COMMENTARY
ON THE
EPISTLES TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES IN ASIA.
Revelation II. III.
INTRODUCTION, Rev. i.
4-20.
Ver. 4. “John to the
seven ChurchesLest any should charge me with a slovenly omission at
the very outset of my work, let me observe that the words “which are,” finding
here a place in most modern editions of our Bible, have no place in the exemplar
edition of 1611.
in Asia.”—So far as the Apocalypse is allowed to
witness for its own authorship, it is difficult to refuse to find in these words
a strong internal argument that we have here an authentic work of St. John. The
writer avouches himself as “John;” but, though there may have been Johns
many in the Church at this time, John the Presbyter and others, still it is well-nigh
impossible to conceive any other but John the Apostle who would have named
himself
by this name alone, with no further style or addition. We instinctively
feel that for any one else there would have been. an affectation of simplicity,
concealing a most real arrogance, in the very plainness of this title, in the assumption
that thus to mention himself was sufficient to ensure his recognition, or that he
had a right to appropriate this name in so absolute a manner to himself. The unique
position in the Church of St. John, the beloved Apostle, and now the sole surviving
Apostle, the one remaining link between the faithful of this time and the earthly
life of their Lord, abundantly justified in him that which would have ill become
any other; just as a king or queen, as representative persons in a nation, will
sign by their Christian names only, but not any other besides. Despite all which
has been urged to avoid this conclusion, it is assuredly either John the Apostle
and Evangelist who writes the Apocalypse; or one who, assuming his style and title,
desires to pass himself off as John—in other words a falsarius.
Are the opposers of St. John’s authorship of this Book prepared for the alternative?
Of the seven Churches which St. John addresses here I reserve
to speak in particular when we reach the nominal enumeration of them (ver.
11); but as this is the only place where they are described as
Churches “in Asia,” it may be needful to say a
few words concerning the “Asia” which is intended. We may trace two
opposite movements going on in the names of countries, analogous to like movements
which are continually finding place in other words. Sometimes they grow more and
more inclusive, are applied in their later use to far wider tracts of the earth
than they were in their earlier. It is thus with the name “Italy.” Designating at
one time only the extreme southern point of the central peninsula of Europe, the
name crept up and up, till in the time of Augustus it obtained the meaning which
it has ever since retained, including all within the Alps. “Holland” is another
example in the same kind. Some names, on the other hand, of the widest reach at
the beginning, gradually contract their meaning, till in the end they designate
no more than a minute fraction of that which they designated at the beginning.
“Asia” furnishes a good example of this. In the New Testament, as generally in the language
of men when the New Testament was written, Asia meant not what it now means for
us, and had once meant for the Greeks, one namely of the three great continents
of the old world (Æschylus, Prom. 412; Pindar, Olymp. 7. 18; Herodotus,
iv. 38), nor yet even that region which geographers about the fourth century of
our era began to call “Asia Minor;” but a strip of the western seaboard containing
hardly a third portion of this: cf.
1 Pet. i. 1; Acts ii. 9; vi. 9.
“Asia vestra,” says Cicero (Pro Flacc. 27), addressing
some Asiatics, “constat ex Phrygiâ, Mysiâ, Cariâ, Lydiâ;” its limits being nearly
identical with those of the kingdom which Attalus III. bequeathed to the Roman people.
Take “Asia” in this sense, and there will be little or no exaggeration in the words
of the Ephesian silversmith, that “almost throughout all Asia” Paul had turned away
much people from the service of idols (Acts xix.
26); words which must seem to exceed even the limits of an angry hyperbole
to those not acquainted with this restricted use of the term.
“Grace be unto you and peace.”—This opening salutation
may fitly remind us (for in reading the Apocalypse we are often in danger of forgetting
it), that the Book is an Epistle, that, besides containing within its bosom those
seven briefer Epistles addressed severally to the seven Churches in particular,
it is itself an Epistle addressed to them as a whole, and as representing in their
mystic unity all the Churches, or the Church (ii.
7, 11, 23, &c.). Of this larger Epistle, namely the Apocalypse itself,
these seven Churches are the original receivers; not as having a nearer or greater
interest in it than any other portion of the Universal Church; though as members
of that Church they have an
interest in it as near and great as can be conceived (i.
3; xxii. 18, 19); but on account of this their representative
character, of which there will be occasion presently to speak. And being such an
Epistle, it opens with the most frequently recurring apostolic salutation:
“Grace and peace.”
This is the constant salutation of St. Paul (Rom. i.
7; 1 Cor. i. 3, &c.), with only
the exception of the two Epistles to Timothy, where “mercy” finds place between
“grace and peace;” cf. 2 John 3; the salutation
also of St. Peter in both his Epistles; while St. James employs the less distinctively
Christian “greeting” (χαίρειν,
i. 1; cf. Acts xxiii. 26).
“From Him which is and which was, and which is to come.”—On
the departure from the ordinary rules of grammar, and apparent violation of them
in these words, ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος,
there will be something more to say when we reach the first clause of the next verse.
Doubtless the immutability of God, “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever”
(Heb. xiii. 8), is intended to be expressed
in this immutability of the name of God, in this absolute resistance to change or
even modification which that name here presents. “I am the Lord; I change not”
(Mal.
iii. 6), this is what is here declared; and there could be no stronger
consolation for the faithful than thus to
be reminded that He who is from everlasting to everlasting, “with whom
is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (Jam. i. 17),
was on their side; how then should they “be afraid of a man that shall die, and
the son of man which shall be made as grass” (Isai.
li. 12, 13)?
And yet we must not understand the words, “and which is to
come,” as though they declared the “æternitas a parte post”
in the same way as “which was” expresses the “æternitas a
parte ante.” It is difficult to understand how so many should assume
without further question that ὁ ἐρχόμενος here
is = ὁ ἐσόμενος, and that thus we have the
eternity of God expressed here, so far as it can be expressed, in forms of time:
“He who was, and is, and shall be.” But how ὁ ἐρχόμενος
should ever have this significance it is hard to perceive. There is a certain
ambiguity about our translation; it cannot be accused of incorrectness; yet, on
the other hand, one does not feel sure that when our Translators rendered,
“which is to
come,” they did not mean “which is to be.” The Rheims, which is
here kept right by the Vulgate (“et qui venturus est”),
so renders the words as to exclude ambiguity, “and which shall come.”
If any urge that “which is, and which was,” present and past,
require to be completed with a future, “and which shall be,” to this it may be replied,
that plainly they do not require
to be so completed, seeing that at xi.
17, no such complement finds place; for the words
καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, have no right to a place there
in the text. And then, on the other hand, there is every thing to recommend the
grammatical interpretation. What is the key-note to this whole Book? Surely it is,
“I come quickly. The world seems to have all things its own way, to kill my servants;
but I come quickly.” With this announcement the Book begins,
i. 7; with this it ends, xxii. 7,
12, 20; and this is a constantly recurring note through it all,
ii. 5, 16; iii. 11; vi. 17; xi. 18; xiv. 7; xvi. 15; xviii. 20. It is
Christ’s word of comfort, or, where they need it, of warning, to his friends; of
terror to his foes. Origen further notes the evidence which this language, rightly
interpreted, yields for the equal divinity of the Son with the Father (De Princ.
§ 10): “Ut autem unam et eandem omnipotentiam Patris ac Filii esse
cognoscas, audi hoc modo Joannem in Apocalypsi dicentem, Haec dicit Dominus Deus,
qui est, et qui erat, et qui venturus est, omnipotens. Qui enim venturus est, quis
est alius nisi Christus?”—There should be no comma dividing “which is”
from the clause following, “and which was.” These rather form one
sentence, which is to be balanced with the other, “and which is to come.”
“And from the seven Spirits which are before
his throne.”—Some have understood by “the seven Spirits,”
the seven principal Angels, the heavenly realities of which “the seven princes of
Persia and Media, which saw the king’s face, and which sat the first in the kingdom”
(Esth. i. 14), the “seven counsellors”
(Ezra vii. 14), were a kind of earthly
copy; room for whom had been found in the later Jewish angelology (Tob.
xii. 15), and the seal of allowance set on the number seven in this very
Book (Rev. viii. 2). And these have not been merely Roman Catholic
expositors, such as Bossuet and Ribera, tempted to this interpretation by their
zeal for the worshipping of Angels; but others with no such temptations, as Beza,
Hammond, Mede (in a sermon on Zech. iv. 10, Works, 1672,
p. 40; cf. pp. 833, 908). They claim some of the Fathers for predecessors in the
same line of interpretation; Hilary, for example, Tract. in Ps. 118, Lit.
21, § 5. Clement of Alexandria is also claimed by Hammond; but neither in the passage
cited nor in the context (Strom. vi. 16) can I find that he affirms anything
of the kind. But this interpretation, which after all is that only of a small minority
either of ancients or moderns, must be rejected without hesitation. Angels, often
as they are mentioned in this Book, are never called “Spirits.” So too, in testimony
of their ministering condition, their creaturely state, they always stand
(Rev. viii.
2; Luke i. 19;
1 Kings xxii. 19, 21), but these Spirits “are” (ἐστιν)
before the throne. Again, how is it possible to conceive the Apostle desiring grace
and peace to the Church from the Angels, let them be the chiefest Angels which are,
and not from God alone? or how can we imagine Angels, created beings, interposed
here between the Father and the Son, and thus set as upon an equal level with Them;
the Holy Ghost meanwhile being omitted, as according to this interpretation He must
be, in this solemn salutation of the Churches Where again would be the singular
glory claimed for Himself by the Son in those words, “He that hath the seven Spirits
of God” (iii. 1)? what transcendant prerogative
in the fact that these Angels, no less than all created things, were within his
dominion?
There is no doubt that by “the seven Spirits” we are to
understand, not indeed the sevenfold operations of the Holy Ghost, but the Holy
Ghost sevenfold in his operations. Neither need there be any difficulty in reconciling
this interpretation, as Mede urges, with the doctrine of his personality. It is
only that He is regarded here not so much in his personal unity, as in his manifold
energies; for “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1
Cor. xii. 4). The matter could not be put better than it is by
Richard of St. Victor: “Et a septem
Spiritibus, id est, a septiformi Spiritu, qui simplex quidem est per
naturam, septiformis per gratiam;” and compare Delitzsch, Bibl. Psychologie,
pp. 34, 147. The manifold gifts, operations, energies of the Holy Ghost are here
represented under the number seven, being, as it is, the number of completeness
in the Church. We have anticipations of this in the Old Testament. When the prophet
Isaiah would describe how the Spirit should be given not by measure to Him whose
name is The Branch, the enumeration of the gifts is sevenfold (xi.
2); and the seven eyes which rest upon the stone which the Lord has laid
can mean nothing else but this (Zech. iii. 9;
cf. iv. 10; Rev. v. 6). On the number “seven,” and
its significance in Scripture and elsewhere, but above all in this Book, there will
be something presently to be said.
Ver. 5. “And from Jesus
Christ, who is the faithful witness.”—In the last of these seven Epistles He
calls Himself “the faithful and true witness” (iii.
14); as, therefore, we shall meet these words again, and they will be
there more conveniently dealt with, I will not now do more than quote Richard of
St. Victor’s noble comment upon them: “Testis fidelis, quia de omnibus
quæ per Eum testificanda erant in mundo testimonium fidele perhibuit. Testis fidelis,
quia quæcunque audivit a Patre fideliter discipulis suis nota fecit.
Testis fidelis, quia viam Dei in veritate docuit, nec Ei cura de
aliquo fuit, nec personas hominum respexit. Testis fidelis, quia reprobis
damnationem, et electis salvationem nunciavit. Testis fidelis, quia veritatem
quam verbis docuit, miraculis confirmavit. Testis fidelis, quia testimonium Sibi
a Patre nec in morte negavit. Testis fidelis, quia de operibus malorum et
bonorum in die judicii testimonium verum dabit.”—A reference to the original, where the nominative
ὁ μάρτυς ὁ πιστός is in apposition to the genitive
Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, will show that we have here
one of the many departures from the ordinary grammatical construction, with which
this Book abounds. The officious emendations of transcribers have caused a large
number of these, though not this-one, to disappear from our received text; but in
any critical edition of the Greek original we are struck by their immense multitude.
To regard these, which some have done, as evidences of St. John’s helplessness
in the management of Greek, is to regard them altogether fromn a wrong point of
view. Rather, we should say, to take the case immediately before us, the
doctrinal interest here overbears the grammatical. Düsterdieck very well:
“Das Gewicht der Vorstellungen selbst durchbricht die Schranken
der regelrechten Form; die abrupte Redeweise hebt die gewaltige Selbstindigkeit
aller drei Prädicate.”
At all costs that all-important ὁ μάρτυς
ὁ πιστός, with the other two titles of the Lord which follow, shall be maintained
in the dignity and emphasis of the casus rectus. Cf.
xx. 2, where ὁ ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος (changed
in the received text into τὸν ὄφιν τὸν ἀρχαῖον)
is in like manner in apposition to τὸν δράκοντα,
and compare further xiv. 12; but above
all, and as making quite clear that St. John adopted these constructions with his
eyes open, and for a distinct purpose, the remarkable
ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν κ. τ. λ.. of the verse preceding that
now under consideration.There is a good discussion on these grammatical
anomalies in the Apocalypse in Lücke’s Einleitung, pp. 458-464.
“The first begotten of the dead.”—Cf. Col. i.
18, where very nearly the same language occurs, and the same title is
given to the Lord: ὁ πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν
here, πρωτ. ἐκ τ. νεκρῶν there. The phrases
are not precisely identical in meaning; and even were they so, the suggestion of
Hengstenberg, that St. John here builds upon St. Paul, setting his seal to the prior
Apostle’s word, seems to me highly unnatural. Glorious as this language is, who
does not feel how easily two Apostles, quite independent of one another, might
have arrived at it to express the same blessed truth? Christ is indeed “the first
begotten of the dead,” notwithstanding that such raisings from the grave as
that of the widow’s son
and Lazarus went before. There was for them no repeal of the sentence
of death, but a respite only; not to say that even during their period of respite
they carried about with them a body of death. Christ first so rose from the dead,
that He did not, and could not, die any more (Rom. vi. 9);
in this respect was “the first-fruits of them that slept” (1
Cor. xv. 20, 23), the Prince of life (Acts iii. 15).
Alcuin: “Primogenitus ideo dicitur quia nullus ante Ipsum
non moriturus surrexit.” In this “first begotten” (or
“first born from the dead,”
as it is Col. i. 18), I do not see the image of the grave as
the womb that bare him (λύσας τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ θανάτου,
Acts ii. 24); but remembering how often
τίκτειν = γεννᾶν, I should rather put this passage in connection with
Ps. ii. 7, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten Thee.” It will
doubtless be remembered that St. Paul (Acts xiii. 33; cf.
Heb. i. 5) claims the fulfilment of these words not in the eternal generation
before all time of the Son; still less in his human conception in the Blessed Virgin’s
womb; but rather in his resurrection from the dead; “declared to be the Son of God
with power by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. i. 4).
On that verse in Ps. ii., and with reference
to Acts xiii. 32, Hilary, the depth and distinctly theological
value of whose exposition seems to me at this day very imperfectly recognised, has
these
words: “Filius meus es Tu, Ego hodie genui Te; non
ad Virginis partum, neque ad eam quæ ante tempora est generationem, sed ad primogenitum
ex mortuis pertinere apostolica auctoritas est.” To Him first, to Him
above all others, God said on that day when He raised Him from the dead, and
gave Him glory, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee.”
“And the Prince of the kings of the earth.”—A manifest
reference to Ps. ii. 2, where the “kings of the earth” (compare
Rev. vi. 15, for the same phrase used in the same sense), appear in open
rebellion against the Christ of God; cf.
Acts iv. 26; Ps. cx. 5;
lxxxix. 27; Isai. lii. 15;
Matt. xxviii. 18. Such a “Prince of the kings of the earth” He
becomes in the exaltation which follows on and is most closely connected with his
humiliation (Phil. ii. 9; Ps. lxxxix. 27);
and shows Himself such at his glorious coming, as set forth in the later parts of
this Book, “Lord of lords, and King of kings” (xvii.
14; xix, 16), breaking in pieces all of those “kings of the earth” who
set themselves in battle array against Him, receiving the homage of all who are
wise in time (Ps. ii. 10-12), and bring their glory and honour
to lay them at his feet, and to receive them back at his hands (Rev. xxi.
24).
“Unto Him that hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in
his own blood.”—The words are
richer still in comfort, when we read, as we ought,
ἀγαπῶντι, and not
ἀγαπήσαντι:
“Unto Him that loves us,”
whose love rests evermore on his redeemed. There is in the Greek theology an old
and often-recurring play on the words λύτρον
and λουτρόν,
words so nearly allied in sound, and both expressing so well, though under
images entirely diverse, the central benefits which redound to us through the
sacrifice of the death of Christ. It is indeed older than this, and is
implicitly involved in the etymology of Apollo, which Plato, whether in jest or
in earnest, puts into the mouth of Socrates’ Cratylus, 405
B.): ὁ ἀπολούων τε καὶ ἀπολύων
τῶν κακῶν, these κακά being impurities
of the body and of the soul. This near resemblance between
λύειν and λούειν
has given rise to a very interesting variety of readings here. Whichever reading
we adopt, λύσαντι or
λούσαντι,
“who released us,” or “who
washed us,” the words yield a beautiful meaning, as in either case they link
themselves on to a whole circle of imagery already hallowed and consecrated by Scripture
use. If we adopt λύσαντι, the
passage then connects itself with all those which speak of Christ having given Himself
as a λύτρον (Matt. xx. 28),
as an ἀντίλυτρον for us (1
Tim. ii. 6; cf.
1 Pet. i. 18; Heb. ix. 12);
as redeeming or purchasing us (Gal. iii. 13; iv.
5;
Rev. v. 9; xiv. 3, 4); and somewhat
more remotely withas many as describe the condition of sin as a condition
of bondage, and Christ as having obtained freedom for us. If on the other hand we
read λούσαντι, then the passage
connects itself with such others as Ps. li. 4;
Isai. i. 16, 18; Ezek. xxxvi. 25; Rev.
vii. 14; as
Acts xxii. 16; Ephes. v. 26;
Tit. iii. 5; so, too, with all those which describe the
καθαρισμός, the
καθαρίζειν, as the end of Christ’s death (1
John i. 7); and somewhat more remotely with as many as under types of
the Levitical law set forth the benefits of this heavenly washing (Num.
xix. 17-21). The weight of external evidence is so nearly balanced
that it is very difficult to say on which side it predominates. For
λούσαντι,
the reading of the received text, adopted by our Translators, there is B, the
Vulgate (“et
lavit nos”), Bengel, Tischendorf, Tregelles; for
λύσαντι, A, C, and among critical
editions, Mill and Lachmann. But the internal evidence I confess appears
to ime very much in favour of retaining the reading of the received text, the poetic
λούσαντι so agreeable to the
poetic character of this Book, rather than the somewhat flat
λύσαντι. Then it is quite true
that redemption may be contemplated as a λούειν ἐν
τῷ αἵματι, but by how much better right, and with how much livelier imagery
as a λούειν ἐν τῷ αἵματι, and certainly Rev. vii. 14 points
strongly this way.
Ver. 6. “And hath made
us kings and priests
unto God and his Father.”—Or rather, and according to the
reading which must be preferred, “And hath made us a kingdom [ἐποίησεν
ἡμᾶς βασιλείαν], priests unto God and his Father”
(“Et
fecit nos regnum, et sacerdotes Deo,” Vulgate). There is a certain
apparent inconcinnity in the abstract βασιλείαν
joined with the concrete ἱερεῖς, but there
can be no question about the reading, and the meaning remains exactly the same;
except, indeed, that instead of the emphasis being equally distributed between the
two words, the larger portion of it now falls on the first; and this agrees with
the prominence given to the reigning of the saints in this Book (v.
10; xx. 4, 6; xxii. 5: cf. Dan. vii. 18, 22).—The
royal priesthood of the redeemed (see Exod. xix. 6;
1 Pet. ii. 9) flows out of the royal priesthood of the Redeemer, a priest
for ever after the order of Melchizedek (Ps. cx. 4;
Zech. vi. 13). That the whole number of the redeemed shall in the
world of glory have been made “priests unto God” is the analogon as regards persons
to the new Jerusalem being without temple, in other words, being all temple, which
is declared further on (xxi. 22); it is
the abolition of the distinction between holy and profane (Zech. xiv.
20, 21) nearer and more remote from God, through all being henceforth
holy, all being brought to the nearest whereof it is capable, to Him.
“To Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”—Cf.
1 Pet. iv. 11. A fuller doxology, being threefold, occurs
iv. 9, 11; and a fuller yet, being fourfold, at
v. 13; cf. Jude 25; and the
fullest of all, the sevenfold doxology, at vii. 12;
cf. 1 Chron. xxix. 11. A study of these,
and a comparison of them with one another, would amply repay the pains bestowed
upon it; above all, if it served to remind us of the prominence which the doxological
element assumes in the highest worship of the Church, the very subordinate place
which it oftentimes takes in ours. We can perhaps make our requests known unto God;
and this is well, for it is prayer; but to give glory to God, quite apart from anything
to be directly gotten by ourselves in return, this is better, for it is adoration;
but it is rarer also, no less than better.
Ver. 7. “Behold, He
cometh with clouds.”—The constant recurrence of this language in all descriptions
of our Lord’s second advent is very remarkable (Dan. vii. 13;
Matt. xxiv. 30; xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62), and all
the meaning of it will scarcely be attained till that great day of the Lord shall
have itself arrived. This much seems certain, namely, that this accompaniment of
clouds (it is μετὰ τῶν νεφελῶν) belongs not
to the glory and gladness, but to the terror and anguish, of that day; as indeed
the context of the present passage
would indicate. The clouds have nothing in common with the light-cloud,
the νεφέλη φωτεινή (Matt. xvii. 5),
“the glorious privacy of light” into which the Lord was withdrawn for a while from
the eyes of his disciples at the Transfiguration, but are rather the symbols of
wrath, fit accompaniments of judgment: “Clouds and darkness are round about Him;
righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne” (Ps.
xcvii. 2; cf. xviii. 11; Nah. i. 3;
Isai. xix. 1).
“And every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him,
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.”—It
will sometimes happen that a prophecy, severe in the Old Testament, by some gracious
turn will be transformed from a threat to a promise in the New; thus, the
“day of
visitation” of St. Peter (1 Ep. ii. 12)
is another from the “day of visitation” of the prophets,—that to be hoped for,
this to be feared. But it is not so here. There is indeed a turn, yet not from the
severe to the gracious, but the contrary. The words of the prophet Zechariah (xii.
10), on which this passage and John xix. 37 in common
rest, are words of grace: “They shall look upon Me, whom they have pierced, and
they shall mourn for Him.” They express the profound repentance of the Jews, when
the veil shall be at length taken from their hearts, and they shall behold
in Jesus of Nazareth, whom they crucified, the Son of God, the King
of Israel. But it cannot be denied that in their adaptation here they speak quite
another language. They set forth the despair of the sinful world, of all the tribes
of the earth (cf. Matt. xxiv. 30), when Christ the Judge
shall come to execute judgment on all that obeyed not his gospel, who pierced
Him with their sins; their remorse and despair, but give no hint of their
repentance. The closing words, “Even so, Amen,” are not to be taken as the prophet’s devout
acquiescence in the terribleness of that judgment-day,—a comparison with
xxii. 20 might easily lead an English reader into this misunderstanding
of them,—but as God’s own seal and ratification of his own word.
Ver. 8. “I am Alpha
and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.”—Cf.
xxi. 6, where the words “the beginning and the ending”
have a right to a place in the text; but not here; having been transferred from
thence, without any authority at all. He who is “Alpha and Omega”
(or better, “Alpha
and Ω”), and thus indeed “the beginning
and the ending,” and “the first and the last” (i.
17; ii. 8), leaves no room for any other; is indeed the only I AM;
and beside Him there is no God. Thus Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 25):
κύκλος γὰρ ὁ Υἱὸς πασῶν τῶν δυνάμεων εἰς ἓν
εἰλουμένων καὶ ἑνουμένων· διὰ τοῦτο Ἄλφα
καὶ Ω εἄρηται· and Tertullian, bringing out the unity of the Old and New
Testaments, and the manner in which the glorious consummations of the latter attach
themselves to the glorious commencements of the former (De Monog. v.):
“Sic
et duas Græciæ litteras summam et ultimam sibi induit Dominus, initii et finis concurrentium
in se figuras; uti quemadmodum α ad
ω usque volvitur, et rursus
ω ad α
explicatur, ita ostenderet in se esse et initii decursum ad finem, et finis
recursum ad initium; ut omnis dispositio in Eum desinens, per quem cœ pta est,
per Sermonem scilicet Dei qui caro factus est, proinde desit quemadmodum et
cœ pit.”
“Which is and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”—Cf.
ver. 4. Παντοκράτωρ, which only
occurs once in the New Testament (2 Cor. vi. 18)
except in this Book, is a constant word in the Septuagint. “The Lord of Hosts” of
the Hebrew is there sometimes κύριος δυνάμεων,
or στρατιῶν, or
σαβαώθ but oftener, I think,
κύριος παντοκράτωρ, as at Jer. iii.
19; Amos iii. 13;
Hab. ii. 13. It is clear that the Old Testament uses of
παντοκράτωρ, so very distinctly fixed as they
are, must quite overrule and determine the New Testament employment of it; and thus
the ingenious speculations of Gregory of Nyssa, and other Greek Fathers (see Suicer,
s. v.), in which they seek a
special meaning for it, and find it to express of God, that He holds
all creation in his grasp, preserving it from that ruin and collapse which would
at once overtake it, if not evermore sustained by his creative Word, prove nothing
worth. This, grand an attribute as it is of the Godhead (Heb. i. 3),
is assuredly not that which specially lies in παντοκράτωρ,
for it is not that which it brought from the earlier Covenant.
Ver. 9. “I John, who
also am your brother.”—The only other writer either in the Old Testament or
the New who uses this style is Daniel—“I Daniel” (vii.
28; ix. 2; x. 2). It is one of the many points of resemblance, small
and great, between this Book and that of Daniel. The
καὶ, represented by “also” in our Version,
and modifying this whole clause, should have no place in the text. It may have been
suggested by 1 Pet. v. 1; and was probably
inserted by some who esteemed ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὑμῶν
too humble a title for one of the great pillars of the Church; and by that
καὶ would make him to say,
“who, being an Apostle, am also a brother.”
“And companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience
of Jesus Christ.”—It has been sometimes asked, When was that prophecy and promise
fulfilled concerning John, that he should drink of his Lord’s cup, and be baptized
with his Lord’s baptism (Matt. xx. 22)? The fulfilment
of this promise and prophecy as it regarded his brother James is plain;
when the sword of Herod was dyed with his blood (Acts xii. 2).
It was answered rightly by Origen long ago (In Matt. tom. xvi. § 6, in
fine), Here—in this his banishment to Patmos; not thereby denying that there
must have been a life-long θλῖψις
for such an one as the Apostle John, but only affirming that the words found
their most emphatic fulfilment now. Let us not fail to observe the connexion and
the sequence—“tribulation”
first, and “the kingdom” afterwards; on which Richard of St. Victor
well: “Recte præmisit, in tribulatione, et post addit, in regno,
quia si compatimur, et corregnabimus” (2 Tim.
ii. 12; cf. Rom. viii. 17;
1 Pet. iv. 13). As yet, however, while the tribulation is present,
the kingdom is only in hope; therefore he adds to these, as that which is the
link between them, “and patience of Jesus Christ;” cf. Acts xiv. 22,
where exactly these same three, the tribulation, the patience, and the kingdom occur.
Ὑπομονή,
which we have rendered “patience,” is not so much the “patientia”
as the “perseverentia” of the Latin; which last word Cicero (De Invent.
ii. 54) thus defines: “In
ratione bene consideratâ stabilis et perpetua mansio;” and Augustine (Quæst.
lxxxiii. qu. 31): “Honestatis aut utilitatis causâ rerum arduarum
ac difficilium voluntaria ac diuturna perpessio.”
It is indeed a beautiful word, expressing the brave patience of the
Christian—βασιλὶς τῶν ἀρετῶν, Chrysostom does
not fear to call it.
“I was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God,
and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”—Patmos, now Patmo or Palmosa, one of
the Sporades, a little rocky island in the Icarian Sea, S.-W. of Ephesus, a spot
in itself utterly insignificant, would have remained unknown and almost unnamed,
if this mention here had not given to it a name and a fame in the Church for
ever. This its entire previous insignificance is slightly, yet unmistakably,
indicated in the words “that is called Patmos.” St. John does not assume his readers
to be familiar with it, any more than St. Mark, writing for those living at a distance
from Palestine, with the Jordan (cf. Mark i. 5 with
Matt. iii. 5). It is not so that a well-known island, Crete or Cyprus,
is introduced (Acts xiii. 4). The deportation of criminals,
or those accounted as such, to rocky and desolate islands was, as is well known,
a common punishment among the Romans. Titus, according to Suetonius, banished some
delators “in asperrimas insularum” (Tit. 8; cf. Juvenal,
i. 73).
The unprejudiced reader will hardly be persuaded that St. John
sets himself forth here as any other than such a constrained dweller in Patmos,
one who had been banished thither “for the word
of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Those modern
interpreters who find in these words no reference to any such suffering for the
truth’s sake, but only a statement on the writer’s part that he was in the isle
of Patmos for the sake of preaching the Word of God, or, as others, for the sake
of receiving a communication of the Word of God, refuse the obvious meaning of the
words, which moreover a comparison with vi. 9;
xx. 4, seems to me to render imperative, for one which, if it also may
possibly lie in them, has nothing but this bare possibility in its favour. It is
difficult not to think that these interpreters have been unconsciously influenced
by a desire to get rid of the strong testimony for St. John’s authorship of the
Book which lies in the consent of this declaration with that which early ecclesiastical
history tells us about him, namely, that for his steadfastness in the faith of Christ
he was by Domitian banished to Patmos, and only released at the accession of Nerva.
The Apocalypse, it is worth observing by the way, has all internal evidence of having
been thus written in time of persecution and by a confessor of the truth. The whole
Book breathes the very air of martyrdom. Oftentimes slighted by the Church in times
of prosperity, it is made much of, and its preciousness, as it were, instinctively
discovered, in times of adversity and fiery trial. This Bengel has well
observed:—“In tribulatione fidelibus maxime hic liber
sapit. Asiatica Ecclesia, præsertim a floridissimo Constantini tempore, minus magni
æstimavit hunc librum. Africana Ecclesia, cruci magis obnoxia, semper hunc librum
plurimi fecit.” Tertullian may be quoted in proof of this assertion. How
often does he seek, now to strengthen the faithful with the promises, and now to
terrify the fearful with the threatenings, of this Book (Scorp. 12; De
Cor. 15); and compare Cyprian, De Exhort. Mart. passim.
Ver. 10. “I was in
the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”—In one sense the faithful are always “in the
Spirit;” they are “spiritual” (1 Cor. iii. 1,
15); are “led by the Spirit” (Rom. viii. 14);
“walk
in the Spirit” (Gal. v. 16, 25). But here, and at
iv. 2; xxi. 10 (cf. Ezek. xl. 2, “in the visions
of God”), the words are used in an eminent and peculiar sense; they describe not
the habitual condition of faithful men, but an exceptional condition, differing
from the other not in degree only, but in kind; a condition in which there is a
suspension of all the motions and faculties of the natural life; that a higher life
may be called, during and through this suspension, into a preternatural activity.
It is the state of trance or ecstasy, that is, of standing out of oneself (θεία
ἐξαλλαγὴ τῶν εἰωθότων νομίμων Plato calls it, Phædrus, 265
A,
and on its positive side, ἐνθουσιασμός,
so often described in Scripture as the condition of men to whom God would speak
more directly (Acts x. 10; cf. xi. 5;
xxii. 17); the antithesis to it, or the return out of it, being a
γενόμενος ἐν ἑαυτῷ (Acts xii. 11);
ἐν τῷ νοΐ (1
Cor. xiv. 14).Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. ciii. 11):
“Illo
orante [Acts x. 10] facta est illi mentis alienatio, quam
Græci ecstasin dicunt; id est, aversa est mens ejus a consuetudine corporali ad
visum quendam contemplandum, alienata a præsentibus.” Cf. in Ps. lxvii.
28; Quæst. in Gen. 1. 1, qu. 80; and De Div. Quæst. 1. 2, qu. 1:
“Mentis alienatio a sensibus corporis, ut spiritus hominis
divino Spiritu assumptus capiendis atque intuendis imaginibus vacet.”
St. Paul exactly describes the experience of one who has passed through this state,
2 Cor. xii. 2-4. That world of spiritual
realities is one from which man is comparatively estranged so long as he dwells
in this house of clay; he has need to be transported out of himself, before he can
find himself in the midst of and come into direct contact with it. Here we have
the explanation of the fact that the Lord never was “in the Spirit,” namely, because
He was always “in the Spirit,” because He always moved in that region as his proper
haunt and home.
Separated in body from the fellowship of the faithful, the beloved
Apostle was yet keeping with them the weekly feast of the resurrection on the day
which the Lord had made for ever peculiarly
his own. It was, as he is careful to declare to us, “on the Lord’s
Day,” which occupied for the Church the place occupied by the Sabbath for the
Jews, that he thus passed out of himself, and was drawn within the veil, and heard
unspeakable words, and beheld things which, unless they had been shown by God, must
have remained for ever hidden from mortal gaze; Some have assumed from this passage
that ἡμέρα κυριακή was a designation of Sunday
already familiar among Christians. This, however, seems a mistake. The name had
probably its origin here. A little later we find ἡμέρα
κυριακή familiar to Ignatius, as
“Dominica solemnia” to Tertullian (De Animâ, c. 9; cf. Dionysius of Corinth, quoted by Eusebins,
II. E. iv. 23, 8; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vii. 12; Origen,
Con. Cels. viii. 22). But though the name, “the Lord’s Day,” will
very probably have had here its rise (the actual form of the phrase may have been
suggested by κυριακὸν δεῖπνον,
1 Cor. xi. 20),—the thing, the celebration
of the first day of the week as that on which the Lord brake the bands of death,
and became the head of a new creation, called therefore sometimes
ἀναστάσιιμος ἡμέρα, this was as old as Christianity
itself (John xx. 24-29; 1 Cor.
xvi. 2; Acts xx. 7;
Ep. of Barnabas, c. 15: ἄγομεν τὴν ἡμέραν
τὴν ὀγδόην εἰς εὐφροσύνην: cf. Suicer, s. v.
