Revelation 2:7

Revelation 2:7. A promise is to be added to the main body of the Epistle, but before it is given we have a general exhortation to men to listen. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. These words are found in all the seven Epistles, but with a different position in some of them as compared with others. In the first three they occur in the body of the letter, immediately before the promise to him that over-cometh: in the last four they are introduced at the end. No student of the Apocalypse will doubt that this difference is designed, and that although he may be unable to say what the design is. In the case of the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls, we meet the same division of seven into its constituent parts three and four, only that in each of these the line of demarcation is at the close of the first four, not, as in the present instance, at the close of the first three. Nor does it seem difficult to understand this division, for four is the number of the earth, and the judgments relating to it are thus naturally four. It is not so easy to see why in the seven Epistles the number three should take precedence. Perhaps it may be because three is the number or God; and because, by the arrangement adopted, the Divine aspect of the Church in her existence considered in itself is brought out with a force which would otherwise have been wanting (see closing remarks on chap. 3). Jewish feeling, so much appealed to by numbers and their arrangement, may have been alive to this in a manner mat we can hardly understand. Whether the above explanation be satisfactory or not, the fact itself is both interesting and important. It throws light upon the measure of artificiality which appears in the structure of the Apocalypse, and is thus a help in its interpretation.

To him that overcometh. The expression is a characteristic one with St. John. It occurs in each of the seven Epistles, as also in chap. Revelation 21:7. In chap. Revelation 3:21 it is used of Christ Himself (cp. also Revelation 12:11; John 16:33; 1 John 2:13; 1 John 5:4-5).

I will give to him to eat out of the tree of fife, which is in the paradise of God. For the tree of life cp. chap. Revelation 22:2; Revelation 14:19. What victorious believers eat is out or the tree of life, not something that grows upon it, its branches, or leaves, or flowers, or fruit. The particular preposition used in the original carries us to the thought of what is most intimately connected with the tree, to the thought of its very heart and substance. For the idea of eating, op. John 6:51. The question is naturally asked, What are we to understand by this ‘tree of life'? and different answers have been given. By some it is supposed to be the Gospel, by others the Holy Spirit; while several of the later commentators on this book suppose it to be that eternal life, with all the means of sustaining it, which comes from Christ. The true answer seems to be that it is Christ Himself. Nor is it any reply to this to say that in chap. Revelation 22:2 we have not one tree but many, for the tree of life there spoken of is really one; or that the Giver must be different from the gift, for the highest gift of the Lord is the Incarnate Lord Himself, ‘in whom,' says St. Paul, ‘dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily' (Colossians 2:9); ‘in' whom, says St. John, ‘is life,' and ‘out of' whom His people have received their life and ‘grace for grace' (John 1:16). (Cp. on Revelation 2:28.) At the same time this view is confirmed by the use of the preposition ‘out of.' Who but the Lord Jesus Christ is that fulness ‘out of' which all believers eat and live?

There may be a correspondence intended between the promise of ‘eating' and the victory over the Nicolaitans, one of whose characteristics was that they ‘ate things sacrificed to idols' (Revelation 2:14). Those who cat of the table of devils cannot cat of the Lord's table (1 Corinthians 10:21). They must share the exclusion from the tree of life of fallen Adam and his fallen seed. But the faithful who, like the Second Adam, and in His might, refuse the devil's dainties (Psalms 16:4; Matthew 4:3), obtain in deepest truth the privilege from which our first parent was excluded (Genesis 3:24).