Unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, Be blessing and honour and glory and dominion-- For ever and ever."
But the Church is the centre of this tribute of the universe to God and to His Christ.
_The Church and Christ Jesus_ are wedded in this doxology, even as they were in the foregoing supplication (vv. 18, 19). In the Bride and the Bridegroom, in the Redeemed and the Redeemer, in the many brethren and in the Firstborn is this perfect glory to be paid to God. "In the midst of the congregation" Christ the Son of man sings evermore the Father's praise (Heb. ii. 12). No glory is paid to God by men which is not due to Him; nor does He render to the Father any tribute in which His people are without a share. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given them," said Jesus to the Father praying for His Church, "that they may be one, even as we are one" (John xvii. 22). Our union with each other in Christ is perfected by our union with Him in realizing the Father's glory, in receiving and manifesting the fulness of God.
The duration of the glory to be paid to God by Christ and His Church is expressed by a cumulative phrase in keeping with the tenor of the passage to which it belongs: "unto all generations of the age of the ages." It reminds us of "the ages to come" through which the apostle in chapter ii. 7 foresaw that God's mercy to his own age would be celebrated. It carries our thoughts along the vista of the future, till time melts into eternity. When the apostle desires that God's praise may resound in the Church "unto _all generations_," he no longer supposes that the mystery of God may be finished speedily as men count years. The history of mankind stretches before his gaze into its dim futurity. The successive "generations" gather themselves into that one consummate "age" of the kingdom of God, the grand cycle in which all "the ages" are contained. With its completion time itself is no more. Its swelling current, laden with the tribute of all the worlds and all their histories, reaches the eternal ocean.
The end comes: God is all in all. At this furthest horizon of thought, Christ and His own are seen together rendering to God unceasing glory.