κυριακή). The strange
fancy of some that ἡμέρα κυρ]ακή
means here “the day of the Lord,” in the sense of “the day of judgment,” intended
as it is to subserve a scheme of Apocalyptic interpretation which certainly needs
ally support which it can any where find, has been abundantly refuted by Alford.
“And I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.”—The
wondrous vision which the Seer shall behold does not break upon him all at once;
he first hears behind him “a voice, great as of a trumpet,”
summoning his attention, and preparing him for the still greater sight which he
shall see. It is a “great voice,” as the voice of the Lord must ever be (Ps.
xxix. 3-9; lxviii. 33; Dan. x. 6;
Matt. xxiv. 31;
1 Thess. iv. 16); a voice penetrating
and clear, “as of a trumpet;” in which comparison there may be allusion,
as Hengstenberg is sure there is, to the divinely-instituted rule of calling together
by a trumpet the congregation of the Lord, when He had any thing to impart to them
(Num. x. 2; Exod. xix. 16, 19;
Joel ii. 1, 15; Matt. xxiv. 31;
1 Thess. iv. 16); although this to me does not seem very probable.
“Saying, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it to the
seven Churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos,
and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”—The
words,
“I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,” which
in our Version follow immediately after “Saying,” have no right
whatever to stand in the text. It is disputed whether the “book”
which St. John is to write, and having written, to send to the seven Churches,
is this whole Book of the Apocalypse, or only the seven shorter Epistles
contained in chapters ii. and iii. Hengstenberg affirms the last; but against
the great body of interpreters, and, as I am persuaded, wrongly. “What thou seest” must in that case be restrained to
ver. 12-16 of this present chapter. All the rest, to the end of chap.
iii., he will have heard; but-will have seen nothing; and moreover
ver. 19 is decisive that what he is to write of is more than that
which he has then seen: “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the
things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.”
Doubtless it is not for nothing that seven Churches, neither more
nor less, are here named. The reason of this lies deeper than some suggest, who
will have these seven to include all the principal Churches of Asia; whatever others
there were being merely annexed to these. But taking into account the rapid spread
of the Gospel in the regions of Asia Minor as recorded in Scripture (Acts
xix. 9; 1 Cor. xvi. 9), and
in other historical documents of a date very little later, we cannot
doubt that toward the end of the life of St. John there were flourishing
and important Churches in many other cities of that region besides these seven;
that if the first purpose of the great ascended Bishop of the Church had been to
bring under spiritual review the whole Church of Asia, in this case Colosse, to
which St. Paul addressed an Epistle, and Hierapolis, where was already the nucleus
of a Church in the Apostle’s time (Col. iv. 13), and where
a little later Papias was bishop, and Miletus, the scene of apostolic labours (Acts
xx. 17), and Tralles, called by Cicero “gravis, ornata
et locuples civitas,” to the Church in which city Ignatius wrote an epistle
some twenty years later, as he did to that in Magnesia as well, these with others
would scarcely have been passed by.There is an instructive chapter in Tacitus
(Annal. iv. 55), throwing much light on the relative dignity and position,
at a period a little earlier than this, of the chief cities in proconsular Asia.
He is describing a contention which found place among eleven of them, which should
have the honour of erecting a statue and temple to Tiberius. Among the eleven contending
for this glorious privilege, which involved as well the maintaining as the founding
of this cult, five out of our seven appear. Two, namely Philadelphia and Thyatira,
do not enter the lists. Laodicea, with others not included in this seven, is set
aside, as unequal in wealth and dignity to the task; Pergamum as having already
a temple to Augustus, Ephesus as devoted to Diana, and others for various causes;
till at length Smyrna and Sardis are the only competitors which remain. Of these
the former is preferred, mainly on account of its greater devotedness in times past
to the interests of the Roman State, when as yet the fortunes of Rome were not so
completely in the ascendant as they were then.
But what we may call the mystical
or symbolic interest overhears and predominates over the actual. No
doubt this actual was sufficiently provided for in another way, and these seven
words of warning and encouragement so penetrated to the heart of things that, meeting
the needs of these seven Churches, they also met the needs of all others subsisting
in similar, or nearly similar conditions. Typical and representative Churches, these
embodied, one or another of them, I will not say all the great leading aspects of
the Church in its faithfulness or its unfaithfulness; but they embodied a great
many, the broadest and the oftenest recurring.Grotius: “Sub
earum nomine tacite comprehendit et alias Ecclesias, quia earum status et
qualitates ad septem quasi genera possunt revocari, quorum exemplum præbent illæ
Asiatiæ.”
The seven must in this point of view be regarded as constituting a complex whole,
as possessing an ideal completeness. Christ, we feel sure, could not have placed
Himself in the relation which He does to them, as holding in his hand the seven
stars, walking among the seven golden candlesticks, these stars being the Angels
of the Churches, and the candlesticks the Churches themselves, unless they ideally
represented and set forth, in some way or other, the universal Church, militant
here upon earth.
But this, which I have here rather assumed than proved, together
with another question, namely, whether besides possessing this typical and representative
character, these seven Epistles are not also historico-prophetical, do not unfold
the future of the Church’s fortunes to the end of time, seven successive stages
and periods of its growth and history, has been so eagerly discussed, has, strangely
enough, roused so much theological passion, that I am unwilling to treat the subject
with the brevity which a place in this exposition would require. I must therefore
refer the reader to al Excursus at the end of the volume, in which I have traced,
rapidly indeed, but with some attempt at completeness, a sketch of the controversy,
and have stated, and sought to justify, the conclusions on the points in debate
at which I have myself arrived.
“And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being
turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks.” Λυχνία
is a word condemned by the Greek purists, who prefer
λύχνιον (Lobeck, Phrynichus,
p. 313). The “seven candlesticks”—the rendering is not a very happy one, though it
is not very plain how it should be bettered—send us back, and are intended to send
us back, to the seven-branched candlestick, or candelabrum, which bears ever the
same name of λυχνία in the Septuagint (Exod.
xxv. 31; cf. Heb. ix. 2; Philo, Quis Rer. Div.
Hær.
44; Josephus, B. J. v. 5. 5); the six arms of which with the
central shaft (καλαμίσκοι, Exod.
xxv. 31; κλάδοι, Philo, Vit.
Mos. iii. 9), made up the mystical seven, each with its several lamp (λύχνος,
Zech. iv. 2). Nor is this the first occasion when that portion of the
furniture of the tabernacle has had a higher mystical meaning ascribed to it. Already
in the candlestick all of gold, which Zechariah saw (iv.
2), there was an anticipation of this image; being one of the many remarkable
points of contact between his prophecies and the Apocalypse. Here, however, it is
not one candlestick with seven branches which St. John beholds; but rather seven
separate candlesticks. Nor is it without a meaning that the seven thus take the
place of the one. The Jewish Church was one; for it was the Church of a single people;
the Christian Church, that too is one, but it is also many; at once the “Church” and the
“Churches.” These may be quite independent of one another, the only bond
of union with one another which they absolutely require being that of common dependence
on the same Head, and derivation of life from the same Spirit; and are fitly represented
by seven, the number of mystical completeness.
In the image itself by which the Churches are symbolized there
is an eminent fitness. The candlestick, or lampstand, as we must rather conceive
it here, is not light, but it is the bearer of light, that which diffuses
it, that which holds it forth and causes it to shine throughout the house; being
the appointed instrument for this. It is thus with the Church. God’s word, God’s
truth, including in this all which He has declared of Himself in revealed religion,
is light (Ps. cxix. 105; Prov. vi. 23);
the Church is the light-bearer, light in the Lord (Ephes. v. 8),
not having light of its own, but diffusing that which it receives of Him. Each too
of the faithful in particular, after he has been illuminated (Heb. vi.
4), is a bearer of the light; “ye are the light of the world”
(Matt.
v. 14-16); “lights in the world, holding forth the word of life”
(Phil.
ii. 15). In accordance with this view of the matter, in the Levitical
tabernacle the seven-branched candlestick stood in the Holy Place (Exod.
xxvi. 35; xl. 4), which was the pattern of the Church upon earth, as
the Holy of Holies was the pattern of the Church in heaven; and the only light which
the Holy Place received was derived from that candlestick; the light of common day
being quite excluded from it, in sign that the Lord God was the light thereof, that
the light of the Church is the light of nature, but of grace.
These candlesticks are of gold (cf. Exod. xxv. 31;
Zech. iv. 2), as so much else in this Book; “the golden girdle”
(i. 13); “golden crowns”
(iv. 4); “golden vials” (v. 8); “golden censer” (viii.
3); “golden altar” (ibid.);
“golden reed” (xxi. 15); “the city
of pure gold” (xxi. 18); “the street
of the city of pure gold” (xxi. 21).
No doubt the preciousness of all belonging to the Church of God is indicated- by
the predominant employment of this the costliest and most perfect metal of all.
A hint no doubt we have here of this, exactly as in the Ark and furniture of the
Ark so much in like manner is of pure gold, the mercy-seat, the cherubim, the dishes,
spoons, covers, tongs, snuff-dishes (Exod. xxv. 17, 18, 29, 38),
the pot which had manna (Exod. xvi. 33),This was a
golden pot, as we learn from Heb. ix. 4; cf. LXX in loc.,
and Philo, Cong. Erud. Gent. § 18.
every thing in short which did
not by its bulk and consequent weight absolutely preclude this, and even that was
for the most part overlaid with gold (Exod. xxv. 10, 11, 23, 24).Cocceius:
“Aurum in figuris et symbolicis locutionibus significat id quod
est omnium optimum, quod omnia perficit, et a nullo perficitur; sed in se est
perfectissimum et purissimum, nullique mutationi obnoxium; quemadmodum aurum
omnium metallorum perfectissimum est, et ab alliis non perficitur; sed quibus
accedit ea perficit, et nec temporis, nec ignis, omnium destructoris violentiam
injuriamque sentit.”
But the mere costliness of gold, that it was of all metals the rarest, and therefore
the dearest, this was not the only motive for the predominant employment of it.
Throughout all the
ancient East there was a sense of sacredness attached to this metal,
which still to a great extent survives. Thus “golden” in the Zend-Avesta is throughout
synonymous with heavenly or divine. So also in many Eastern lands while silver might
be degraded to profane and every-day uses of common life, might as money pass from
hand to hand, “the pale and common drudge ’twixt man and man,” it was not permitted
to employ gold in any services except only royal and divine (see Bähr, Symbolik,
vol. i. pp. 273, 282, 292).
Ver. 13. “And in the
midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man.”—Some
translate “like unto a son of man,” that is to say, “like unto a man,” the words merely
for them expressing that He who was seen was in human shape, and, so far as the
appearance warranted the conclusion, the sharer of a human nature (Ezek.
xxxvii. 3, 16; xxxix. 1). The absence of the articles, however, does
not require this either here or at xiv. 14;
any more than υἱὸς Θεοῦ (Matt. xxvii.
54) demands to be translated “a son of God,” or
πνεῦμα Θεοῦ,
“a Spirit of God.” The beloved Apostle by this “like unto the Son of man” would express his recognition
in this sublime appearance of Him whom he had once known on earth, the born of the
Virgin Mary; and who even then had claimed to be executor
of all judgment, because He was the Son of man (John v. 27).
“Clothed with a garment down to the foot.”—We are again
reminded of Daniel’s vision, where in like manner He whom the prophet saw was
“clothed
in linen” (x. 5), or, as it would be
more rightly translated, “in a long linen garment.” Ποδήρης,
the “poderis” of ecclesiastical Latin, is properly an adjective
here, with χίτων understood; cf.
Wisd. xviii. 24: ποδῆρες ἔνδυμα,
and Xenophon, Cyrop. vi. 2, 10: ἄσπις ποδήρης,
a shield reaching down to the feet, such as the θυρεός
(Ephes. vi. 16), and covering the whole person. The long
robe is every where in the East the garment of dignity and honour (Gen.
xxxvii. 3; Mark xiii. 38; Luke xv. 22)—the
association of dignity with it probably resting originally on the absence of the
necessity of labour; and thus of loins girt up, which it implied: see, on the other
hand, 2 Sam. x. 4. The word nowhere else
occurs in the New Testament, but several times in the Old; and designates there
sometimes the long linen garment common to all the priests, the chetoneth,
“the
holy linen coat” (Lev. xvi. 4; Exod. xxxix. 27),
sometimes the High Priest’s “robe of the ephod” (Exod. xxviii. 31;
Zech. iii. 4; Wisd. xviii. 24);
στολὴ δόξης, as it is called, Ecclus.
xlviii. 7. Yet these passages must not lead us, as they have led some,
to regard this
as a manifestation of Christ in his priestly character alone. The Rheims
version indeed renders ποδήρης here
“a
priestly garment,” but with no warrant for so doing. Any stately garment,
any “vestis talaris,” may be indicated by the word (Ecclus.
xxvii. 8), as for instance, that worn by the Angel of the covenant (Ezek.
ix. 2, 3). So too in Isaiah’s magnificent vision (vi.
1), He was clothed with a ποδήρης,
though the word does not there occur, whom the prophet beheld sitting as a King
upon his throne, and whose train filled the temple. The
ποδήρης, in fact, is quite as much a kingly
garment as a priestly, even as Christ presents Himself here not only as the Priest,
but the King, and, so far as there is any predominance, more the King than the Priest,
ruling in the midst of his’ Church.
“And girt about the paps with a golden girdle.”—So we
read of the Angels “having their breasts girded with golden girdles” (xv.
6); cf. Ovid: “cinctæque ad pectora vestes.”
The ordinary girding for one actively engaged was at the loins (1
Kings ii. 5; xviii. 46; Jer. xiii. 11; cf.
Luke xii. 35; Eph. vi. 14;
1 Pet. i. 13); but Josephus (Antt. iii. 7, 2) expressly tells
us that the Levitical priests were girt higher up, about the breast, or as it is
here, “about the paps” (ἐπιζώννυνται κατὰ στῆθος)—favouring,
as this higher cincture did, a calmer, more majestic movement (see Braun, De
Vest. Hebr. p. 402). The girdle, knitting up as it would do
into a compact unity all the scattered forces of a man, is often contemplated as
the symbol of strength and power (Isai. xxii. 21;
Job xii. 18); and as nothing is so strong as righteousness and truth,
therefore the prophet foretells of Messiah, “Righteousness shall be the girdle of
his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins” (Isai.
xi. 5; cf. Ephes. vi. 14). The girdle here is
“golden;”
not merely with a golden clasp or buckle, as Hengstenberg, relying on
1 Macc. x. 89; xi. 58; xiv. 44, where such appears as the ensign of royalty,
would have it; but all of gold; cf. xv. 7; and Dan.
x. 5: “His loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz.” It is quite true
that the curious girdle of the High Priest was not golden, but only wrought and
interwoven with gold (Exod. xxviii. 8; xxxix.
5); but this with other departures in the present appearance of the Lord
from the investiture of the High Priest only goes to confirm what was just asserted,
namely, that we have to do with Him here not as the Priest only, but as also the
King in his Church; for it is in this direction that all the variations tend.
Ver. 14. “His head
and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.”—Cf.
Dan. vii. 9: “The hair of his head was like the pure wool;” wool and
snow being joined together on the score
of their common whiteness both there and at
Isai. i. 18. I must needs consider those interpreters as here altogether
at fault who see in this whiteness of the Lord’s hairs the symbol of age, the hoary
head as of the Ancient of Days, which should inspire honour and respect. Augustine
himself has not escaped this error (Exp. ad Gal. iv. 21): “Dominus
non nisi ob antiquitatem veritatis in Apocalypsi albo capite apparuit;” and
Vitringa gives a reference to Lev. xix. 32.
That it is an error a moment’s reflection will convince. The white hairs of old
age are at once the sign and the consequence of the decay of natural strength, in
other words, of death commencing; the hair blanching because the blood refuses to
circulate any longer in these extremities, as it will one day refuse to circulate
in any part of the frame. Being then this, how can the white hairs, the hoary head
which is the sign of weakness, decay, and the approach of death, be ascribed to
Him who, as He is from everlasting, so also is He to everlasting?
Even the Angel at the sepulchre is a νεανισκός,
“a young man” (Mark xvi. 5; cf.
Zech. ii. 4); what then the Angel’s Lord (cf.
2 Esdr. ii. 43, 47)?
“And his eyes were as a flame of fire.”—Cf.
Dan. x. 6: “His eyes [were] as lamps of fire.” This too has been understood
by some, of the clear-sightedness of Christ, that all things are open and
manifest to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Thus Vitringa:
“Significant perspicaciam divinæ et puræ mentis omnia arcana pervadentis;”
but Cocceius much better: “Significat hoc iram
ἀπαραίτητον
in adversarios.” The other explanation is insufficient. “His eyes were as a flame of fire,” does not
say merely that He knows what is in man, that nothing can escape his searching penetrative
glance; it expresses much more than this—the indignation of the Holy One at the
discoveries of evil which He thus makes. These “eyes of fire,” do not merely
look through the hypocrite and the sinner, but consume him, him and
his sins together, unless indeed he will suffer them to consume his sins, that so
he may live. For indeed in the symbolism of Scripture, fire is throughout the expression
of the divine anger; and seeing that nothing moves that anger but sin, of the divine
anger against sin (Gen. xix. 24; Lev. x. 2;
Num. xi. 1; xvi. 35; Ps. 1. 3; xcvii.
3; 2 Kings i. 10, 12;
Ezek. xxxviii. 22; xxxix. 6; Dan. vii. 9, 10;
Luke ix. 54; 2 Thess. i. 8;
Heb. x. 27; Jude 7;
Rev. xx. 9). It need hardly be observed, as confirming this interpretation,
that the eyes flashing fire are evermore the utterance, the outward tokens of indignation
and wrath; thus Homer (Il. xiii. 474): ὀφθαλμὼ
δ᾽ ἄρα οϙ πυρὶ λάμπετον: cf. Virgil, Æn. xii. 101, 102. If any hesitation
existed in
ascribing this meaning to the symbol here, it must be removed by a
comparison with xix. 11, 12. The
whole imagery there is of Christ as a man of war coming forth in his anger to
make war upon his enemies, and the “eyes as a flame of fire” are again ascribed to
Him there.
Ver. 15. “And his feet
like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace.”—The
ποδήρης, as the name sufficiently indicates,
must have reached to the feet, but permitted them to be seen. They were no doubt
bare; as were the feet of the Levitical priesthood ministering in the sanctuary.
We are no where indeed expressly told of these that they ministered barefoot, but
every thing leads us to this conclusion. Thus while all the other parts of the priestly
investiture are described with the greatest minuteness, and Moses accurately instructed
how they should be made, there is no mention of any covering for the feet. Then
again the analogy of such passages as
Exod. iii. 5; Josh. v. 15, and the fact
that the moral idea of the shoe is that of a defence against the defilements
of the earth, of which defilements there could be none in the Holy Place, all this
irresistibly points this way. Plutarch’s testimony to the contrary (Symp.
iv. 6, 2), who ascribes, to the High Priest at least, buskins (κοθόρνους,),
cannot be regarded as of the slightest weight on the other side. Uncovered at
all events the feet on the present occasion were; for St. John compares
them to χαλκολίβανος—there is no reason why
we should assume a neuter, χαλκολίβανον, as
the nominative, which has very commonly been done—a word which we have
translated “fine brass.” It occurs only here and at ii.
18; being, in all probability, of St. John’s own composition; and has
much perplexed, we may say has hitherto defied, interpreters to give any satisfactory
explanation of it—to do more than guess at its etymology and its meaning.
It has been suggested, and the suggestion is as old as Arethas,—it
is indeed older, for the Syriac and the Ethiopic versions rest upon it,—that we
are to find Λίβανος, or Lebanon, in the latter
part of the word, and that χαλκολίβανος means
“brass of Mount Lebanon,” such as was there found; or more generally “mountain-brass,”
“aurichalcum,” as it is in the Vulgate; in the first
syllable of which, as need hardly be observed, we are not to find “aurum,”
as though this mixed metal were of gold and brass, and the word designating
it a hybrid, partly Latin, partly Greek, but ὄρος,
“orichalcum” (Æn. xii. 87) =
ὀρείχαλκος.
So one quoted by Wolf: “Libanus
pro monte quolibet, fortasse quod Libanus dederit ejusmodi genus metalli;”
which it has been further sought to prove by putting together the promise to Asher,
“Thy
shoes shall be iron and brass” (Deut. xxxiii. 25),
and the fact that Lebanon was within the borders of this tribe. It is hardly fair
to urge against this etymology the objection that it violates the law which holds
good in Greek composite words, namely, that the more important word should come
last, and the merely qualitative first; which indeed holds good quite as much in
our own language, in which “brass-mountain” would signify something very different
from “mountain-brass.” I say it is hardly fair to urge this, that the word should
be rather λιβανόχαλκος than
χαλκολίβανος, because the same objection may
be urged against every other attempted explanation of the word, including that which
seems to me the most probable of all. Another suggestion, first made by Salmasius,
has found favour with Ewald, to the effect that this mysterious word is a somewhat
euphonic form of χαλκολίβανος, brass of the
κλίβανος, or furnace; it is scarcely likely
to find favour with others, and is not worthy any serious notice. As little, I confess,
does the solution of the riddle of this word, which Wordsworth has allowed and adopted,
commend itself to me, namely, that the second part of the word is
λίβανος, frankincense, brass of the colour
of frankincense, that is, brass of a dark copper hue; for, to say nothing of the
extreme unlikelihood of frankincense being sought to
suggest what the colour was, this part of the description is thus put
in direct opposition with all the rest. Every thing else is light, fire, of a white
shining brightness; the feet must be so as well.
The explanation which satisfies this, as well as other conditions,
and commends itself above any other, is one first proposed by Bochart (in a learned
disquisition, De Animal. S. Script. pars ii. c. xvi. p. 883); and since adopted
by Grotius, Vitringa, Hengstenberg, and others. Bochart sees in
χαλκολίβανος, a hybrid formation, the combination
of a Greek word and a Hebrew, χαλκός, and
לִבֵּן
= “albare,” to make white; brass which in the
furnace has attained what we call “white heat.” In this word on a
small scale, as in the Apocalypse itself on a larger, the two sacred tongues,
Greek and Hebrew, will thus be wonderfully married. If this be the key of the
word, it will then exactly correspond to, and the Seer will have intended to
express by it, the “burnished brass” of the feet of the four living creatures
(Ezek. i. 7; cf. ver. 27 and viii. 2),
the “polished brass” of the feet of Him whom Daniel saw on the banks of Hiddekel
(Dan. x. 6), neither “burnished” nor “polished” in those passages
of our Translation exactly expressing the force of the original; which the LXX by
ἐξαστράπτων in the first passage,
στίλβων
in the second (the Vulgate has well “candens” in both),
had more precisely seized. If this be correct, the
χαλκολίβανος
will not be the “fine,”
or the “shining,” but the “glowing,” brass. This conclusion is very
much strengthened by the epexegesis, “as if they burned in a furnace;” words of explanation
immediately added by St. John, as probably knowing the difficulty which his readers
would find in this unusual term. A further confirmation we may draw from a comparison
with x. 1, where feet as “pillars of
fire,” which can only be feet as glowing or burning brass, are ascribed to
the mighty Angel, who there appears. This grand and terrible image sets forth to
us Christ in his power to tread down his enemies; at once to tread down and to
consume them—“ut potentissimum in conculcandis hostibus” (Marckius).
“And his voice as the sound of many waters.”—Hitherto
St. John has trodden closely on the footsteps of Daniel in his delineation of
Him whom his eyes beheld; but grand as is the imagery which he offers (“the
voice of his words [was] like the voice of a multitude,” Dan. x. 6),
the Seer of the New Testament, leaving this, draws now his comparison from another
quarter, from Ezek. xliii. 2: “his voice was like a noise of
many waters;” cf. Ezek. i. 24; Rev. xix. 6;
Jer. 1. 42; Isai. xvii. 12.
We may note, I think, herein a special characteristic of this wonderful Book. Were
it not that the
term, “a mosaic,” always seems to imply, or to suggest, something artificial,
we might in many parts liken the Apocalypse to such a costly mosaic; the precious
stones of which, wrought into novel combinations of beauty, have been brought from
all the richest mines of the Old Testament and the New.—By this comparison of
the voice of the Lord to “the sound of many waters,” is not to be
understood the “prædicatio Evangelii” (Vitringa), but the terribleness
of the voice with which He will rebuke his foes within the Church and without.
Ver. 16. “And He had
in his right hand seven stars.”—Cf.
ver. 20; ii. 1; iii. 1. In
what fashion we are to conceive the Lord as thus “having in his right hand” these
“seven stars,” has been often asked, and variously answered. Is it as so many jewelled
rings on the fingers? The threatened rejection of the Laodicean Angel (iii.
16) would then find a remarkable parallel in Jer. xxii. 24:
“Though Coniah, king of Judah, were the signet upon my right hand, yet would I pluck
thee thence.” But, not to mention other objections, the seven stars would ill
distribute themselves on five fingers. Better therefore to regard them as a
wreath or garland which He held in his right hand. “The mystery of the seven stars” we shall
return to before long (ver. 20); and on
two occasions
shall have need to consider what is the spiritual signification of
his having or holding these stars in his right hand (ii.
1; iii. 1); all which may therefore for the present be past over.
“And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword.”—Ῥομφαία,
sometimes ῥομβαία,
in Latin ‘rumpia’ (Ennius, Annal. 14 [the passage has not reached us], Valerius Flaccus, vi.
96), is a Thracian word for a Thracian weapon (A. Gellius, x. 25; cf. Diefenbach,
Origines Europææ, p. 409). It is properly the long and heavy broadsword (ῥομβαία
βαρυσίδηρος,
Plutarch,—Æmil. Paul. 18; Livy, xxxi. 39), which the
Thracians and other barbarous nations used; and as such to be distinguished from
the μάχαιρα, the sacrificial knife, or short
stabbing sword. The word, occurring six times in the Apocalypse, only occurs once
besides in the New Testament (Luke ii. 35). This sword is
“two-edged” here (δίστομος, cf. Heb. iv. 12,
μάχαιρα δίστομος =
ἀμφίστομος =
ἀμφήκης,, Homer, Il. x. 256), the sharpness of it being reckoned as
its mouth; cf.
Heb. xi. 34, στόματα μαχαίρας,
and Judg. iii. 16; Ps. cxlix. 6;
Prov. v. 4; Ecclus. xxi. 4. The phrase, “the
devouring sword” (2 Sam. xviii. 8;
Isai. i. 20; Jer. ii. 30) rests on the same image.
Yet it is not a mere Hebraism; but finds its place in classical Greek poetry, and
indeed in Greek prose as well; thus Euripides, δίστομα
φάσγανα: and elsewhere,
πέλεκυς δίστομος. As it is from
the mouth that man’s word proceeds, so this sword, not wielded in the hand, but
proceeding from the mouth of the Son of God, is his Word (compare
Isai. xlix. 2: “He hath made my mouth as a sharp sword”); but his Word,
as it is also Spirit; “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God”
(Ephes.
vi. 17; cf. Heb. iv. 12). They fall short of the
full meaning of this emblem, who press mainly as the tertium
comparationis here the penetrative searching power of the Word of God,
amputating our vices, convincing us of our sins, as Tertullian (Adv. Marc.
iii. 14); Cocceius: “Notatur vis verbi in conscientiam;”
and Henry More (Mystery of Iniquity, ii. xiv. 6): “A prophetical symbol of
that wonderful contrition of heart that the powerful Word of God makes when sincerely
and seasonably evibrated against the enemies of his kingdom.” The whole feeling,
the whole sense of the passage with which we have here to do, requires that we should
take this sword from the mouth as expressing rather the punishing than the convincing
power of God’s word. With this sword from his mouth He fights against his
enemies and destroys them; compare ii.
12, 16; xix. 15, 21. The Word of the Lord is no empty threat, but having
in readiness to avenge all disobedience; cf. Hos. vi. 5;
Isai. xi. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 8;
Wisd. xviii. 15,
16.—Shall we give any spiritual significance to the two-edgedness
of this sword? Many have so done, Tertullian for instance (Adv. Jud.):
“Bis
acutus duobus Testamentis, legis antiquæ, et legis novæ;” and Augustine,
Enarr. in Ps. cxlix. 6; and Richard of St. Victor: “Qui
gladius utrâque parte dicitur acutus, quia in Veteri Testamento amputavit vitia
carnalia, in Novo etiam spiritualia. Utrâque parte acutus est, quia qui foris in
nobis amputat luxuriam carnis, intus resecat malitiam cordis. Utrâque parte
acutus est, quia in his qui contemnunt que præcepit, corpus et animam punit.
Utrâque parte acutus est, quia malos et a bonis discernit, et singulis quod
merentur reddit.”
“And his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.”—Of
the Angel by the vacant tomb it is said, “His countenance was like lightning”
(Matt.
xxviii. 3; cf. Judg. xiii. 6); here the
countenance of the Lord is compared to the sun “in his strength” (cf.
x. 1), at his brightest and clearest, in the splendour of his highest
noon, no veil, no mist, no cloud obscuring his brightness. When He shall appear,
they that are his shall be like Him, for they shall see Him as He is; therefore
of them too it can be said that in that day “they shall shine forth as the sun in
the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. xiii. 43; cf.
Wisd. iii. 7). No doubt if there had been any thing brighter than the
sun, the Seer
would have chosen it to set forth the transcendant and intolerable
brightness of that countenance which he now beheld.
This description of the glorified Lord, which has now been brought
to a conclusion, sublime as a purely mental conception, but intolerable, if we were
to give it an outward form and expression, and picture Him with this sword proceeding
from his mouth, these feet as burning brass, this hair white as wool, and the rest,
may suggest a few reflections on the apocalyptic, and generally the Hebrew symbolism,
and the very significant relations of difference and opposition in which it stands
to the Greek. Religion and art for the Greek ran into one another with no very great
preponderance of the claims of the former over the latter. Even in his religious
symbolism the sense of beauty, of form, of proportion, overrules every other, and
must at all costs find its satisfaction; so that the first necessity of the symbol
is that it shall not affront, that it shall satisfy rather, the esthetic sense.
Rather than it should offend this, it would be moulded and modified even to the
serious injury of the idea of which it was intended to be the exponent. But with
the Hebrew symbolism it is altogether different. The first necessity there is that
the symbol should set forth truly and fully the religious idea of which it is intended
to be the vehicle.
How it would appear when it clothed itself in an outward form and shape,
whether it would find favour and allowance at the bar of taste, this was quite a
secondary consideration; may be confidently affirmed not to have been a consideration
at all; for indeed, with the one exception of the cherubim, there was no intention
that it should embody itself there, but rather that it should remain ever and only
a purely mental conception, the unembodied sign of an idea. I may observe, by the
way, that no skill of delineation can make the cherubim other than unsightly objects
to the eye. Thus in this present description of Christ, sublime and majestic as
it is, it is only such so long as we keep it wholly apart from any external embodiment.
Produce it outwardly, the sword going forth from the mouth, the eyes as a flame
of fire, the hair white as wool, the feet as molten brass; and each and all of these
images violate more or less our sense of beauty. Bengel, missing this important
distinction, has sought to give a picture of the Lord Jesus according to this description,
prefixing it to his German Commentary on the Apocalypse; a picture which is almost
degrading, and only not deeply offensive to every feeling of reverence and awe,
because we know that it was not so intended by this admirable man.Others have
done the same, though with quite a different object and aim. I can perfectly remember
seeing exposed in Carlisle’s shop-window a blasphemous picture with the title,
“The
God of the Bible,” constructed according to a similar scheme. Two or three days
after, a Jew was brought before the magistrates, who in a righteous indignation
had dashed his hand through the window, seized and destroyed it; and I do not think
it appeared again.
The explanation of the difference does not lie altogether in the
fact that the Greek created his symbol, and therefore could do what he would with
his own; while the Hebrew received his from God, and could not therefore venture
to touch it. It would have existed more or less without this distinction between
the given and the invented, the inspired and uninspired. The unsightliness, often
the repulsiveness, of the symbol, so long as it is judged merely by the laws of
aesthetic beauty, is common to all the religions of the East. What an ugly sight
is the Artemis multimammia of Ephesus, an Oriental deity, it need not be said, and
not a Greek; what monstrous forms the Indian gods, with their hundred arms, present.
At the same time we should altogether err if we accepted this as a mark of the inferiority
of these nations to the Greeks. Inferiority in one sense no doubt it does indicate,
a slighter perception of beauty, but superiority in other and more important matters,
a deeper religious earnestness, a feeling upon their part that the essence was above
the form, a conviction
that truth, such as they conceived it, was better than beauty, and
that every thing else, as of lesser moment, was to be sacrificed to this. But now
to return from this digression.
Ver. 17. “And when I saw Him, I fellOn this second aorist (ἔπεσα)
with the termination of the first, an Alexandrian and afterwards a Byzantine form,
see Lobeck, Phrynichus, p. 724, and Sturz, De Dialecto Alexandrinâ, p. 61.
at his feet as dead. And He laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear
not.”—-This, as is evident,
is no voluntary act of homage on the part of St. John, but an involuntary consequence
of what he saw. Finding, as it does, its parallel in almost all manifestations of
a divine, or even an angelic, presence, it must be owned to contain a mighty, because
an instinctive witness for the sinfulness of man’s nature; so that any very near
revelation of ought which comes direct from heaven fills the children of men, even
the holiest among them, with terror and amazement, yea, and sometimes with the expectation
of death itself. Examples innumerable make plain that this holds equally true of
good men and of bad (Gen. iii. 8; Exod. iii. 6; Judg. xiii. 6, 20, 22; 1 Chron.
xxi. 20; Job xlii. 5, 6; Isai. vi. 5; Ezek. i. 28; iii. 23; xliii. 3; xliv. 4; Dan.
viii. 17; x. 7, 8; Matt. xvii. 6; xxviii. 4, 5; Mark xvi. 5; Luke i. 12, 29; v.
