Revelation 3:7

ἐν φ. Less than twenty years later an equally favourable account of the local church was given by Ignatius (ad Philippians 3:5; Philippians 3:5, Philippians 3:10). ἅγιος κ. τ. λ., Jesus is a messiah indeed, one deserving that honoured name and realising its meaning. The favourite Johannine term ἀληθινός (=“true,” in the wider sense of “genuine,” opposed to unreal rather than to untruthtul, cf. Justin's Dial. xcvi., Athen. vi. 253 100: no pseudo-messiah, as local Jews asserted, cf. 8 c and 9) is here grouped with ἅγιος (i.e., not merely = legitimately messianic as in John 10:36, Clem. Rom. xxiii. 5, but freed from creaturely weakness and imperfection, his nature in intimate touch with the divine fulness, Issel: der Begriff der Heiligkeit im N.T., 1887, pp. 70, 110, R. J. 305), as in Revelation 3:14; Revelation 19:11; Revelation 21:5; Revelation 22:6 with πιστός, and in Revelation 15:3; Revelation 16:7; Revelation 19:2 with δίκαιος. Slightly otherwise, Apoc. Bar. lxvii. 7: “He is true, so that he shall do you good and not evil,” and below at Revelation 16:7 (though this sense might suit here also, as an amplification of ἅγιος). κλεῖν κ. τ. λ. (based on Isaiah 22:22) the messiah, as Davidic scion, possesses the absolute power of admission to and exclusion from the divine realm. This part of the title (cf. Job 12:14, ἐὰν κλείσῃ κατὰ ἀνθρώπων τίς ἀνοίξει ;) alludes to what immediately follows as well as to the arrogant claim mentioned in Revelation 3:9. Christ alone, the heavenly κλειδοῦχος, has the right to excommunicate. Compare Savonarola's brave reply to the bishop of Vasona who had pronounced his sentence of degradation (separo te ab ecclesia militante atque triumphante): Militante, non triumphante: hoc enim tuum non est.