Revelation 1:4-7

Revelation 1:4-6. After the manner of the prophets of the O. T., the writer now brings himself forward by name, and directly addresses the Church. In the consciousness of his Divine commission, and of his own faithfulness to it, he is bold. It is the seven churches which are in Asia that are addressed, that is, in Proconsular Asia (comp. 1 Corinthians 16:19), a Roman province at the western extremity of what is now known as Asia Minor. Of this province Ephesus was the capital, and few early traditions of the Church seem more worthy of reliance than those which inform us that at Ephesus St. John spent the latter years of his life. The churches of that neighbourhood would thus naturally be of peculiar interest to him, and he would be more intimately acquainted with their condition than with that of others. The question may indeed be asked, why a prophecy bearing so closely as the Book of Revelation does upon the condition of the whole Church should be addressed to so limited an area. The answer will meet us at Revelation 1:11, and in the meantime it is enough to say that the number seven is to be taken, not according to its numerical but its sacred value. It is the number of the covenant, and in these seven churches we have a representation of the Church universal. To the latter, therefore, to the Church of every country and of all time, the Revelation is addressed.

The Salutation wishes grace and peace, the same blessings, and in the same order, as so often found in the writings of the other apostles, ‘grace' first, ‘peace' afterwards, the love of God supplying us with all needful strength, and keeping our hearts calm even amidst such troubles as those about to be recorded in this book. The Salutation is given in the name of the three Persons of the Trinity.

(1) The Father, described as He which is, and which was, and which is to come. In the original Greek of this verse we have a striking illustration of those so-called solecisms of the Revelation of which we have spoken in the Introduction, Revelation Book Comments. The pronoun ‘which' is not grammatically construed with the preposition ‘from' preceding it: instead of standing in one of the deflected cases, it stands in the nominative. The explanation is obvious. St. John sublimely treats the clause (which is really a paraphrase or translation of the Name of God in Exodus 3:14 I am that I AM) as an indeclinable noun, the name of Him who is absolute and unchangeable. That Name denoted God to Israel not so much in His abstract existence as in His covenant relation to His people, and it has the same sense here. Hence the use of the words ‘which is to come,' instead of, what we might have expected, ‘which will be' (comp. Revelation 1:8; Revelation 4:8). The change of expression does not depend upon the fact that there is no ‘will be' with an Eternal God, but that with Him all is, because upon the same principle we ought not to have it said of Him ‘which was.' It depends upon the fact that God is here contemplated as the redeeming God, and that as such He comes, and will come, to His people. The Son is never alone even as Redeemer. He ‘can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father doing' (John 5:19). When He comes the Father comes, according to the promise of Jesus, ‘If a man love Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make our abode with Him' (John 14:23). As, therefore, throughout this whole book the Son is the ‘coming' One, so the same term is here properly applied to the Father, not ‘which is, and which was, and which will be,' but ‘which is, and which was, and which is to come.'

(2) The Holy Spirit, described in the words the seven Spirits which are before his throne. It is impossible to understand these words of any principal angels such as those of chap. Revelation 8:2, for no creature could be spoken of as the source of ‘grace and peace,' be associated with the Father and the Son, or be made to take precedence of the Son who is not introduced to us till the following verse. Nor can they refer to any seven gifts or graces of the Spirit, for they are obviously intended to convey the thought not of a gift but of a giver. We must learn the meaning by looking at other passages of this book. In chap. Revelation 4:5 we read of seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, ‘which are the seven Spirits of God.' In chap. Revelation 5:6 we read that the Lamb has seven eyes, ‘which are the seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth;' and in chap. Revelation 3:1 we are told of Jesus the Head of the Church that He ‘hath the seven Spirits of God.' These seven Spirits, then, belong to the Son as well as to the Father (comp. note on John 15:26). What has been said will become still clearer if we turn to Zechariah 3:9; Zechariah 4:10, in the first of which we have mention made of the stone with seven eyes, while in the second it is said of these eyes that they ‘run to and fro through the whole earth.' This stone is the Messiah, so that putting the Old and New Testaments together, no doubt can remain on our minds that we have before us a figure for the Holy Spirit He is called ‘the seven Spirits,' the mystical number seven being identical with unity, though unity unfolded in diversity, and denoting Him in His completeness and fulness as adapted to the seven churches or the Universal Church. By Him the whole Church is enlightened and quickened. The idea of the words ‘before His throne' seems to be taken from the thought of the seven-branched golden candlestick in the tabernacle.