8; xxiv. 5; John xviii. 6; Acts ix. 4; x. 4). The
unholy, and all
flesh is such, cannot endure immediate contact with the holy, the human with the
divine. Heathen legend consents here with Christian truth. Semele must perish, if
Jupiter reveals himself to her in his glory, being consumed in the brightness of
that glory; cf. Exod. xxxiii. 18, 20: “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall
no man see Me, and live.” For every man it is a dreadful thing to stand face to
face with God. The beloved disciple, who had handled the Word of life, lain in his
Lord’s bosom in the days of his flesh, can as little as any other endure the
revelation of his majesty, or do without that “Fear not,” with
which that Lord reassures him here. This same “Fear not” is uttered on similar occasions to Isaiah (vi. 7),
to Daniel (x. 12), to the three at the Transfiguration, of whom John himself was
one (Matt. xvii. 7). Nor is this reassurance confined to words only; the Lord at
the same time lays his right hand upon him,—something parallel to which goes
along with the “Fear not” of all the three cases just referred to (cf. Jer. i. 9); and
from the touch of that strengthening hand the Seer receives strength again, and
is set, no doubt, upon his feet once more (Ezek. i. 28; ii. 1, 2).
“I am the first
and the last.”—This prerogative is three times claimed for the Lord Jehovah in Isaiah
(xli. 4; xliv. 6; xlviii. 12); and in like
manner three times in this Book
(here, and ii. 8; xxii. 13). It is the expression of absolute Godhead:
“I am the
first and the last, and beside me there is no God” (Isai. xliv. 6). He is from
eternity to eternity, so that there is no room for any other. All creation comes
forth from Him (John i. 1-3), all creation returns to Him again, as from whom and
by whom and to whom are all things. Not the semi-Socinian expositors alone, as Grotius
and Wetstein, but others who lie under no such suspicion, Cocceius for instance,
and Vitringa, have here gone astray, making “first” to mean the
first in glory, and “last” the last in humiliation; “I am He who, being the foremost and first in
all honour, became the lowest and last in dishonour, sounding the lowest depths
of ignominy and shame.”This, which itself is true (Phil. ii. 7, 8),
is yet not the truth of this place. That truth is nobly expressed in the comment
of a medieval theologian, Richard of St. Victor, more than once quoted already:
“Ego sum primus
et novissimus. Primus per creationem, novissimus per retributionem. Primus, quia
ante me non est formatus Deus; novissimus, quia post me alius non erit. Primus,
quia a me sunt omnia; novissimus, quia ad me sunt omnia; a me principio, ad me finem.
Primus, quia Ego sum causa originis; novissimus, quia Ego judex et finis.”
Ver. 18. “I am
He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen.”—.Translate
rather, “And the living, and I became dead, and behold, I am living for evermore.”
Gain, as it appears to me, will thus accrue to every clause of the sentence. In
the first place, καὶ, connecting this verse so closely with the one preceding,
will have its rights, which are wholly overlooked in our Version. Then ὁ ζῶν expresses
not so much that He, the Speaker, “lived,” as that He was “the Living One,” the
Life (John i. 4; xiv. 6), αὐτοζωή, having life in Himself, and the fountain and
source of life to others. It is true that in one sense it is the exclusive prerogative
of the Father to have life in Himself, but a prerogative which He has communicated
with the Son (John v. 26); of Him too it may be said, in the words of the Psalmist,
παρὰ Σοὶ πηγὴ ζωῆς (Ps. xxxvi. 10, LXX.).
To Him belongs absolute being (ὄντως εἶναι),
as contrasted with the relative being of the creature, with the life which may be
no life, seeing that it inevitably falls under the dominion of corruption and death,
so soon as it is separated from Him, the source from which it was derived; for others
may share, but He only hath, immortality (1 Tim. vi. 16), being
οὐσίᾳ ἀθάνατος, οὐ μετουσίᾳ (Theodoret). All this is included in Christ’s assertion here of Himself
as ὅ ζῶν. Being
thus The Living One, He goes on to say, “I yet became (ἐγενόμην) dead; I the source of all life stooped even to
taste of death.” Such is the second clause, and then follows the glorious third.
“This state of death endured for Me but for an instant. I laid down my life that
I might take it again. I drank of the brook in the way, and therefore have I lifted
up my head (Ps. cx. 7); death having now in Me been so swallowed up in life, that
behold, I am living for evermore.”
“And have the keys of hell and of death.”—We
should read rather “of death and of hell,” for so all the best MSS. and Versions
have it, while the reading of our Translation inverts the natural and logical order;
for it is death which peoples hell or Hades; it is a king Death who makes possible
a kingdom of the dead (vi. 8; xx. 13, 14);
for by “hell,” or Hades, this invisible kingdom or dominion of the
dead is intended, and that in all its extent, not merely in one dark province of
it, the region assigned to the lost. Hengstenberg indeed affirms in his own
confident way that “death” here means the second death, and as a
consequence that “hell” or Hades, can mean only Gehenna; observing that in
the New Testament this second death is alone set forth as an object of fear. But
why is it that the other death, itself the outward sign and seal of God’s extreme
indignation against
sin, has ceased
to be an object of terror, has been robbed for the faithful of its sting? Why, except
for that fact which we find proclaimed in these words, namely, that the Son of God
has gone down into the dark realms of shadows and returned from it again—and not
this only, but returned from it a conqueror, having overcome death, and burst, like
another Samson (Judg. xvi. 3), the gates of the city of the grave which shut Him
in; and in pledge of this having the keys of both, the absolute Lord who opens and
shuts them at his will for all the children of men. For myself I cannot doubt, above
all when I look at the words which immediately go before, that Christ sets Himself
forth here as the overcomer of death natural; which it must always be remembered
is rather death unnatural; for man was made for immortality (Gen. ii. 17), and death
is the denial and reversal of the true law of his being (Rom. v. 12). He who is
the Prince of life is indeed but saying here what already He had been bold to say,
while the victory was yet unwon: “I am the Resurrection and the Life;” life, that
is, in conflict with death, and overcoming it. The keys are the emblems of authority
(cf. iii. 7); to have the keys is to have the power of Himself going in and out
as He pleases, of admitting and excluding, shutting up and delivering others: cf.
Deut. xxxii. 39, “I kill and I make
alive;” and 1 Sam. ii. 6. The
metaphor rests on the conception of Hades as a city with walls and gates; Christ
had spoken in his earthly life of the πύλαι Ἅιδου (Matt. xvi. 18; cf. Isai. xxxviii.
10; Job xxxviii. 17).
Let me express here, before leaving this subject, the regret
which all who have thoughtfully compared our Version with the original must feel
that the one word “hell” covers there two words of such difference in meaning
as ᾅδης and γέεννα, the first
“Sheol,” the gathering-place of all departed souls,
the second the λίμνη τοῦ πυρός of this Book (xix. 20; xx. 10), the final abode
of the lost. All must lament the manifold confusions which out of this have arisen;
the practical loss indeed among our people of any doctrine about Hades at all. I
have entered into this more at full elsewhere,On the Authorized Version of the New Testament, 2d edit. p. 20.
and have quite acknowledged the
difficulty of taking any other course, so that it is much easier to note the fault
than to suggest the remedy. The relations of ᾅδης
to γέεννα, and also to παράδεισος,
are well put in this extract from a funeral sermon of Jeremny Taylor: “The word
Αιδης signifies indefinitely the state of separation, whether blessed or accursed;
it means only ‘the invisible place,’ or the region of darkness, whither whoso descends
shall be no more
seen. For as among the heathens the Elysian fields and Tartara are both ἐν
Ἅιδου,As witness the lines of the comic poet:,
καὶ γὰρ καθ Ἅιδην δύο τρίβους νομίζομεν,
μίαν δικαίων, κατέραν ἀσεβῶν
ὁδόν.
so
among the Jews and Christians paradisus and gehenna
are the distinct states of Hades.”A little
work by König, Die Lehre von Christi Höllenfahrt, 1842, gives admirably the whole
teaching of Scripture, and in an historic sketch that of the Church, concerning
Hades.
Ver. 19. “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which
are, and the things which shall be hereafter.”—It is certainly a piece of carelessness
on the part of our Translators to have omitted, which none of the previous translators
had done, the οὖν (“Write therefore”),
about the right of which to a place in the text no question has been ever made.
With what intention the illative particle is used, is not so easy to determine;
perhaps it is best referred to what goes immediately before: “Seeing that
I am this mighty One, the first and last, who was dead and am alive, do thou
therefore write; for the things declared by Me are all steadfast and sure.”
Ver. 20. “The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right
hand, and of the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the Angels of the
seven Churches, and the seven candlesticks
which thou sawest are the seven
Churches.”—We may either regard the first sentence as governed by the
“Write” of
the verse preceding; so no doubt our Translators, who place only a comma at the
conclusion of that verse; or else, placing a full-stop there, regard these words
as a sort of nominative absolute, the statement of the “mystery,” or spiritual
riddle, of which the solution follows in the latter half of the verse. This distribution
seems to me certainly preferable to the other. A “mystery” in the constant language
of Scripture is something which man is capable of knowing, but only when it has
been revealed to him by God (Matt. xiii. 11; Rom. xi. 25; Ephes. vi. 19; 1 Cor.
xiii. 2), and not through any searching of his own. Thus, as has been well observed, μυστήριον
and ἀποκάλυψις are correlative terms (Rom. xvi. 25);
and as in the former clauses of the present verse there is the μυστήριον, so in the latter the ἀποκάλυψις μυστήριου.
From this, the revelation of the mystery, we learn that “the seven
stars are the Angels of the seven Churches.” In all the typical language of Scripture
stars are symbols of lordship and authority, ecclesiastical or civil. Thus a star
is the symbol of the highest dominion of all; “There shall come a star out of Jacob” (Num. xxiv. 7); and the actual birth of Him whom Balaam prophesied of here, is
announced by a star (Matt. ii. 2).
Faithful teachers
are stars that shall shine for ever (Dan. xii. 3); false teachers are wandering
stars (Jude 13), or stars which fall from heaven (Rev. viii. 10; vi. 13; xii. 4).
But “the Angels of the seven Churches” have given occasion to much
discussion and dispute; and only when we know exactly what they mean, shall we
feel perfectly sure that we have interpreted the “stars” aright; or rather that we have apprehended
aright the interpretation of them given here by the Spirit.
Some, then, have understood by the “Angels” the heavenly messengers who bear this name. They urge that often
elsewhere in this Book as the word “Angel” recurs, it is never in any other sense;
therefore that in these we are to recognize the guardian Angels over the several
Churches, “their Angels;” that if single persons had thus their Angels (Matt. xviii.
10; cf. Acts xii. 15), much more the same might be predicated of Churches (Dan.
xii. 1). Thus Origen (Hom. xiii. in Luc.): “Si
audacter expedit loqui Scripturarum sensum sequenti, per singulas Ecclesias bini
sunt Episcopi, alius visibilis, alius invisibilis; ille visui carnis, hic sensui
patens. Et quomodo homo, si commissam sibi dispensationem bene egerit, laudatur
a Domino, si male culpæ et vitio subjacet, sic et Angelus.” And again (Hom. xx. in Num.):
“Secundum ea quæ Johannes in Apocalypsi
scribit,
unicuique Ecclesiæ generaliter Angelus præest, qui vel collaudatur
pro bene gestis populi, vel etiam pro delictis ejus culpatur. In quo etiam
stupendi mysterii admiratione permoveor, quod intantum Deo cura de nobis est, ut
etiam Angelos suos culpari pro nobis et confutari patiatur. Sic enim cum
pædagogo traditur puer, si forte minus dignis, nec secundum paternam nobilitatem
imbutus appareat disciplinis, continuo culpa ad pædagogum refertur, nec ita puer
a patre ut pædagogus arguitur.” Cf. Jerome (In Mich. vi. 1, 2), who
has evidently copied this passage.
The preoccupation of an obvious objection is
in the words just quoted ingeniously attempted, but not successfully accomplished.
Indeed the objection is one which it is impossible to surmount: this, namely, How
could holy Angels be charged with such delinquencies as are laid to the charge of
some of the Angels here (ii. 4; iii. 1, 15)? See some good observations on this
point in Augustine (Ep. 43, § 22: “Angelo Ecclesiæ
Ephesi scribe; Quod si de Angelo superiorum cœ lorum, et non de præpositis
Ecclesiæ vellet intelligi, non consequenter diceret: Sed habeo adversum te, quod
caritatem primam reliquisti. Hoc de superioribius Angelis dici non potest, qui
perpetuam retinent caritatem, unde qui defecerunt et lapsi sunt, diabolus est et
angeli ejus.”
This then of the “Angels” meaning heavenly Angels may certainly be dismissed. Even all which
Alford has urged in its favour will be unable, I am persuaded, to procure any wide
acceptance for it. The Angel must be some person or persons in the Church on earth,
not one overlooking it from heaven. I say some person or persons, not as myself
thinking it possible that he can represent a plurality, but having in view explanations
which by some have been offered, and on which something will have to be said.
But
if some human person in the Church, who but the chief shepherd, in other words,
the bishop? To whom else would all which we here in these Epistles find ascribed
to the Angel apply? For myself, I cannot but think that the argument for the existence
of the episcopate in the later apostolic times, and that as a divinely recognized
institution, which may be drawn from the position of the Angels in the several Churches,
and from the language in which they are addressed, is exceedingly strong. Tile Angel
in each Church is one; but surely none can suppose for an instant that there was
only one presbyter, or other minister serving in holy things, for the whole flourishing
Church of Ephesus, or of Smyrna; and that we are in this way to account for the
single Angel of the several Churches. Thirty years before this time St. Paul
had uttered his parting words
at Miletus to the elders of the Ephesian Church (Acts xx. 17), and certainly addressed
them even then as many (ver. 25). Taking into account what we know of the spread
of the Christian faith in these parts daring the intermediate time, it is probable
that their number was at this time largely increased. And yet now, with this large
number of presbyters, there is only one Angel in each of these Churches. What can
he be but a bishop?—a bishop too with the prerogatives which we ascribe to one.
His preeminence cannot be explained away, as though he had been merely a ruling
elder, a primus inter pares, with only such authority and jurisdiction as the others,
his peers, may have lent him. For the great Bishop of souls who is here on his spiritual
visitation, every where holds the Angel responsible for the spiritual condition
of his Church; for the false teaching which he has not put down, for the false teachers
whom he has not separated from the communion of the faithful,—in short, for every
disorder in doctrine or discipline which has remained unrepressed. But Christ could
not so deal with them, could not charge them personally with these negligences
and omissions, unless upon the ground that they had been clothed with power and
authority sufficient to have prevented them, so that these
evils could only
have existed through their neglect and allowance.
By what has been just said it is not intended in the least to
affirm that bishops were commonly called Angels in the primitive Church, or
called so at all, except with a more or less conscious reference to the use of
the word in the Apocalypse. There is a certain mysteriousness, and remoteness
from the common language of men, in the adoption of this term, and such there is
intended to be. It belongs to the enigmatic symbolic character of the Book,
elevated in its language throughout above the level of daily life. Those to whom
this title is ascribed are herein presented to the Church as clothed with a
peculiar dignity, and are herein themselves reminded that they stand before One,
whose ministries of grace and love they should be swift to fulfil on earth, even
as those whose names they bear are swift to fulfil them in heaven. There is then
a certain, though very partial right in what Origen taught; and “Angel”
is a heavenly
title here; but a heavenly title which has been borrowed by earth, which has been
transferred and applied to men; a transfer not without its analogies in the Old
Testament (Eccles. v. 5; Mal. ii. 7; iii. 1); and rendered more easy by the fact
that Angel is a name not designating the personality, but the
office, of those heavenly beings
by whom it properly is borne.
It is not to be supposed that those who believe the
government of the Church to have been presbyterian at the first, and who see in
the episcopate a result of declension from apostolic purity, should accept these
conclusions. At the same time they are far from being at one in the ways by which
they have sought to evade the argument for primitive episcopacy which we believe
that we are here justified in finding.
Thus some affirm that the Angel represents
and stands for not any single person, but the whole body of the προεστῶτες, the
collective presbytery, contemplated and addressed not as many, but as one. So for
the most part the early anti-episcopal Protestants, Brightman for example; and even
Hengstenberg has not disdained to fall back on this unworthy subterfuge; the mere
statement of which involves its condemnation. Vitringa (De Synag. Vet. p. 911) with
more candour mentions this only to reject it, and finds a clear testimony here for
the superior dignity of one in these several Churches; though naturally the episcopate
which he thus recognizes, is of the mildest form, of the Usherian type; and Beza
in like manner glosses τῷ ἀγγέλῳ, i. e.
προεστῶτι; though, curiously enough,
he considers that the upgrowth of the tyrannous hierarchy of
Rome is evidence
sufficient that, however there were προεστῶτες in these apostolic Churches, it
was never intended of God that such should always continue in the Church.
But there is a poorer evasion even than this; which has lately
been revived by Ebrard. It rests on an entirely gratuitous assumption, on the
fiction, namely, that the seven Churches had sent their messengers to St. John
at Patmos, therefore called the “Angels,” or messengers (cf. Luke ix. 52)
“of the Churches.” These in these Epistles
are now successively addrest, that they may bring back his word, or rather the word
of Christ, to those Churches from which they had been deputed. But in answering
a letter by a messenger, you write by, you do not usually write to, him; nor is
it easy to see where is the correspondency between such messengers, subordinate
officials of the Churches, and stars; or what the mystery of the relation between
them then would be; or how the Lord should set forth as an eminent prerogative of
his, that He held the seven stars, that is, the seven messengers. in his right hand
(ii. 1). The scheme breaks down at every point, and among many lame and feeble shifts
must needs be regarded as the lamest and feeblest of all. I again repeat my conviction
that in these Angels we are to recognize the bishops of the several Churches. So
many difficulties, embarrassments,
improbabilities attend
every other solution, all which disappear with the adoption of this, while no others
rise in their room, that, were not other interests, often no doubt unconsciously,
at work, it would be very hard to understand how any could have ever arrived at
a different conclusion.
I will take the opportunity of a pause here between this,
the Introduction to the seven Epistles, and the seven Epistles themselves, to say
a few needful words on the mystery of the number seven; which only I have left unsaid
so long, because unwilling to interrupt the exposition by any thing in the shape
of a dissertation; not to say that I found it difficult to attach to any one of
those important sevens which have already occurred, considerations which properly
belonged to them all.
Even the most careless reader of the Apocalypse must be struck
with the manner in which almost every thing there is ordered by sevens. Thus, besides
the seven Churches, and their seven Angels, we have already in this first chapter
the seven Spirits (ver. 4), the seven candlesticks (ver. 12), the seven stars (ver.
16); and then further the seven lamps of fire (iv. 5), the seven seals (v. 1), the
seven horns and seven eyes of the Lamb (v. 6), the seven heavenly Angels and the
seven trumpets (viii. 2), the seven thunders (x. 3), the seven heads of the
dragon, and the
seven crowns upon these heads (xii. 3), the same of the beast rising out of the
sea (xiii. 1), the seven last plagues (xv. 1), the seven vials (xv. 7), the seven
mountains (xvii. 9), the seven kings (xvii. 10); not to speak of other recurrences,
not so obvious, of this number seven as the signature of the Book; as, for instance,
the distribution of it into seven visions, the sevenfold ascription of glory to
the Lamb (v. 12), and to God (vii. 12).
But indeed the recurrence, and, as I shall
seek to show, the symbolic dignity of the number seven runs through the whole of
Scripture from first to last,—to say nothing of the echoes of this sense of its
significance which abound in every religion of heathendom;”Die
alIgemeine Heiligkeit der Siebenzahl haben die Alten schon in allen Beziehungen
bemerkt.” Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. ii. p. 161, where
see a large collection of the literature on the subject.
and if it is more strongly
marked in the Apocalypse than in any other book of Scripture, it is only that this,
like so much else, has culminated here. Should it be asked, What is the special
significance, and what the sacredness and peculiar dignity of seven, of what is
it the signature, the answer is not very hard to give. A careful induction from
all the passages where this number cannot be regarded as fortuitous, but is evidently
of Divine ordinance and appointment (I call fortuitous such sevens as occur, Acts
xix. 14; xx. 6), will leave no
doubt that it claims throughont
Scripture to be considered as the covenant number, the sign and signature of God’s
covenant relation to mankind, and above all to that portion of mankind with which
this relation is not potential merely, but actual, namely the Church.
The evidences
of this reach back to the very beginning. We meet them first in the hallowing of
the seventh day, in pledge and token of the covenant of God with man (Gen. ii. 3;
cf. Ezek. xx. 12), as indeed in the binding up of seven in the very word Sabbath.It was therefore a true instinct of hatred against
a divine institution which led those who in the first French Revolution proclaimed
the abolition of the Christian religion, to make war also on the Christian week,
the distribution of time by sevens, and to substitute that by decades in its stead.
They felt that here was a witness for God in the world, a witness that He was the
measurer out of our times to us, which must not be allowed to survive.
So too circumcision, being the sign of a covenant, is accomplished on the eighth,
or after seven days (Gen. xvii. 12; Lev. xii. 3). And as seven is the signature
of God’s covenant with man, so of all man’s covenants with his fellows, resting
as these do and must, on the anterior covenant with God; thus of treaties of peace
(Gen. xxi. 20), of marriages (Judg. xiv. 12). Nor should it be left unnoticed that
the word seven is again bound up in the Hebrew word signifying an oath, or a covenant
confirmed with an oath. Seven
is the number of
sacrifice, by aid of which the covenant once established, is continually maintained
in its first vigour and strength, and the relations between God and man, which sin
is evermore disturbing, and threatening to bring to an end, are restored (2 Chron.
xxix. 21; Job xlii. 8; cf. Num. xxiii. 1, 14, 29). It is the number of purification
and consecration, as the fruits of the sacrifice (Lev. iv. 6, 17; viii. 11, 33;
xiv. 9, 51; xvi. 14, 19; Num. xix. 12, 19), of forgiveness (Matt. xviii. 21, 22;
Luke xvii. 4). Then, again, seven is the number of every grace and benefit bestowed
upon Israel; which is thus marked as flowing out of the covenant and a consequence
of it. The priests compass Jericho seven days, and on the seventh day seven times,
that all Israel may know that the city is given into their hands by their God; and
that its conquest is a direct and immediate result of their covenant relation to
Him (Josh. vi. 4, 15, 16). Naaman is to dip in Jordan seven times, that he may acknowledge
the God of Israel the author of his cure (2 Kings v. 10). It is the number of reward
to those that are faithful in the covenant (Deut. xxviii. 7; 1 Sam. ii. 5); of punishment
to those who are froward in the covenant (Lev. xxvi. 21, 24, 28; Deut. xxviii. 25;
2 Sam. xii. 8; xxiv. 13), or to those who injure the people in it (Gen. iv. 15,
24; Ps. lxxix. 12; Exod. vii. 25); or again of punishment, regarded in the
light of a making of amends,
a readjusting of the disturbed balances of justice, and so a restoring of harmony
between the sinner and the outraged law of God (Prov. vi. 31). All the feasts, as
must be obvious to every one, are ordered by seven, or else by seven multiplied
into seven (7 x 7), and thus made intenser still. Thus it is, not to recur again
to Sabbath, the mother of all feasts, with the Passover (Exod. xii. 15, 16), the
feast of weeks (Deut. xvi. 9), of tabernacles (Deut. xvi. 13, 15), the sabbath-year
(Lev. xxv. 2, 3; Deut. xv. 1), and the jubilee (Lev. xxv. 8).See
Philo, De Septenario, passim.
Further we may observe
that wherever God is at work in the history of other nations outside of the covenant,
while yet He would make it plainly to appear that it is for Israel’s sake, and
having respect to the covenant, that He is so working, this signature of seven
in his dealing with those nations is never wanting. Thus it is the number of the
years of plenty and of the years of famine, in sign that these were sent not so
much for Egypt’s sake, as for Israel’s, and as conducing to the divine preparation
through which the chosen people were to pass (Gen. xli. 26, 27). Seven times pass
over Nebuchadnezzar, that he may learn in his abasement how that the God of his
Jewish captives is indeed the King over all the earth (Dan. iv. 16, 23, 25).
But it would be
endless to go through all passages in proof; it would need to quote or refer to
a great part of Scripture. I prefer leaving to the student of God’s Word to fill
up the sketch which I have drawn, and to find for himself further confirmation of
what has been asserted here.
But if it should be further asked, Why has seven been
selected for this, what are the grounds of its adoption to this high dignity and
honour, the answer does not seem very far to seek. I am indeed aware that in all
speculations upon numbers we may very profitably lay to heart the wise caution of
Fuller,A Pisgah Sight of Palestine,
b. iii. c. 6.
clothed, as is ever the case with his wisdom, in witty words:
“For matter
of numbers fancy is never at a loss, like a beggar never out of his way, but hath
some haunts where to repose itself. But such as in expounding of Scripture reap
more than God did sow there, never eat what they reap thence, because such grainless
husks, when seriously threshed out, vanish all into chaff.” And yet I feel very
sure that in this matter we need not dread lest we should be threshing barren ears,
with only chaff for our pains.
To the question then asked above it may be replied
by first calling attention to the fact that the number seven results from the combination
of three and four. But can it be shown that these in Scripture
have severally any symbolic
significance of their own? Assuredly yes. Three, the signature of God; four, that
of the world; and thus seven, or these numbers brought into contact and relation,
the token and signature of the covenant between these two.
That three is the number
of God, of the ever-blessed Trinity, this of itself needs no proof And it is so recognized
in Scripture. There are vestiges of this in the Old Testament, in the Trisagion
of Isai. vi. 3; in the blessing as from three distinct persons, Num. vi. 24-26;
in the prominent position assumed there by the Angel of the Covenant, hereafter
to be acknowledged as the second Person of the Trinity, in the often mention not
of God, but the Spirit of God, hereafter to be acknowledged as the third (Gen. i.
2; Ps. li. 11). These footprints of the Trinity are purposely more or less obscure,
and only clear when they are read in the light of a later revelation; for the office
of the Church of the Old Testament was to guard the truth of the unity of the Godhead,
not to declare the Trinity; which indeed, so long as polytheism was not overcome,
but still had its roots even in the minds of the chosen people itself, could not
yet have been safely declared. Here is explanation amply sufficient, of the reserve
with which the number three is employed in the Old Testament as the signature
of Deity; the reason
why this is only perfectly plain and clear in the New.
Four, the next number to
three, and growing immediately out of it, is the signature of the world—of the
world, not indeed as a rude undigested mass, but as a κόσμος, as the revelation,
so far as nature can be the revelation, of God. Four is stamped every where on this
the organized world. Thus, not to speak of the four elements, the four seasons,
neither of which are recognized in Scripture, we have there the four winds (Ezek.
xxxvii. 9; Matt. xxiv. 31; Rev. vii. 1); the four corners of the earth (Rev. vii.
1; xx. 8); the four living creatures, emblems of all creaturely life (Rev. iv. 6),
and each of these with four faces and four wings (Ezek. i. 5, 6); the four beasts
coming up from the sea, and representing the four great world-empires which in the
providence of God should succeed one another (Dan. vii. 3); the four metals composing
the image which sets forth the same phases of empire (Dan. ii. 32, 33); the four
Gospels, or the foursided Gospel (εὐαγγέλιον τετράγωνον, as one called it of
old), in sign of its designation for all the world; the sheet tied at the four corners
(Acts x. 11; xi. 5);Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. ci.
Serm. iii.): “Discus qui quatuor lineis
continebatur orbis terrarum crat in quatuor partibus. Has quatuor partes sæpe
Scriptura commemorat, orientem et occidentem, aquilonem et meridiem. Ideo quia
totus orbis per Evangelium vocabatur, quatuor Evangelia conscripta sunt.”
the four horns, the sum total of the
forces of the world as arrayed
against the Church (Zech. i. 18); the enumeration, wherever this is wished to be
exhaustive, of the inhabitants of the world by four, kindreds, tongues, peoples,
and nations (Rev. v. 9; cf. vii. 9; x. 11; xi. 9; xiv. 6; xvii. 15).
There are reasons then amply sufficient why seven, being thus,
as it is, made up of three and four, should be itself the signature of the
covenant. No mere accident or caprice dictated the selection of it. And if this
number of the covenant, then we can account for its constant recurrence in this
Book; for admitting, as few would refuse to do, that the idea of God’s covenant
with his Church as the key to all history, comes to its head in the Apocalypse,
it is nothing wonderful that this Book should be more markedly ordered by seven,
and have this number stamped upon it even more strongly, than any other portion
of Scripture.On this whole subject
of the symbolic worth and dignity of numbers in Scripture, see Bahr, Symbolik des
Mos. Cultus, vol. i. pp. 128-209; and a good article by Kurtz, in the Theoll. Stud.
u. Krit. 1844, pp. 315-370.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF EPHESUS.
Rev. ii. 1-7.
Ver. 1. “Unto the
Angel of the Church of Ephesus write.”—Before proceeding to consider this
the first Epistle in the series, it may be well worth while to call the
attention of.the reader to the symmetry, to what we should call in human
composition, the remarkable art, to be traced in the construction of them all;
quite justifying the words of Henry More: “There never was a book penned
with that artifice as this of the Apocalypse.” They are all constructed
precisely on the same scheme. They every one of them contain—
α.
A command in exactly the same form to the Seer that he should write to the Angel
of the Church.
β. One or more glorious titles which Christ claims for Himself, as
adding weight and authority to the message which He sends; these titles being in
almost every case drawn more or less evidently
from the attributes ascribed to Him,
or claimed by Him, in the manifestation of Himself which has just gone before (i.
4-20).
γ. The actual message from Christ to the Angel of the Church, declaring his
intimate knowledge of its condition, good, or bad, or mixed, with a summons to steadfastness
in the good, to repentance from the evil—all this brought home by the fact that
He was walking up and down in the midst of his Churches, having in readiness to
punish, and having in readiness to reward.
δ. A promise to the faithful, to him
that should overcome—the heavenly blessedness being presented under the richest
variety of the most attractive, and often the most original, images.
ε. Finally,
the whole is summed up with an exhortation which shall give an universal character
to these particular addresses, a summons to every one with a spiritual ear that
he should give earnest heed to the things, which were indeed spoken to all. In the
addresses to the four last Churches the position of δ and ε is reversed.
On comparing
these Epistles one with another, we may observe that in two Churches, namely Smyrna
and Philadelphia, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls finds matter only for praise;
in two, Sardis and Laodicea, with very smallest exception in the former, only for
rebuke. In three
of the Churches,
in Ephesus, Pergamum, and Thyatira, the condition is a mixed one, so that with some
things to praise, there are also some, more in one, fewer in another, to condemn.
It will thus be perceived at once what far-looking provision is made in the selection
of these particular Churches to be addressed, as in the scheme of the addresses
to them, for the most varied instructions; for reproof, for praise, for reproof
and praise mingled together and tempered by one another; for promises and threatenings.
The spiritual condition of the several Churches gives room and opportunity, nay,
constitutes a necessity, for each and all of these.
Ephesus, the chief city of Ionia, “Asiæ lumen,” πρώτη τῆς Ἀσίας, as the Ephesians themselves styled it, asserting
in this style for Ephesus that primacy which Smyrna and Pergamum disputed with it,
had now so far outstripped both its competitors that it was at once the civil and
ecclesiastic centre of that Asia with which we have to do. Wealthy, prosperous,
and magnificent, a meeting-place of oriental religions and Greek culture, and famous
on many grounds in heathen antiquity, it was chiefly famous for the celebrated temple
of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world, about which we read so much, Acts
xix. (cf. Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. ii. p. 515). But Ephesus had better titles of
honour than these. It was a greatly
favoured city. St. Paul laboured
there during three years (Acts xx. 31); he ordained Timothy to be bishop there (1
Tim. i. 3; cf. Eusebius, H. E. iii. 4); Aquila, Priscilla, Apollos (Acts xviii.
19, 24, 26), Tychicus (Ephes. vi. 21), all contributed to build up the Church in
that city. And if we may judge from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, and from
his parting address to the elders of that Church (Acts xx. 17-38)
nowhere does the word of the Gospel seem to have found a kindlier soil, to have
struck root more deeply, or to have borne fairer fruits of faith and love. St.
John too had made it the chief seat of his ministry, his metropolis, during the
closing years of his protracted life; from whence he exercised a wide, though
not wholly unquestioned, jurisdiction (see 3 Ep. 9, 10) over the whole of
“Asia.” How early that ministry
there began it is impossible to say, The date of his withdrawal from Jerusalem being
itself uncertain, and uncertain also whether he at once chose Ephesus for the middle
point of his spiritual activity. From a Church to which so much was given, much
would be required. How far it had profited as it ought by these signal advantages,
how far it had maintained itself at those spiritual heights to which it had once
attained, will presently be seen.
“These things saith He that holdeth the seven
stars in his right
hand.”—The title is borrowed from i. 16:
“He had in his right hand seven stars;”
cf. i. 20, where “the mystery of the seven stars” is unfolded. It is only when
all the titles furnished by chap. i. 4-20 are exhausted, that the Lord seeks them
from any other quarter. At the same time there is a significant alteration here.
At i. 16 it is ὁ ἔχων,
“He that hath;” here more emphatically it is ὁ κρατῶν,
“He that holdeth.” The variation is not without intention; ὁ κρατῶν (cf. ii.
