CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Revelation 1:4. Churches.—Or congregations. Asia.—The single province, not the whole Asia Minor. It may have been the province in which St. John had chiefly laboured. The Seven Churches are taken as types of the varieties in the churches which make up together the one Church. Seven is the perfect number. Him which is, etc.—God Himself. Note how jealously apostles guard against the possibility of being so interested in Christ as to lose the sense of God. Christ Himself never would come between souls and God, and He will not now. Seven spirits.—Or the one spirit, with differing manifestations. The Holy Ghost must be meant. It is difficult, however, to see why He should be represented as before the throne. Possibly the allusion is to the attendants about God’s throne who reverently agree in what God does.
Revelation 1:5. Jesus Christ.—This combines His human name, “Jesus,” and His human office, “Christ,” i.e., Messiah. St. John is the apostle of the veritable humanity. Faithful Witness.—Alluding to the teaching work of His human life. First begotten.—R.V. first-born, which conveys the idea of the text. Christ was the first person born into that spiritual, eternal life, into which we must be born. Prince, etc.—True ruler of mankind, because King in the spiritual sphere, which must necessarily control the material. Bishop Carpenter well says: “The disposition to dwell on the future and more visibly recognised reign of Christ hereafter has tended to obscure the truth of His present reign. He is the real King of kings.” Washed us … blood.—Clearly a strong figure. Taken literally it carries no meaning, for nothing ever is, or can be, washed in blood. It will appear again and again in this book, and, indeed, elsewhere in the New Testament, that Christ’s “blood” stands as a figure for the strenuousness of His endeavour in carrying out His redemptive mission, which mission is figured as “washing us from our sins.” The sentence giving the key to the use of the term is this: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4).
Revelation 1:6. Kings and priests.—R.V. “to be a kingdom, to be priests”; see 1 Peter 2:5. The service which Christ’s redeemed and cleansed ones are called to render is partly represented by the service of a king, and partly by the service of a priest.
Revelation 1:7. With clouds.— Mark 14:62. Either as with a glory which must be tempered by clouds, or magnificently surrounded with clouds, or set against a background of clouds, so as to stand out most impressively. There is also the idea that, being in the sky, all eyes can be turned up to Him. But we should clearly see that Christ’s coming is figured, not described; indeed, it cannot be described in human language. Pierced.— John 19:34. Type of those who pierced Christ, in a spiritual sense, in every age.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Revelation 1:4-7
A Salutation, a Doxology, and a Prophecy.—It is important to notice distinctly to whom this book of Revelation is addressed. It is neither sent to the world in general, nor meant for the world in general; and it takes a point of view which makes it wholly incomprehensible to the world in general. It is altogether a mistake for men who have not the special illumination of the Holy Spirit, which belongs exclusively to the new, Divine life in men, to seek in the book of Revelation for any events or details of human history. The book is prepared for, and addressed exclusively to, the regenerate persons who are in the fellowship of seven particular Christian Churches, but to these Churches as representing the whole Church of Jesus Christ in that age, and so to the whole Church of Jesus Christ in every age. The book of Revelation is, strictly and exclusively, a Christian’s book. It is no disclosure of the progress of human history, even to him; it is the assurance—which is a most gracious and inspiring assurance to him—that the Living Lord Jesus is ruling, controlling, and using all the movements of men, all the calamities of nature, and even all the ills and evils brought in by men’s bad passions, for His purposes in the disciplining and perfecting of His Church. It is the book of Revelation of Christ’s triumph over all material and all human evils, in the interest of His Church. Keeping this in mind will greatly help our understanding of the book, which may properly be called “Christ in History for His Church’s sake.”
I. The salutation.—“Grace and peace” are familiar to us as the Old Hebrew salutation, “Peace be unto you!”—instinct with the new Christian feeling which recognises peace to be dependent on grace. What is peculiar in this salutation is the threefold source from which St. John expects the grace and peace to come.
