Revelation 1:4-8 Commentary

It sometimes seems as if 21^st century North American culture has largely omitted formal greetings from its communications. At least some of us have replaced, “Dear Joan (or John),” with something like “Hey.” In fact, in the case of emails, we often skip greetings altogether and simply hurry to what we wish to communicate. I have a friend who even eschews social niceties like “Good morning” for a simple “Morning …”

So there is something both counter-cultural and refreshing about the way John opens his letter to Christ’s beleaguered church in Asia Minor. It’s not that he just personally “signs” it as “John” and addresses his readers by the name God has given them: “the seven churches in the province of Asia” (4).

It’s also that John’s first message is “Grace” [Charis*]. And that his second word is basically “peace” [eirene].” The apostle begins his description of Jesus Christ with “grace to you and peace.” He sets the tone for his letter’s often mysterious, sometimes sobering message with “grace … and peace.”

This seems like a pertinent reminder on this Sunday after Jesus’ friends celebrated Christ’s resurrection. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson characterizes post-resurrection life as grace- and peace-filled. John’s “grace … and peace” to you also stands in stark contrast to society’s messages of revenge and division. God has gifted God’s people of the resurrection, insists the apostle in verse 4, with God’s grace and peace.

John’s “grace … and peace” is also a timely reminder for the 21^st century Church. Among the sins we confess are our failures to be gracious and peace-loving Christians. I sometimes wonder if that’s at least partly due to the Church’s persistent emphasis on what Jesus’ followers should do rather than on what God has done. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds its readers in all times and places that we can’t know what we should do until we remember what God has already done for and in us Jesus Christ.

What God has done includes, among other things, gifted us with God’s charis (“grace”). For Jesus’ sake God both views and treats us not as the rebels against God’s plans and purposes that we naturally are, but as God’s dearly beloved people. Yet perhaps even more pertinent to Revelation 1’s message of grace is what the New Testament scholar Edwin Walhout (Revelation Down to Earth, Eerdmans, 2000) noted: grace is “the power of God that gradually works within people so as to enable them to image their creator more faithfully.”

So by writing to Asia’s churches, “Grace to you …” John may not just be reminding us that God is gracious to God’s people. The apostle is also reminding Jesus’ followers that God employs the Spirit’s transforming power to make us more and more gracious like Jesus Christ.

Of course, to that John adds to that greeting “and peace [charis] …” It’s the Greek word for the Hebrew word shalom that names the peace with which God gifts us through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. The peace about which the apostle reminds his readers is marked not just by an absence of conflict, but also a restoration to the full-orbed peace with God and our neighbor for which God created us.

But, of course, those gifts of grace and peace have a “giver.” They come to us “from him who is [ho on], and who was [ho en], and who is to come [ho erchomenos]” (4). Grace and peace are, in other words, gifts to God’s people from God in Jesus Christ. This God is eternal. The Giver of grace and peace has no beginning or end. The Message paraphrases verse 4 as “THE GOD WHO IS, THE GOD WHO WAS, AND THE GOD ABOUT TO ARRIVE.”

That means that, among other things, the lives of not just the Asian churches to which John writes, but also of all of God’s adopted children lie, as Walhout [ibid] notes, in this eternal God’s hands. Our entire existence lies completely within God’s loving control. As surely as God has always bent things to conform to God’s sovereign plans and purposes, God will always continue to hold God’s image-bearers in the palm of God’s nail-scarred hands.

What Paul means when he goes on to write in verse 4b that grace and peace are also gifts “from the seven spirits [Pneumaton] before his throne [thronou]” is less clear. It may be enough for preachers to admit to the phrase’s mysteriousness, while also noting a possible link between the “seven” [hepta] spirits and the seven churches to whom John writes.

John is clearer about his assertion that “Jesus Christ … is the faithful [pistos] witness [martys], the firstborn [prototokos] from the dead, and the ruler [archon] of the kings [basileon] of the earth [ges] (5a).” Jesus Christ gifts his adopted siblings with grace and peace in no small measure because he remained faithful to the very end. Now, insists the apostle, the risen Christ rules over not just the death whose fate he sealed, but also over the earth’s kings, some of whom are already persecuting Jesus’ followers.

Those rulers may assume that they have a monopoly on the power to grant (and take away) their subjects grace and peace. People may also grant the power to give grace and peace to those various rulers. But human rulers are too limited and flawed to grant us the full grace and peace we need. The grace and peace that endures all things is, John insists, a gift from God through Jesus Christ alone.

This risen and ascended Christ who gifts us with grace and peace is, what’s more, coming again. Those gifts’ divine Giver is “coming [erchetai] with the clouds [nephelon], and ‘every eye [pas ophthalmos] will see him, even those who pierced [exekentesan]’; and all people on earth will mourn [kopsontai] because of him.”

When the Source of grace and peace became the incarnate Jesus, relatively few people saw him. Even fewer people saw Jesus with the eyes of faith. When he returns, however, John insists every eye will somehow see him. Even those who helped engineer Jesus’s execution will see him. We will finally see the returning Jesus as not just the giver of grace and peace, but also as the Savior of the world.

At Christ’s return, every eye will finally see that the God of heaven and earth is, according to verse 8, “the Alpha and the Omega … who is [ho on], and who was [ho en], and is to come [ho erchomenos], the Almighty [Pantokrator].” With this acclamation, John basically brackets this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson (4, 8).

John and the churches to which he writes were part of the Roman Empire that reached as far as the ancient mind could stretch. That Empire seemed to call all the shots. Among other things it exercised its might by exiling people like John, who the Romans thought of as a threat to its power. The exiled John, however, insists that earthly power is limited. Only one can rightly be called the Almighty. That is not the Caesar, but the living God in Jesus Christ.

What, then, is the most fitting response of not just Asia’s seven churches to which John writes, but also of the Church and churches of all times and places who now read it? It is to worship “him who loved [agaponti] us and has freed [lysanti] us from our sins [hamartion] by his blood [haimati] and has made [epoiesen] us a kingdom [basileian] and priests [hiereis] to serve his God and Father” (5-6).

These verses almost overflows with rich theology. Yet preachers might let the Spirit help us highlight a couple of things. While English translations generally render the verbs “freed us” and “made us” in the past tense, both are actually aorist active participles. That means among other things that Christ’s freeing and making us aren’t just past realities. They’re also part of his ongoing work. The risen Christ, in other words, continues to free his friends’ from our sins and make us to be God’s kingdom and priests.

Preachers might also highlight the startling nature of the tasks to which God calls us and for which God prepares us. We are, according to verse 6, “a kingdom” and “priests.” So it’s not just the risen Christ who is priest and king. John insists Christians also share in some of his work. Reformed Christians profess in Answer 34 of the Heidelberg Catechism, we are both “priests who present ourselves as sacrifices of thankfulness to Christ, and kings who fight with free and good consciences against sin and the devil in this life.”

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

A story Ken Bazyn tells in his book The Seven Perennial Sins and their Offspring points to how desperately we long for the grace with which John begins his revelation. Quoting Ernest Hemingway’s The Capital of the World, Bazyn reports on a cruel joke that was circulating in Madrid.

“It seemed that a remorseful father placed a personal ad in the newspaper El Liberal, which read, ‘PACO MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN.’ What the father had forgotten is that Paco (short for Francisco) is a popular name. The Madrid Civil Guard had to be called to the Hotel Montana, because 800 Pacos [who longed for their dads’ forgiveness] had answered the ad.”