25; iii. 11) is stronger than ὁ ἔχων,
“He
that holdeth” than “He that hath.” He holds these stars in his grasp,—words full of comfort for them, if only they
are true to Him; none shall pluck them out of his hand (John x. 28), none shall
harm them in the delivery of their message (Matt. x. 30; Acts xviii. 9, 10); or
if the malice of their enemies is so far permitted that they are able to kill the
body, they shall only in this way prepare for them an earlier and a speedier passage
to glory (Acts vii. 56, 60; Rev. xi. 7, 12); but words which are full of fear for
the unfaithful, for the idol shepherds (Zech. xi. 17), who feed themselves and not
the flock (Ezek. xxxiv. 1-10). Them too He holds in his grasp, and none can deliver
then from his hand.
“Who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.”—“Who walketh” is new. The Seer
had indeed already beheld the Lord “in the midst of the seven candlesticks”
(i. 13), but not “walking” in their midst,
the word expressing the unwearied activity of Christ in his Church (cf. Lev. xvi.
12), moving up and down in the midst of it; beholding the evil and
the good; evermore trimming and feeding with oil of grace the golden lamps of
the sanctuary. Marckius: “Ad innuendam clarius
perpetuitatem actûs et curam Christi contra conatus oppositos Satanæ.” It is impossible not to admire the appropriateness of these titles, expressing
as they do the broader and more general relations of Christ to his Church, for the
first Epistle in this series; which constitutes, as this and a thousand other tokens
declare, not an accidental aggregate, but a divinely-ordered complex, with all its
parts mutually upholding and sustaining one another.
Ver. 2. “I know thy works.”—This
is a formula which introduces all the seven Epistles. “Works” therefore are not,
as some interpreters would understand them, good works; for Christ uses this language
where there were no works which He could count good (iii. 15); as little are they
bad works (iii. 8); but the word is used with the same freedom here as in other
parts of Scripture, now for those (John vii. 21; 1 Cor. iii. 14); and now for these
(1 Cor. iii. 15; Tit. i. 16).
“I know thy
works “has another
intention than to express either praise or blame. It declares rather the omniscience
of Him who walks up and down among the candlesticks of gold, whom nothing escapes
(Amos iv. 13; Ps. xi. 4, 5; John ii. 24, 25;
Heb. iv. 13; Rev. ii. 23; Acts i.
24; xv. 8); being words of comfort and strength for all them who, amid infinite
weaknesses, are yet able to say, “Search me, O Lord, and know my heart; try me,
and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me” (Ps. cxxxix. 23,
24), or with St. John, “Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love
Thee” (John xxi. 17); but words of fear for every one who would fain keep back
any thing in his outer or inner life from the Lord. All is open and manifest before
Him with whom we have to do; and this in these words He declares.
“And thy labour
and thy patience.”—There was an earlier Angel of this same Church of Ephesus, on
whom St. Paul had urged that he should not fail in this labour and patience (2 Tim.
ii. 25, 26); and Christ’s commendation here shows that the holy lesson had been
laid to heart by him who had now stept into his place, The κόπος, occasioned probably
by the earnest resistance which it was necessary to oppose to the false teachers
in the Ephesian Church, would naturally fall chiefly on the bishop and presbyters—above
all, on the first.—Κόπος and κοπιάω are frequently
used in reference both to apostolic and ministerial labours (Rom. xvi. 12; 1 Cor.
xv. 10; Gal. iv. 11); κόπος, often in connexion with
μόχθος (1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8; 2 Cor. xi. 27); the latter perhaps marking the toil on the side of
the magnitude of the obstacles which it has to surmount, as the derivation μόγις,
and the possible connexion with μέγας, seems to suggest (Ellicott); the former
alluding to the toil and suffering which in these labours strenuously and faithfully
performed is involved. For indeed this word κόπος, signifying as it does not merely
labour, but labour unto weariness, may suggest some solemn reflections to every
one who at all affects to be working for his Lord, and as under his great taskmaster’s
eye. This is what Christ looks for, this is what Christ praises, in his servants.
But how often does labour, which esteems itself labour for Him, stop very short
of this, take care that it shall never arrive at this point; and perhaps in our
days none are more tempted continually to measure out to themselves tasks too light
and inadequate, than those to whom al office and ministry in the Church has been
committed. Indeed, there is here to them an ever-recurring temptation, and this from
the fact that they do for the most part measure out their own day’s task to themselves.
Others in almost every
other calling have
it measured out to them; if not the zeal, earnestness, sincerity which they are
to put into the performance of it, yet at any rate the outward limits, the amount
of time which they shall devote to it, and often the definite amount of it which
they shall accomplish. Not so we. We give to it exactly the number of hours which
we please; we are for the most part responsible to no man; and when labourers thus
apportion their own burdens, and do this from day to day, how near the danger that
they should unduly spare themselves, and make their burdens far lighter than they
should have been. We may well keep this word κόπος, and all that it signifies,
namely labour unto weariness, in mind; and remember ever that it is this which the
Lord praises and allows.
“And how thou canst not bear them which are evil.”—Christ
has good things to say of the Church of Ephesus, and He, who rejoices in the truth,
dwells on these good things first. It is well worth while to observe here the graciousness
of the Lord, that He puts thus in the foremost place all which He can find to approve;
and only after this has received its mead of praise, notes the shortcomings which
He is also compelled to rebuke. Many graces had decayed at Ephesus; of this we may
be sure; seeing that the grace of all graces, namely love, had decayed (ver. 4);
but in the midst of this decay
there survived an earnest hatred
of certain evildoers and evil deeds. The κακοί here are not exactly equivalent
to the κακοὶ ἐργάται of Phil. iii. 2. These last are the
prominent workers of
mischief in the Church, false apostles, false prophets, and the like; but the κακοί
will include the whole rabble of evil-doers as well. It is not a little remarkable
that the grace or virtue here ascribed to the Angel of the Ephesian Church and still
more strongly at ver. 6, should have a name in classical Greek, μισοπονηρία (Plutarch,
Quom. Am. ab Adul. 12), the person of whom the grace is predicated being μισοπόνηρος,
while neither of these words, nor yet any equivalent to them, occurs in the New
Testament. Φιλάγαθος it has (Tit. i. 8), but nowhere, μισοπόνηρος, nor any adequate
substitute for it. It is the stranger, as this hatred of evil, purely as evil, however
little thought of, or admired now, is eminently a Christian grace (Rom. xii. 9;
cf. Ps. cxxxix. 21). The sphere in which the Angel of Ephesus had the chief opportunity
of manifesting this holy intolerance of evil-doers was, no doubt, that of Church-discipline,
separating off from fellowship with the faithful those who named the name of Christ,
yet would not depart from iniquity (2 Tim. ii. 19). The infirmities, even the sins,
of weak brethren, these are burdens which we may, nay, which we are commanded to,
bear (cf. Gal. vi.
2, where the
same word βαστάζειν is used); it is otherwise with
false brethren (Ps. cxix. 115; cix. 21, 22; 1 Cor. v. 11).
“And thou hast tried them which say they are apostles,
and are not, and hast found them liars.”—We translate by the same word the πειράζειν
here and the δοκιμάζειν of 1 John iv. 1. What this Angel at Ephesus had done, and
effectually done, St. John there bids those to whom he is writing that they should
do, namely, prove the spirits of those who came to them claiming to teach as with
authority, and to bring a direct message from God (cf. 1 Thess. v. 21; 1 Tim. iv.
1). The touchstone which he there gives, the Ithuriel’s spear which should compel
each heretic to start up and show himself in his proper shape, is the acknowledgment
or denial that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh (ver. 2, 3). At the same time
we must not regard this as so absolutely the touchstone, but that other times and
other conditions of the Church might demand other tests. Thus, in the fourth century
and during the Arian conflict the Homoousion was that by which the spirits were
to be tried. And when our Lord, warning against false prophets, lays down this rule,
“Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matt. vii. 16), He adds a further test by
which all such may be detected. By what methods the Angel of this Church had tried
these pretenders to
the apostolate, and discovered
the falsehood of their claims, we are not told; but probably by a union of both
these tests. If these false prophets were, as is generally assumed, the chiefs and
leaders of the Nicolaitan wickedness, which is presently named by its name (ver.
6), then doctrinally he will have tried them by the touchstone of Christ’s true
humanity, whether they would confess this or deny it;—we may be sure that they had
that in common with all other Gnostics, which led them to the denial of it;—and
practically, by the fruits which they bore; which, being works of shame and darkness,
avouched that the workers of them were not, and could not be, sent of Him who is
Light, and in whom is no darkness at all. And even were they not precisely identical
with the Nicolaitans, on which there will be something to say at ver. 6, these tests
would not the less effectually have accomplished this work.
We must not press the word “apostles,” as though it implied a claim on their parts to have seen and been
immediately sent by the Lord Jesus Christ, which was necessary for an Apostle in
the highest sense of the word (Acts i. 21, 22; 1 Cor. ix. 1),
nor even by the mother Church at Jerusalem. It was now too late for either. St.
John alone of living men could claim the first prerogative, and Jerusalem had
long ago been destroyed. As little are these “which say they are apostles” identical in
the actual form
of their resistance to the truth with those “false apostles, deceitful workers,”
who every where sought to hinder the labours of St. Paul, and every where denied
the apostolic authority which he claimed (2 Cor. x. 11). Those and these had indeed
this in common, that they alike opposed the truth; but those were Judaizers, seeking
to bring back the ceremonial law and the obligations of it, see Acts xv. 1, and
Galatians, passim; these do not judaize, but heathenize, seeking to throw off every
yoke, to rid themselves not of the ceremonial law only, but also of the moral; and
to break down every distinction separating the Church from a world lying in the
wicked one.This intolerance of error, this resolution to hold fast
the precious deposit of the truth, to suffer nothing to be added to it, nothing
to be taken from it, nothing to be altered in it, was still the mark and glory of
the Ephesian Church at a date somewhat later than this. It is a remarkable testimony
to this which Ignatius, writing not many years after, bears, and it admirably agrees
with the testimony which the Lord Himself bears here to its zeal for doctrinal purity
(ad Ephes. vi.):
αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν Ὀνήσιμος ὑπερεπαινεῖ ὑμῶν τὴν ἐν Θεῷ εὐταξίαν,
ὅτι ἐν ὑμῖν οὐδεμία αἵρεσις κατοικεῖ· ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ ἀκούετέ τινος πλέον
ἤπερ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ λαλοῦντος ἐν ἀληθείᾳ.
And again, c. ix. ἔγνων δὲ παροδεύσαντάς τινας ἐκεῖθεν, ἔχοντας κακὴν διδαχήν· οὃς οὐκ εἰάσατε
σπεῖραι εἰς ὑμᾶς, βύσαντες τὰ ὦτα, εἰς τὸ μὴ παραδέξασθαι τὰ σπειρόμενα
ὑπ᾽ αὐτῶν.
Ver. 3. “And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name’s sake
hast laboured, and hast
not fainted.”—There is a good deal of filling up by
transcribers here, and more than one phrase to be omitted. The following version
will represent more truly the original as it stands in the best critical
editions: “And hast patience, and didst bear for my name’s sake, and hast
not grown weary.” It is not hard to see the inducements which led transcribers in
the last clause of the verse to change καὶ οὐ κεκοπίακες into
κεκοπίακας καὶ οὐ κέκμηκας.
They took the verb κοπιάω only in the sense of
“to labour;” but
how could it be said in praise of the Ephesian Angel that he had not laboured; above
all when his κόπος only one verse before was the especial object of the Lord’s
commendation, as indeed it is throughout the Epistle? so they changed the word
to what we have in the received text and in our Version; “thou hast laboured, and
hast not fainted.” But κοπιάω is not only to labour, but implying, as we have
seen it does, strenuous and exhausting labour, will often mean farther, to grow
weary with labour (thus John iv. 6; Matt. xi. 28: κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι);
and it is this for which the Lord here praises the Angel and in him the Church at
Ephesus, that it had borne the burden and heat of a long day’s toil without fainting
under, or waxing weary of it. This recurrence to the κόπος of the verse preceding
is very instructive, though it is hard, if not impossible, to reproduce it
in English. “Thou
knowest what κόπος is, without knowing what κοπιᾶν is;” and that this is not
accidental seems evident from the exactly similar recurrence of βαστάζειν in both
verses; “There are things which thou canst not bear, and things which thou canst
bear; thou canst not bear the wicked, such false brethren as name the name of Christ
only to bring shame upon it; thou hast something of the spirit of him who declared,
‘He that telleth lies shall not tarry in my sight’ (Ps. ci. 10), but thou canst bear
my reproach, my cross;” cf. Luke xiv. 27, where the same word βαστάζειν is used
as here; so also John xix. 17. Wetstein: “Eleganter opponuntur:
οὐ δύνῃ βαστάσαι
et ἐβάστασας.
Ferre potes molestias propter Christum et vexationes; at non potes ferre
pseudapostolos.”
Ver. 4. “Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because
thou hast left thy first love.”—“Ἔχω κατὰ σοῦ: cf. for the same phrase Matt.
v. 23; Mark xi. 25; and for a similar, Col. iii. 13. This is one of three occasions
(see ver. 14, 20) on which Christ has
to make a like exception, and to dash his praise with blame. In neither,
however, of the other cases is the blame so severe as here, the “somewhat,”
which appears in part to mitigate the severity of this judgment, having nothing
corresponding with it in the original. It is indeed not a “somewhat,” which the Lord has against the
Ephesian Church; it threatens to
grow to be an “every thing;” for see the verse following, and compare 1 Cor. xiii.
1-3. The great passage on “first love” is Jer. ii. 2:
“I remember thee, the kindness
of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the
wilderness, in a land that was not sown,”—words which set forth the first warmth of gratitude,
the first devotion of heart on the part of Israel to its Redeemer and Lord (Exod.
xiv. 31; xv. 1), when it seemed as if the flood-tides of a thankful
love would never ebb, but would bear it triumphantly over every obstacle which
it might meet in its path. Such a “first love” of the Bride to the heavenly Bridegroom, and in Him to
all that are his, dwelt largely in the Ephesian Church when St. Paul wrote his Epistle
to it; he gives God thanks for their love unto all the saints (i. 15);
he draws
them without a misgiving into the deepest mysteries of human love and divine (v.
23-33). The suggestion that this leaving of the first love can refer to the abating
of any other love but that to God and Christ, grows out of an entire ignorance of
the whole spiritual life, the ways by which it travels, and the dangers to which
it is inevitably exposed, and which, alas! only too often prove fatal to it.
On
the question, When the Apocalypse was composed, we have a certain amount of implicit
evidence here,
in this reproach with which the Lord reproaches the Ephesian Angel; such as has
its value in confirming the ecclesiastical tradition which places it in the reign
of Domitian, as against the more modern view which assumes it to have been written
in the time of Nero. It has been well observed that in St. Paul’s Epistle to the
Church of Ephesus there are no signs, nor even presentiments, of this approaching
spiritual declension with which the great Searcher of hearts upbraids it here. Writing
to no Church does he treat of higher spiritual mysteries. There is no word in the
Epistle of blame, no word indicating dissatisfaction with the spiritual condition
of his Ephesian converts. He warns them, indeed, in his parting charge given at
Miletus of dangers threatening them no less from within than from without (Acts
xx. 29, 30); but no word indicates that they by any fault of theirs were laying
themselves open to these. Those who place the Apocalypse in the reign of Nero hardly
allow ten years between that condition and this—too brief a period for so great and
mournful a change. It is inconceivable that there should have been such a letting
go of first love in so brief a time. No: that which we have here described marks,
as Hengstenberg has excellently said, the rise of another generation—a condition
analogous to that of the children of Israel, when Joshua and
the elders who had seen the great
wonders in Egypt were gathered to their fathers (Josh. xxiv. 31). With their departure
another order of things commences. A second generation rises up rather with the
traditions of earnest religion; than the living power of it. The forms, which were
once instinct with life, still survive; but the life itself has, not indeed altogether,
but in good part, departed from them. Place the Apocalypse under Domitian, and thirty
years will have intervened since St. Paul wrote his Epistle to Ephesus—exactly
the period which we require, exactly the life of a generation; the outlines of
the truth are still preserved; but the truth itself is not for a second
generation what it was for the first; apparently there is nothing changed; while
yet in fact every thing is changed. How often has something of this kind
repeated itself in the Church.There is a passage in Bishop Burnet’s History of his own Times, which has always
seemed to me to throw considerable light on this picture of the Ephesian Church,
active, zealous of good works, resolute to maintain a form of sound words, the truth
once delivered, and yet with its inner principle of love so far decayed. He is describing
the state of the Protestant communities of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, and
of the French Protestant refugees who had found shelter among them’ from the dragonades,
the “mission bottée” as it is so facetiously called by some Roman Catholic writers,
of Louis XIV. His words, written in the year 1680, are as follows: “I was indeed
amazed at the labours and learning of the ministers among the Reformed. They understood the Scriptures well in the original
tongues, they had all the points of controversy very ready, and did thoroughly understand
the whole body of divinity. In many places they preached every day, and were almost
constantly employed in visiting their flock. But they performed their devotions
but slightly, and read their prayers, which were too long, with great precipitation
and little zeal. Their sermons were too long and too dry. And they were so strict,
even to jealousy, in the smallest points in which they put orthodoxy, that one who
could not go into all their notions, but was resolved not to quarrel with them,
could not converse much with them with any freedom.” Speaking of the French refugees
from the dragonades, he says: “Even among them there did not appear a
spirit of piety and devotion suitable to their condition, though persons who
have willingly suffered the loss of all things rather than sin against their
consciences, must be believed to have a deeper principle in them, than can well
be observed by others.”
Ver. 5. “Remember
therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.”—There
are ever goads in the memory of a better and a nobler past, goading him who has
taken up with meaner things and lower, and urging him to mlake what he has lost
once more his own; as, to take an extreme instance, it is the prodigal’s recollection
of the bread enough and to spare in his father’s house, which makes the swine’s
husks and the famine even among them, so intolerable to him. And therefore is it
that this Ephesian Angel is bidden to remember the glorious heights of grace, the
heavenly places whereon, though yet on earth, he once walked with Christ during
the fervency of his first
love. Perhaps the desire shall thus be kindled in him to scale
these heights again. In this “from whence thou
art fallen,” an allusion may possibly lie to Isai. xiv. 12,
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.”—“And, as thou rememberest, repent,
and do the first works.” Christ does not say “Feel thy first feelings;”
that perhaps would have been impossible, and even if possible, might have had
but little value in it; but “Do the first works,” such as thou didst in the time of thy first devotedness
and zeal. Not the quantity, but the quality, of his works was now other and worse
than once it had been.
“Or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy
candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.”—The “quickly” is wanting in
most MSS., and has probably found its way here from ver. 16; iii. 11; xxii. 7, 12,
20. The removing of the candlestick from a place implies the entire departure of
Christ’s grace, of his Church with all its blessings, from that spot, with the transfer
of it to another; for it is removal of the candlestick, not extinction of the candle,
which is threatened here—judgment for some, but that very judgment the occasion
of mercy for others. And so it has been. The Churches of Asia are now no more, or
barely and hardly exist; but the grace of God, withdrawn from them, has been bestowed
elsewhere. The seat
of the Church
has been changed, but the Church itself still survives. The candlestick has been
removed, but the candle has not been quenched; and what the East has lost the West
has gained. How awful the fulfilment of the threat has been in regard of Ephesus
every modern traveller thither has borne witness. One who lately visited the place
found only three Christians there, and these sunk in such ignorance and apathy as
scarcely to have heard the names of St. Paul or St. John.
Ver. 6. “But this thou
hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.”—Very beautiful
is the tenderness of the Lord in thus bringing forward a second time some good thing
which He had found at Ephesus. Having been compelled to speak sharp severe words,
He yet will not leave off with these; but having wounded, He will, so far as it
is safe to do so, also heal.On this mingling of praise, so far as truth
will allow, with the necessary blame, and the leaving off not with blame, but
with praise, Plutarch has much to say in his delightful treatise, “How to discern
a Flatterer from a Friend,” which is full of instruction on the true spirit of Christian
rebuke. On this, which the Lord so notably practises here, namely the not leaving
off with rebuke, but if possible with praise, he beautifully says (c. 37):
Ἐπεὶ τοίνυν, ὥσπερ εἴρηται, πολλάκις
ἡ παῤῥησία τῷ θεραπευομένῳ λυπηρὰ ὑπάρχει, δεῖ μιμεῖσθαι τοὺς
ἰατρούς. οὔτε γὰρ ἐκεῖνοι τέμνοντες, ἐν τῷ πονεῖν καὶ ἀλγεῖν καταλείπουσι
τὸ πεπονθὸς, ἀλλ᾽ ἐνέβρεξαν προσηνῶς καὶ κατῃόνησαν· οὄτε οἱ
νουθετοῦντες ἀστείως, τὸ πικρὸν καὶ δηκτικὸν προσβαλόντες ἀποτρέχουσιν,
ἀλλ᾽ ὁμιλίαις ἑτέραις καὶ λόγοις ἐπιεικέσιν ἐκπρανουσι καὶ
διαχέουσιν. Cf. c. xxxiii.
It is no small
praise to love that which Christ
loves, and to hate that which Christ hates, and this praise the Lord will not withhold
from the Angel of Ephesus.
But the Nicolaitans, whose deeds were the object of the
earnest hate of Christ’s servant, as also of his own, who were they? It is not an
easy question to answer. Was there, in the first place, any sect existing at the
time when these words were uttered, which actually bore this name? I am disposed
to think there was not. The other names of this Book, Egypt, Babylon, Sodom, in
agreement with its apocalyptic character, are predominantly mystical and symbolic;
and in all probability this is so as well; while the key to the right understanding
of it is given us at ii. 14, 15;
where those “that hold the doctrine of Balaam” (ver. 14)
are evidently identical with those “that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans”
(ver. 15). We are here set upon the
right track. It is probable that we hardly rate high enough the significance of
Balaam as an Anti-Moses, and therefore as an Antichrist, in the Old Testament.
But without entering more into this, it may be observed that his name, according
to the best etymology, signifies “Destroyer of the people” (“qui absorpsit populum,” from בֶלַע and עָם),
and Νικόλαος
(νικᾶν τὸν λαόν) is no more than a grecizing
of this name,—such
alternation, or duplication, presenting a word, now in its Greek, now in its Hebrew
aspect, being altogether in the character of the Book, Greek in language, but Hebrew
in form and spirit, and several times recurring in it; thus, Ἀπολλύων and
Ἀβαδδών
(ix. 11);
Διάβολος and Σατανᾶς
(xii. 9; xx. 2);
ναί and ἀμήν (i. 7). The genesis
of the name, which, so understood, will almost exactly correspond to Armillus (=
ἐρημόλαος), the name by which the final Antichrist, who shall seduce the Christians
to their ruin, is known among the Jews (see Eisenmenger, Entd. Judenth. ii. 705,
sqq.), may be accounted for in this way. The Nicolaitans, as we have seen, are the
Balaamites; no sect bearing the one name or the other; but those who in the New
Dispensation repeated the sin of Balaam in the Old, and sought to overcome or destroy
the people of God by the same temptations whereby Balaam had sought to overcome
them before. But it was into the fleshly sins of heathenism that he had sought to
lead them, to introduce these among the people of God, to draw them to eat idol
meats and to commit fornication (Num. xxv. 1-9; xxxi. 16); and this the leading
character of his wickedness must be also of theirs.
The Nicolaitans then, or Balaamites, are no sect that in early
times bore one of these names or the other; but those who after the pattern of
Balaam’s
sin sought to introduce a false freedom;
the freedom of the flesh, into the Church of God. These were the foremost tempters
of the Church in the later apostolic times when the Apocalypse was written, and
in the times immediately succeeding. The first great battle which the Church had
to fight was with Jewish legalism; this came to its head historically, and found
its condemnation, in the Council of Jerusalem (Acts xv. 1-31), dogmatically in St.
Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, those who refused to accept the Church’s decisions
on the matter gradually forming themselves more and more into a schismatical heretical
body, not any longer within, but henceforth without, the Church’s pale. But this
danger overcome, St. Paul lived to see before the close of his ministry the rise
of another, of exactly the opposite error—that, namely, of heathen false freedom
and libertinism; while in the later writings of the New Covenant, in the Epistle
of St. Jude, in the second of St. Peter, and in the Apocalypse of St. John we find
these libertine errors full blown. They all speak of lawless ones (2 Pet. ii. 16),
who abused St. Paul’s doctrine of grace (iii. 16), who promised liberty to others,
being themselves the servants of corruption (ii. 19), who turned the grace of God
into lasciviousness (Jude 4); or, as these Nicolaitans, would fain entice the servants
of God to eat idol meats and commit fornication. It
is not indeed
a little remarkable, as attesting the identity of those whose works the Lord here
declares that He hates with them whom his Apostles denounce, that Balaam, whose
name as we have seen is the key-word to the name which these Nicolaitans bear, and
to the works which they do, is set ftorth both by St. Peter (ii. 15) and St. Jude
(ver. 11) as the seducer in whose path of error these later seducers were themselves
running and persuading others to run.
But it may be urged against this view of the
matter that we find actual Nicolaitans in the second century. Doubtless we do so.
That there existed in the second and third centuries a sect of antinomian Gnostics,
who bore this name, has been denied by some; but on grounds quite insufficient. Irenæus (i. xxvi. 3) is probably in error when he makes the founder of this sect
to have been Nicolas, the proselyte of Antioch, of whom such honourable mention
is made in the Acts (vi. 3, 5); and who, if this were true, must afterwards have
miserably fallen away from the faith; while yet the fault of Irenæus is probably
no more than that he too lightly admitted the claim which they made to Nicolas,
as the author of their heresy. It is certainly difficult to see what authority any
statement of his would retain with us, if we felt at liberty to set aside his distinct
assertion of such a sect as existing in his own time.
But still more explicit are the
references made to them by Tertullian (De Præsc. Hær. 46). It cannot be said
of him, as it sometimes is of Irenæus, that he knows nothing about them except
what he has drawn from these passages of Scripture; for he gives an account of
their doctrines, not merely libertine, but Gnostic, at considerable length. Clement
of Alexandria also (Strom. ii. 20) speaks without hesitation of the Nicolaitans
(οἱ φάσκοντες ἑαυτοὺς Νικολάῳ ἕπεσθαι) as a body existing in his day; and compare
iii. 4, where he records their unbridled excessive lusts. He indeed entirely acquits
Nicolas the deacon from having had any share in the authorship of this heresy,
giving no credit to this boasted genealogy of theirs. The Apostolic Constitutions
(vi. 8) do the same. With such distinct notices of Nicolaitans existing in the second
century, it seems a piece of unwarranted scepticism to deny the historic existence
of such a sect. At the same time, there is no need to suppose that they were the
spiritual descendants of actual Nicolaitans, of libertines I mean, bearing this
name, in the times of the Apostle. Rather, springing up at a later day, one of the
innumerable branches of the Gnostic heresy, they assumed this name which they found
ready made for them in the Apocalypse.The fullest collection of all
passages of antiquity bearing on the Nicolaitans which I know is to be found in
Stern’s
Commentar über die Offenbarung,
1854, pp. 141-145.
It may seem indeed,
at the first showing, almost inconceivable that a sect, professing to stand even
in the remotest relation to Christianity, should appropriate to itself a name so
branded with infamy as in Holy Scripture is this. But we must remember that with
many of the Gnostics this was a relation of absolute and entire opposition to nearly
all of the Scripture; and the history of these daring fighters against God would
supply many parallel instances of blasphemous impiety. Thus, not to speak of the Ophites, there were the Cainites (Tertullian indeed identifies them and the Nicolaitans,
De Præsc. Hær. 33), all whose saints and heroes were those whom the
Scripture had marked with deepest reprobation, the list beginning with Cain and
ending with Judas Iscariot (Tertullian, De Præsc. Hær. 47). When too we keep in mind the intense
antagonism of the antinomian Gnostics to John as a judaizing Apostle, contradistinguished
from Paul, who with their own Marcion was to sit, Paul on the right hand, and Marcion
on the left hand, of Christ in his kingdom, being those for whom this was reserved
of the Father (Matt. xx. 23; Origen, in Luc. Hom. 25), assuredly there will seem
nothing strange that a name which John branded with worst dishonour, they who gloried
in
their shame should assume as one
of chiefest honour;—just as in an infidel publication of the present day which
has sometimes come under my eye, there are letters signed in blasphemous earnest
with the signature of “Antichrist.”
One point still remains. Is the hating the deeds of the
Nicolaitans of this verse identical with not being able to “bear them which
are evil” of ver. 2? or, being a grace growing out of the same holy impatience of
evil, is there for all this a certain difference between them, so that while that
was rather a hatred of error in doctrine, of departure from the faith once delivered,
an unmasking of them that said they were apostles, and were not, this is more a
hatred of evil done, of the deeds of the Nicolaitans? In other
words, is the Lord here recurring to the good thing which He has already found
and praised in Ephesus? or is this new praise, and the recognition of a further
grace? Most expositors take for granted that Christ here returns to the praise
which He has already uttered, that the Nicolaitans therefore are identical with
“them that are evil” of the
former verse. I cannot think it; but must see here not the repetition of praise
bestowed before, which seems somewhat flat, but a further merit which Christ is
well pleased to find and to acknowledge in his Church at Ephesus. The deeds of the Nicolaitans
were, no doubt,
the crowning wickedness
there, the bitter fruit growing out of that evil root of false doctrine; but whether
in root or fruit this evil was equally hated by the Angel and Church of Ephesus.
Ver. 7. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.”—These
words recur in each of the Epistles; with only this difference, that in the former
three they occur before, in the latter four after, the final promise. Is there any
meaning in this change of place? It is difficult to believe that there is not. The
Apocalypse is a work of such consummate art, a device of such profound wisdom, that
one is slow to assume any thing accidental in it, any departure from a rule which
has been once admitted, without a meaning. At the same time I must own that I have
never seen any satisfactory explanation of this. That in every case the words usher
in, or commend, truths of the deepest concernment to all, there can be no doubt.
This we might confidently argue from the very form of the exhortation; but we
further gather it from a comparison of the passages, all of them of deepest significance,
where the same summons to attention recurs (Matt. xi. 15; xiii. 9, 43; Mark vii.
16; Rev. xiii. 9); so that Irving (Expos. of the Revelation, vol. i. p. 354) has
perfect right when he affirms, “This form always is used of radical and as
it were of generative truths, great principles,
most precious promises, most deep
fetches from the secrets of God, being as it were eyes of truth, seeds and kernels
of knowledge.” These words then proclaim to us that they are matters of weightiest
concernment to the whole Church of God, which Christ is uttering here.
But let us look a little closer at them, and see what other
lessons this summons, in the form which it here takes, is capable of yielding.
And first the “ear” here is not a
natural ear, and this therefore a summons to every man, for every man has such a
natural ear, to attend to the words now spoken; but rather the words are an equivalent
to the ὁ δυνάμενος χωρεῖν χωρείτω of Matt. xix. 12, and imply that, spiritual truth
needing a spiritual organ for its discernment, only he will be able to hear to whom
God has given the hearing ear (Deut. xxix. 4), whose ear He has wakened (Isai.
l. 4, 5); of others it is true, “their ear is uncircumcised, and they
cannot hearken” (Jer. vi. 10). And yet for all this the words are in another sense addressed to
every one, inasmuch as he who has not this hearing ear, who discovers from the
failure of these words of Christ to reach the depths of his spirit, that he has
it not, is implicitly bidden to seek it of Him, who can alone give it to any, and
who would be well pleased to give it to all. But secondly we are taught by these
words how absolute is the identity
between the
workings of the Son and the Holy Ghost; how truly the Spirit is the Spirit of the
Son, as of the Father. Christ has been speaking throughout; but now without a word
of explanation, what He speaks is declared to be what the Spirit speaks.
It is the Spirit who declares these things to the Churches. And in that phrase,
“the
Churches,” we are further reminded of the universal character which this Epistle
and those that follow it possess. It might seem that all which had hitherto been
uttered had been uttered only to one Church, to that of Ephesus; nor is it meant
in the least to deny this primary destination, that all the reproofs, encouragements,
warnings, promises which it contained were designed for Ephesus; but they are not
limited to it. Christ will allow of no such limitation. In a form somewhat more
solemn He virtually repeats what He once spoke in the days of his flesh, “What
I say unto you, I say unto all;” for, standing as He does at the central heart
of things, in his particular there ever lies involved an universal; and therefore
is it that heaven and earth may pass away, but his words can never pass away.
“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst
of the Paradise of God.”—It is deeply interesting and instructive to observe how
in this, and probably in every
other case, the character of the promise corresponds to the
character of the faithfulness displayed. They who have abstained from the idol
meats, from the sinful dainties of the flesh and world, shall, in return,
“eat of the tree of life;” or, as it is in the Epistle to Pergamum,
“of the hidden manna” (ii. 17); the same law of correspondency and compensation
being found, as I have said, to reign in most, if not all of the other promises
as well. They who have not feared those who can kill the body only, who have given,
where need was, their bodies to the flame, shall not be hurt by the second death
(ii. 11). They whom the world has not vanquished, shall have dominion over the world
(ii. 26, 27). They who keep their garments here undefiled, shall be clad in the
white and shining garments of immortality there (iii. 4, 5). They who overcome Jewish
pretensions (and the earnest warnings of the Epistle to the Hebrews, show us that
this for some was not done without the hardest struggle) shall be made free, not
of an earthly, but of an heavenly, Jerusalem (iii. 12). The only Church in which
any difficulty occurs in tracing the correlation between the form of the victory
and the form of the reward, is the last.
But this much said by way of general introduction to all the
promises, the promise here may well claim closer attention. “To him
that overcometh.”
The image of
the Christian as a conqueror, an overcomer, is frequent with St. Paul (2 Tim. ii.
5; 1 Cor. ix. 24, 25); but such phrases as
νικᾶν τὸν κόσμον, νικᾶν τὸν πονηρόν,
or simply νικᾶν as here, nowhere occur in his Epistles—the only passage in them
which in the least resembles these, or where the word is used to express the moral
victory over sin and temptation, is Rom. xii. 21. This use of νικᾶν, with that single
and partial exception, is exclusively St. John’s; and the frequent recurrence of
it on the one side in his Gospels and Epistles, and on the other in the Apocalypse
(thus compare John xvi. 32; 1 Ep. ii. 13, 14; v. 4, 5, with Rev. ii. 11, 17, 26;
iii. 5, 12, 21; xii. 11; xxi. 7), constitutes an interesting point of contact between
the language of this Book and of those others whereof he was the author as well;
and for those who need such arguments, as argument for the identity of the author
of those and of this.