1. From God, the Being who is thought of as outside of and independent of time. “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” This thought of God must be seen in precise relation to the contents of the book. Such are the commotions and the woes of the human story, that men might easily be so unduly oppressed by them as to fear that they were even beyond God’s control. So St. John starts with such an assertion concerning God as involves His absolute superiority—beyondness. All the earth-story is but a day in His eternal years. The conflicts of earth are to Him but as a play fight of children to a father. He holds it all in control, and can give peace in the power of His grace.
2. From the representatives of the Church. “The seven Spirits which are before the throne” (see “Critical Notes”; and Special Note from Moses Stuart). It would be unnatural to bring in the Holy Ghost here, because of the attitude; because of the unnatural description,—“seven Spirits”—and because St. John does not usually deal with the work of the Spirit. He is the apostle of the Person of Christ, human, and glorified. God is thought of under figure of an Eastern king, seated on His throne, surrounded by His courtiers, who cheerfully echo His wishes, and join in wishing for the Church on earth “peace through grace.”
3. From the Son of God, as the mediatorial agent for administering God’s grace to His Church, and so bringing to it peace. Christ is presented in a threefold form, as Witness, New-Born, and Prince. This description must be seen in relation to the contents of the book, and then we see Christ as the Witness for God who prepares the Church for what is coming; as the first to possess that new spiritual life which is to be subjected to the strain of all these earthly associations; and as the Prince—Immanuel commissioned by Shaddai—to do the actual ruling and over-ruling of everything in the interests of the Church.
II. The doxology.— Revelation 1:5-6. This is dealt with fully in one of the Outlines. We only notice here that praise is offered for
(1) Christ’s self-sacrificing love;
(2) for the cleansing which that self-sacrificing love effects; and
(3) for the honour which Christ brings for those whom He has cleansed. Two things are desired for Christ; present honour—that honour and glory which come from full trust and loyal service; and final triumph, the hastening of the day when everything shall be put under His feet. The doxologies grow in strength in this book. Here twofold; in Revelation 4:9-11, threefold; in Revelation 5:13, fourfold; in Revelation 7:12, sevenfold.
III. From prophecy.— Revelation 1:7. The explanation of this verse depends on our regarding it as indicating what Christ’s coming will be to the Church, or to the world. Probably St. John is briefly declaring what it will be to all who have not been cleansed by Christ from their sins. To Christians, Christ is presented as the Living One, who has come, who is here, and who is now working for them amid world-scenes. But what is Christ to the world? Only the coming One who comes for judgment. The picture of the coming fixes attention on the manifestation of Christ in the majesty and terror of surrounding clouds. Then it bids us see the upturned eyes, and hear the hopeless wail, of unrepentant humanity. For the Saviour of moral beings must become their Judge when His saving grace toward them has been finally despised and refused. Christ coming to a world of sinners can but be an appalling revelation to them. Seeing Him, they will know what they have lost, and what they have to fear. In the righteous dealings of God the good man cannot fail to coincide. “Even so, Amen.” But this must in no way be represented as gloating over the woes of the lost. What is right for God to do, is right for God’s servants to approve. And “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Note on Revelation 1:4. “Seven Spirits”; so Revelation 3:1, Revelation 4:5, Revelation 5:6. In the second of these passages it would be possible to understand the names of seven chief angels (see Revelation 8:2); but here it would scarcely seem possible that creatures should be, not merely coupled with the Creator as sources of blessing, but actually thrust into the midst of His being, between the two Divine Persons. “The seven Spirits,” thus made co-ordinate with the Father and the Son, can scarcely be other than the Holy Ghost, who is known to us in His sevenfold operations and gifts, and who, perhaps, has some sevenfold character in Himself which we cannot and need not understand, but of which there seem to be intimations in the passages of this book referred to, and in Zechariah 3:9; Zechariah 4:10, by which these are certainly to be illustrated.—W. H. Simcox. M.A.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Revelation 1:4. The Number Seven.—It may not be inappropriate to note that Philo speaks of the number seven in its mystical import as identical with unity, as unity developed in diversity, and yet remaining one. The after recurrence in this book of the number seven is selected to support the thought of completeness and variety; the dramatic unity is preserved, though the scenes which are unfolded are amply diversified; and the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials, are not three successive periods, but three aspects of one complete period, presided over by that one Spirit whose guidance may be seen in all ages and in diverse ways.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
Seven Spirits.—There are three possible explanations of this term which claim our careful consideration.
