image, yet we have broken that reflection through our sinful hearts and behavior. Left to ourselves, we are more like devils than gods, and yet we can be God's children—united to him and fully forgiven.

The union of God and man is not something we can win for ourselves, nor is its necessity something that we can "opt out" from, as though we were truly autonomous. We can't explain it away by calling ourselves stardust and singing "imagine there's no heaven... above us only sky."

We can be restored redeemed by Jesus the Messiah, the Man himself. When anyone repents of his sin and receives Jesus as Savior and Lord, God fully forgives him and immediately sees him as sinless before him. In Jesus, humanity's status is restored and bettered.

This is the Good News we followers of Jesus bring out and proclaim to all our fellow human creatures. In this way we spread the dominion of Jesus. We do this as we wait with sure hope that God, who both created and redeemed all things by Jesus, has also united us to Jesus as heirs of all things (Ro 8:17), and will also (someday) graciously give us all things along with him (Ro 8:32).

Conclusion

Therefore, it is no wonder that David ends the Psalm the way he does in verse 9. And knowing what we know about the Good News and its aforementioned implications, we can joyfully say it with him:

"LORD, our Lord, how magnificent is your name throughout the earth!"