A Man Will Rule the World: Psalm 8 and the Continuing Incarnation of Christ

“A man will rule the world! The message of this extraordinary psalm is that the Creator’s majesty will be fully visible when a man governs the earth.”¹

That sentence, from Christopher Ash’s recent commentary on the Psalms, captures something that too many theological systems have quietly abandoned. Not merely the dignity of humanity, and not merely the sovereignty of God, but the permanent, irreversible, bodily humanity of the one who now sits enthroned over all things. Psalm 8 is not a nostalgic poem about Eden, nor is it a vague hymn about human potential. It is a prophecy, and the New Testament tells us exactly who fulfills it: Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Son of God, the man who was crowned with glory and honor, and who remains a man forever.

Any theological system that denies the continuing incarnation of Christ, whether hyper-preterism or any other scheme that reduces the incarnation to a temporary episode, must reckon with this psalm. Because what Psalm 8 declares, and what the apostolic commentary on it confirms, is that the visible majesty of God in all the earth depends on a man governing it. Not a spirit. Not a post-incarnate divine being who has shed his flesh. A man.

The psalm opens and closes with the same exclamation: “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Ps 8:1, 9). This refrain is not merely praise; it is a thesis statement. The psalm exists to answer the question: how will the covenant Lord be visibly majestic on this earth? And the answer the psalm gives is striking. It is not through raw displays of cosmic power, not through angelic armies, but through the dominion of a human being.

David looks up at the night sky, at the moon and stars, the work of God’s fingers, and the sight provokes not worship alone but astonishment at a contrast (vv. 3-4). If the heavens declare the glory of God with such effortless grandeur, then what is man? The Hebrew word used here, enosh, speaks of human beings in their frailty, their weakness, their mortality. And the parallel term, “son of man” (ben adam), means something like an earthling, a creature formed from dust.² David does not ask this question to diminish humanity. He asks it to magnify the goodness of God, who has chosen to crown such a creature with glory and honor and to give him dominion over the works of his hands (vv. 5-6). Calvin put it sharply: “God, with very good reason, might despise them and reckon them of no account if he were to stand upon the consideration of his own greatness or dignity.”³ And yet he does not despise them. He exalts them.

The language of verses 5 through 8 is unmistakably drawn from Genesis 1:26-28. Man is made “a little lower than the heavenly beings” and given dominion: sheep and oxen, beasts of the field, birds of the heavens, fish of the sea, “whatever passes along the paths of the seas.” Nothing in all creation, save God himself, is excluded. As Ash observes, this may even include the great sea creatures, perhaps Leviathan itself, the epitome of the powers of evil. “Even this is under the authority of the man.”⁴

But here is the question that the psalm forces us to face: is this dominion a present reality, or is it a broken promise? We do not, at present, see humanity exercising this kind of authority. We cannot even tame our own tongues (James 3:7-8). The dominion mandate of Genesis 1 was shattered by the fall, and as Calvin wrote, “by the fall of Adam, all mankind fell from their primeval state of integrity, for by this the image of God was almost entirely effaced from us, and we were also divested of those distinguishing gifts by which we would have been, as it were, elevated to the condition of demigods.”⁵

So what becomes of the psalm’s claim? If it is merely a backward glance at Eden, then it is an elegy, not a hymn. If it describes only what was lost, then the refrain, “how majestic is your name in all the earth,” rings hollow. The psalm demands a fulfillment.

And this is exactly where the New Testament steps in.

The most important commentary on Psalm 8 in all of Scripture is Hebrews 2:5-9. The author of Hebrews quotes the Septuagint of Psalm 8:4-6 and then applies it directly, explicitly, and exclusively to Jesus:

For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, ‘What is man, that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.’ Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. (Heb 2:5-9 ESV)

Several things about this passage demand careful attention.

First, notice the scope. The “world to come” (oikoumene) has been subjected not to angels but to the “man” and “son of man” of Psalm 8. And the author identifies this man as Jesus. Not Jesus-as-he-once-was, but Jesus as he now is. The verb tenses matter. He was made lower than the angels (incarnation and death), and he is crowned with glory and honor (present exaltation). The manhood of Christ is not past tense. He did not become a man temporarily. He became a man permanently, and it is as a man that he now exercises universal dominion.

Second, notice the “not yet.” “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him.” This is devastating to any system that claims all eschatological realities were fulfilled in AD 70. The author of Hebrews, writing before AD 70, does not say, “We do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we will within a few years when Jerusalem falls.” He frames it as an ongoing eschatological reality: the dominion of Christ is real, it is inaugurated, but it is not yet consummated. There are things not yet under his feet. And the psalm’s promise, that “nothing” will be left outside his control, awaits a future and visible fulfillment. Paul confirms this when he writes that the last enemy to be destroyed is death itself (1 Cor 15:26), and that only when all things have been subjected to him will the Son himself be subjected to the Father, “that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). That has not happened yet. Death is still here.

Third, notice the continuation. The passage does not stop at verse 9. Hebrews 2:10 says that God is “bringing many sons to glory” through the one who suffered. And this requires a continuing incarnation. Why? Because of what follows in verses 14 through 17:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Heb 2:14-17 ESV)

The logic is relentless. Because the children share in flesh and blood, Christ partook of flesh and blood. He was made like his brothers “in every respect.” And this was not for the sake of a thirty-year episode that ended at the ascension. It was so that he might become, and remain, a merciful and faithful high priest. The priesthood of Christ is not a completed and discarded function. He “always lives to make intercession” for those who draw near to God through him (Heb 7:25). And he intercedes as a man. If he has ceased to be a man, then his priesthood has ceased, and we have no mediator.