(1) It may mean God, regarded as a most perfect Spirit;
(2) it may mean the Holy Spirit, endowed with a most perfect nature; or
(3) it may mean the seven archangels, or presenceangels, who stand near the throne of God, and are (so to speak) prime ministers in the execution of His will.
The Seven Spirits.—No one who has studied the mystic use of the number “seven” will wonder to find the infinitude of the power and the glories of the Holy Ghost expressed in the language, “the seven Spirits.” The Holy Ghost is described as “before the throne,” to convey, with the idea of equality, His continual procession from the Father and from the Son. There is another reason why the Holy Ghost is called “the Seven Spirits”—in that sevenfold action by which He works upon the soul of a man.
I. The office of reproving or convincing.—“He shall reprove the world of sin.” To show us what we are, to make us feel sin, is the Spirit’s first work.
II. The showing of Christ.—“He convinces of righteousness.” There is no other power that ever can, or will, reveal the Saviour to a sinner’s soul.
III. The Holy Ghost comforts.—All the Spirit’s comfortings have to do with Jesus Christ. He never uses the commonplaces of man’s consolation. He makes Christ fill the empty place, and exhibits the loveliness of Christ’s person, and the sufficiency of Christ’s work.
IV. The Holy Ghost teaches.—He admits the believer into those deeper hidden meanings which lie buried under the surface of the Word. He assists the memory and makes it retentive of holy things. There are none who teach like this Teacher, because He knows all things—not the lesson only, but the learner also.
V. The Holy Ghost sanctifies.—He prompts every good desire and right thought. He gives the taste for spiritual things, and prepares the timid for the occupations and enjoyments of a higher world.
VI. The Holy Ghost intercedes.—Not as Christ, who carries on His work without us and prays for us in heaven; but He inwardly, throwing Himself into the soul, prays. All true prayer in a man is the prayer of the Holy Spirit.
VII. The Holy Ghost seals the soul.—He lays on the believer that stamp with the name and the image of God which every power in earth, or in heaven, or in hell, shall recognise. This is “the seven Spirits which are before the throne.” I thank God the “seven” are one and the one is “seven.” Where He fulfils one of His blessed offices, there, sooner or later, He will assuredly fulfil them all.—James Vaughan, M.A.
Revelation 1:4-5. The Gifts of Christ as Witness, Risen, and Crowned.—So loftily did John, in his old age, come to think of his Lord. The words of the text are not only remarkable in themselves, and in the order in which they give these three aspects of our Lord’s character, but remarkable also in that they occur in an invocation in which the apostle is calling down blessings from heaven on the heads of his brethren.
I. How do “grace and peace” come to us from the “Faithful Witness”?—“Witness” is one of St. John’s most familiar words. He received it from Christ Himself, who claimed to be, in an eminent and special sense, the Witness to the world. Witness of what? Mainly about God. All our highest, and purest, and best knowledge of God comes from the life, and conduct, and character, of Jesus Christ. The name “Witness” indicates the characteristic and remarkable manner of our Lord’s testimony. The task of a witness is to affirm; and our Lord makes His words stand on their own evidence, or, rather, depend upon His veracity. The name bears, too, on the ground of His testimony. A faithful witness is an eye-witness. That Christ claims to be in His witness concerning God. Is there not, then, grace and peace brought to us all from that faithful Witness and from His credible testimony?
II. We have grace and peace from the Conqueror of death.—He is the “first-born from the dead,” the resurrection being looked upon as a kind of birth into a higher order of life.
