Revelation 3:21

To him that overcometh The construction is as in Revelation 2:26; Revelation 3:12, "He that overcometh, I will give him." For the sense, compare the former of these passages; but the promise of sharing Christ's inheritance (Romans 8:17) is even more fully expressed here.

as I also overcame See St John's Gospel, John 16:33.

with my Father in his throne See Revelation 5:6; Revelation 7:17. In the Jewish Cabbala (of which the oldest parts are ascribed to a date little later than St John, and perhaps embody still older traditions, though it received its present form quite late in the middle ages) we hear of Metatron, apparently a Greek word Hebraised for "Next to the Throne," or perhaps "in the midst of the Throne," a sort of mediator between God and the world, who is identified with the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel's vision. The Cabbala as it now exists has more affinity with Gnostic mythology than with scriptural or Catholic Christianity: but it is deserving of notice, as the outcome of tendencies in Jewish thought that might have developed, or found their satisfaction, in the Gospel. St John's Lamb "in the midst of the Throne" is perhaps just as far comparable with the Cabbalistic Metatron, as his doctrine of the personal "Word of God" is with Philo's. It is hardly wise to ask whether "My Throne" and "His Throne" are quite identical; for the doctrine that the faithful stand to Christ in the same relation as He to the Father, see St John's Gospel, c. John 17:21-23, and 1 Corinthians 3:23; 1 Corinthians 11:3.