This is the theological catastrophe that hyper-preterism introduces. If the incarnation was temporary, if Christ’s body “dissipated” at the ascension or at AD 70, if the hypostatic union was dissolved, then the man of Psalm 8 no longer exists. And if the man of Psalm 8 no longer exists, then no one is crowned with glory and honor. No one has all things under his feet. The psalm’s promise collapses. And the majesty of God in all the earth, which the psalm says depends on the rule of a man, has no living fulfillment.

The additional New Testament echoes only deepen the point. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:27 that God “has put all things in subjection under his feet,” directly echoing Psalm 8:6. It describes the present, ongoing dominion of the risen and ascended Christ, a dominion that will reach its consummation when death itself is abolished. Paul makes the same connection in Ephesians 1:22: God “put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.” Again, this is a present and continuing reality, not a past event that has run its course.

Even the episode in Matthew 21 confirms the incarnational thrust of the psalm. When the children cry “Hosanna to the Son of David” in the temple, and the chief priests are indignant, Jesus responds: “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” (Matt 21:16, quoting Ps 8:2 LXX). Jesus applies the psalm to himself, to his physical presence in the temple, to the acclamation of his messianic identity by the weakest and most unimpressive voices. The strength that God ordains from the mouths of babes is the praise of the incarnate Son. Matthew Henry observes that this is fulfilled “by the apostles, who were looked upon but as babes, unlearned and ignorant men, mean and despicable, and by the foolishness of their preaching.”⁶ The gospel is the weak instrument by which the strong enemy is silenced, and that gospel is the proclamation of a man, the incarnate Christ, ruling the world.

John Gill, commenting on verse 5, draws the Christological application with particular force. He writes that Christ “was made low as to nature, place, estate, reputation, and life; he who was the most high God, in the form of God, and equal to him in the divine nature, was made frail mortal flesh.” And yet this low estate was temporary in its humiliation but permanent in its assumption. Gill notes that the crowning with glory and honor refers to Christ’s exaltation: God crowned him “by raising him from the dead, and setting him at his own right hand, committing all judgment to him; and requiring all creatures, angels and men, to give worship and adoration to him.”⁷ The crowning did not dissolve the manhood. It glorified it. The one who sits at the right hand of God is the same one who was made lower than the angels, the same one who partook of flesh and blood, the same one who died and rose again in a body. He is still a man, and it is as a man that he reigns.

Calvin, for his part, was careful to explain the relationship between Christ and the psalm’s broader reference to humanity. He observed that what David says about mankind “belongs properly to the beginning of the creation, when man’s nature was perfect,” but that the fall ruined this dignity. And so the fulfillment passes from mankind in general to Christ in particular: “as the heavenly Father hath bestowed upon his Son an immeasurable fulness of all blessings, that all of us may draw from this fountain, it follows that whatever God bestows upon us by him belongs of right to him in the highest degree; yea, he himself is the living image of God, according to which we must be renewed.”⁸ The dominion of Psalm 8, lost in Adam, is restored in Christ, and it is restored precisely because Christ assumed the nature that Adam ruined. If Christ no longer possesses that nature, then the restoration has no anchor.

This is not a peripheral doctrinal point. The continuing incarnation of Christ is the hinge on which Psalm 8 turns. The psalm does not say, “How majestic is your name in all the earth, for a spirit governs it from heaven.” It says a man will rule. And the New Testament says that man is Jesus. Not Jesus as he was during his earthly ministry, but Jesus as he is now and will be forever: the glorified, incarnate, reigning Son of God and Son of Man.

The implications for hyper-preterism are unavoidable. If the incarnation has ended, if Christ has discarded his humanity, then the “man” of Psalm 8 is a vacated title. The dominion has no subject. The high priesthood has no mediator. The “many sons” being brought to glory have no elder brother who shares their nature. The eschatological hope of the new humanity, governing the new heavens and new earth under Christ, has no foundation. As Ash summarizes the trajectory of the psalm: “Jesus is the righteous man of Psalm 1, the world-inheriting King of Psalm 2, the King opposed in Psalms 3-7, the second Adam of Psalm 8, and he is all this so that his people will inherit the blessing and will rule the world with him.”⁹

A man will rule the world. Not merely as a past accomplishment in the sufferings of the cross, and not merely as a spiritual metaphor for covenantal transition. A man, the God-Man, crowned with glory and honor, reigning until every enemy is under his feet and death itself is swallowed up. That is what Psalm 8 declares. That is what Hebrews 2 confirms. And any theology that cannot confess this has departed not merely from a few proof texts, but from the living Christ himself.

1. Christopher Ash, Psalms 1-50, vol. 2, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), Psalm 8, Orientation.

2. Ash, Psalms 1-50, on Psalm 8:3-4. Cf. Calvin: “The Hebrew word, enosh, which we have rendered man ... expresses the frailty of man rather than any strength or power which he possesses.” John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, trans. James Anderson, vol. 1 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), on Psalm 8:4.

3. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, on Psalm 8:3-4.

4. Ash, Psalms 1-50, on Psalm 8:6-8.

5. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, on Psalm 8:5.

6. Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1994), on Psalm 8:1-2.

7. John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 3, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), on Psalm 8:5.

8. Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, on Psalm 8:5.

9. Ash, Psalms 1-50, Psalm 8, Orientation.