1. The resurrection of Christ is the confirmation of His testimony. In it He is “declared to be the Son of God.” All the truth, and peace, and grace, and hope, which flow to us from the witness of Jesus Christ to the Father are neutralised and destroyed unless we believe in the resurrection from the dead. His words may still remain gracious and true in a measure, only all dashed with the terrible mistake that He asserted that He would rise again, and rose not. Strike away the resurrection, and you fatally damage the witness of Jesus. You cannot strike the supernatural out of Christianity and keep the natural. Moreover, faith in the resurrection gives us a living Lord to confide in. And in Him, and in His resurrection-life, we are armed for victory over that foe whom He has conquered.
III. We have grace and peace from the King of kings.—The series of aspects of Christ’s work here is ranged in order of time, in so far as the second follows the first and the third flows from both; though we are not to suppose that our Lord has ceased to be the Faithful Witness when He has ascended His sovereign throne.
1. He is “Prince of the kings of the earth” just because He is “the Faithful Witness.” That is to say, His dominion is the dominion of the truth; His dominion is a kingdom over men’s wills and spirits: such rule rests upon His witness.
2. He is “Prince of the kings of the earth” because in that witness He dies, and so becomes a “martyr” to the truth. His dominion rests on love and sacrifice. He is the King because He is the Sacrifice.
3. Because He has risen again. His resurrection has been the step mid-way, as it were, between the humiliation of earth and death, and the loftiness of the Throne. By it He has climbed to His place at the right hand of God. He is King and Prince, then, by right of truth, love, sacrifice, death, resurrection. And King to what end? That He may send grace and peace. Is there no peace for a man’s heart in feeling that the Brother that loves him and died for him rules over all the perplexities of life, the confusions of providence, the sorrows of a world, and the corruptions of his own nature? Is it not enough to drive away fears, to anodyne cares, to disentangle perplexities, to quiet disturbances, to make the coward brave, and the feeble strong, and the foolish wise, and the querulous patient, to think that Christ is King, and that the Hands which were nailed to the cross wield the sceptre, and that He who died for me rules the universe, and rules me?—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Revelation 1:4-6. The Song of the Forgiven.—Not every gift calls forth a song; but this gift of forgiveness is worthy of, and has obtained, one.
I. This gift of pardon is necessary for the Church.
II. It was purchased at a great cost.
III. Love prompted its bestowment.
IV. It is bestowed freely.
V. Like all the benefactions of love, it is bestowed promptly.
VI. It is all-inclusive.
VII. It brings with it all other blessings.—R. A. Bertram.
Revelation 1:5. Christ’s Present Love and its Great Act.—R.V. “Unto Him that loveth us, and looseth us from our sins by His blood.”
I. The ever-present, timeless love of Jesus Christ.—St. John wrote nearly half a century after Jesus Christ was buried, and he proclaims, not a past love, not a Christ that lived long ago, but a Christ that lives now; and he speaks as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This is unintelligible, unless we believe Christ to be Divine. He loves us with an everlasting love, because He is God manifest in the flesh. The Divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is woven through the whole of the book of Revelation, like a golden thread. Christ’s love, then, is
(1) unaffected by time, for it is the love of One who is Divine. As of all His nature, so of all His love, we may be sure that time cannot bound it. And it is
(2) not disturbed or absorbed by multitudes. He loveth us. It is
(3) unexhausted by exercise, pouring itself ever out, and ever full notwithstanding. It is
(4) a love unchilled by the sovereignty and glory of His exaltation. There is a wonderful difference between the Christ of the gospels and the Christ of the Revelation: But the nature behind the differing circumstances is the same.
II. The great act in time which is the outcome and proof of this endless love.—“He looseth us.” The metaphor is that of bondage. We are held and bound by the chains of our sins. Christ looses them by “His blood.” The death of Christ has power to deliver us from the guilt and penalty of sin. His blood looses the fetters of our sins, inasmuch as His death, touching our hearts, and also bringing to us new powers through the Spirit, frees us from the power of sin, and brings into operation new powers and motives, which deliver us from our ancient slavery.