(3) The Son. That the Salutation culminates in the Son is proved by the fact that He has three designations, and that, in Revelation 1:6, three separate parts of His work are mentioned. We might have expected the Son to be spoken of before the Spirit. But it is the manner of St. John, strikingly illustrated in the Prologue to His Gospel, so to arrange what he has to say that a new sentence shall spring out of the closing thought of that immediately preceding. Thus in this very chapter the mention of ‘John' in Revelation 1:1 is unfolded into the long description of Revelation 1:2; and the mention of the readers and hearers of this prophecy in Revelation 1:3 into the more specific reference to the seven churches in Revelation 1:4. In like manner here the Son is not only the leading theme of the book, but He is to be dwelt upon in the large and full statement of Revelation 1:5-8. This, therefore, was the proper place to speak of Him. Three particulars regarding Him are noted. First, He is the faithful witness, the giver of the ‘testimony' already spoken of in Revelation 1:2; and, so high and holy is the qualification, that even after the preposition the name ‘Witness' in the original is in the nominative case. The idea of witnessing as applied to Jesus is a favourite one both in the Apocalypse and in the Gospel (Revelation 3:14; Revelation 12:17; Revelation 19:10; Revelation 22:20; John 3:11; John 3:32; John 4:44; John 5:31-32; John 7:7; John 8:14; John 13:21; John 18:37, etc.). The designation is also found in Psalms 89:37, and in Isaiah 55:4. The combination with the word ‘true' in chaps. Revelation 19:11; Revelation 21:5; Revelation 22:6, and especially in chap. Revelation 3:14, seems to show that the faithfulness is not simply that of One who, even unto death, bore witness to what He had heard, but that also of One who had received the truth in a manner strictly corresponding to what the truth was. Secondly, He is the first-born of the dead. The designation is to be distinguished from that in Colossians 1:18, the first-born from the dead, where our thoughts are directed rather to the Redeemer Himself than to those whom He leaves behind Him in the grave, whereas here we have the Redeemer as He has begun that resurrection-life in which He shall yet bring along with Him all the members of His Body. Thirdly, He is the prince of the kings of the earth (comp. chaps. Revelation 17:14; Revelation 19:16). The meaning is not that He is one of them, although higher than they, but that He is exalted over them, that He rules them as their Prince. The ‘earth' is to be understood here, as always in the Apocalypse, of the earth which is alienated from God, and its ‘kings' are its greatest powers and potentates. Yet these the exalted Redeemer rules with the rule of Psalms 2:9 and Revelation 2:27. In the exercise of their greatest might they are in His hand: He subdues them, and constrains them to serve His purposes.

It has been often imagined that in the three designations employed we have a reference to the prophetical, the priestly, and the kingly offices of Christ. The supposition is improbable; for, in the immediately following doxology with its three members, the description given of the Redeemer does not correspond with these offices in this order of succession. In the three designations of this verse, therefore, we are to see not parallel offices of Christ, but successive stages of His work, His life on earth, His glorification when He rose from the dead, and the universal rule upon which He entered when He sat down as King at the right hand of the Father.

The thought of the glorious dignity of the Person whom he has just mentioned now leads the Seer to burst forth, in the second part of his Salutation, into a doxology of adoring praise, in which the contemplation not so much of what Jesus is in Himself as of what we experience in Him is prominent Three relations of the Lord to His people are spoken of. First, He loveth us. Not, as in the Authorised Version, He ‘loved' us, as if the thoughts of St. John were mainly directed to Christ's work on earth; but He ‘loveth' us. He loveth us now; even amidst the glory of His exalted state we are partakers of His love; and His love will give us all things. Secondly, He loosed us (not ‘washed us') from our sins in his blood. It is complete salvation that is before the writer's eye, not simply the pardon of sin, but deliverance from its bondage. They who are ‘loosed from their sins in' the blood of Christ are alike cleansed from the stain and defilement of sin, and are quickened and enfranchised in the participation of their Lord's Resurrection-life; ‘being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life' (Romans 6:22). In the great Head to whom by faith they are united, they are united also to the Father, and are consecrated to Him in the free and joyful service in which Jesus gives Himself to the Father for evermore. Thirdly, He made us a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father. The words are in a certain measure parenthetical, the doxology which follows connecting itself directly with the clause immediately preceding them; but they do not on that account less forcibly express one of the greatest of all privileges bestowed upon believers. Particular attention ought to be paid both to the word ‘kingdom' and to the relation in which it stands to ‘priests.' It is not said that we are made ‘kings,' a term nowhere applied to Christians in their individual capacity. We are made ‘a kingdom,' yet not, as some would have it, a kingdom with which Christ is invested, but ourselves a kingdom, clothed in oar corporate existence with royal dignity and honour. The regal glory is that of Him who has been set as King upon God's holy hill, but it extends to and glorifies that Body which is one with Him. Only in her collective capacity, however, in her oneness, in the harmonious co-operation of all her parts, is the Church such a kingdom as is here described, the eternal kingdom of an eternal Lord, for ‘every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation' (Matthew 12:25). ‘We,' says the Seer, ‘are not kings, but a kingdom.' The relation in which the word ‘kingdom' stands to the word ‘priests' is to be equally observed. From the collective word we pass to that which describes our individual position, and brings out its most distinctive and essential feature. We are ‘priests,' to minister to one another, to plead for one another and for the world, to set forth before those less favoured than ourselves the praise and glory of God. Not for our selfish gratification, for our own personal enjoyment, has the ‘kingdom' been bestowed on us, but that we may be God's ministers for the world's good. And this service belongs to every follower of Jesus. All Christians are ‘a kingdom,' but in that kingdom, sharing its privileges each Christian is a ‘priest.' The same thought lies at the bottom of Exodus 19:6 (comp. also 1 Peter 2:9); and the same order is exhibited in our Lord's own ministry. The glory of His kingship upon earth consisted in His bearing perfect witness to the truth, with all that was implied in doing so (John 18:37). He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister: that was His glory; ‘and the glory,' He says in His high-priestly prayer, ‘which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them' (John 17:22). How Important to be reminded of this at the very beginning of a book which is to describe in such exalted strains the triumphs of God's children, and from which they have so often gathered pleas for selfish and worldly aggrandisement!

To One in Himself so exalted in His threefold greatness; to One who has done so much for us in the threefold actings of His love, we may well ascribe the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.