It is very noteworthy, and this “I will give,” recurring
as it does so constantly in all these Epistles, bids us to note, how absolutely
without reserve or qualification Christ assumes for Himself throughout them all,
the distribution of rewards, as supreme and sole μισθαποδότης (Heb. xi. 6) in the
kingdom of glory (ii. 10, 17, 26, 28; iii. 21; cf. xxi. 6, and 2 Tim. iv. 8). Elsewhere
St. Paul has said, “The gift of God is eternal life” (Rom.
vi. 22); here it appears eminently as the gift of
Christ. And his “I will give,” though still in the future, is sure.
It has nothing in it of the δώσω of that ever promising but never performing king
of Macedon; who, having ever this same δώσω
on his lips, but never the δώσω in
his hands, acquired the name of Doson, fastened as no honourable distinction upon
him who never crowned the promise with the performance.
In “the tree of life” there is manifest allusion to Gen. ii. 9. The use of ξύλον, the dead timber in classical
Greek, for δένδρον, the living tree, there as here is Hellenistic; not indeed exclusively
confined to the Septuagint and the New Testament, being found in the Alexandrian
poets, Callimachus for instance, as well; indeed, there is an anticipation of it
in Herodotus, iii. 47. The tree which disappeared with the disappearance of the
earthly Paradise, reappears with the reappearance of the heavenly, Christ’s kingdom
being in the highest sense “the restitution of all things” (Acts iii. 21). Whatever
had been lost through Adam’s sin is won back, and that too in a higher shape, through
Christ’s obedience. That the memory of “the tree of life” had not in the mean time
perished, we gather from such passages as Prov. iii. 18; xi. 30; xiii. 12; xv.
4.The Rabbis, of course, know a great deal
about this “tree of life.” Its boughs
overshadow the whole of Paradise. It has five hundred thousand fragrant smells,
and its fruit as many pleasant tastes, not one of them resembling the other (Eisenmenger,
Entdecktes Judenthum, vol. ii. p. 311).
To eat of the tree of life is a figurative
phrase
to express participation in the life eternal; cf. Gen. iii. 22; Ezek. xlvii. 12;Lucian’s words (Ver. Hist. ii. 14), in
his account of the Island of the Blest, sound very much like a scoff at this:
αἱ μὲν ἄμπελοι δωδεκάφοροί εἰσι, καὶ κατὰ μῆνα ἔκαστον καρποφοροῦσι.
Rev. xxii. 2, 14; 2 Esdr. ii. 12; vii. 53; and Ecclus. xix. 19:
“They that do the
things that please Him shall receive the fruit of the tree of immortality.” Compare
the words of the Christian Sibyl:
Οἱ δὲ Θεὸν τιμῶντες ἀληθινὸν ἀέναόντε
Ζωὴν κληρονομοῦσι τὸν αἰῶνος ⛯ρόνον, αὐτοὶ
Οἰκοῦντες Παραδείσου ὁμῶς ἐριθήλεα κῆπον,
Δαινύμενοι γλυκὺν ἄρτον ἀπ᾽ οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος.
We meet with echoes and reminiscences of
this “tree of life” in the mythologies of many nations; or if not actual reminiscences
of it, yet reachings out after it, as in the Yggdrasil of our own northern
mythology (see Grimm, Deutsche Mythol. p. 756); and still more remarkable in the Persian
Hom. This is the king of trees, is called in the Zend-Avesta the Death-destroyer;
it grows by the fountain of Arduisur, in other words, the waters
of life; while its sap drunken
confers immortality (Creuzer, Symbolik, vol. i. p. 187, and often).
For the words, “which is in the midst of the Paradise of God,”
there can be no doubt that we should read simply, “which is in the Paradise of God.”
Transcribers brought their “in
the midst” from Gen. ii. 9. Παράδεισος is a word whose history is well worth
tracing. The word and thing which it designated are both generally said to be Persian;
though this is now earnestly denied by some, who claim for it a Semitic origin
(see Tuch, Genesis, p. 68). As is well known, it was first naturalized in Greek
by Xenophon, who designated by it the parks or pleasure-gardens of Persia, in which
wild beasts were kept, or stately trees grown (Hell. iv. 1. 15; Cyrop.
i. 4. 11), being at once the “vivarium” and the
“viridarium” of the Romans. Classical Latin did not know
the word ‘paradisus’ (see A. Gellius, ii. 20. 4, and the long circumlocution
by which Cicero, De Senect. 17, is compelled to express the thing). Where the Septuagint
employs παράδεισος, it is commonly to designate the garden of Eden (Gen. ii.
8; iii. 1; Ezek. xxviii. 13), though sometimes employing it for any stately garden
of delight whatever (Isai. i. 30; Jer. xxix. 5; Eccl. ii. 5):
ἐποίησά μοι κήπους καὶ παραδείσους). The word, when it appears in the New Testament, has taken a great
spring. The ideal beauty of that
dwelling-place
of our first parents, perhaps also the fact that it had now vanished from the earth,
has caused the name “Paradise” to be transferred to that region and province in
Hades, or the invisible world, where the souls of the faithful are gathered, waiting
for their perfect consummation and bliss. “Their [the Jews’] meaning therefore was
this; that as paradise, or the garden of Eden, was a place of great beauty, pleasure,
and tranquillity, so the state of separate souls was a state of peace and excellent
delights” (J. Taylor). It is in this sense that Christ allowed and employed the
term, when to the dying thief He said, “This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise”
(Luke xxii. 43).The most interesting passages in the Fathers on Paradise as this middle state, are
Tertullian, De Animâ, 55 (his book De Paradiso has not reached us); and Origen,
De Princ. ii. 11. 6.
But even this is not all. The word takes a higher meaning yet;
for this inferior Paradise is not to be confounded with the heavenly Paradise,
“the
Paradise of God,” as it is here called, “the third heaven,” where is the presence
and glory of God (2 Cor. xii. 2, 4).There is much about both Paradises, the upper and the under,
as the Jews were wont to call them, in Eisenmenger, Endecktes Judenthum, vol.
ii. pp. 260-320.
We may thus trace
παράδεισος passing through
a series of meanings, each one higher than the last; from any garden of delight,
which is its first meaning, it comes
to be predominantly applied to the garden of Eden, then to the resting-place of
separate souls in joy and felicity, and lastly, to the very heaven itself; and we
see eminently in it, what we see indeed in so many words, how revealed religion
assumes them into her service, and makes them vehicles of far higher truth than
any which they knew at first, transforming and transfiguring them, as in this case,
from glory to glory.
This “tree of life,” with the privilege of eating of its fruits,
as belonging to the faithful overcomer, reappears at the close of this Book (xxii.
2, 14). Indeed it is very interesting to note, and here will be a fit opportunity
for noting, the fine and subtle bands which knit one part of the Apocalypse to another,
the marvellous art, if we may dare to use an earthly word speaking of a heavenly
fact, with which this Book is constructed. Especially these seven Epistles, which
at first sight might appear, which to some have appeared, to hang loosely on the
rest, to be but slightly attached, do yet on nearer examination prove to be bound
to it by the closest possible bands. There is not one of the promises made to the
faithful in these second and third chapters, which does not look on to, and perhaps
first finds its explanation in, some later portion of the Book. Thus the eating
of the tree of life, at
xxii. 2, 14, 19;
deliverance from the second death (ii. 11) receives its solemn commentary, xx. 14;
xxi. 8; the writing of the new name of ii. 17 reappears xiv. 1; the dominion over
the heathen of ii. 26 at xx. 4; the morning star of ii. 28 at xxii. 16; the white
garments of iii. 5 at iv. 4; vii. 9, 13; the name found written in the book of life
of iii. 5 at xiii. 8; xx. 15; the New Jerusalem and the citizenship in it of iii.
12 at xxi. 10; xxii. 14;
the sitting upon the throne of iii. 21
at iv. 4.Very beautifully Bengel on
this matter, though his words refer not to the seven Epistles only, but to the
whole Book: “Partes hujus libri passim inter se
respiciunt. Omnino structura libri hujus prorsus artem divinam spirat; estque
ejus quodam modo proprium, ut res futuras multas, et in multitudine varias,
proximas, intermedias, remotissimas, maximas, minimas, terribiles, salutares, ex
veteribus prophetis repetitas, novas, longas, breves, easque inter se contextas,
oppositas, compositas, seque mutuo involventes et evolventes, ad se invicem ex
intervallo parvo aut magno respicientes, adeoque interdum quasi disparentes,
abruptas, suspensas, et postea de improviso opportunissime sub conspectum
redeuntes, absoluto compendio complectatur; atque his rebus, quæ complectitur
liber, structura libri exacte respondet. Itaque in omnibus suis partibus
admirabilem habet varietatem, spirasque pulcerrimas, simulque summam harmoniam,
per ipsas anomalias, quæ illam interpellare videntur, valde illustratam.”
There is one thing more to observe before leaving this
promise,-namely the large amount of evidence in favour of a very interesting
reading,—“in the Paradise of my God”
(τοῦ Θεοῦ μου). It is not hard to understand the motives which led to
the omission of this μου—the
fear namely of Arian conclusions, or others dishonourable to the divinity of
Christ, which may probably have influenced transcribers. Such fears are
altogether superfluous, as Arethas long ago observed. This Scripture does but
say what innumerable others say as well. The Lord after his resurrection could
speak of “my Father and
your
Father, my God and your God” (John xx. 17); and compare in this very Book,
“the
temple of my God,” “the name of my God,” “the city of my God”
(iii. 12); while St.
Paul does not scruple to speak of the God, as well as the Father, of our Lord Jesus
Christ (Ephes. i. 17).
II.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF SMYRNA.
Rev. ii. 8-11.
Ver. 8. “And unto
the Angel of the Church in Smyrna write.”—The next in order to Ephesus of the seven
Churches is Smyrna, the next in the natural order as it is also in the spiritual,
lying as it does a little to the north of that city. Smyrna, ἄγαλμα τῆς Ἀσίας,
as it has been called, was one of the fairest and noblest cities of Ionia; most
favourably placed upon the coast to command the trade of the Levant, which equally
in old and modern times it has enjoyed. In early ecclesiastical history Smyrna is
chiefly famous as the Church over which Polycarp presided as bishop. This Church
must have been founded at a very early date, though there is no mention of it either
in the Acts or the Epistles of St. Paul. Knowing as we do that at a period only
a little later than this, Polycarp was bishop there, a very interesting
question presents itself to us,
namely, whether he might not have been bishop now; whether he may not be the Angel
to whom this Epistle is addrest. There is much to make this probable; and the fact,
if it were so, would throw much light on the character of the Epistle, and beautifully
account for that key-note of martyrdom to which it is set; while the difficulties
which some find in this, rest mainly on the erroneous assumption that the Apocalypse
was composed under Nero or Galba, and not under Domitian. It is true indeed that
we have thus to assume an episcopate of his, which lasted for more than seventy years;
for “the good confession” of Polycarp did not take place till the year 168, while
the Apocalypse was probably written in 96. Let us see, however, how far ecclesiastical
history will bear us out in this. As early as 108 Ignatius on his way to his Roman
martyrdom found Polycarp the bishop or Angel of the Church of Smyrna (Mart. Ign.
3), addressing to him a letter which, despite of all which has been said against
it, must still be considered genuine. We have only to extend his episcopate twelve
years a parte ante, and he will have been Angel of Smyrna when this Epistle was addrest to that Church.
Is there any great unlikelihood in this? His reply to the
Roman Governor, who tempted him
to save his life
by denying his Lord, is well known—namely that he could not thus renounce a Lord
whom for eighty and six years he had served, and during all this time had received
nothing but good from Him (De S. Polyc. Mart. 9; Eusebius, H. E. iv. 15). But these
“eighty and six years” can scarcely represent the whole length of his life, for
Irenæus (Adv. Hær. iii. 3. 4; cf. Eusebius, H. E. iv. 14) lays such a stress on
the extreme old age which Polycarp had attained, that, great as this age is, we
must yet esteem the number of his years to have been greater still. They represent
no doubt the years since his conversion. Counting back eighty-six years from the
year 168, being that of his martyrdom, we have A.D. 82 as the year when he was first
in Christ. This will give us fourteen years as the period which will have elapsed
from his conversion to that when this present Epistle was written, during which
time he may very well have attained the post of chiefest honour and toil and peril
in the Church of Smyrna. Tertullian indeed distinctly tells us that he was consecrated
bishop of Smyrna by St. John (De Præsc. Hæret. 32); and Irenaeus, who declares
to us that he had himself in his youth often talked with Polycarp, declares the
same (Eusebius, H. E. iv. 14; cf. iii. 36; Jerome, Catal. Script. s. v.
Polycarpus;
Jacobson, Patt. Apostoll. p. 564; and Röthe, Die
Anfänge d. christl. Kirche, p.
429). There are then very sufficient reasons for thinking it at least possible,
to me it seems probable, that to Polycarp himself the words which follow were first
spoken.
“These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive.”—Being
addressed, as this Epistle is, to a Church exposed, and hereafter to be still
more exposed, to the fiercest blasts of persecution, it is graciously ordered
that all the attributes which Christ here claims for Himself should be such as
would encourage and support his servants in their trials and distress.
Brightman: “Titulos sibi sumit [Christus] qui præsenti
rerum conditioni conveniunt. Unde varium suæ gloriæ radium in singulis Epistolis
spargit, pro variâ fortunâ quâ sunt Ecclesiæ.” For these titles of
Christ, “the first and the last,” and “which was dead, and is alive,”
or rather, “who became dead, and lived again,” see i. 17, 18.
Ἔζησεν here
is not “vixit,” but “revixit” (cf. Ezek. xxxvii. 3; John v. 25; Rev. xiii. 14); death
having been for Him only the passage to a more glorious life. How then should his
servants fear them who could kill the body, and then had nothing more which they could
do? how should they doubt of committing their souls to One, who had so triumphantly
redeemed his own?
Ver. 9. “I know thy works, and tribulation,
and poverty; but
thou art rich.”—For the first clause see what has been said already on ver. 2;
the words of themselves express neither praise nor blame. The “tribulation” refers
out of all doubt to the affliction which the Church of Smyrna endured at the hands
of its Jewish and heathen persecutors and oppressors, θλίβειν and
θλῖψις being
constant words to express this (1 Thess. iii. 4;
Heb. xi. 37; Acts xx. 23; Rev.
i. 9, and often). So too their “poverty” will probably have come upon them through
the spoiling of their goods (Heb. x. 34), and the various wrongs in their worldly
estate which the profession of the faith of Christ will have brought with it.
“But thou art rich.”—How much better this, poor in the esteem of the world, but rich
before Christ, than the condition of the Laodicean Angel, rich in his own esteem,
but most poor in the sight of Christ (iii. 17).
There can, of course, be no doubt that “rich” here means rich in grace (cf. Rom. viii. 32; Col. ii. 3; 1 Tim. vi.
18), having treasure in heaven (Matt. vi. 20; xix. 21; Luke xii. 21), as the same
word πλούσιος expresses in a similar, but yet a far higher sense, rich in glory
elsewhere (2 Cor. viii. 9). These words, to which James ii. 5-7 furnishes a remarkable
parallel, constitute a very beautiful parenthesis, declaring as they do the judgment
of heaven concerning this
Church of Smyrna, as contradistinguished
from the judgment of earth. Men saw nothing there save the poverty, but He who sees
not as man seeth, saw the true riches which this seeming poverty concealed, which
indeed the poverty, rightly interpreted, was; even as He too often sees the real
poverty which may lie behind the show of riches; for there are both poor rich-men
and rich poor-men in his sight.
“And I know the blasphemy of them which say they
are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.”—The most important
question which presents itself here is, In what sense shall we take the term
“Jews”? by “those which say they are Jews, and are not,”
shall we understand Jews literally so called, who, being the natural seed of
Abraham, claimed also to be the spiritual; or accepting “Jews” here as the designation of the true circumcision not made
with hands, that is, of Christians, shall we see in these, some who claimed to be
Christians, but whose right to belong to his Church Christ here denies? The former
appears to me the preferable interpretation. The analogy of such passages as Rom.
ii. 28, 29; ix. 6; Phil. iii. 2, 3, seems to point this way.There is
a long discussion in one of Augustine’s letters (Ep. cxcvi. § 6-16), how far Christians,
as the true circumcision, might rightfully be called Jews.
Then again
these opposers and blasphemers were evidently persecutors to bonds
and death of the faithful at Smyrna; but, extreme shame and disgrace as some of
the heretical sects were bringing on the true Church at this time, there is no
tittle of evidence that they had the power or the desire to persecute it with
the weapons of outward persecution. It was otherwise, however, with the Jews
literally so named. What their ‘blasphemy’ against Jesus of Nazareth, against the Lord of glory, but known to them as
“the
hanged one,” was, and still is, we know only too well (see Eisenmenger, Entdecktes
Judenthum, vol. i. pp. 61-188). While too the opposition of the heathen was still
languid and occasional, the jealousy of Rome being hardly awakened, the fierceness
of their enmity, the eagerness with which they sought to arouse that of the heathen,
almost every page in the Acts declares (xiii. 50; xiv. 2, 5, 19; xvii. 5; xxiv.
2; 1 Thess. ii. 14); and many a page of early ecclesiastical history no less. Moreover,
this blasphemy and malignant antagonism of the Jews against the truth displayed
itself in bitterest enmity against this very Church of Smyrna. We learn from that
precious document, the Epistle of the Church of Smyrna recording the martyrdom of
Polycarp, that Jews joined with heathens in crying out in the amphitheatre that
the Christian bishop should be cast
to the lions; and when there was
a difficulty about this, that he should be burned alive; which being granted, the
Jews, as was their wont (ὡς ἔθος αὐτοῖς), were foremost and forwardest in bringing
logs for the pile; they, too, doing all that lay in their power to hinder the remains
of the martyr from being delivered to his followers for burial (ch. 12, 13, 17).
In the words which follow, “but are the synagogue of Satan,” I find another proof
that Jews, literally so called, are intended. To them belonged the synagogue, to
Christians the Church. Throughout all the New Testament συναγωγή is only once
used for a Christian place of assembly (Jam. ii. 2), never for the body of the faithful
in Christ Jesus. With this one exception, capable of an easy explanation (see my
Synonyms of the New Testament, § 1), the word is abandoned to the Jews.
And that of theirs, which might have been the Church of the living God, is now
“the synagogue
of Satan”—a hard saying, a terrible word, but one which they, once the chosen
people of the Lord, had wrought with all their might to deserve. Nothing else indeed
was possible for them, if they would not be his people indeed; they could not be
as the heathen, merely non-Christian, they must be anti-Christian. The measure of
their former nearness to God was the measure of their present distance
from Him. In
the height to which they were lifted up was included the depth to which, if they
did not continue at that height, they must inevitably fall. And this, true for them,
is true also for all.—As nothing is accidental in this Book, so it is worth
remarking that as we have here “the synagogue of Satan,” so
presently “the throne of Satan” (ii. 13),
and then lastly, “the depths of Satan” (ii. 24);
“the synagogue of Satan” representing the Jewish antagonism to the
Church, “the throne of Satan” the heathen, and “the depths of Satan” the heretical.
Ver. 10. “Fear none of those things
which thou shalt suffer.”—The great Captain of our salvation never keeps back or
conceals what those who faithfully witness for Him may have to bear for his name’s
sake; never entices recruits into his service, or seeks to retain them under his
banner, by the promise that they shall find all things easy and pleasant there.
So far from this, He says of Paul at the outset of his apostolic career, “I will
show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake” (Acts ix. 16; cf. Matt.
x. 16-31; Luke ix. 23; John xvi. 1, 23; Ezek. ii. 3-7; Jer. i. 19); and in like
manner He announces to the Angel of Smyrna that bonds, and tribulation, and death
itself, are before him and before others, as many as at Smyrna shall continue faithful
to the end. But
for all this they are not to
fear. Presently He will declare to them why they should not fear; but first he further
unrolls in their sight the scroll of their sufferings.
“Behold, the devil shall
cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried.”—Ὁ διάβολος (= κατήγωρ,
Rev. xii. 10), a name given to Satan by the Alexandrian translators with reference to the
work of accuser ascribed to him, Job i. 2; Zech. iii. 1, 2. How well under him the
Jews played the secondary rôle of διάβολοι, first against the Lord Himself, and
then against his servants, appears in the Gospels (Luke xxiii. 2; John xix. 12),
in the Acts (xvii. 5-8; xxiv. 2),
and in all the early Church history. From a multitude of passages in Justin
Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, and Origen’s answer to Celsus
(iii. 1; vi. 27), it is clear that they were the authors of the calumnies against
the Christians with which the malice of the heathen was stimulated and fed.
The
manner in which this persecution of the saints is here traced to the direct agency
of Satan, is very well worthy of note. We sometimes assume that Christians were
persecuted, because the truth for which they bore witness affronted the pride, the
prejudices, and the passions of men; and this is true; but we have not so reached
to the ground of the matter. There is nothing more remarkable
in the records
which have come down to us of the early persecutions, and in this point they singularly
illustrate the Scripture before us, than the sense which the confessors and martyrs,
and those who afterwards narrate their sufferings and their triumphs, entertain
and utter, that these great fights of affliction through which they were called
to pass, were the immediate work of the Devil, and no mere result of the offended
passions, prejudices, or interests of men. The enemies of flesh and blood, as mere
tools and instruments, are nearly lost sight of by them in a continual reference
to Satan as the invisible but real author of all. And assuredly they had right.
So we might boldly say, even if we had not the warrant of such Scriptures as this.
Thus, who that reads that story of the persecution of the saints at Lyons and Vienne,
A.D. 177, happily preserved for us by Eusebius (H. E. v. 1) in the very words of
the survivors, that wondrous tale of persistent inventive cruelty on the part of
the heathen, overmatched by a superhuman patience on the part of the faithful,
but must feel that here there is infinitely more than a conflict of bad men with
good? There is rather on the one side an outbreak from the bottomless pit, the might
and malice of the Devil, making war against God in the person of his saints; on
the other, such a victory over Satan as could only have
been surpassed when Christ Himself
beheld him fall like lightning from heaven. This reference to the Devil as the primary
author of all assaults upon the Church, the sense of which speaks out so strikingly
in these Acta Martyrum, of the Gallic martyrs, hardly speaks out less strongly in
others; thus see the Ep. de S. Polycarpi Mart. iii. 17, 19; Mart. Ignat. 7.
From
the fact that our Translators have rendered ἵνα πειρασθῆτε,
“that ye may be
tried,” we may certainly conclude that they contemplated these πειρασμοί rather
as the gracious trials of God (cf. Jam. i. 2, 3; 1 Pet. i. 7)
than the temptations of the Devil. Yet assuredly this is not so; and Tyndale and
Cranmer, who translate, “to tempt you,” are to be preferred; so
Marckius: “Ut tentemini; non simplici probatione
constantiæ, quo pacto Deus tentat suos, sed incitatione ad malum et
infidelitatem, quo pacto Deus neminem tentat.” Temptation from the Devil, not
trial or proof
from a Heavenly Father’s hand, is that which, according to this word of the Lord,
was in store for them. It is indeed perfectly true that the same event is oftentimes
both the one and the other—God sifting and winnowing the man to separate his chaff
from his wheat, the Devil sifting and winnowing him in the hope that nothing else
but chaff will be found in him. It is quite true also that πειράζειν is used in
both senses;
sometimes in a sense closely bordering upon that of δοκιμάζειν, and then ascribed
to God, who, as the supreme δοκιμαστὴς τῶν καρδιῶν, tempts and makes trial
of his servants to show them what of sin, of infirmity, of unbelief is in themselves;
and showing them this, to leave them holier than before this temptation He found
them (Heb. xi. 17: cf. Gen. xxii. 1; Exod. xv. 25; Deut. xiii. 3). At the same
time πειράζειν is much oftener used of tempting
by the Devil, solicitation on his
part to evil (Matt. iv. 1; 1 Cor. x. 13; Gal. vi. 1; 1 Thess. iii. 5; Heb. ii. 18;
Jam. i. 13); and the words going immediately before,
“Behold the Devil will cast
some of you into prison,” are decisive that the Lord is here warning his servants,
as HIe did in the days of his personal ministry upon earth, against fierce assaults
of their ghostly enemy which were close at hand, that so by watchfulness and prayer
they might be able to stand in the evil day that was so near (Luke xxii. 32).
The
temptations of imprisonment He especially adduces here. In the records of the Church’s
early conflicts with the heathen, we constantly find the prison doing its work;
those who endured torture bravely being returned to prison, that so it might be
seen whether hunger and thirst, darkness and chains, would not be effectual in breaking
down by little and little the courage and the steadfastness
which had resisted manfully the
first onset of the foe. Sometimes it would prove so. The Church’s early story, furnishing
in the main a glorious commentary on these words, furnishes a mournful commentary
as well. When temptations such as the Lord here speaks of arrived, it would be ever
seen that there were many weak brethren, and some false brethren; and the Church,
rejoicing over the steadfastness of multitudes among her children, had yet to mourn
over the faltering infirmity of some, and the bold apostasy of others (Eusebius,
H. E. v. 1. 10; Cyprian, De Laps. 1, 2).
“And ye shall have tribulation ten days.”—For
ἕξετε Lachmann and others have received into the text ἕχητε, which then equally
with πειρασθῆτε will depend ἵνα.
These “ten days,” during which the tribulation
of Smyrna shall endure, have been very variously interpreted, some understanding
by them a very long period (cf. Gen. xxxi. 41; Job xix. 3; Num. xiv. 22); and some
a very short (Gen. xxiv. 55; Num. xi. 19). Those who interpret in the former sense
have very commonly seen here allusion to the ten persecutions which the Church is
often said to have passed through, during the three hundred years of its conflict
with heathen Rome. It has been objected that this enumeration of exactly ten persecutions
is merely an arbitrary one; that, if we include in our list
only those which had some right to be called general, as extending
over the whole Roman empire, the persecutions would not be so many; if all those
which reached any one Church or province, they would be many more. But, setting
this objection aside, I am persuaded we must look for something very different
here from an announcement of the great length of time over which the persecution
would extend; the “ten days” declare
rather the shortness of time within which all this tyranny would be overpast. I
conclude this from the fact that only so will the words fall in with the whole temper
and spirit of this verse, which is encouraging and consolatory throughout. Here,
as so often elsewhere, the briefness of a trial is urged as a motive for the patient
endurance of it (cf. Isai. xxvi. 20; liv. 8; Ps. xxx. 5; Matt. xxiv. 22; 2 Cor.
iv. 17; 1 Pet. i. 6; v. 30).
“Be thou faithful unto death, and I woill give thee
a crown of life.”—More than one of the early Fathers have written an “Exhortatio
ad Martyrium,” but what are they all as compared with this? It needs hardly
be observed that this “unto death” is an intensive, not an extensive, term. Christ
does not mean, “to thy life’s end,” contemplating life under the aspect of time;
but “to the sharpest and worst which the enemy can inflict upon thee, even to death
itself.” Dare and endure, the words
would say, the worst which evil
men can threaten and inflict, even death itself (Matt. x. 22; xxiv. 13; Ecclus.
iv. 28). Marckius: “Quam exigit [fidelitatem]
usque ad mortem, non tam terminum temporis notans, quanquam et ad metæ nostræ
finem sit perseverandum, quam quidem gradum mali, in quo fidelitas nostra
demonstranda est, ut mortem ipsam in causâ fidei et pietatis subire non
detractemus.” For the words of the promise which follow, “and I will give thee a crown of life,” compare 2 Esdr. ii. 42-47, which, however,
it can hardly be doubted is the interpolation of some later Christian hand (see Lücke,
Offenb. d. Johan. p. 155, 2d edit.).
This “crown of life,” always remaining
essentially the same, is not the less designated by a rich variety of images. Here,
and with St. James (i. 12), it is
“a crown of life;” with St. Paul, “a crown
of
righteousness” (2 Tim. iv. 8; cf. Plutarch,
Philop. et Flam. 3: δικαιοσύνης καὶ χρηστότητος στέφανος); with St. Peter,
“a crown
of glory” (1 Ep. v. 4); with Isaiah,
“a crown of beauty” (lii. 3,
στέφανος κάλλους, LXX.; with which compare
διάδημα τοῦ κάλλους, Wisd. v. 17); in the
Mart. S. Polycarpi, “a crown of incorruption” (ἀφθαρσίας, xvii. 19; cf. Eusebius, H. E.
v. 1; μέγας τῆς ἀφθαρσίας στέφανος;
with Ignatius, “a crown of conflict” (ἀθλήσεως, Mart. 5, with probable reference
to 2 Tim. ii. 5). Whether Lucian intended a sneer at these
glorious promises
of the Scripture, when he introduces the impostor Peregrinus, who had been among
the Christians, though he died a Cynic, to declare his intention of adding, by a
voluntary death, a golden crown to a golden life (χρυσῷ βίῳ
χρυσῆν κορώνην ἐπιθεῖναι,
De Mort. Pereg. § 33), may be questionable. That he has many such scoffs at the
promises of Scripture, as at its miracles and other facts, no one who has at all
studied the matter will be disposed to deny.
One may pause to consider here, Is
this crown the diadem of royalty, or the garland of victory,
“Krone” or “Kranz”? I believe the former. It is quite true
that στέφανος is seldom used in this
sense, much oftener διάδημα (see my Synonyms of the New Testament,
§ 23); yet the “golden crowns” (στέφανοι) of chapter v. can only be royal crowns (cf. ver. 10); στέφανος too is the word which all the Evangelists employ of the crown of thorns,
evidently a caricature of royalty, which was planted on the Saviour’s brows. Did
we indeed meet these words “a crown of life” in the Epistles of St. Paul, we should
be justified in saying that in all probability the wreath or garland of the victor
in the games, the “crown” in this sense was intended. St. Paul was familiar with
the Greek games, and freely drew his imagery from them (1 Cor. vii. 24-27; Phil.
iii. 12; 1 Tim. vi. 12); does not fear to contemplate
the faithful under the aspect
of runners (θεόδρομοι, as Ignatius, ad Philad. c. ii., calls them) and wrestlers
in the games. His universal, Hellenic as well as Jewish, education, exempted him
from any scruples upon this point. Not so, however, the Christians of Palestine.
These Greek games were strange to them, or only not strange, as they were the objects
of their deepest abhorrence; as witness the tumults and troubles which accompanied
the first introduction of them by Herod the Great at Jerusalem, recorded at length
by Josephus (Antt. xv. 8. 1-4). Tertullian’s point of view, who styles them (Scorp.
6) “contentiosa solemnia et superstitiosa certamina Græcarum et religionum et
voluptatum,” would very much have been theirs. And. then, to me at least, decisive
on this point is the fact, that nowhere else in the Apocalypse is there found a
single image drawn from the range of heathen antiquity. The Book moves exclusively
in the circle of Jewish imagery—either sacred or cabalistic; derived in largest
part from the depths of the temple service. The palms in the hands of those who
stand before the throne (vii. 9) may seem an exception to the universality of this
rule; but really are far from so being. It is quite true that the palm was for Greek
and Roman a token of victory, but this “palmiferens company,” to use Henry More’s
words, these happy palmers, do not stand before the throne as
conquerors,—Tertullian’s exposition, “albati et palmis victoriæ insignes”
(Scorp. 12.), being at fault,—but
as those who keep the true feast of tabernacles, the feast of rest, of all the weary
toil in the wilderness accomplished and ended; and as such, and to mark them for
what they are, they bear, according to the injunctions of the Old Testament, the
branches of palms in their hands (Lev. xxiii. 40; cf. Neh. viii. 15; 2 Macc. x.
7; John xii. 13; Josephus, Antt. xiii. 13. 5); see some beautiful remarks on this
point in Hengstenberg, in part anticipated by Vitringa. I must needs then believe,
that these are royal crowns, not victorious garlands, which the Lord is promising
here.
Ver. 11. “He that hath an ear to hear, let
him hear what the Spirit saith
unto the Churches; he that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”—This
“second death,” setting forth the “vita non vitalis,” the death in life of
the lost, as contrasted with the life in death of the saved, is a phrase peculiar
to the Apocalypse (cf. xx. 6, 14; xxi. 8);
but is not uncommon in the later Jewish theology; indeed frequent in the Chaldee
Paraphrase. Vitringa: “Phrasis nata haud dubie in scholâ
sanctorum virorum qui fidem et spem Ecclesiæ post reditum ex exilio Babylonico
explicarunt.” But though the word is not on the lips of the Lord during
his earthly life, He does not shrink from proclaiming the
fearful thing. The δεύτερος θάνατος
of this Book is the γέεννα of Matt. v. 29; Mark ix. 43-49; Luke xii. 5.
The phrase is itself a solemn witness against the Sadduceeism and Epicureanism,
which would make the natural death the be-all and end-all of existence. As there
is a life beyond this present life for the faithful, so a death beyond the death
which falls under our eye for the wicked. “Vita damnatorum mors est,” is the fearful gloss of Augustine
on these words.Philo too, though he does
not know this phrase, “the second death,” has a terrible commentary upon it (De Prœm. et Pœn. 12):
ἄνθρωποι μὲν γὰρ πέρας τιμωριῶν εἶναι νομίζουσι θάνατον· ἐν δὲ τῷ
θείῳ δικαστηρίῳ μόγις ἐστίν οὗτος ἀρχή. And going on to ask what is the punishment
of the ungodly, he answers, ζῆν ἀποθνήσκοντα ἀεὶ,
καὶ τρόπον τινὰ θάνατον ἀθάνατον ὑπομένειν καὶ ἀτελεύτητον,
with more which I cannot quote.