III. The praise which should be our answer to this great love.—Irrepressible gratitude bursts into a doxology from St. John’s lips as he thinks of the love of Christ, and all through the Apocalypse we hear the shout of praise from earth or heaven.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Revelation 1:5-6. A Suggestive Doxology.—This is a doxology—a sudden outburst of praise. There are many such in Scripture, and they show that religion is a matter of emotion, and not of intellect only. St. John, in his vision of the redeemed world, saw that the mention of Christ’s name woke the heavenly song, and set the angels and the redeemed singing together His praise. In the doxology now before us, though we seem to have no more than St. John’s human feeling, we have in reality the praise of the rapt and entranced man, who seems to himself to be actually taking a place among the redeemed hosts, and only giving an earthly form and voice to the utterance of their heavenly song. The doxologies in which the redeemed Church takes part grow in fulness in the early Chapter s of this book of Revelation. In our text the doxology ascribes “glory and dominion.” The four and twenty elders ascribe “glory and honour and power.” All creation ascribe “blessing, and honour, and glory, and power.” And the angels, and the elders, and the four beasts, solemnly bow before the throne, offering a sevenfold, perfect adoration, and saying, “Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Amen.” We have, in the text, the threefold marvel for which we should be ever praising Christ now, in our measure, as for this same threefold marvel the redeemed praise Him in the glory.
I. The first marvel is, that He should love us.—“Unto Him that loved us.” St. John dwells on this as if it were a most surprising thing. It is characteristic of dependent and affectionate natures that they cannot understand why it is that they have become objects of love. No one dwells on the mystery of God’s love to sinful men as St. John does. His pleased, satisfied feeling, which so often finds expression, kept the beloved disciple in right relations with his Saviour. It made him feel every day in a clinging, humble, thankful mood. And that is the kind of mood we all need to win. It is a marvel indeed that Christ should love us. If we were lovable we might feel no surprise. But what are we to His all-searching view? Who but the Father could see anything attractive in the prodigal. In view of the actual tone and temper of our daily life, is it really a surprise to us that Christ should keep His arms of everlasting love continually about us?
II. The second marvel is, that Christ should “wash us from our sins in His own blood.”—The cleansing power of the blood of Christ was one of this apostle’s most cherished ideas. The words of Jesus on the supper night, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me,” gave St. John a key-thought, which unlocked for him the mystery of the risen Christ’s continuous work, and explained the relation in which the redeemed ones must ever stand to Christ. That company of white-robed saints in heaven, is not a company of sinners, all of a sudden washed and cleansed. It is made up of sanctified sinners, whose Christian sins have been washed away by Christ, through the gracious agency of earthly tribulations. The figure of washing is a somewhat difficult one for us to apprehend, because one side—another side—of our Redeemer’s work, His justifying work, His work of setting us in a right standing with God, has been almost unduly pressed on attention. We may be helped by observing that washing is not so much an act as a process, and that it bears relation to stains on the garments, and foulness on the person. It is a prolonged business to get the foulness off, and the stains out; and several processes, and often severe ones, have to be gone through. Christ’s washing is to be distinguished from His forgiving and His justifying. “Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified.” Justified, or set in a right standing before God. Washed, or cleansed from the defilements left from the old-time of sin and self-will. Sanctified, or positively endowed, clothed upon, with the beautiful and pure spirit of Christ. We can readily see how those who had been brought over from the defilements and moral corruptions of heathenism would deeply feel the marvel of Divine grace, shown in washing them from their sins. That they would be able to get fully rid of the relics of immorality and foulness, left from their old heathen life, must have seemed to them impossible; and so, for them to be actually clean at last, and dressed in the symbolic white robes, was to them the marvel of marvels. This much is easy in explanation of the figure; but what did the apostle mean by washing “in His own blood.” We do not wash things in blood. Even in Judaism, there was sprinkling with