Revelation 22:3 , Revelation 22:5
Servitude and Royalty.
I. "His servants shall serve Him." Such is the title of the glorified. In heaven itself there is no emancipation from the bonds of God. The holy nations are eternally bound in absolute obligation to the will of God and of the Lamb. It is no part of the Creator's promise to raise, to educate, the creature to independence, to self-dependence. That could not be without a profound and fatal contradiction. The created soul could not be the basis of its own being, nor could it be the source of its own joy and power or the law of its own eternity. We read what is but likely when we read that the nearer and the clearer is the sight of the Creator granted to the creature, the better the creature recognises the blessedness of self-surrender. The nearer the approach, the more entire the service. Even within the most living circles of the Christian Church just now the sense of duty surely is not at its strongest. The will to do our Divine Master's will, not our liking, but His bidding; the sober strength of Christian character; the weight and fixity of principle; the jealousy that conscience is kept void of offence in the plain duties of the common day these are not things so often to be found. Nevertheless these things are essentials in the seed sown here which is to issue in the life of heaven. For it is written that His servants there shall serve Him still.
II. "They shall reign for ever and ever." Such is the twin promise of the better life. The bondmen of the Eternal, in that existence of endless duty, shall for ever reign. Even in the present world the true servant of God, in proportion to the reality and simplicity of his servitude, receives some foretastes of his royalty. There is no independence upon earth so strong, and so nobly strong, as that of a Christian who wills wholly to be Christ's servant.
H. C. G. Moule, Christ is All,p. 203.
References: Revelation 22:4. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xiv., No. 824; J. B. Lightfoot, Church of England Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 369; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 308. Revelation 22:4; Revelation 22:5. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 282.Revelation 22:5. W. C. E. Newbolt, Counsels of Faith and Practice,p. 57; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p. 200; G. W. Conder, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 44; Preachers Monthly,vol. v., p. 52.Revelation 22:7. R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 437.