The Promise to the Overcomer.
I. In Ephesus the special evil to be contended against was the waning of first love. The overcomer, therefore, in Ephesus, would be the man who rose above the tendencies to waning love, the man in whose heart love continued, not merely to abide, but to deepen and intensify. Health and strength might fail, inducing physical languor; age might come stealing on, with its feebleness and loss of enjoyment; but even unto death would love continue, profounder, and more ardent, and more fit for service and sacrifice in the end than the beginning, able to take up the glorious challenge, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
II. To this victor, loving on in spite of deadening and benumbing influences, a very great promise is given. The promise is announced with the utmost solemnity, in the hearing of the whole Church, in order that all might be inspired for the conflict, the promise of blissful and glorious, if yet mysterious reward, not as bribe, but as hope set before them. The doctrine of reward is really a further disclosure of the infinite generosity of Christ, and is fitted to captivate the heart. In suspecting the doctrine, we are really mistrusting, if not blaming, Christ Himself.
III. The Christian victor shall eat of fruit that grows in the paradise of God; the overcomer shall enjoy a Divinely sustained and everlasting life. While the life eternal in its beginnings is a present possession of the believer in Jesus, yet in its glorious fulness, or what Jesus calls its abundance, it shall be also the future reward of him that overcometh. What we are sure of is that body, soul, and spirit shall all share in the perfectness of the redemption; and that the perfected and triumphant life of love shall have suitable nourishment, Divinely provided and supplied, in the fruit of the tree of life. The very mystery of the promise enkindles desire, and gives intensity to the prayer, "Even so come, Lord Jesus."
J. Culross, Thy First Love,p. 103.
The Tree of Life.
We always look with great interest on any representation of a future state of things which borrows its imagery from the paradise wherein our first parents were placed. There is nothing which more assures us how complete will be the final triumph of the Redeemer than sketches of the thorough restoration of what sin hath destroyed or defaced, so that the garden of Eden shall again blossom in all its loveliness, and be once more filled with its sacramental mysteries. The question is not whether these sketches are accurate delineations of what is yet to occur. They may be only employed as parables, and not to be literally interpreted. But the mere fact that representations of the future are given in what may be called the language of paradise does always seem to us a most striking proof that the effects of redemption shall at last be commensurate with those of apostacy; so that there is nothing of what the one hath lost which shall not be finally recovered through the other. Let this globe resume its lost place among the morning stars of the universe, let its first verdure return, and everything like discord and unhappiness be banished from its habitations, and then will there be a demonstration such as can hardly be given on any other supposition that Christ Jesus hath effected the very purpose for which He was "manifested" namely, "that He might destroy the works of the devil."
I. Our text is a beautiful instance of the employment of what we call the imagery of paradise. Our Lord Himself is the Speaker. He is addressing the Church of Ephesus, which, though still presenting many things for which it gains commendation, had somewhat declined from its first love, and needed, therefore, to be bidden to remember from whence it had fallen to "repent and do the first works." And Christ would encourage the Ephesians to the attempting of the recovery of the ground which has been lost by speaking to them of the recompense which is laid up for the righteous: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." The Christian life must be a warfare: a constant battle has to be maintained with "the world, the flesh, and the devil"; but "to him that overcometh" to him who perseveres to the end, "fighting the good fight of faith" to him "will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God."
II. We must not forget that our text refers to the heavenly state. The paradise in the midst of which is the tree of life is the final dwelling-place of those who shall overcome in the "good fight of faith." Therefore we must not illustrate the matter under review by reference to what belongs only to our present condition. Yet who shall say that what is figuratively set forth by the combination of the river and the tree will not equally hold good in our eternal inheritance? Rather, since it is in our eternal inheritance that the combination is represented as subsisting, we are bound to believe that the river, whose streams shall "make glad the city of our God," will be bordered hereafter, as it is now, by the tree of life; in other words, that Christ and the Spirit will never be separated from the experience and the happiness of the Church. The occupation and gladness of eternity shall greatly consist, we may believe, in the searching more deeply into the mysteries of redemption and comprehending more and more that love which will always pass knowledge. Now we see only through a glass, darkly; and dim and feeble are our apprehensions of that magnificent scheme which perhaps includes the whole universe of animated beings in that unlimited mercy which held nothing too costly that this scheme might be perfected. But hereafter, in the manhood of our faculties and in possession of eternal life, we shall be admitted into acquaintance with the height, and depth, and breadth of the Atonement; and we shall be able at last so to climb, and penetrate, and explore, as vastly to outstrip our present feeble progress, though the result of every advance may be that untravelled immensity is still stretching beyond. And why may we not suppose that in these our lofty and glorious researches we shall be aided by the Spirit who now "takes of the things of Christ and shows them" to the soul?
III. But the Evangelist John tells us yet more of this tree of life more by which he encourages us in the endeavour to overcome all the enemies of our salvation. It may be that wherever the river rolls only one species of tree is found on its banks; nevertheless there is no sameness, for we are told of this tree that it bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields fruit every month. It is not, surely, for us to suppose the number of twelve is the exact number of fruits which are produced. The number is evidently given with reference to the length of the year, that we may know that the tree, unlike every other tree, yields fruit at all seasons, and is at no time barren a beautiful emblem of the Lord our Redeemer! He is represented as the tree of life, inasmuch as He is the root whence every order of being derives its animation. But He is also the tree of life to sinners who have banished themselves from paradise, where that tree was first planted. The grand thing for us to be satisfied of in reference to the Redeemer is that there is in Him a supply for our every necessity. If He be the tree of life, we must be able to obtain from Him whatever we require as candidates for immortality. And what can more admirably affirm that He is such a tree than the saying that it bears twelve manner of fruits and yieldeth fruit every month? This is certainly a description, if any can be, of the largeness and fulness of the Mediator's office. This sets before us the Mediator as offering to every individual case exactly what is suited to its circumstances. We do not believe that the variety and sufficiency which we can now find in the Mediator shall have ceased in another state of being. There will not, indeed, be precisely the same wants to satisfy, nor the same desires to appease; and therefore neither do we suppose that precisely the same fruits will hang on the branches of the tree. But this is only saying that the fruits change with the season. Why should they be the same beneath the cloudless shinings of eternity as amid the bleak winds of time? Nevertheless there may be a great variety, and yet there may still be the twelve manner of fruits. There are to be degrees in heaven hereafter, each being happy up to the full measure of his capacity, but the capacity of one differing from that of another, as "one star differeth from another star in glory." Why may not this be represented by the twelve manner of fruits? Why may we not think that when the tree of life grows in the midst of the celestial paradise for we read of no other tree, though every species were found in the terrestrial and when this is represented as yielding varieties of produce, why may we not think that it is a figurative declaration that Christ will hereafter fill the capacities of the whole company of the redeemed, giving Himself to each individual exactly in that measure in which there is power to receive Him? Every one who enters heaven shall find himself made perfectly happy. Eating of that tree which is in the midst of the paradise of God, he will enjoy in full measure the highest felicity of which he is capable. But there must be warfare, struggle, endurance, beforehand. "To him that overcometh," to no other, is the promise made. Fight, then, as those who strive for the mastery. The prize is worth the conflict. Yet a little while, and the battle shall be ended; and they who have "overcome," by the aid of that Spirit "which speaketh unto the Churches," shall sit down beneath the shadow of "the tree of life," and its fruits shall be "sweet to their taste."
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 1807.
References: Revelation 2:7. G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 206; J. Oswald Dykes, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 248. Revelation 2:8-10. T. Hammond, Ibid.,vol. xv., p. 204.Revelation 2:8-11. Expositor,1st series, vol. ii., p. 374.