blood, but, in our sense of washing, neither garments, nor persons, nor sacrifices, were ever washed in blood. Perhaps this was the apostle’s meaning: Christ’s blood, as referring to His earthly work, stands for His sufferings, borne in carrying out His life-mission as man’s Redeemer—sufferings which were consummated in His offering Himself unto blood-shedding and death. And so Christ’s blood, figuratively used by St. John concerning His present work in the “heavenlies,” stands for His present efforts and suffering anxieties—up, as it were, to measures of blood—borne in carrying out the heavenly mission of sanctifying that is now entrusted to Him. Christ’s blood, when it is applied to His human history, stands as a figure for His strenuous earnestness, and sacrificing endeavours as a human Saviour. Christ’s blood, if it is applied to His present continuing life in heaven, stands as a figure for the strenuous earnestness, and sacrificing endeavours of His heavenly life, as our Intercessor, High Priest, and Mediator. We are “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” then, means this: We are actually now being cleansed from our pollutions, our corruptions, our evil inclinations, our easily besetting sins, by the present gracious working of the Living Saviour, who still works in us, even as He did on earth for His disciples, up to such measures as can only be represented by the shedding of His blood. “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin;” but Christ, our Lord, has so resisted, and is so resisting every day. He rolls over us, back and fro, His own great tribulum, the threshing roller of testings and sufferings, parting the chaff from the wheat. But have we watched Him at the rolling? Have we seen that the rolling is hard work to Him—straining work for Him? In His supreme concern for our washing and cleansing, He brings right over us, body and soul, the great threshing roller of tribulation, and will sacrifice Himself up to measures of blood, if He can but cleanse us from all sin, and make us pure grain, free and faultless. It is the marvel of marvels—Christ, the infinite Cleanser, is actually at work in our lives to-day; and the work is so hard that it even costs Him groans, and tears, and blood.
III. The third marvel is, that He should make us “kings and priests unto God.”—The symbol of the washing naturally leads on to the symbol of consecration. God does not merely turn citizens and subjects into kings, and common people into priests. That would be a very little thing to count a marvel of grace. In the old Jewish thought, kings and priests were God’s “anointed ones”—anointed to some special service, as Aaron and David. And it is in just this concerning themselves that redeemed souls rejoice. They are, in the higher sense, king’s and priests, consecrated to God’s service, altogether set apart as His, having every power and faculty absorbed in His work. Will not that be a marvel for us, who have been so long busied with our own things—so busied that we could scarcely find even corners of our time and life for the things of God? At last we shall be wholly Christ’s, to serve Him day and night in His temple. We shall be kings and priests unto God, and in that find an all-satisfying heaven.
Revelation 1:7. The Hope of God’s Church in all the Ages.—Sometimes we dwell on the hope of the Old-Testament saints. Christ, Messiah, was to them the coming One. To us, in that sense—perhaps also in a yet higher sense—Christ has come; that old promise has been fulfilled. And yet Christ is to-day what He has always been—the coming One. Can we profitably think of the ever-coming One?
I. The hope, in the old Church, was Messiah’s coming.—The world, everywhere and everywhere, has its “Golden Age,” and it is always somewhere ahead. Men have always been heard saying to their fellows:—
“Courage, boys, wait and see; Freedom’s ahead.”
The world would sink into helplessness and despair without that hope. A soul is not lost till it has lost hope. A nation is not lost till it has lost hope. But how did the hope of the Jewish world differ from the hope of the poetical and imaginative world? Precisely in this: that it centred in a person. And the person was its manifested God. That hope in a coming person kept up faith in the living God. More than that, better than that, the hope kept up, day by day, the sense of living relations with the living God, and the conviction of the Divine presence and Divine interest. And this helps us to understand and to realise what our hope of Christ’s coming should be to us.
II. The hope, in the modern Church, is Christ’s coming.—That is the “Good time coming” of which the Christian ever dreams and sings. But it is still true that the Christian’s hope differs from the world’s hope, just as of old. It centres in a person. Christian life is love to a person. Christian hope is being with the person we love.