So much has been idly written upon names, not a little most idly
on the names of these seven Churches, and the mystical meanings which they contain,
that one shrinks from any seeming fellowship in such foolish and unprofitable fancies;
and yet it is difficult not to remember here that σμύρνα, the name of this suffering
Church which should give out its sweetness in persecution and in death, is a subform
of μύῤῥα (Lobeck, Pathol. p. 241); and that myrrh, an aromatic gum of Arabia. served
for embalming the dead (John xix. 39; cf. Herodotus,
ii. 40, 86), went
up as incense before the Lord (Exod. xxx. 23), was one of the perfumes of the bridegroom
(Ps. xlv. 8), and of the bride (Cant. iii. 6);
all which Vitringa has excellently urged: “Myrrha itaque nobis hic symbolice figurat graviores Ecclesiæ afflictiones,
amaras equidem et ingratas carni, πρὸς τὸ παρόν, quod ad tempus præsens, sed
ex quibus fructus provenit vere salutaris. Solet enim eas Deus suâ providentiâ Ecclesiæ
immittere, ut electos et electorum fidem præservet a corruptione, et illos hoc
etiam medio veluti condiat ad immortalitatem, et fragrantiam iis
conciliet egregiam virtutum Christianarum, quarum exercitium persecutiones
Ecclesiæ solent suscitare.”
III.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF PERGAMUM.
Rev. ii. 12-17.
Ver. 12. “And
to the Angel of the Church in Pergamos write.”—A word or two may fitly find
place here on the name of this city, as it appears in our Authorized Version. In
the first place, why do our Translators, writing “Pergamos,” and
not “Pergamus,” retain a
Greek termination for it, and for it alone? ‘Assos’ (Acts xx. 13, 14) is not a parallel
case, for the Romans wrote ‘Assos’ as frequently as ‘Assus;’ and always ‘Chios,’ which therefore is quite correct (Acts xx. 15).
But if ‘Pergamos,’ then, by the same
rule, ‘Ephesos,’ ‘Miletos,’ and many more. And even against ‘Pergamus,’ though
more correct than ‘Pergamos,’ there would still be something to object. Instances
of the feminine, ἡ Πέργαμος (Ptolemy, i. 2), are excessively rare (see Lobeck,
Phrynichus, p. 422); while the neuter, τὸ Πὲργαμος in Greek. and
‘Pergamum’ in Latin, occurs
innumerable
times (Xenophon, Anab. vii. 8. 8; Polybius, iv. 48. 2; Strabo, xiii. 4; Pliny,
H. N. v. 33). I shall speak throughout of the city under this its more usual designation.
It was another illustrious city of Asia; ἐπιφανὴς πόλις
Strabo calls it (xiii. 4); “longe clarissimum Asiæ Pergamum,” Pliny (H. N. v. 33). Although of high
antiquity, its greatness, splendour, and importance did not date very far back.
It only attained these under the successors of Alexander. One of these made Pergamum
the capital of his kingdom—the same kingdom which a later of his dynasty, Attalus
the Second, bequeathed to the Romans. It was famous for its vast library; for splendid
temples of Zeus, of Athene, and of Apollo; but most of all for the worship of Æsculapius
(Tacitus, Annal. iii. 63; Xenophon, Anab. vii. 8. 23), the remains of whose magnificent
temple outside the city still remain.
“These things saith He which hath the sharp
sword with two edges.”—Compare i. 16.
Ver. 13. “I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is.”—This may not sound, at the first hearing,
a reassuring word; and yet indeed it is eminently such. None of the peculiar difficulties
and dangers which beset the Church at Pergamum are concealed from Christ. We indeed
ask now, and it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer to the question, Why should
Pergamum
more than any other corrupt heathen city have been “Satan’s seat,”
or “Satan’s throne;” for as θρόνος
is constantly in this Book translated “throne” when applied to the powers of
heaven, it should be so also when applied to the hellish caricature of the
heavenly kingdom; to the kingdom which the rulers of the darkness of this world
seek to set up over against the kingdom of light. The question has been
variously answered. Some have supposed that allusion is here to the fane of Æsculapius, Θεὸς Σωτήρ
he was called, where lying miracles of healing were vaunted to be performed,
Satan seeking by the aid of these to counterwork the work of the Gospel. The
explanation is quite insufficient. All which we can securely conclude from this
language is, that from one cause or another, these causes being now unknown,
Pergamum enjoyed the bad preeminence of being the head-quarters in these parts
of the opposition to Christ and his Gospel. Why it should have thus deserved the
name of “Satan’s throne,” so emphatically repeated a second time at
the end of this verse, “where Satan dwelleth,” must remain
one of the unsolved riddles of these Epistles. Some circumstances, of which no historical
notice has reached us, may have especially stirred up the fanaticism of the heathen
there.
“And thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in
those days wherein Antipas
was my faithful
martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.”—There is a multitude of
small variations of reading here, though none seriously affecting the sense. There
was probably an anacoluthon in the sentence originally, which transcribers would
not let be; but tried by various devices to palliate or remove. It is evident from
the testimony borne here to the Pergamene Church, that many there, probably the
Angel himself, had shown an honourable steadfastness in the faith; had been confessors
of it; though possibly only one, Antipas, had resisted, or had been called to resist,
unto blood. Eusebius (H. E. iv. 15) records several martyrs who at a somewhat later
day were at Pergamum faithful to death, and received a crown of life. Attalus also,
it may be mentioned, who did so valiantly in the persecutions of Lyons and Vienne,
and won a foremost place in that noble company of martyrs, was a Pergamene (Ib.
v. 1, 14, 38, 47).
Of Antipas, except from the glorious record which the Lord bears
to him here, we know absolutely nothing. It is difficult to understand the silence
of all ecclesiastical history respecting so famous a martyr, one singled out by
Christ to such honour as this; for silent in regard of him ecclesiastical history
must be confessed to be; that which Tertullian (Scorp. 12) and other early writers
tell us
about him, being merely devised in fugam vacui, and manifestly drawn from the passage before us. They know nothing
about him except what they find here. Later Latin martyrologies, of course, know
a great deal; according to these he was bishop of Pergamum, and by command of Domitian
was shut up, Perillus-like, in a brazen bull, afterwards made red-hot; this being
his passage to life. lengstenberg has a curious explanation of this name, though
it is not perfectly original; he has derived at least the hint of it from Aretius.
Pressing the fact that almost all other names, he would say all, are symbolic in
this Book, as Jezebel, Balaam, Egypt, Sodom, he urges that this must be symbolic
too. But Ἀντίπας, what is it but a word formed on the same model as
Ἀντίχριστος;
and as this is made up of ἀντί and Χριστός, so
Ἀντίπας of ἀντί and
πᾶς, and Antipas
is one who for Christ’s sake has dared to stand out against all, an ἀντίκοσμος;
cf. Jer. xx. 10; xv. 10, “Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of
strife and a man of contention to the whole earth,” which must be the character
and condition of an eminently godly man set in the midst of a world which lieth
in the wicked one (Jam. iv. 4; Acts iv. 19; v. 29). A later commentator contemptuously
dismisses this with the observation that
Ἀντίπας is only an abbreviation of
Ἀντίπατρος, as Νικόμας of Νικομήδης,
Μηνᾶς of Μηνόδωρος,
and the like. I am certainly not disposed to rate this higher than an ingenious
fancy, a lusus of the critic’s art, but see little or no force in this argument
against it. Antipas, once formed, enters into all the rights which its new form
confers upon it, irrespective of the process by which it may have attained this
form. But it is not worth while to vindicate from a bad objection that which will
not commend itself a whit the more, even after this objection is set aside.
Ver.
14. “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold
the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children
of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.”—Those
“that hold the doctrine of Balaam” are, I am persuaded, identical with the Nicolaitans
of ver. 6, 15; indeed the latter verse seems to leave no doubt on the matter. The
mention of him as the tempter and seducer would of itself sufficiently explain what
was the nature of the sins to which he tempted and seduced (Num. xxv. 1-9; xxxi.
15, 16); but the sins are here expressly named. First, however, something may be
said on the words; ὃς ἐδίδασκεν τῷ Βαλὰκ,
which we, and I believe rightly, have rendered, “who taught Balac.” Hengstenberg indeed, and Bengel before him, on the strength
of this dative, a dativus commodi as they regard it,
united with the fact that διδάσκειν
habitually governs an accusative of the person who is the object of the teaching
(thus ver. 20. in this very chapter),
have urged that we ought to translate “who taught for Balac,” that is, in the interests of Balac, to please him; and, in confirmation
of this, they press that there is no hint in Scripture of Balaam having suggested
to Balac to put these temptations in the way of the children of Israel; the parting
of the two is recorded Num. xxiv. 25, nor is there any reason, they say, to suppose
that they ever met again; it was to the Moabitish women themselves, to Balac’s people,
but not to Balac himself, that Balaam suggested the placing these
stumbling-blocks in their way. I am persuaded that this is a mistake. The
construction proposed is much too artificial for the Apocalypse; the dative
after διδάσκειν
is the penetrating
of a Hebrew idiom through the forms of the Greek language; and there is nothing
at Num. xxxi. 16 to compel us to understand that Balaam’s communication with the
daughters of Moab was immediate, and not through the intermediation of the king.
Thus see Josephus, Antt. iv. 6. 6, who assumes this last to have certainly been
the case; and cf. Vitringa, Obss. Sac. 1. iv. c. ix. § 29.
There are two words which
claim here special consideration, σκάνδαλον and εἰδωλόθυτον.
Σκάνδαλον, a later
form of σκανδάληθρον (Aristophanes,
Acharnan. 686),
and σκανδαλίζω (there is no
σκανδαληθρίζω, see Rost und Palm), occur only, I
believe, in the sacred Scriptures, the Septuagint and the New Testament, and in
such writings as are immediately dependant upon these (see Suicer, s. v.); being
almost always in them employed in a tropical sense; Judith v. 1; Lev. xxix. 14 are exceptions.
Σκάνδαλον is properly a trap (joined often with παγίς,
Josh. xxiii. 13; Ps. cxl. 9; Rom. xi. 9), or more precisely that part of the trap on which the
bait was laid, and the touching of which caused the trap to close upon its prey;
then generally any loop or noose set in the path, which should entangle the foot
of the unwary walker and cause him to stumble and fall; σκάνδαλον = πρόσκομμα
(Rom. xiv. 13) and σκανδαλίζειν = προσκόπτειν (Matt. iv. 6;
Rom. ix. 32); and
next any stone, or hindrance of any kind (Hesychius explains it by ἐμποδισμός),
which should have the same effect (1 Pet. ii. 7). Satan, then, as
the Tempter is
the great placer of “scandals,” “stumbling-blocks,” or “offences,” in the path
of men; his sworn servants, a Balaam or a Jeroboam (1 Kin. xiv. 16), are the same
consciously. All of us unconsciously, by careless walking, by seeking what shall
please ourselves rather than edify others (1 Cor. viii. 10), are in danger of being
the same; all are deeply concerned with the warning of Matt. xviii. 7.
Εἰδωλόθυτον is a New Testament
word to express what the heathen sacrifices were, as they presented themselves to
the eye of a Christian or a Jew, namely things offered to idols.It is a notable
example of the extreme inconsistency of our Version in rendering the same word in
different places, that εἰδωλόθυτα is rendered in four different ways; it is
“meats
offered to idols” (Acts xv. 29), it is “things offered to idols”
(Acts xxi. 15),
it is “things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols” (1 Cor. viii. 4), it is
“things sacrificed unto idols” (Rev. ii. 14).
The Gentiles themselves
expressed the same by ἱερόθυτον (which word occurs 1 Cor. x. 28, according to the
better reading, St. Paul there assuming a Gentile to be speaking, and using, if
not an honourable, yet at any rate a neutral word), or by θεόθυτον, which the Greek
purists preferred (Lobeck, Phrynichus, p. 139). It will be worth while here to consider
under what plea any who even named the name of Christ could consent to eat of these
idol-meats, and yet claim to retain allegiance to that name. We may be quite sure
that as many of the stock of Abraham as joined themselves to the Church of Christ
were not so much as tempted to this sin; their whole previous education, all that
they had learned to abhor or to hold dear, was for them a sufficient safeguard against
it (Num. xxv. 2; Ps. cvi. 28; Dan. i. 8; Tob. i. 10, 11). It was otherwise with
the converts from the heathen world; with the Gentile Christian,
gathered in,
it may be, to the Church of Christ out of some corrupt Greek city. Refusal to partake
in the idol-meats was for him refusal to partake, not merely in the idolatry which
he had renounced, but in very much else which he was not at all so well prepared
to renounce; it involved abstinence from almost every public, every private festivity,
a withdrawal in great part from the whole social life of his time; for sacrifice
had bound itself up in almost every act of this social life. We have a singular
evidence of this in the fact that “to kill” and “to sacrifice” had in Greek
almost become identical; θόειν, which had originally meant the latter, meaning the
former now. The poor, offering a slain beast, after the priest and the altar had
received their shares, would sell the remainder in the market; the rich would give
this which remained over away. From one cause or another, there was a certainty
at many entertainments of meeting these sacrificial meats, there was a possibility
of meeting them at all. The question therefore was one which, like that of caste
at the present day in India, would continually obtrude itself, which could not be
set aside.See an excellent Essay on this subject in Stanley’s Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
with this title, The sacrificial feasts of the heathen, vol. i. pp. 149-152.
Already we find at the Council of Jerusalem
the Apostles resolving that
among the few “necessary things” (Acts xv. 28) which must be absolutely demanded
of the Gentile converts, abstinence from “the pollutions of idols” (ver. 20), or,
as in the more formal decree it is expressed, “meats offered to idols” (ver. 29),
was one. Some two years later various cases of conscience have occurred exactly
in that Church where beforehand we might have looked for them, namely at Corinth,
and St. Paul has been called upon to settle them. Some it would seem there, who
boasted of their γνῶσις, affirmed that they saw through the whole heathen idolatry
that it was a fraud and a lie; to them an idol was nothing; what fear then that
they should become partakers with the idol through partaking of the idol meats?
and these, in the assertion of their liberty, sat openly at meat in the very idol
temple itself (1 Cor. viii. 10). So too
at a somewhat later date, in Justin Martyr’s
Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew Trypho makes it a charge against the Christians that
many of them partook of idol sacrifices, affirming that they were in no way injured
by them (c. 35); to whom the Christian Father replies that these Marcionites, Valentinians,
and the rest, usurped the name of Christ, but that the Catholic Church repudiated
them utterly, in no way acknowledged them for children of hers. From Irenæus (i.
6. 3) we learn that they not
merely thus
ate of the idol meats, boasting that they were not defiled by them, but took a foremost
share in the celebration of the heathen festivals. Others, in an opposite extreme
and excess of scrupulosity, were exceedingly troubled lest the meat they innocently
bought in the market, or partook of at the house of a heathen friend, might not
have been offered in sacrifice, and so they unknowingly defiled (1 Cor. x. 25, 27).
All will no doubt remember the wonderful wisdom and love with which St. Paul deals
with these various cases, strengthening and guiding the weak, rebuking and restraining
the proud. Some, however, of these latter continued to allow themselves in these
dangerous liberties, degenerating easily into scandalous excesses; although, after
such decisions, first of the Council at Jerusalem, and afterwards of St. Paul, not
any longer within the bosom of the Church, but without it; and one may see in the Nicolaitans the legitimate spiritual descendants of those Gnostics (Gnostics at
least in the bud) who were not brought back to humbler, more loving, more self-denying
courses by the earnest remonstrances of St. Paul.
Ver. 15. “So hast thou also them
that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.—“As Balac had
Balaam, a false prophet and seducer, “so hast thou also,” wanting that earnest hatred of
evil which would make such a presence and such a teaching
intolerable to thee, “them that hold the doctrine of
the Nicolaitans;” and then Christ adds, “which thing I hate,” reminding him how
ill it became him not to hate that which was hated of his Lord. In this matter at
least the Angel of Ephesus had more of the mind of Christ than he had (ver. 6).
What Christ hated, that Angel hated too.
Ver. 16. “Repent; or else I will come
unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.”—Out
of this feebleness of moral indignation against evil it had come to pass that the
Angel had not testified with sufficient energy against the Nicolaitans and their
doctrine; he could not say with Paul, “I am pure from the blood of all men”
(Acts
xx. 26). But now repenting and faithfully witnessing against their errors, he would
either recover them for the truth, or else drive them wholly from the communion
of the Church—in either case a gain. If he do not repent, the Lord will come quickly,
and fight against him and them with the sword of his mouth. We have, I am persuaded,
another allusion here to the history of Balaam, namely to Num. xxxi. 8 (cf. Josh.
xiii. 22): “Balaam also, the son of Beor, they slew with the sword;” this sword
of the children of Israel being indeed the sword of God; cf. Num.
xxii. 31. Vitringa: “Verba hæc manifeste respiciunt historiam Bileami: in quâ habemus, primo quidem,
Angelum Domini stricto ense se Bileamo, populo Dei maledicere meditanti,
in viâ opposuisse, et, si in instituto perseveraret, exitium illi minatum esse;
deinde Bileamum, et Israelitas qui consilium illius secuti fuerant, jussu Dei
gladio periisse.”
In that, “I will fight against them,” it might seem at first sight as if there was
only a threat for these ungodly workers; and not for the Angel who had been faithful
in the main, nor for the better portion of the Church. But it is not so. When God
has a controversy with a Church or with a people, the tribulation, reaches all,
though the judgment is only for his foes.. The gold and the dross are cast alike
into the fire, though it is only the dross that is consumed therein. The holy prophet
is entangled outwardly in the same doom with the ungodly king (Jer. xxxix. 4; xliii.
6; Matt. xxiv. 20, 21). There may be, there assuredly will be, on the part of the
faithful, a separation from the sin—there is seldom a separation from the suffering—of
such a time. This suffering is for all. It is well that it should be so; that there
should be nothing in the usual course of God’s judgments to flatter the selfish
hope of avoiding a share in the woe. Enough for any to escape the woe within
the woe, namely, the sense of
this suffering ass the utterance of the extreme displeasure of God.
Ver. 17. “He
that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches; To him
that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden rnanna.”—There can, I think, be
no doubt that allusion is here to the manna which at God’s express command Moses
caused to be laid up before the Lord in the Sanctuary (Exod. xvi. 32-34; cf. Heb.
ix. 4). This manna, as being thus laid up in the Holy Place, obtained
the name of “hidden,” “occultatum,” or
“reconditum,” as Cocceius presses that it should be
rendered, not “occultum;” for it is not κρυπτόν in the original, but
κεκρυμμένον;
not therefore “latens manna” as in Tertullian, but
“absconditum” as in the Vulgate. It is true that many
commentators, as Hengstenberg, omit any reference to this, and some expressly
deny that there is any such; but Vitringa rightly: “Ducit
autem phrasis nos manifeste ad cogitandum de mannâ illo, quod ex jussu Dei in
urnâ reponendum erat in sacratissimo Tabernaculi conclavi, per divinam
providentiam ab omni corruptione præservandum; . . . . quod manna vere symbolum
fuit Christi virtute obedientiæ suæ in cœ lum translati, et ibi delitescentis,
usque quo Ecclesia ipsius luctam suam in his terris absolverit.” The
question, what we shall exactly understand by this “hidden
manna,” and
the eating of it, has not always been answered with precision. Origen very characteristically
understands by it the inner mystical sense of Scripture as contrasted with the outward
form and letter (Hom. 9 in Exod.): “Urna
mannæ reposita, intellectus Verbi Dei subtilis et dulcis.” For the
Mystics it is in general that graciousness of God which can only be known by
those who have themselves actually tasted it; thus one of these: “Hujus
spiritualis et occulti mannæ sapor latet in occulto, nisi gustando sentiatur.”
I take it, however, that this “hidden manna” represents a more central benefit
even than these; moreover, like all the other promises of these Epistles, it represents
a benefit pertaining to the future kingdom of glory, and not to the present kingdom
of grace. I would not indeed affirm that this promise has not prelibations which
will be tasted in the present time; for the life eternal commences on this side
of the grave, and not first on the other; and here in the wilderness Christ is the
bread from heaven, the bread of God, the true manna, of which those that eat shall
never die (John vi. 31-33, 48-51). Nay, more than this;
since his Ascension He is in some sort a “hidden manna” for them now. Like that manna laid up in the Sanctuary
before the Testimony, He too, withdrawn from sight, but in a human body, and bearing
our flesh, is yet exempted
from the law of corruption
under which all other children of men have lain (Exod. xvi. 20, 33, 34; Acts ii.
27, 31). But this promise of feeding on “the hidden manna” is misunderstood, or
at any rate is scanted of its full meaning, unless we look on to something more
and higher than this. The words imply that, however hidden now, it shall not remain
hidden evermore; and the best commentary on them is to be found at 1 Cor. ii. 9;Alcuin:
“Apte ergo illa satietas celestis gloriæ manna [absconditum?]
vocatur, quia juxta Pauli vocem nec oculus vidit, nec in cor hominis ascendit,
quæ præparavit Deus diligentibus se.”
1 John iii. 2. The seeing Christ as
He is, of the latter passage, and through this
beatific vision being made like to Him, is identical with this eating of the hidden
manna; which shall, as it were, be then brought forth from the sanctuary, the Holy
of Holies of God’s immediate presence, where it was withdrawn from sight so long,
that all may partake of it; the glory of Christ, now shrouded and concealed, being
then revealed to his people.
There has been, and there will be again, occasion to
observe, that in almost all these promises there is a peculiar adaptation of the
promise to the self-denial by which it will have been won. Witsius notes this here,
and draws out very beautifully the inner sweetness of this promise (Miscell. Sacra,
vol. i. p. 692): “Eas [profanas epulas] si quis generosâ
fidei constantiâ,
una cum omnibus blandientis seculi deliciis atque illiciis fortiter spreverit, sciat
se satiatum iri suavissimis divinæ tam gratiæ quam gloriæ epulis, quorum suavitatem
nemo rite æstimare novit, nisi qui gustavit. Propterea autem mannæ absconditæ
comparantur, id est, illi quæ in urnâ aureâ in abdito loco asservanda, coram facie
Jehovæ seposita fuit, I. Quia quod præcipuum est in illâ dulcedinis Christi participatione
reservatur cum Christo in cœlis (Col. iii. 3; 2 Tim. i. 12).
II. Quia mundanorum
hominum nemo dulcedinem hujus novit (Joh. xiv. 17);
immo ne ipsi fideles quidem
antequam experiantur (1 Joh. iii. 2).
III. Quia communio ista non in diem est, uti
manna quotidiana, sed perpetua, uti illa quæ seposita coram Domino a putrefactione
et vermibus immunis erat (Joh. vi. 27), et propterea
profanis Pergamensium epulis immensum anteferenda.”
“And will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new
name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”—”
White” is every
where the colour and livery of heaven; and nowhere with a greater or so great an
emphasis, or with so frequent iteration, as in this Book. Thus of the Son of God
we were told, “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow” (i. 14). Then besides this “white stone”
we have “white raiment” (iii. 5),
“white
robes” (vii. 9),
“a white cloud” (xiv. 14),
“fine linen clean and white” (xix. 8, 14),
“white horses” (xix. 11, 14),
“a
great white throne” (xx. 11). With these passages compare Dan. vii. 9; Matt. xvii.
2; xxviii. 3; Mark ix. 3; xvi. 5; John xx. 12; Acts i. 10.
The sense of the fitness of white to serve as a symbol of absolute purity speaks
out in many ways; it would do so singularly in the Latin; “castus,” if Döderlein’s
suggestion that “castus” is a participle of “candeo”
could be allowed. It may be well to observe that this “white” as
the colour of heaven, is not the mere absence of other colour, not the dull
“albus,” but the bright “candidus;” glistering white—as is evident from
many passages; for instance, from a comparison of Matt. xxviii. 3 and Luke xxiv.
4 with John xx. 12; of Rev. xx. 11 (λευκὸς θρόνος)
with its original in Daniel vii.
9 (θρόνος αὐτοῦ φλὸξ πυρός);
and from those passages just now referred to, which relate to the
Transfiguration. It is the character of intense white to be shining; thus
“niteo” (= “niviteo”) is
connected with “nix;” λευκός
with “lux,” see Donaldson,
New Cratylus, § 269. We may note too how λευκός and
λαμπρός are used as convertible
terms, Rev. xix. 8, 14; while at Acts x. 30, λευκῇ and
λαμπρᾷ are different readings;
and at Cant. v. 11, the Septuagint has λευκός, and Symmachus
λαμπρός.
And as “white,” so also “new”
belongs eminently to this Book; being one of the key-words of it; He who is the
giver of this revelation every where setting forth Himself as the only renewer
of all which sin had made old; the author of a new creation even in the midst of
a decaying and dying world; and thus we have besides the “new name” here (cf. iii. 12), the “new Jerusalem”
(iii. 12), the “new song” (v. 9),
the “new heaven and the new earth” (xxi. 1), and finally
“all things
new” (xxi. 5);
with all which we may profitably compare Ps. xxxii. 3; cxliii. 10; Isai. xlii. 10;
lxii. 2; lxv. 17; Jer. xxxi. 31; Ezek. xi. 19; xxxvi. 26.
But though it is not difficult to fix the symbolic
significance of “white” and “new” in this Book, it
must be freely admitted that we still wait an entirely satisfactory explanation
of this “white stone” with the “new name” written in it. The greater number of expositors,
especially the older ones, start from a point to which no objection can be made,
namely, that there was in ancient times something festal, fortunate, of good omen,
in white pebbles or beans. Thus the Greek phrase λευκὴ ἡμέρα, or
λευκὸν ἵμαρ
(Æschylus, Pers. 305), is commonly derived from a custom ascribed to the Scythians
or Thracians, of indicating each happy day which they spent with a white stone placed
in an urn, each unhappy with a black. After death, as those or these
preponderated in number,
their lives were counted happy or miserable (Pliny, H. N. vii. 41; the Younger
Pliny, Ep. vi. 11; Martial ix. 53: “Dies nobis Signandi melioribus lapillis”).
Or there is another explanation of the “white day,” connecting it still with the
white stone or bean, I mean that given by Plutarch in his Life of Pericles,
c. 61; I quote the translation of North. At the siege of Samos, fearing that his
soldiers would be weary with its length, “he divided his army into eight
companies, whom he made to draw lots, and that company which lighted upon the
white bean, they should be quiet and make good cheer, while the other seven
fought. And they say that from thence it came that when any have made good
cheer, and taken pleasure abroad, they do yet call it a white day, because of
the white bean.”
But how, it may be asked, is all this brought to bear on the
promise of the “white stone” to the faithful here? The earliest attempt to find help in this quarter is that
of the Greek commentator Andreas. He sees allusion in these words to the white pebble,
by placing which in the ballot-box the Greek judges pronounced the sentence of acquittal
(ψῆφοι σώζουσαι they were therefore called), as by the black of condemnation; a
custom expressed in the well-known lines of Ovid (Metam. xv. 41, 42):
Mos erat antiquns,
niveis atrisque lapillis,
His damnare reos, illis absolvere culpæ.”
But, not to
speak of a grave fault, of which I shall presently speak, common to this and almost
every other explanation of these words which is offered, this one is manifestly
inadequate; the absolving pebble was not given to the acquitted, as this is to the
victor, nor was there any name written upon it.
Others see allusion to the tessera
(it too was called ψῆφος) which the conquerors at the Olympic or other solemn games
(the ὀλυμπιονῖκαι, ἱερονῖκαι) received from the master of the games; which ψῆφος
gave ever after to him who received it certain honorary distinctions and privileges,
as for example, the right of free access to the public entertainments. So Arethas,
Gerhard (Loci Theoll. vol. ii. p. 327), and others; while Vitringa is obliged to
confess that he can only explain the symbol by combining together these two customs
of the absolving pebble, and the tessera given to
the victor in the games; which two in the higher interpretation must be blended
into one: “Ut tamen verum fatear,
probabile videri possit Dominum orationem suam hoc loco ita temperâsse, ut non
ad simplicem aliquem ritum, apud Græcos receptum, hic loci alluserit, sed phrasin
suam mutuatus sit a duobus illis ritibus supra commemoratis, inter se compositis,
qui licet diversi fuerint generis, in tertio tamen, quod dicitur,
inter se conveniebant.”
But all these explanations, and others which it would be
tedious to enumerate, even if they were more satisfactory, and they appear to me
most unsatisfactory, are affected with the same fatal weakness, namely, that
they are borrowed from heathen antiquity, while this Book moves exclusively
within the circle of sacred, that is, of Jewish, imagery and symbols; nor is the
explanation of its symbols in any case to be sought beyond this circle. All
which on this matter was said in respect of the “crown of life” (ii. 10)
finds its application here. It is true that Hengstenberg, whose interpretation I
have not yet mentioned, avoids this mistake, but at a cost which leaves his as
valueless as the others. For him the “white stone” has no
significance of its own, no independent value, being introduced merely for the
sake of the “new name” which is written upon it,
and that it may serve as a vehicle for this name, the substrate on which that is superinduced, and as such entirely subordinate to it. Few, I am persuaded, reading
the words of the promise, with the emphasis which the Lord lays on the twice-repeated
mention of the stone, and noting the independent place which it occupies as itself
a gift, whatever other gifts might be associated with it, will be content to acquiesce
in this, or to regard
as a solution,
what is in fact merely an evasion, of the difficulty which the words present.
But
to return. The first necessary condition of any interpretation which should be accepted
as satisfactory being this, that it should be sacred and not heathen, at the same
time this is not the only one. There appear to me two other necessary conditions,
the non-fulfilment of which is fatal to any exposition; the fulfilment of them,
on the contrary, not being itself a proof that the right interpretation has been
seized; but only a conditio sine quâ non, and up
to a certain point implying a probability that this has been attained. Besides
thus being Jewish or sacred, and not heathen or profane, which I believe is the
universal law of all Apocalyptic symbolism, the solution must in this particular
instance refer to the wilderness period of Jewish history, in the same way as
the “hidden manna” does. I must ask
the reader to suspend his demand for a proof of this assertion till we have reached
the very last of the promises, when the course and order of them all will be considered.
And, in the second place, it must be capable of being brought into some unity with
that other promise of eating of the hidden manna; there must be some bond of connexion
between the two. I conclude this not merely from the natural fitness of things,
but from the analogy of all the other
promises made to the other Churches.
In every other case the promise is either absolutely single, as at ii. 7, 11; iii.
21; or single in its central idea, as at ii. 26-28; iii. 5, 12, which I shall have
the opportunity of showing. Which thing being so, it is very improbable that the
present should be an exception to the rule, and that here two entirely disparate
promises should be arbitrarily linked together.
The only solution I know which fulfils
all these conditions, is one proposed by Züllig.Offenb. Johannis, vol. i. pp. 408-454.
It has found no favour whatever,
having been indeed wrought out by him in a manner of itself sufficient to insure
its rejection. Fully acknowledging my obligation to him for the original suggestion
of it, and for some of the arguments by which it is supported, I must yet claim
to set it forth independently of him, nor is he in any respect responsible for my
statement of it.
Starting then from a reconsideration of the word ψῆφος, this,
it may be observed, is sometimes used in the later Greek for a precious stone; thus
ψῆφος δακτυλική, the gem in a seal-ring.
Neither is there in the epithet λευκός,
not “albus” but “candidus,” anything which renders this unlikely here, but rather
the contrary; a diamond, for instance, being of the purest glistering white. The
ψῆφος λευκή,
then may be, not what we commonly begin with taking for granted it must be, a white
pebble, but a precious stone shining white, a diamond. But may not the mysterious
Urim and Thummim have been exactly this? First, let me observe, by way of preoccupying
a difficulty on the threshold, that whatever this may have been, it was not two
things, but two names for one and the same thing (see Bähr, Symbolik d. Mos.
Cult. vol. ii. pp. 109, 110); often therefore called only the Urim (Num. xxvii.
21; 1 Sam. xxviii. 6). Sparing my readers the learning which might easily be transcribed
to any amount from the many elaborate treatises devoted to the question what this Urim and Thummim was, let me state the conclusions to which those who have studied
the matter most profoundly have arrived. They are agreed that it was some precious
thing which the High Priest bore within the Choschen or square breastplate of judgment,
this being doubled back upon itself, to the end that like a purse it might contain
the treasure committed to it (Exod. xxviii. 15-30; Lev. viii. 8), and with all its
costly jewellery and elaborate workmanship existing for this object, quite as much
as the ark for the tables of the law. But what precious thing this Urim was is shrouded
in mystery; only as that in the purse, that for which the purse was made, is likely
to
have been more precious than
the purse itself, if that was set with its twelve precious stones, each with the
name of a tribe engraven on it, in this we are led to look for a stone rarer and
more costly than them all; and it is certainly very noticeable that among the twelve
stones of the breastplate the diamond does not appear; for the mention of it in
our Version (Exod. xxviii. 18) is confessedly a mistake;—as though this stone had
been reserved for a higher honour and dignity still.
Then further, no one knows, probably no one ever knew, what
was written on the Urim; except indeed the High Priest; who, consulting it that
he might in some way obtain through it lively oracles from God, in matters which
greatly concerned the weal or woe of the people, could not have remained
ignorant of this. It is generally conjectured, however, to have been the holy
Tetragrammaton; the ineffable name of God. I need hardly ask the reader who has
followed me thus far to note how well this agrees with the words before us,
“and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth
it.” Many indeed are led away from the right interpretation of these last
words, by referring this “receiveth it,” to the “name,”
and not to the “stone;” “saving
he that receiveth this name,”—when, as I feel sure, we ought to understand
it, “saving he that receiveth this stone.”, They
assume the overcomer’s
own name to be that written on this stone; and draw from these words an intimation
that, just as the mystery of regeneration is known only to the new-born, so the
yet higher glory of heaven only to him that is partaker of it (1 Cor. xiii. 9);
which all is most true, and a new name is often used to express a new blessedness
(Isai. lxii. 2; lxv. 15); but yet
it is not the truth, I am persuaded, of the present words. The “new name”
here is something even better than this. It is the new name of God or of Christ,
“my new name” (iii. 12), some revelation of the glory of God,
only in that higher state capable of being communicated by Him to his people, and
which they only can understand who have actually received; for it is a knowing which
is identical with a being.
