Revelation 2:27

Revelation 2:27. And as a shepherd he shall tend them with a sceptre of iron. The figure has nothing to do, as so often supposed, with the Homeric title, ‘Shepherd of the people.' Jesus as King is Shepherd of His own; but He is also Shepherd of His enemies, though in a different way. Hence the ‘iron sceptre,' for the instrument alluded to is not a rod or shepherd's crook, but a king's sceptre (comp. chaps. Revelation 12:5; Revelation 19:15).

The fact that it is of iron brings out the judgment involved.

As vessels of the potter are they broken to shivers, words which cannot be interpreted as expressing ‘a judgment behind which purposes of grace are concealed,' ‘a threat of love.' Whether grace may one day be revealed even for those upon whom the judgments spoken of descend, we are not told. Actual facts proved that behind the words, ‘in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,' such purposes of grace lay: but they were not contained in the words; nor are they here.

As I received of my Father. Again we have the privileges of Christ's people closely identified with those which He Himself enjoys. He receives of the Father, and what He receives He makes theirs.

It must be noticed that, like all the promises of these Epistles, this promise belongs to the future, not to the present life. The reader, too, will not fail to mark the correspondence between it and the description of the Lord in Revelation 2:18, as well as that between it and the particular trials of this church. A heathen element in Thyatira was threatening to destroy the life of God's people there. They have given them the assurance of the coming of a time when that element shall be crushed beneath their feet.