1. See how the Christian’s hope keeps up faith in the living God. A faith scarcely needed in this age of “law,” and “material success.”
2. See how the Christian hope brings Christ into present relations with us. His coming is the consummation and issue of what He is now presiding over. We cannot hold the hope of Christ’s coming apart from the spiritual conviction that Christ is now with us.
III. The Christian hope was held in a formal and material way in the apostolic age.—Indeed, it could then be held in no other. Pictures always come before principles. That was the child-age of Christianity. The Christian then “understood as a child.” The apostles took Christ’s words literally. They are not to be so taken, for “they are spirit, and they are life.” Apostles expected the return of the Lord in their day, and as a bodily appearance. Were they right? Certainly Christ did not come in their day, just as they expected. Nay, this further is true, Christ has never so come yet: and that could not have been His meaning; that must have enshrined His meaning. The truth is that our Lord put His spiritual meaning into a formal setting, and we have to find His secret.
IV. The Christian hope gets a final statement in the book of Revelation.—Notice the sudden insertion of this verse, and St. John’s way of giving a thesis, or summary. He really wrote a book of illustrations of this double point. The Living Christ is always here, and yet is always coming into definite relations, for every emergency of His Church. He is ever working towards His own climax. Christ is always coming for—
1. Special help—of the faithful.
2. Special discipline—of the wayward.
3. Special judgment—of the wilful. These are illustrated in the epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia.
The Christ who is the Coming One.—The story of the human race may be read as the story of the successive comings of God in Christ unto it. There have been—
1. Comings in sign and symbol, from the first symbol of the Cherubim set watching and guarding the way to the “tree of life.”
2. Comings in vision and dream, from the first vision to Abraham, who saw the smoking furnace and burning lamp pass between the severed pieces of the victims.
3. Coming in angel manifestation, from the three men whom Abraham led on their way to make due examination of the truth concerning Sodom.
4. Comings in the flesh: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
5. Comings in the Spirit—according to the word of the Lord Jesus: “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.”
6. Comings in judgment: all human calamities are Divine visitations.
7. Comings in final judgment: “Inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.” The last two of these comings seem to be more especially referred to in this text. Strange, and complex, and difficult to understand, is this book of Revelation. No real and satisfying key for the unlocking of its meaning and message, as a whole, has yet been found. We cannot so precisely recover the associations of St. John’s age as to know its excitements, controversies, and national perplexities, and set before ourselves the actual historical materials of the various visions. Indeed, we cannot be sure how much of it is historical, and how much symbolical. And we do not quite understand how Old-Testament images, such as are found in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, can be put to New-Testament uses. There is an exaggeration and an extravagance about the forms of Eastern poetry, and even of Eastern prose, which sorely puzzles the more orderly and formal Western mind. The contents of the book appear to be a series of Divine judgments, running through the Christian ages; and the text affirms that Christ comes in all these judgments, and works His work of grace, for His people, and for His Church, by means of them. But this is a larger and more comprehensive view of Christ’s coming than is usually taken.
I. Christ coming in judgments.—Fix these points: judgments in a man’s life, or in a nation’s life, the book of Revelation teaches us to regard as Christ’s coming. Christianity stands in the closest connection with all human calamity. Read the verse in this light. Clouds: the recognised symbol of calamity, regarded as Divine judgment. (See associations in Jewish history.) Sometimes “clouds” represent “mystery,” but usually “Divine calamity.” Every eye: we are not able to conceive how this can be one localised event. But it is the fact of the ages. Christ in judgment is universal. Every eye does see him. They who pierced: this is for a class. Only one soldier actually pierced; but plainly the words represent the Jews, as a nation, who crucified the Lord. They come into Christly judgments, and, indeed, are under such now. All kindred, etc: who also now come under the Christly testings, as the gospel is preached to them. Jesus is now the World-Test, the Administrator, the Judge. Humanity now stands before God in Christ; all judgment is committed to the Son. Christ does come constantly in judgments on men and nations. No sin ever goes unnoticed. Christ visits for every sin. Bereavement, failure, plague, storm, war, are never seen aright until they are recognised as Christ’s comings. It is true of all men. We need not shift our thoughts away to some appalling day in the far future. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” “The avenging Fates are shod with wool,” but it only silences, it does not prevent, their coming.