How excellently well the promise, so understood, matches with
the other promise of the hidden manna, which goes hand in hand with it. I said
at the outset of this inquiry, that there ought to be an inner bond between the
two parts of the promise, and such, according to this interpretation, there is.
“The hidden manna” and the “white stone” are not merely united in time, belonging
both to the wilderness period of the history of God’s people; but they are united
as both representing high-priestly privileges, which the Lord should at length impart
to all his people, kings and priests to God, as He will
then have made them all. If any should eat of “the hidden manna,”
who but the High Priest, who alone had entrance into the Holy Place where it was
laid up? If any should have knowledge of what was graven on the Urim, who but
the same High Priest, in whose keeping it was, and who was bound by his very
office to consult it? The mystery of what was written there, shut to every
other, would be open to him. In lack of any more satisfying explanation of the
“white stone;” with the “new name” written upon it, I venture to suggest
that the key to it may possibly be here.
IV.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF THYATIRA.
Rev. ii. 18-29.
Ver. 18. “And unto the Angel of the Church in Thyatira write.”—The Roman road from Pergamum
to Sardis left Thyatira, as we are told by Strabo (xiii. 4), a little to the left;
St. John is led in the Spirit by the same route which he may often in time past
have travelled in the course of his apostolic visitations. Thyatira, a city of no
first-rate dignity, was a Macedonian colony (Strabo, xiii. 4); and it may be looked
at as a slight and unintentional confirmation, in a minute particular, of the veracity
of the Acts, that Lydia, a purple-seller of Thyatira, is met exactly in the Macedonian
city of Philippi (Acts xvi. 14), being precisely that which was likely to happen
from the close and frequent intercourse maintained between a mother city and its
daughter colonies. From this Lydia, whose heart the Lord had opened to attend to
the things spoken of Paul,
the Church at Thyatira may
have taken its beginnings; she who had gone forth for a while, to buy and sell and
get gain, when she returned home may have brought home with her richer merchandise
than any she had looked to obtain.
“These things saith, the Son of God, who hath
his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass.”—The attributes
which the Lord claims are again drawn from the description of the first chapter,
ver. 14, 15, which see. The title
“Son of God” (cf. xix. 13) is not indeed expressly
and in so many words there; but it is involved in, and is the sum total of the impression
left by the whole description. The actual form of this title is here drawn from
the second Psalm, ver. 9, as is plain from more than one reference to that Psalm
before this Epistle is ended; thus, compare ver. 26 with Ps. ii. 8; and ver. 27
with ii. 9. He who will presently give dominion to his servants, first claims it
for Himself. The heathen have been given to Him for an inheritance, else He could
not give them to his servants. If they are to rule them with a rod of iron, and
break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel, it is only as partakers in a power
which He has Himself first received.
Ver. 19. “I know thy works, and charity,
and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more
than the first.”—Omit “and
thy works” on its second occurrence, which has no right to
a place in the text, and which mars the symmetry of all. We shall then have two
pairs,— first, “thy charity and thy
service,” for the article prefixed to all these words shows that the concluding σοῦ belongs to them all,—the
“charity,” or love, being the more inward thing, the “service”
(διακονία)
the outward ministrations, the helps of all kind shown first to the household of
faith, and then to all others, in which this “charity” found its utterance (Acts xi. 29; 1 Cor. xvi. 15; 2 Cor. xii. 9; Heb. vi. 10).
As the first pair have a very close inner connexion, so have also the next pair,
“thy faith and thy patience.” It needs but to refer in proof to Heb. xi. 27:
“He endured, as seeing Him that is invisible;” and indeed Scripture everywhere
declares that faith is the root and source of all patient continuance in
well-doing.—“And
the last to be more than the first.” The faithful in Thyatira were growing and increasing
in this service of love, this patience of faith; herein satisfying the desire of
Him, who evermore desires for his people that they should abound more and more in
all good things. How much better this τὰ ἔσχατα
πλείονα τῶν πρώτων than that
of which St. Peter elsewhere speaks as the state of some, τὰ ἔσχατα χείρονα τῶν
πρώτων (2 Ep. ii. 20; cf. Matt. xii. 45), which, as regards the most excellent
grace of all, the Lord
has just declared to be the
state of the Ephesian Church (ver. 4).
Ver. 20. “Notwithstanding I have a few things
against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a
prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat
things sacrificed unto idols.”—Omit “a few things” (ὀλίγα),
which has no business in the text, changing, as a consequence of this, “because”
into “that”—but do not change “that woman” into
“thy wife” (τῆν γυναῖκά σοῦ), the authority for
the insertion of σοῦ being insufficient to justify this. The whole condition of
things at Thyatira was exactly the reverse of what it was at Ephesus. There much
zeal for orthodoxy, and for the maintenance of sound doctrine, but little love,
and as a consequence, no doubt, few ministrations of love. Here the activity of
faith and love; but insufficient zeal for the maintenance of godly discipline and
doctrine, a patience of error even where there was not a participation in it. Each
of these Churches was weak in that wherein the other was strong.
But whom shall we understand by “that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess,” whom
the Lord proceeds presently to threaten with so terrible a doom? It will be expedient
here to consider first the position which the literal and historic Jezebel occupies
in the history of the Church of the Old
Testament. As Balaam,
in the earlier history of the children of Israel, was the author of the great attempt
to introduce heathenism with all its train of attendant impurities into the heart
of the Church of God (Rev. ii. 14; Num. xxv.), so Jezebel in the later period of
that same history. She was a daughter of Ethbaal, king of Sidon (1 Kings xvi. 13).
The identity of this Ethbaal and Εἰθώβαλος, mentioned in a fragment of the
Tyrian
Annals of Menander, preserved by Josephus (Con. Apion. i. 18), is sufficiently
made out, and is not, I believe, called in question by any. Of him then we there
learn that he was priest of Astarte, and, by the murder of his predecessor Pheles,
made his own way to the throne and kingdom. Jezebel, so swift to shed blood (1 Kings
xviii. 4; xix. 2; xxi. 10), is a worthy offshoot of this evil stock. Nor less does
she attest herself the daughter of the priest of Astarte. Hitherto the worship of
the Calves had been the extent of the departure of the Ten Tribes from the Levitical
institutions,—the true God worshipped still, the law of Moses in the main allowed
and kept, however there might be a certain amount of sinful will-worship mingling
with and spoiling all. But from the time of Ahab’s marriage with the daughter of
Ethbaal the apostasy of Israel assumes altogether a different character; the guilt
of it is of quite another and an infinitely deadlier kind
(1 Kings xvi. 31; xxi. 25,
26). A fanatical promoter of the Baal worship (1 Kings xviii. 19), overbearing with
her stronger will the weak will of her despicable husband, animated with the fiercest
hatred against the prophets of Jehovah, the last witnesses for Him in Israel, now
that the Levitical priesthood had been abolished there (1 Kings xxi. 31), she seeks
utterly to exterminate these (1 Kings xviii. 13). She was probably herself, like
her moral namesake here, a false prophetess; a priestess of that foul enthusiasm.
Many arguments might be adduced to make this probable at the least. As much seems
implied in Jehu’s answer to Joram’s question, “Is it peace?” “What peace, so
long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts are so many”
(2
Kings ix. 22)? While, again, when we keep in mind the essentially impure character
of the Phœnician idolatries which she introduced,—Ashtaroth or Astarte was the
Phœ nician Aphrodite,—we have an explanation of the “whoredoms” which Jehu further
lays to her charge, and which may thus have set an hideous contradiction between
her and her name, if indeed that derivation which would make it etymologically to
signify The Chaste (our Agnes) is the true one. Nor is this the only passage where
these impurities are ascribed to her. There is at Jeremiah iv. 30 an allusion,
often overlooked, but, so soon as attention is called to it, not
to be gainsaid,
to 2 Kings ix. 30; and there the lovers or paramours of Jezebel appear.
Such was
the elder Jezebel. And the later, assuredly not a sect of evil-workers personified,
but some single wicked woman in the Church of Thyatira, inheriting from her this
name of infamy in the Church of God, would seem to have followed hard in the steps
of her Jewish prototype (for a like transfer of an evil name see Isai. i. 10). She
gave herself out for a prophetess, and in one sense probably was so,—no mere teacher
of perverse things, employing her intellectual faculties in the service of
Satan, and not of God; but claiming inspiration, and probably possessing it,
wielding spiritual powers, only they were such as reached her from beneath, not
such as descended on her from above; for as at this time miraculous gifts of
grace and power were at work in the Church, so were also their counterparts. And
thus, by aid of these, she seduced the servants of Christ “to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed
to idols;” see ver. 14. The attempt
to restrain “servants” here to those who hold
office in the Church is certainly a mistake. Δοῦλος may very well have this narrower
meaning at i. 1; but that δοῦλοι includes the whole body of the faithful at vii.
3; xxii. 3, is evident. A comparison of this verse with ver. 14-16 leaves no doubt
that the Jezebelites, and Balaaminites, and Nicolaitans, with secondary
differences no doubt,
were yet substantially the same;—all libertine sects, disclaiming the obligations
of the moral law; all starting with a denial that Jesus Christ was come in the flesh,
and that in the flesh therefore men were to be holy; false spiritualists, whose
high-pretensions did not hinder them from ending in the foulest fleshly sins.
Ver.
21. “And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not.”—The
fact that punishment does not at once overtake sinners is constantly perverted by
them as an evidence that it never will overtake them (Eccl. viii. 11; Isai. xxvi.
10; Ps. xxvi. 11); that God does not see, or, seeing, does not care to avenge. Christ
opens out here another aspect under which this delay in the divine revenges may
be regarded. The very time during which ungodly men are heaping up for themselves
greater wrath against tie day of wrath, was a time lent them for repentance (Rom.
ii. 4; 2 Pet. iii. 9), if only they would have understood the object and the meaning
of it.
Ver. 22. “Behold, I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery
with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.”—These
last words imply that even now the day of grace was not expired for these
transgressors, however near at hand the close of it might be. “I will
cast her into
a bed;”A curious testimony to the entire disappearance of Greek, and
of the power of appealing to Greek copies of Scripture, probably to the total
absence of Greek copies in Western Europe to appeal to, and the consequent
exclusive dependence on the Vulgate, occurs here in the Commentary of Richard of
St. Victor, one of the most learned men of perhaps the most learned monastic
foundation in France. He observes that some copies here read ‘lectum,’
some ‘luctum;’ discusses at length the relative advantages and probabilities
of the two readings, without a word implying the possibility of settling the question
at once by a glance at the original.
there where she has sinned shall she also be punished (cf. 1 Kings xxi.
19); the bed of sin shall be the bed of languishing, of sickness, and of death.
The allusion which Vitringa traces here to the bed on which Ahab cast himself down
heavy and displeased (1 Kings xxi. 4) is ingenious, but exceedingly far-fetched.
Ver. 23. “And I will kill her children with death.”—If
her lovers, those “that commit
adultery with her” (ver. 22), can
only mean the chief furtherers and abettors of those evil things (she may have
seduced them to fleshly as well as spiritual wickedness), “her children” must be rather the less prominent, less forward members of the same
wicked company, more the deceived, while the others were the deceivers (Isai. lvii.
3), who yet should be overtaken with those others in a common doom (Ezek. xxiii.
47). The words “with death” must plainly be accepted as emphatic;
some understand, with pestilence
and plague (see Jer. xxi. 7), relying mainly on Rev. vi. 8; which, however, is insufficient
to bear out this view, seeing that θάνατος in that passage itself cannot be proved
to mean this; a reference to 2 Sam. xxiv. 13, 15, LXX. would be more to the point.
Hengstenberg detects an allusion to the death of the adulteress (Lev. xx. 10; cf.
John viii. 5); but this call scarcely be; for it is the
“children” of the adulteress,
not the adulteress herself, who are here threatened with death. Others find a reference
to tire two sweeping catastrophies which overtook the Baal priests and votaries
at exactly that period of Jewish history to which the mention of Jezebel here points
(1 Kings xviii. 40; 2 Kings x. 25). To me it seems no more than a threat that their
doom should be a signal one, that they should not die the common death of all men,
nor be visited after the visitation of all men (Num. xvi. 29), but leaving the precise
manner of that doom undefined.
“And all the Churches shall know that I am He, which
searcheth the reins and hearts.”—The judgment on this brood of transgressors shall
be so open and manifest, their sin shall so plainly find them out, that, not the
wicked, for God’s judgments are far above out of their sight, whether those
judgments overtake themselves or others, but “all the Churches,” all who ponder these things
and lay
them to heart,
shall confess that He who moves up and down in the midst of his Church, beholding
the evil and the good, is a God of knowledge (see ii. 2),
who is not mocked; “which
searcheth the reins and hearts” (ταῖς ἐννοίαις ἐμβατεύων,
as Olympiodorus explains it),—“the reins” being regarded as the seat of the passions, “the heart” of the
affections; cf. Jer. xvii. 10; xx. 12. But this searching of the hearts and reins
being, as it is, a prerogative of Deity (Mark ii. 8), God only knowing the hearts
of men (ὁ καρδιογνώστης Θεός, Acts xv. 8; i. 24; 1 Chron. xxix. 17),
it is plain that Christ, claiming this to Himself, is implicitly claiming to be
God.—Ἐρευνᾶν
is used in this same sense of searching, Rom. viii. 27, and always expresses a
careful
investigation, a following up of tracks or indications as far as they will lead,
as the dog the footprints of the chase, the miner the veins of the metal (Gen. xxxi.
35; 1 Kings xx. 6; Prov. xx. 27; 1 Cor. ii. 10; 1 Pet. i. 11). Expressing, as the
word does, this laborious and even painful investigation, leading step by step to
its result, it, in the same way as every other discursive act, can only ἀνθρωποπαθῶς
be ascribed to God; to whom by absolute and immediate intuition all hearts at all
times lie open and manifest; who needs not to search out, and in this way to find,
that which He always knows. ἐρευνῶν the Septuagint Translators
prefer ἐτάζων (Ps. vii.
10; 1 Chron. xxix. 17; Ps. cxxxviii. 22; Jer. xvii. 10), which does not occur in
the New Testament.
“And I will give unto every one of you according to your works.”—This
promise, or this threat, for it may be either, is one which we commonly keep at
this time too much in the background; but it is one which we should press on ourselves
and on others with the same emphasis wherewith Christ and his Word presses it upon
us all (Ps. lxii. 13; Matt. xvi. 27; Rom. ii. 6; Job xxxiv. 11; Prov. xxiv. 12;
Jer. xxii. 19). It is indeed one of the gravest mischiefs which Rome has bequeathed
to us, that in a reaction and protest, itself absolutely necessary, against the
false emphasis which she put on works, unduly thrusting them in to share with Christ’s
merits in our justification, we often fear to place upon them the true; being as
they are, to speak with St. Bernard, the “via regni,”
however little the “causa
regnandi;” though here too it must of course never be forgotten that it is only
the good tree which brings forth good fruit; and that no tree is good until Christ
has made it so.
Ver. 24. “But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as
many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as
they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.”—Leave out the καὶ with which
the second
clause in this sentence begins, and read, “But unto you I say, the rest in Thyatira, &c.” The
Gnostics, starting probably from 1 Cor. ii. 10, were ever boasting their acquaintance
with mysteries, the deep things of God; could speak much about the βυθός,
“vere
cæcutientes, qui profunda Bythi adinvenisse se dicunt” (Irenæus; cf. Tertullian,
Adv. Valentin. § 1). A question is often here raised, whether these
evil-workers spoke of “depths of Satan;” or only of “depths,”
while “of Satan” is a further characteristic of these “depths,”
added by the Lord Himself; who thus intimates with a keen irony what was the
real character of those “depths” into which they
professed themselves to have entered, and into which they sought to guide others.
In this last way the words are generally understood, the Lord declaring what, in
his all-seeing eye, was the true nature of the μεγαλοῤῥημοσύναι (such Ignatius,
Ep. ad Ephes. 10, calls them), the “great swelling words of vanity”
which these Gnostics vented; promising liberty to others, being themselves
servants of corruption. I should be disposed, however, to think with
Hengstenberg, that it was they themselves who talked of “depths of Satan,”—the position of ὡς λέγουσι seems to
imply as much,—that in that fearful sophistry wherein they were such adepts, and
whereby they sought to make a religion of every corrupt
inclination of the natural mind, they talked much of “depths of Satan,” which it was expedient for them to
fathom. We know concerning them how they taught that it was a small tiling for a
man to despise pleasure and to show himself superior to it, while at the same time
he fled from it. The true, the glorious victory was, to remain superior to it, even
while tasting it to the full; to give the body to all the lusts of the flesh, and
yet with all this to maintain the spirit in a region of its own, uninjured by them;
and thus, as it were, to fight against pleasure with the arms of pleasure itself;
to mock and defy Satan even in his own kingdom and domain. We have an anticipation
of this sophistry of sin, with its flatteries at once of the pride and corruption
of the human heart, in the well-known mot of Aristippus, the Cyrenian philosopher,
who being upbraided on the score of his relations with a Corinthian courtesan, defended
himself with the reply, difficult adequately to render in English,
Ἔχω Λαΐδα, οὐκ ἔχομαι ὑπ᾽ αὐτῆς (Clemens Alex.
Strom. ii. 20). Here, however, were but the
germs of that which in some of the Gnostics appears fully blown.
“For you,” says
the Lord, “who have not gone to this Satanic school, who have been content with
the simple knowledge of the good, and not thought it needful to know the evil as
well, not good and
evil, but only
good, I will put upon you none other burden.” If it be asked, “none other burden” than what?—the answer no doubt is, none other than a continued abstinence from,
and protest against, these abominations. It was the master-stroke of the antinomian
Gnostics to exaggerate, to distort, to misapply, all which St. Paul had spoken about
the freedom of the Christian man from the law. They were the ultra-Paulines, who
caricatured his doctrine, till of God’s truth they had made a devil’s lie. St. Paul
had said of the law that it was not the ground of the Christian man’s
justification, nor yet the source of his holiness; they made him to say that it
was not the rule of his life; as though he had rejected it altogether as a
burden no longer to be borne by the redeemed. The Lord takes up this word
“burden;”—“I do lay on you
a burden, but it is a burden which it is your blessedness to bear, and over and
above which I will impose no other.” Compare Matt. xi. 30, where, however, φορτίον,
not βάρος, stands in the original, and Acts xv. 28, 29, where βάρος
occurs in this very sense of abstinence from idol-meats and fornication; and
where exactly in the same sense, and almost in the same words, the Apostles
declare that they will lay on the faithful of the Gentiles “no greater
burden than these necessary things.”
Ver. 25. “But that which
ye have already hold fast till I come.”—It is on this condition that He will impose
on them no additional burden. What they have of sound doctrine, of holy living,
this they must hold fast, must so grasp it that none shall wrest it from them, till
the day when the Lord shall come, and bring this long and painful struggle for the
maintenance of his truth to an end. Ever and ever in Scripture, not the day of death,
but the day of the Lord Jesus, is put as the term of all conflict.
Ver. 26. “And
he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power
over the nations.”—By “my works” we must understand, “works which I have commanded,
in which I find pleasure, which are the fruit of my Spirit;” cf. John vi. 27, where
“works of God” are to be understood in the same sense as “godly works.” Here
again that which is praised, that which will be crowned, is the keeping of these
his works to the end; for Christ, the great ἐπιστάτης in the games, of which the
Father is the ἀγωνοθέτης, and, still to keep the language of Tertullian, the Holy
Ghost the ξυστάρχης, eternal life the
βραβεῖον,
promises here this reward, not to him who enters the lists and endures for a
time, but to him who, having begun well, continues striving lawfully to the
last. “To him will I give power over
the nations.”
The royalties of Christ shall by reflection and communication be the royalties also
of his Church. They shall reign; but only because Christ reigns, and because IHe
is pleased to share his dignity with them (iii. 21; Rom. v. 17; 2 Tim. ii. 12).
When we ask ourselves in what sense, at what time, and in what form this “power
over the nations” shall be the prerogative of the Church, we must find our answer
in such passages as Rev. xx. 4; xxii. 5; 1 Cor. vi. 2; Ps. cxlix. 9, 6; and above
all Matt. xix. 28.; cf. also Wisd. iii. 8.
Ver. 27. “And he shall rule them with
a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers.”—As this
is a dignity which is originally Christ’s (Ps. ii. 9; Rev. xii. 5; xix. 15), and
only by Him made over to his servants, it is needful first to inquire what it means
in respect of Him; and we may then understand what it means in respect of them.
The passage in the second Psalm is no doubt that on which the three in this Book
repose. It is there, “Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron;” but this Book
throughout is in agreement with the Septuagint, “Thou shalt rule [ποιμανεῖς] them
with a rod of iron.” The Hebrew words for “Thou shalt break” and “Thou shalt
rule” only differ in their vowels; their consonants are identical; at the same time
the parallelism of the latter half of the verse, “Thou shalt
dash them in pieces like a
potter’s vessel,” leaves no doubt that “Thou shalt break” was the intention of
the Psalmist. Shall we therefore conclude not merely that the Septuagint Translators
mistook, which happens too frequently to be a matter to us of any serious wonder,
but that the Lord set his seal to their error? Not so; He indeed accepts the pregnant
and significant variation which they, intentionally or unintentionally, drew out
of the language before them; and which was justified by the root common to both
words; and instead of the mere unmingled judgment which lay in the passage as it
originally stood in that Psalm, He expresses by it now judgment mingled with mercy,
judgment behind which purposes of grace are concealed, and only waiting their due
time to appear. Such a παιδευτικὴ ἐνέργεια, as Theodoret terms it,
must be recognized
in the ποιμαίνειν; which our
“Thou shalt rule,” and the Latin “reges,” only imperfectly
give back; as, in regard of the Latin, Hilary (in Ps. ii.) urged long
ago: “Reges
eos in virgâ ferreâ; quanquam ipsum reges non tyrannicum neque injustum
sit, sed ex æquitatis ac moderationis arbitrio regimen rationale demonstret, tamen
molliorem adhuc regentis affectum proprietas, Græca significat. Quod enim nobiscum
est, reges eos, cum illis est ποιμανεῖς αὐτούς, id est,
pastoraliter reges, regendi
scilicet eos curam affectu
pastoris habiturus.”
For a still tenderer use of ποιμαίνειν see
John xxi. 16; Acts xx. 28. I do not
in the least mean to affirm that the words do not contain a threat for the nations;
but it is a threat of love. Christ shall rule them with a sceptre of iron to make
them capable of being ruled with a sceptre of gold; severity first, that grace may
come after; they are broken in pieces, that they may know themselves to be but men;
that, their fierceness and pride being brought down, they may accept the yoke of
Christ (Ps. lxxxiii. 16). And indeed how often the great tribulations of a people
have been the προπαιδεία, through which the Son of God has broken their pride,
and made them capable of receiving his gospel, which, but for this, they would in
their presumption and self-confidence have rejected to the end.
Our Translators
have only rendered ῥάβδος by
‘sceptre’ on a single occasion in the New Testament
(Heb. i. 8). It were to be wished they had done so here, and at xii. 5; xix. 15.
The word in the second Psalm שֶׁבֶט has this meaning; cf. Ps. xliv. 8, where in like
manner it occurs; and every thing else speaking of royalty here, this should do
the same. It may be urged, indeed, that royal sceptres are not usually of iron,
but of wood overgilded, or of silver, or of gold. This may be quite
true, but, if so, only makes more striking the exception in the
present instance. “He shall rule them with a
sceptre of iron,” which, harder and stronger than any other, shall dash them who
oppose themselves to it in pieces like a potter’s vessel; this image implying the
ease with which all resistance shall be overcome, the utter destruction which shall
overtake all them who attempt it (Jer. xix. 11; Isai. xxx. 14).
Ewald: “Imago regis hostes suos facillimâ operâ
conterentis et dispergentis.”
“Even as I received
of my Father.”—There was one who offered to inaugurate Him at once in the possession
of all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and the Lord had put back
him and his offer with indignation (Luke iv. 5-8), not because these were not his
just expectation and his due inheritance; but because He would receive them at
no other hands than his Father’s. And now we find that He has received them at these
hands, and they are his; his to impart to his servants; and that which was a lying
boast on the lips of the usurper, that he could give them to whom he would, is a
truth on the lips of the rightful Lord. Even while upon earth He could say to his
own (and the words constitute a very remarkable parallel to these), “I appoint
unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto Me” (Luke xxii. 29).
Richard of St. Victor: “Magna promissio, magnum
donum: hoc promittit, hoc tribuit, quod Ipse accepit.”
Ver. 28. “And I will give him the zorning star.”—Compare
xxii. 16, where the Lord Himself is
“the bright and morning star” (ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ λαμπρὸς ὁ πρωϊνός).
Whether He is meant by “the day-star” (φωσφόρος) of 1 Pet. ii. 19,
may be a question. This star, as light-bringer, herald and harbinger of day, goes
by many names; it is ἀστὴρ ἐωθινός (Ecclus. 1. 6),
ὁ ἑωσφόρος ὁ πρωὶ ἀνατέλλων
(Isai. xiv. 12, “Lucifer, son of the morning,” E. V.), the beauty and transcendant
brightness of it being continually celebrated by poets, as by Homer (Il. xxii. 317);
by Virgil (Æn. viii. 389); by Ovid (Trist. i. 3. 71: “cœlo nitidissimus alto”),
and by Milton (Par. Lost, iv. 605:
“Hesperus, that led
The starry host,
rode brightest”).
So does the Lord claim all that is fairest and loveliest in creation as the
faint shadow and image of his perfections. A comparison with that other passage
in this Book referred to already (xxii. 16) conclusively proves that when Christ
promises that He will give to his faithful ones the morning star, He promises that
He will give to them Himself, that He will impart to them his own glory and a share
in his own royal dominion (cf. iii. 21); for the star,
as there has been already occasion
to observe, is evermore the symbol of royalty (Matt. ii. 2), being therefore linked
with the sceptre (Num. xxiv. 17). All the glory of the world shall end in being
the glory of the Church, if only this abide faithful to its Lord.
Ver. 29. “He that
hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches.” Compare ii.
7.
V.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF SARDIS.
Rev. iii. 1-6.
Ver. 1. “And unto
the Angel of the Church in Sardis write.”—Sardis, now Sart, was situated on the
side of mount Tmolus, and on the river Pactolus. The ancient capital of Lydia,
the kingdom of Crœsus, it maintained a certain portion of its old dignity and splendour
in the time of the Persians, and had not wholly lost it in the Roman period. For
the things in which the Sardians gloried the most, see Tacitus, Annal. iv. 55.
“These things saith He that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars.”—There
has been already occasion to speak of “the seven Spirits of God,” and to claim
for these that they in this complex can set forth no other than the one Holy Spirit,
the third Person of the ever-blessed Trinity, in his sevenfold operation (i. 4).
All that remains tlhen is to consider the relation in which Christ, declaring
that it is He “that hath
the seven Spirits of God,” claims to stand to these seven. How entirely He
“hath” them, by how close a right they are his, may best be understood by the comparison
of other words, presently occurring in this same Book; “I beheld a Lamb as it had
been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God
sent forth into all the earth” (v. 6; cf. Zech. iii. 9; iv. 10).
It need hardly be observed how important a witness this verse, when the right
interpretation of “the seven Spirits” has been seized, bears to the faith of the Western Church
on that great point upon which it is at issue with the Eastern, in respect, namely,
of the procession of the Holy Ghost. He is indeed the Spirit of the Father and the
Son. The Son “hath the seven Spirits,” or the Spirit; not because He has received;
for though it is quite true that in the days of his flesh He did receive (Matt.
iii. 16; John iii. 34; Heb. i. 9);
yet now it is the Son of God, a giver therefore, and not a receiver, who is
speaking; who “hath” the Spirit; “hath” to the end
that He may impart it. If, too, the Spirit be admitted to be God, then the Son,
who “hath” the Spirit, must be God likewise; as is well argued, though not with
reference to this particular verse, by Augustine (De Trin. xv. 26):
“Quomodo Deus
non est, qui dat Spiritum Sanctum? Immo quantus Dens est, qui dat Deum?”
There is a special
fitness in the assumption of this style by the Lord in his address to the Angel
of the Church of Sardis. To him and to his people, sunken in spiritual deadness
and torpor, the lamp of faith waning and almost extinguished in their hearts, the
Lord presents Himself as one having the fulness of all spiritual gifts; able therefore
to revive, able to recover, able to bring back from the very gates of spiritual
death, those who would employ the little last remaining strength which they still
retained, in calling, even when thus in extremis, upon Him.
“And the seven stars.”—This is the only approach
to a repetition in the titles of the Lord throughout all the Epistles. He has
already declared Himself “He that holdeth the seven stars in his
right hand” (ii. 1), and now “He that hath the seven stars.”
But “the seven stars” are brought there and here into entirely
different combinations. There “He that
holdeth the seven stars” is set forth as the same “who walketh in the midst of
the seven golden candlesticks;” here “He that hath the seven Spirits of God”
hath also “the seven stars.” But since “the stars are the Angels of the seven
Churches” (i. 20), we must see in this combination a hint of the relation between
Christ, as the giver of the Holy Spirit, and as the author of a ministry of living
men in his Church; this ministry of theirs resting wholly on these gifts, even as
the connexion between
the two is often brought
out in the New Testament. Of course the locus classicus on this matter is Ephes.
iv. 7-12; but compare further John xx. 22, 23; Acts i. 8; xx. 28.
His are the golden urns from which these “stars” must continually draw their light. They need not fear
to be left destitute of his manifold gifts, for his is the Holy Spirit in all his
sevenfold operations, with which evermore to furnish them to the full.
“I know
thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.”—A passage which
at once suggests itself as parallel to this, is 1 Tim. v. 6, where St. Paul, of
a woman living in pleasure, says, ζῶσα τέθνηκε; and compare, in the same sense,
Matt. viii. 22; Luke xv. 24;
Rom. vi. 13; Ephes. ii. 1, 5; Heb. vi. 1; ix. 14. Bengel suggests, though indeed earlier commentators had anticipated the suggestion,
that the name of this Angel may have contained some assertion of life; which stood
in miserable contradiction with the realities of death which the Lord beheld in
him; a name therefore which in his case was not the utterance of a truth, but a
lie; no nomen et omen, but the reverse; the name affirming and implying that he
was alive, while in truth he was dead; Ζώσιμος would be such a name in Greek,
Vitalis
in Latin. Hengstenberg considers the suggestion not improbable; it appears to me
exceedingly improbable and far-fetched. The
use of “name” as equivalent to fame, reputation, character, is as common in Greek as in English.
The fact that Sardis should have had this name and fame of life is very startling,
and may well summon each and all to an earnest heart-searching. There would have
been nothing nearly so startling, if Sardis had been counted by the Churches round
about as a Church fallen into lethargy and death. But nothing of the kind. Laodicea,
we know, deceived herself (iii. 17), but we do not find that she deceived others;
counted herself rich, when she was most poor; but there is nothing to make us think
that others counted her so as well; Sardis, on the other hand, had a name to live,
was spoken of, we may well believe, as a model Church, can therefore have been by
no means wanting in the outer manifestations of spiritual life; while yet all these
shows of life did but conceal the realities of death; so He, before whose eyes of
fire no falsehood can endure, too surely saw.
Ver. 2. “Be watchful, and strengthen
the things which remain, that are ready to die.”—Translate rather, “Become”
(what
thou art not now) “watchful (γίνου γρηγορῶν).” Compare the many passages in which
activity or vigilance of spirit is set forth under this same image, often by this
same word (Matt. xxiv. 42, 43; xxv. 13; xxvi. 41; Mark xiii. 37; Acts xx. 31; 1
Cor. xiv. 13; 1
Thess. v. 6; 1 Pet. v. 9; Rev.
xix. 15). Almost all better commentators are agreed that τὰ λοιπά
here should not be rendered “the things which remain,” “quæ
huc usque tibi mansere virtutes” (Ewald); but rather, “the persons which remain,”
or “the rest,” =
τοὺς λοιπούς,
as many as are not yet dead, though now at the point of death. We gather from these
words that, with few exceptions, the entire Sardian Church shared in this deadness
of its chief pastor; while he, in seeking to revive their life, to chafe their dead
limbs, would best revive and recover the warmth of his own (Ps. li. 13). Their present
abject and fallen condition is excellently expressed by the use of the neuter; cf.
1 Cor. i. 26; Ezek. xxxiv. 4; Zech. xi. 9; nor indeed need the use of it surprise
us, even without the sufficient explanation which this supplies. It is not here
only that στηρίζειν is employed in this sense of establishing, confirming in the
grace of God; thus compare Luke xxii. 32; Rom. i. 11; 2 Thess. iii. 3; 1 Pet. v.
10; βεβαιοῦν often occurs in the same sense (1 Cor. i. 8; 2 Cor. i. 21; Col. ii.
7); and θεμελιοῦν as well (Eph. iii. 17; Col. i. 23; 1 Pet. v. 10). This command
to the Sardian Angel implies that the νεκρὸς εἶ of ver. 1 must not be taken absolutely.
The dead can bury their dead; but this is all which they can do; they must be themselves
alive, who are bidden to impart a savour of life to others.
The fire of grace
may have burned very low in their hearts; but it cannot be quite extinguished; for
how in that case could they kindle any flame in others?
“For I have not found thy
works perfect before God.”—The word here employed is not that which we
commonly render “perfect;” not τέλεια, but
πεπληρωμένα; so that the Lord contemplates
the works prepared and appointed in the providence of God for the faithful man to
do as a definite sphere (Ephes. ii. 10), which it was his duty and his calling to
have fulfilled or filled to the full,—the same image habitually underlying the uses
of πληροῦν and
πληροῦσθαι (Matt. iii. 15; Rom. xiii. 8).