II. Christ coming to judgment.—Once for all, to judge your life as a whole, when that life is complete. The “when,” the “where,” the “how,” of that final judgment can only be told us in figures. What we can get firm hold of is this: “Our life on the earth will be estimated by an infallible judge, and our future must depend upon the result.” We can also see, more or less perfectly:
1. That God in Christ will be the Judges 2. That the revelations which God has made to us will be the test.
3. That the disabilities under which men have been placed will all be righteously and graciously estimated.
4. And that all actions will be treated as revealing the will and heart from which they come. Then we ought to live in the clear sense of this twofold judgment relation of Christ. As we know Christ’s judgments, in the history of the ages, they have all been designedly corrective. And some are able to cherish the hope that even the final judgment will prove to be corrective, as all the others have been. No one may speak positively on a matter that is not clearly and fully revealed, but it is a sublime possibility that the final judgment may prove to be the judgment of the redeeming love and wrath—the “wrath of the Lamb.” Can we add “Christ the Judge” to our conception of Christ, and find that view of Him add to our confidence and our love? We have not seen the whole of Christ unless we have seen that judgment is committed to Him.
Revelation 1:7. Coming with Clouds.—See Daniel 7:13. Accompanied or surrounded by clouds; for μετά (with) frequently indicates the relation of a thing with other things which accompany or surround it. The idea here is that He will come seated on a cloud as His throne or chariot, or at least in a cloud moving or conveying these. So God is said to be surrounded, in Psalms 18:11. The clouds are His chariot (Psalms 104:3). Compare also Exodus 19:16; Exodus 40:34; Isaiah 6:4; Isaiah 19:1; Ezekiel 1:4. The object of this figurative language is to show that Christ will come in a majestic and awful manner, as enthroned upon a cloud fraught with thunder, lightning, and tempest, and thus will execute vengeance upon His enemies.—Moses Stuart.
Christ’s Return in Glory.—Did not the Lord declare, in the assembled sanhedrin, and at the very moment when His death was about to put an end to His presence upon earth, “I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven”? (Matthew 26:64). In that notable saying, Christ’s return in glory, as King and Judge—this latter is the idea implied in the symbol of the cloud—is closely connected with the fact of the Ascension. The reason is that in fact from this moment the office fulfilled by Jesus in the world’s history is that of establishing, by the instrumentality of preaching, and of the Holy Spirit, whom He sends forth from the seat of His glory, His kingdom in the earth, and of successively overthrowing all the obstacles which oppose themselves to its progress. His glorious appearance, when the close of this period of His working has been reached, will not be His coming—for that began to take place from the time of His ascension—but His advent. The coming of Christ takes place during the whole of the present age; it will only be consummated in the event which is called the Parousia, or advent. Accordingly, the sigh of the Church, and of the inspired bard, who prays in her name, is not, Come soon, but, more exactly and literally, Come quickly. This expression refers, properly speaking, not to the nearness of the arrival, but to the rapidity of the journey, though the former is the necessary result of the latter. This coming of Christ, from the time of the Ascension to the time of the Parousia, is therefore the true subject of the Apocalypse, just as His first coming, between the fall of man and the Incarnation, was the true subject of Old-Testament prophecy. “Behold, He shall come,” said the last of the prophets, at the highest summit of ancient revelation, speaking of the Messiah-Jehovah (Malachi 3:1). The history of the world, in its essential character, is summed up in these three sayings: He is coming; He has come; He will come again. It is upon this idea that the whole plan of the apocalyptic drama rests. In every journey we contemplate, as distinct from one another, the starting point, the journey itself, and the arrival.—F. Godet, D.D.