This sphere of appointed duties the Sardian Angel had not fulfilled; not, at
least, “before God;” for on these last words the emphasis must be
laid. Before himself and other men his works may very likely have been “perfect;”
indeed, we are expressly told that he had “a
name to live” (ver. 1); for we all
very easily satisfy ourselves concerning our own works, neither is it very
difficult to satisfy the world concerning them. But to have our works “perfect before God,” to fill up the measure of those that
He
has ordained, so to have them πεπληρωμένα, that is quite a different and a far
harder thing. Very striking and very searching words on this matter are those of
one whose own devotion to his work gave
him a right to speak—Juan d’Avila, the apostle of Andalusia:
“Tot tantæque sunt pastorum obligationes, ut qui vel
tertiam earum partem reipsâ impleret, sanctus ab hominibus haberetur; cum tamen
eo solo contentus, gehennam non esset evasurus;” and few, who have read, will forget
some words of Cecil very nearly to the same effect,—that a minister of Christ is
very often in highest honour with men for the performance of one half of his work,
while God is regarding him with displeasure for the neglect of the other half.
It
is a very instructive fact, that every where else, in the Epistles to all the Churches
save only to this and to Laodicea, there is mention of some burden to be borne,
of a conflict either with foes within the Church or without, or with both. Only
in these two nothing of the kind occurs. The exceptions are very significant. There
is no need to assume that the Church at Sardis had openly coalesced and joined hands
with the heathen world; this would in those days have been impossible; nor yet that
it had renounced the appearance of opposition to the world. But the two
tacitly understood one another. This Church had nothing of the spirit of the Two
Witnesses, of whom we read that they “tormented them that dwelt on the earth”
(Rev. xi. 10),
tormented them, that is, by their witness for a God of truth and holiness and love,
whom the dwellers on
the earth were
determined not to know. There was nothing in it to provoke from the heathen, in
the midst of whom it sojourned, any such words as those which the author of The
Wisdom of Solomon puts into the mouth of the ungodly men (ii. 12-16). The world
could endure it, because it too was a world. On the not less significant absence
of all heretical opposition in these Churches, there will be something to say when
we deal with the Epistle to Laodicea.
Ver. 3. “Remember therefore how thou hast
received and heard, and holdfast, and repent.”—This “how” is by some interpreters
referred to the manner of their former receiving, and by some to the matter which
they formerly received and heard. Now if the character of the charges which the
Lord is making against Sardis were that of holding, or even tolerating, any erroneous
doctrine contrary to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” I should
certainly be on their side who referred this “how” to the matter, to the form of sound words
which they had accepted at the first, and to which Christ would recall them now;
I should see in these words a parallel to such passages as Col. ii. 6; 1 Tim. vi.
10; 2 Tim. i. 14. But the charge against Sardis is not a perverse holding of untruth,
but a heartless holding of the truth; and therefore I cannot but think that the
Lord is graciously reminding
her of the heartiness, the zeal,
the love with which she received this truth at the first. There was great joy in
that city, no doubt, then; but now all was changed. Compare St. Paul to the Thessalonians,
1 Ep. i. 5-10, where, however, there is no such painful comparison to draw between
their present and their past; also the same Apostle to the Galatians (iv. 13-15),
a completer parallel to the words before us, St. Paul contrasting there their
present disaffection and coldness of heart toward him and the Gospel of the
grace of God which he brought, with the zeal and warmth and love wherewith they
first received these glad tidings at his lips, the “how” of their
present holding with the “how” of their past receiving. At the same
time, this their joyful loving acceptance of the truth in times past is only
one-half of the “how” of their receiving it. They are bidden, no
doubt, in these words to remember as well “how” that truth
itself came, that they might receive it; with what demonstration of the
Spirit and of power from the lips of those ambassadors of Christ, whoever they
may have been, who first brought it to Sardis; how holily, how unblamably these
went in and out among them. And remembering all this, let them not guiltily let
that go, which came so commended to them, which was so joyfully embraced by
them, but rather hold it with a firm grasp. “Prize now”—this is what
Christ would say—“that which thou didst once prize so highly, which came to thee
so plainly as a gift from God, accompanied with the Holy Ghost from heaven; and
repent thee of all the coldness and heartlessness with which thou hast learned to
regard it” (2 Pet. i. 9).
“If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on
thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”—Augustine
has pointedly said, “Latet ultimus dies, ut observetur
omnis dies.” But should
this Angel refuse thus to observe and watch, the Lord takes up against him and repeats
here his own words, twice spoken, with slight variations, in the days of his ministry
on earth (Matt. xxiv. 42, 43; Luke xii. 39, 40); words which must have profoundly
impressed themselves on those who heard them, and on the early Church in general,
as is evidenced from the frequent references to them in other parts of the New Testament;
as by St. Paul (1 Thess. v. 2, 4); by St. Peter (2 Ep. iii. 10); and by St. John
(Rev. xvi. 15). It is the stealthiness of Christ’s
advent, and thus his coming upon the secure sinner when least He is looked for, which is the point of the comparison.
not the violent taking away of the worldling’s goods. In that case, he would be
the λῃστής rather than the κλέπτης, the robber, and not the thief which here he
is (cf. Matt. xxiv. 36-51; xxv.
13). The grand Greek proverb, which
affirmed that the feet of the avenging deities were shod with wool, awfully expressed
the sense which the heathen had of this noiseless approach of the divine judgments,
of their possible nearness at the moment when they were supposed the furthest off.
So too in those sublime lines of Æschylus, the very turn of the phrase in the conclusion
reminds one of these words of Christ:
δοκεῖς τὰ θεῶν σὺ ξυνετὰ νικῆσαί ποτε,
καὶ τὴν δίκην που μάκρ᾽ ἀποκεῖσθαι βροτῶν;
ἡ δ᾽ ἐγγύς ἐστιν, οὐχ ὁρωμένη δ᾽ ὁρᾷ,
ὃν χρὴ κολάζειν τ᾽, οἶδεν· ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ οἶσθα σὺ,
ὁπόταν ἄφνω μολοῦσα διολέσῃ
κακούς.
Ver. 4. “Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments.”—“Names” cannot here be slightingly used, any more than at Acts i. 15; cf. Rev. xi. 13;
it must be simply equivalent to persons;—or there may be a tacit reference to ver.
1. The Angel of Sardis had a name that he lived, and was dead; but there were some
there, however few, whose names were more than names; who had not merely the form
of godliness (2 Tim. iii. 5, μόρφωσις there =
ὄνομα here), but the power. It
is very beautiful to observe the gracious manner in which the Lord recognizes and
sets his seal of allowance to the good
which any where
He finds. Abraham said, “to slay the righteous with the wicked, that be far from
Thee” (Gen. xviii. 25); but it is far from Him even to seem to include the righteous
and the wicked in a common blame. He, the same who delivered Noah, a preacher of
righteousness, from the destruction of the old world, who drew just Lot out of Sodom,
who could single out from the whole wicked family of Jeroboam, and take from the
evil to come, Ahijah, for some good thing toward the Lord his God which was found
in him (1 Kings xiv. 13), beholds the
few faithful in Sardis that had not defiled their garments, will not suffer them
to suppose that they are overlooked by Him, or that his condemnation was
intended to include them. The “garments” which these are thus
declared not to have “defiled,” are not to be identified with the
“white
raiment” of the next verse, nor with the “white” in the next
clause of this. That “white raiment” there is the garment of glory,—this the garment of grace. That
incapable of receiving a stain, being part of an inheritance which in all its parts
is ἀμίαντος (1 Pet. i. 4); this something to which
σπῖλοι (Ephes. v. 27; James
iii. 6), μιάσματα (2 Pet. ii. 20),
μολυσμοί (2 Cor. vii. 1), can only too easily
adhere. That keeping itself, for nothing that defileth entereth the place where
it is worn (Rev. xxi. 27); this needing to be kept, and
above all keeping (Rev. xvi. 15),
if the glory and brightness of it is not quite to disappear. This, itself a wedding
garment (Matt. xxii. 11, 12), but not necessarily identical with
“the fine linen,
clean and white, the righteousness of saints” (Rev. xix. 8), is put on at our entrance
by baptism into the kingdom of grace; that at our entrance by the resurrection
into the kingdom of glory.
There were those at Sardis, a little remnant, who had thus
kept their garments; or, according to the testimony of Christ, had “not defiled” them. Absolutely, and in the highest sense, no one has thus kept his garments,
save only He who received more than a garment of grace at baptism; having been
sanctified from his conception, and thus a “holy thing” (Luke i. 35) from the very
first. But, in a secondary sense, and as compared with too many others, there are
those who have not defiled these garments; the phrase is equivalent to St. James’s
“keeping oneself unspotted from the world” (i. 27). These are they who, if they
do contract any defilement upon these, yet suffer it not to harden or become ingrained
there; but go at once to the fountain open for all uncleanness, wash their garments
and make them white again in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. vii. 14). Μολύνειν differs
from μιαίνειν,
as “inquinare” from “maculare,” being not so much to stain as to
besmear
or besmirch with
impurity (Cant. v. 3; Gen. xxxviii. 31). It is with reference to this word that
Hengstenberg is convinced we are to find a covert allusion here to the name of this
city, Sardis or Sardes, which is so near to sordes; Christ saying that, with the
few exceptions which He has made, Sardes is become sordes (“Sardes ist
sordes geworden “). But a Latin pun in the Apocalypse! A Hebrew, or even a Greek, play on words
would be very conceivable in these Epistles; indeed, I am convinced that there is
one in the name “Nicolaitans,” given to the libertines of the apostolic period
(see ii. 6). A deep sense of the significance of words and names will often find
its utterance in such; but a Latin pun, and that without the slightest hint to set
any looking for it, is about the unlikeliest thing in the world to encounter there.
Not a few expositors, bringing this passage into connexion with Jude 23, find reference
in both to those ceremonial uncleannesses spoken of Lev. xv. and elsewhere, which
so very easily may be moral uncleannesses as well. I do not think this to lie in
the words; but that every defilement (μολυσμός) of the flesh and spirit (2 Cor.
vii. 1) is here intended.
“And they shall walk with Me in white.”—Here are many
promises in one. The promise of life, for only the living walk, the dead are still;
of liberty, for the free walk, and not the fast bound.
Much more too we may find in these words, “they shall walk in white,” than if it had been merely said,
“they shall
be clothed in white.” The grace and dignity of long garments only appears, at least
only appears to the full, when the person wearing them is in motion; cf. Luke xx.
46: “the scribes desire to walk in long robes.” And all this has its corresponding
truth in the kingdom of heaven. God’s saints and servants here in this world of
grace, and no doubt also in that world of glory, are best seen and most to be admired
when they are engaged in active services of love. And such they shall have. They
shall walk (cf. Zech. iii. 7) with their Lord, shall be glorified together with
Him (Rom. viii. 17; John xvii. 24); his servants shall serve Him (Rev. xxii. 3).
“For they are worthy,”—God’s Word does not refuse to ascribe a worthiness to men
(Matt. x. 10, 11; xxii. 8; Luke xx. 35; xxi. 36; 2 Thess. i. 5, 11); although this
worthiness must ever be contemplated as relative, and not absolute; as grounding
itself on God’s free acceptance of an obedience which would fain be perfect,
even while it actually is most imperfect, and on this his acceptance and
allowance of it alone. There are those who “are worthy” according to the rules which free grace
has, although there are none according to those which strict justice might have,
laid down; and
God is “faithful” (1 John i. 9),
in that having laid these rules down, He will observe and abide by them.
Vitringa well: “Dignitas hic notat proportionem, et
congruentiam, quæ erat inter statum gratiæ quo fuerant in his terris, et gloriæ
quam Dominus ipsis decreverat, æstimandam, ex ipsâ lege gratiæ.” There is another very fearful
“They are worthy” in this Book (xvi. 6), where no such observation would need to
be made, where no such mitigation of the word’s force would be required; for see
the antithesis between death as the wages (ὀψώνια) of sin, and eternal life as
the gift (χάρισμα) of God, Rom. vi. 23.
Ver. 5. “He that overcometh, the same
shall be clothed in white raiment.”—A repetition of the promise of the verse preceding. They who have kept their garments here, as a few in Sardis to whom the Lord bears
testimony (ver. 4) had done, shall have
brighter garments given to them there, “vestes
vitæ;,” as in the book of Enoch they are called. Of white as the colour of
heaven, and of white garments as shining ones, there has been already occasion
to speak; see p. 170. Add the words of Grotius: “λευκὰ ἱμάτια,
hoc loco et infra, iii.
18; iv. 4, sunt vestes coruscantes, et sic sume
στολὰς λευκάς, infra, vi. 11,
vii. 9, 13.” It is not in Scripture merely that white is thus presented as the colour
of heaven, and white garments the
suitable investiture of the blessed
inhabitants of heaven. The same, out of a deep inborn symbolism, repeats itself
in heathen antiquity as well; thus see Plato, Legg. xii. 956; Cicero, Legg. ii.
18; Virgil, Æn. vi. 665; Ovid, Fast. iii. 363; iv. 419, 420; Metam.
x. 432. As we cannot conceive of any room in heaven for raiment in the literal
sense of the word, we must understand by this that vesture of light, that
clothing with light as with a garment, which shall be theirs who shall then
“shine out (ἐκλάμψουσι,
Matt. xiii. 43) as the sun in the kingdom of their Father;
“their
raiment, and yet for all this not something external to them, but the outward
utterance of all which now inwardly they are, who have left all sin behind them for ever. The glorified
body, defecated of all its dregs and all its impurities, transformed and transfigured
into the likeness of Christ’s body (Phil. iii. 21), this,
with its robe and atmosphere of light, is itself, I believe, the “white raiment” which Christ here promises
to his redeemed.
I have alluded already, see p. 147, to the frequency, as it appears
to me, of the scoffing side-glances at Scripture which occur in the writings of Lucian.
It would be curious to know whether he intended a mock at this and at the glorious
hope of the Christian, when, relating the tales current about Peregrinus, after
his fiery passage in the
spirit of Empedocles
to a mock immortality, he makes one of this impostor’s followers assure his hearers
that shortly after the disappearance of Peregrinus in his funeral-pile he beheld
him walking in a white garment, shining, and crowned with a garland of olive
(ἐν λευκῇ ἐσθῆτι περιπατοῦντα,
φαιδρόν, κοτίνῳ τε ἐστεμμένον,
De Mort. Pereg.
40). One or two such passages we might attribute to accident; but they seem to me
to occur too often for any such explanation. See a very good article by Planck,
Lucian und das Christenthum, in the Theoll. Stud. und Krit. 1851, pp. 826-902.
“And I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.”—It is much more than
a simple negative; οὐ μὴ ἐξαλείψω
= “nequaquam delebo.” We read of a “book of
life,” Exod. xxxii. 32; Ps. lxix. 29; Dan. xii. 1; Phil. iv. 3; Rev. xiii. 8; xx.
15; xxi. 27; of those “written among the living” (Isai. iv. 3); and resting on the
same image, our Lord speaks of some whose names “are written in heaven” (Luke x.
20; cf. Heb. xii. 23). These are the τεταγμένοι εἰς ζωήν of Acts xiii. 48. At
the same time the pledge and promise which is here given, implying, as on the face
of it it does, that there are names, which, having been once written in that book,
might yet be afterwards blotted out of it, has proved not a little perplexing to
those followers of Augustine, who will not be
content in this mystery of predestination
with having some Scriptures on their side, and leaving the reconciliation of these
and those others which are plainly against them, and apparently contradictory to
these, for another and a higher state of knowledge; but who would fain make it appear
that all Scripture is on their side (see Turretine’s treatise, De Libro Vitæ, pp.
9-22). If this passage had stood by itself, it would not have been hard for them
to answer, as indeed they do answer, that all who are written in the book of life
overcome; therefore this promise holds good for them all, and none who are there
written have their names blotted out from thence. But, unhappily, beside and behind
this passage, there are others not capable of this solution, and principally Exod.
xxxii. 32; Ps. lxix. 29; Rev. xxii. 19. To what hard shifts they are put in forcing
these statements within the limits of their system may be judged from Augustine’s
comment on the second of these passages (Enarr. in Ps. lxix.): “Deleantur de libro
viventiumn, et cum justis non scribantur, non sic accipere debemus quod quemquam
Deus scribat in libro vitæ;, et deleat illum; si homo dixit, Quod scripsi scripsi,
Deus quemquam scribit et delet? . . Isti ergo quomodo inde delentur, ubi nunquam scripti
sunt? Hoc dictum est secundum spem ipsorum, quia ibi se scriptos putabunt. Quid
sit, deleantur
de libro vitæ;? Et ipsis constet non illos ibi esse.”
“But I will confess his name before my Father, and before his Angels.”—Christ had spoken when on earth of confessing
those who confessed Him, before his Father in heaven (Matt. x. 32, 33), and before
the Angels (Luke xii. 8, 9). That “in heaven” is of course omitted now, for there
is no longer any contrast between the Father in heaven and the Son on earth; but
the two confessions, which were separated before, appear united now; and in general
we may observe of this Epistle that in great part it is woven together of sayings
which the Lord had already uttered once or oftener in the days during which He pitched
his tent among men; He now setting his seal from heaven upon his words uttered on
earth. On these costly mosaic-works of Scripture, which in our careless reading
of it we so often overlook, there are some beautiful remarks in Delitzsch, Commentar
über den Psalter, on Ps. cxxxv.; which is itself, as are also Ps. xcvii. xcviii.
striking examples of the skill of a divine Artificer herein.
Nor will it be inopportune
to observe further what signal internal evidence this same fact, analysed a little
closer, will supply on another point; upon this, namely, that these Epistles are
what they profess themselves to be, namely Epistles, directly,
and in their form no less than their
substance, from Christ the Lord. With no unworthy thought about their inspiration,
we might very easily come to regard them as having past through the mind of St.
John, and having been recast, in their form at least, in the passage. What they
would have been, if they had undergone any such modifying process as this, St. John’s
own Epistles tell us. But no; it is the Lord Himself who speaks throughout; who
not merely suggests the thoughts, but dictates the words. That St. John is here
merely his mouthpiece, that the Master is speaking and not the servant, is, I say,
remarkably witnessed for in the fact of the numerous points of contact and coincidence
between these seven Epistles and the words of Christ as recorded in the Gospels,
in the three synoptic Gospels above all. Had such only been found in St. John’s
own Gospel, this might have suggested quite a different explanation. But it is mainly
the other Gospels which furnish these. Thus in this Sardian Epistle alone, where,
it is true, the points of resemblance are more numerous than any where else, spiritual
activity is set forth as a watching, ver. 3; with which compare Matt. xxiv. 42;
xxv. 13; xxvi. 41; Mark xiii. 37. Christ likens his. unlooked-for coming to that
of a thief (ibid.); compare Matt. xxiv. 43; Luke xii. 39. He speaks here of blotting
out a name from the book of life (ver. 5),
there of names
written in the book of life (Luke x. 20); here of confessing his servants before
his Father (ibid.), with which the parallels from the Gospels have just been given.
The remarkable reappearance in this and in all these Epistles of the words so often
on our Lord’s lips, according to the three first Gospels, but never noticed in
the fourth, “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear” (Matt. xi. 15; xiii. 9, 45;
Mark iv. 9, 23; vii. 16, 33; Luke viii. 8; xiv. 35), has been dwelt on already,
p. 120.
Ver. 6. “He that hath an ear, let him, hear what the Spirit saith unto
the Churches.”—Compare ii. 7.
VI.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA.
Rev. iii. 7-13.
Ver. 7. “And to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia write.”—Philadelphia, at the foot
of mount Tmolus, on the banks of the little river Cogamus, which not far from the
city falls into the Hermus (Pliny, H. N. v. 29, 30), was built by Attalus Philadelphus,
king of Pergamum (he died B.C. 138), from whom it derives its name. No city of Asia
Minor suffered more, or so much, from frequent earthquakes—πόλις σεισμῶν πλήρης
Strabo calls it (xiii. 4), and describes it as almost depopulated in consequence
of these. In the great earthquake in the reign of Tiberius Philadelphia was nearly
destroyed (Tacitus, Ann. ii. 47).
“These things saith He that is Holy.”—Christ
claims here to be ὁ Ἅγιος, The Holy One; cf. Acts ii. 27; xiii. 35; Heb. vii. 26.
In all these passages, however,ὅσιος, not ἅγιος, stands in the
original; nor are these words perfectly identical, though we have
but the one word “holy” by which to render them both. The ὅσιος,
if a man, is one who diligently observes all the sanctities of religion;
anterior, many of them, to all law, the “jus
et fas,” with
a stress on the latter word. If applied to God, as at Rev. xv. 4; xvi. 5, and here,
He is One in whom these eternal sanctities reside; who is Himself the root and ground
of them. The ἅγιος is the separate from evil, with the perfect hatred of the evil.
But holiness in this absolute sense belongs only to God; not to Angels, for He chargeth
his Angels with folly (Job iv. 18), and certainly not to men (Jam. iii. 2; Gen.
vi. 5; viii. 21). He then that claims to be “The Holy One,”—a name which Jehovah
in the Old Testament continually claims for Himself,—implicitly claims to be God;
takes to Himself a title which is God’s alone, which it would be blasphemy for any
other to appropriate, and, unless we allow the alternative that He is guilty of
this, can only be accepted as Himself God.
“He that is true.”—We must not confound
ἀληθινός
(= “verus”) with
ἀληθής (=
“verax”). God is
ἀληθής (=ἀψευδής, Tit.
i. 2), as He cannot lie, the truth-speaking and truth-loving God; with whom every
word is Yea and Amen; but He is
ἀληθινός, as fulfilling all that is involved in
the
name God, in contrast with those which are called gods, but which,
having the name of gods, have nothing of the truth, wicked spirits, or dead
idols. That is
ἀληθινός which fulfils its own
idea to the highest possible point; as Origen (In Joan. tom. ii. § 4) well puts
it: ἀληθινός, πρὸς ἀντιδιαστολὴν
σκιᾶς καὶ τύπου καὶ εἰκόνος. Nor is
ἀληθινός
only, as in this case of God, the true as contrasted with the absolutely false;
but as contrasted with the subordinately true, with all imperfect and partial realisations
of the idea; thus Christ is φῶς ἀληθινόν (John i. 9; 1 John ii. 8),
ἄρτος ἀληθινός
(John vi. 32), ἄμπελος ἀληθινή (John xv. 1);
there is a σκηνὴ ἀληθινή in heaven
(Heb. viii. 2). In each of these cases the antithesis is not between the true and
the false, but between the perfect and the imperfect, the idea fully, and the idea
only partially, realized; for John the Baptist also was a light (John v. 35), and
Moses gave bread from heaven (Ps. cv. 40), and Israel was a vine of God’s planting
(Ps. lxxx. 8), and the tabernacle pitched in the wilderness, if only a figure of
the true, was yet pitched at God’s express command (Exod. xxv.).
“He that hath
the key of David.”—Let us note here, but only that we may avoid it, a not
uncommon error of interpretation, namely, the, identifying, or confounding, of
this “key
of David” with “the key of knowledge,” which in the days of his
earthly ministry
Christ accused the Scribes that they had taken away (Luke xi. 52). They who thus
identify the two regard Him as here claiming to be the One who unlooses the seals
of Scripture, opens the closed door into its inner chambers; who by his advent first
made intelligible the dark and obscure prophecies of the Old Testament, and by his
Spirit opens and enlightens the eyes of men to see and understand the deep things
which are written in his Word. Into this erroneous interpretation Origen not unfrequently
falls, bringing Rev. v. 7-9 into relation with these two passages as a third, having
the same import; thus In Joan. tom. v. § 4; Sel. in Psalm. Ps. i.; Hilary no less
(Prol. in libr. Psalm. §§ 5, 6); and Jerome (Ep. 50, de Stud. Script.).
“The key” is of course here and elsewhere, as Andreas expresses it, ἐξουσίας σύμβολον,
the symbol of power (cf. xxii. 1); and
“the key of David” is “the key of the
house of David,” of that royal household whereof David was chief, and all his
servants members. Cocceius: “Clavem Davidis vocat, quia ea regia clavis, et is tempore ministerii
sui clausit et aperuit, typum Christi gerens; vide Ps. ci. 4-8.” But David being
a type of Christ, nay often his name being actually named for the name of Christ
(Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24), “the house of David” alluded to thus can mean nothing less
than the heavenly house, the
kingdom of heaven; and the
Lord is, in fact, declaring, “I have the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Those
keys which He committed to Peter and his fellow Apostles (Matt. xvi. 19), He announces
to be in the highest sense his own. It depends on Him, the supreme κλῃδοῦχος in
the house of God, who shall see the King’s face, and who shall be excluded from
it. Men are admitted into, or shut out from, that presence according to the good
pleasure of his will; for it is He, and no other, “that openeth, and no man shutteth,
that shutteth, and no man openeth.” Christ teaches us here that He has not so committed
the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power of binding and loosing, to any
other, his servants, here, but that He still retains the highest administration
of them in his own hands. If at any time there is error in their binding and loosing,
if they make sad the heart which He has not made sad, if they speak peace to the
heart to which He has not spoken peace, then his judgment shall stand, and not theirs.
For the promise that He would ratify and confirm in heaven the judgments of his
Church on earth, could only be absolute and unconditional so long as the Church
retained a discernment of spirits which was never at fault. When once this had departed
from it, when therefore it was liable to mistake and error, from that moment the
promise could be only conditional.
From the highest
tribunal upon earth there lies an appeal to a tribunal of yet higher instance in
heaven; to his, who opens and none can shut, who shuts and none can open; and when
through ignorance, or worse than ignorance, any wrong has been done to any of his
servants here, HIe will redress it there, disallowing and reversing in heaven the
erring or unrighteous decrees of earth. It was in faith of this that Hus, when the
greatest Council which Christendom had seen for a thousand years delivered his soul
to Satan, did himself confidently commend it to the Lord Jesus Christ; and many
a faithful confessor that, at Rome or Madrid, has walked to the stake, his yellow
san-benito all painted over with devils in token of those with whom his
portion was to be, has never doubted that his portion should be indeed with Him
who retains in his own hands “the key of David;” who thus could open for him, though all who
visibly represented here the Church had shut him out with extreme malediction at
once from the Church militant on earth and the Church triumphant in heaven.
That
the substrate of this language, and, so to say, the suggestion of this thought,
is to be sought at Isai. xxii., there can be no reasonable doubt. The Prophet there
describes the removal, indeed the shameful rejection, of Shebna, the chief οἰκονόμος
of the king, who had occupied for a while the place
of highest dignity and honour,
but whom the Lord beheld as unworthy of this, and from which He puts him down with
shame and dishonour, with the substitution in his room of his servant Eliakim, and
his inauguration into the honours and dignifies which the other had lost. It needs
only to quote the words as they occur in the Septuagint:
δώσω αὐτῷ τὴν κλεῖδα οἴκου Δαυὶδ ἐπὶ τῷ ὤμῳ αὐτοῦ, καὶ
ἀνοίξει καὶ οὐκ ἔσται ὁ ἀποκλείων, καὶ κλείσει καὶ
οὐκ ἔσται ὁ ἀνοίγων.
The Prophet describes all this with an emphasis
and fulness, which, however highly we may conceive of Eliakim, is surprising and
inexplicable, until we look beyond that present, and see in that Scripture not merely
the history of a revolution in the royal palace or house of David,—a putting down
of one and setting up of another; but, over and above this, the type and real prophecy
of something immeasurably greater, the indignant rejection of all those unworthy
stewards who in God’s spiritual house had long abused their position, and the exaltation
of the true Steward of the mysteries of God, who should be faithful in all his house,
in their room. Vitringa (Comm. in Esai. xxii.): “Quæ Eliakimo promittitur prærogativa
dignitatis, fore ut claves gerens Domûs Davidis clauderet et aperiret solus, et
omnis ab eo suspenderetur sarcina et decus Domûs Davidis (in quam hic cadit emphasis):
tam magnifice et ample dictum
est, ut plus dixisse videretur Propheta quam debebat, si id in
aliquo subjecto nobiliore, cujus Eliakimus typum gerere poterat, olim illustrius
non consequeretur exemplum. Certe sunt verbi prophetici recessus profundi.”
Ver. 8. “I know thy works: behold, I
have set before thee an open door, and no man can, shut it.”—This “open door” is best explained by a reference to 1 Cor. xvi. 9; 2 Cor. ii. 12; Acts xiv. 27;
Col. iv. 3. Vitringa: “Notat commodam Evangelii prædicandi occasionem.” To this
Philadelphian Church, weak probably in numbers, weak in worldly advantages, God
had opened “a great door and effectual for the declaring of his truth; and, though
there were many adversaries, no man could shut it. For was not He who opened, the
same who had the key of David? and when He opened none could shut, when He made
room for his truth in the heart of one or of many, none could hinder it from having
free course and being glorified; even as, if He shut and withheld a blessing, all
other might and power would be wholly unavailing to make for it an entrance there.
“For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and
hast not denied my
name.”—They were probably but a little flock, poor in worldly goods, of small account
in the eyes of men (cf. 1 Cor. i. 26-28),
having “little strength”—not “a
little strength,” which
would rather be an acknowledgment of power than of weakness—the fitter therefore
that God should be glorified in them and by them; even as He had been; for, put
to the proof, they had kept his word, and had not denied his name. The aorists,
ἐτήρησας, οὐκ ἡρνήσω, refer to some distinct occasions in the past, when, being
thus put to the test, they had approved themselves faithful to Him.
Ver. 9. “Behold,
I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not,
but do lie; behold, I will make them? to come and worship before thy feet, and
to know that 1 have loved thee.”—Here is the reward of their faithfulness, of the
entrance which they had made by that open door which the Lord set before them. The
promise to Philadelphia, in respect of Jewish adversaries, is larger and richer
than that to Smyrna. The promise there did but amount to this, that these enemies
should not prevail against them (ii. 9, 10);
but here are better promises, namely, that they shall prevail against their
enemies; and that with a victory the most blessed of all, in which conquerors
and conquered should be blessed alike, and should rejoice together. In reward of
their faithfulness, they should see some of these fierce gainsayers and
opposers, some of this “synagogue of Satan” (see ii. 9), falling
on
their faces, and owning that God was with them of a truth. The
“worship” before their feet,
of course, does not mean more than this; compare Isai. xlix. 23;
lx. 14, to which
last verse is manifest allusion here. It is only some of them who shall worship
thus; for there is no promise during the present dispensation that all Israel, but
only that a remnant, shall be saved (Rom. ix. 27). In our Version we have failed
to express this, that they are only some of the synagogue of Satan who should thus
acknowledge the presence of God in the Church of his dear Son, should look at Him
whom they had pierced, and own that this Jesus of Nazareth was indeed He of whom
Moses and the Prophets did write, the promised Messiah, the King of Israel, who
should turn iniquity from Jacob. In connexion with this promise, there is an interesting
passage in the Epistle of Ignatius to this same Philadelphian Church (c. 6), implying
the actual presence in the midst of it, of converts from Judaism, who now preached
the faith which once they persecuted. We may say too that this same promise has
been gloriously fulfilled to other Churches in our own days, or almost in our own
days, as we call to mind the. many of Germany’s noblest theologians and philosophers,
her Neanders and her Stahls; who, being of the stock of Abraham, have yet had the
veil taken from their hearts, and owned
of the Church of Christ
that God was with it of a truth.
Ver. 10. “Because thou hast kept the word of my
patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon
all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”—What does the Lord
exactly mean here by “the word of my patience”? There are some who find reference to certain
special words and sayings of Christ’s, in which He has exhorted his servants to
patience, or declared the need which they would have of it; such words as occur
at Luke viii. 15; Matt. x. 22; xxiv. 13; cf. Rev. i. 19.
Better, however, to take the whole Gospel as “the word of Christ’s patience,”
everywhere teaching, as it does, the need of a patient waiting for Christ, till
He, the waited for so long, shall at length appear. Observe, “Because thou hast kept”
(ἐτήρησας,
therefore “I also will keep” (τηρήσω); the
benigna talio of the kingdom of God; “because
thou hast kept my word, therefore in return I will keep thee.” The promise does
not imply that the Philadelphian Church should be exempted from persecutions which
should come on all other portions of the Church; that by any special privilege they
should be excused from fiery trials through which others should have to pass. It
is a better promise than this; and one which, of course, they share with all
who are faithful
as they are—to be kept in temptation, not to be exempted from temptation (τηρεῖν ἐκ not being here =
τηρεῖν ἀπό, Jam. i. 27;
Prov. vii. 5; cf. 2 Thess. iii. 3);
a bush burning, and yet not consumed (cf. Isai. xliii. 2).
They may take courage; the blasts of persecution will blow; but He will not
winnow his barn-floor with so rough a wind that chaff and grain shall be borne
away together. This “hour of
temptation” is characterized as coming “upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.” These, according to the constant use of the Apocalypse, include
all mankind, with the exception of the ἀπαρχή of the Church (vi. 10; xi. 10; xiii.
8, 14); who are already seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.
The great catastrophies which come upon the earth are “temptations”
to the world no less than to the Church. God is then putting “them that dwell upon the earth”
to proof, whether now at least they will not repent, and, when his judgments are
in the world, learn righteousness, however they may have in times past hardened
themselves against Him. So too such times of great tribulation are trials or
“temptations,” because they bring out the unbelief, hardness of heart,
blasphemy against God, which were before latent in these children of this world;
hidden from others, hidden from themselves, till that “hour of temptation”
came and revealed
them (Rev. ix. 20, 21; xvi. 9, 11, 21). Thus Moses speaks of the plagues as the
“temptations of Egypt” (Deut. iv. 34; vii. 19; xxix. 3). They were such, inasmuch
as they brought out the pride and obduracy that were in Pharaoh’s heart and in his
servants’, as these would never have been otherwise revealed either to themselves
or to others.
Ver. 11. “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast,
that no man take thy crown.”— This announcement of the speedy coming of the Lord,
the ever-recurring key-note of this Book (cf. xxii. 7, 12, 20), is sometimes used
as a word of fear for those who are abusing the Master’s absence, wasting his goods
and ill-treating their fellow-servants; careless and secure as those for whom no
day of reckoning should ever arrive (Matt. xxiv. 48-51; 1 Pet. iv. 5; cf. Jam. v.
9; Rev. ii. 5, 16); but sometimes as a word of infinite comfort for those with difficulty
and painfulness holding their ground; He that should bring the long contest at once
to an end; who should at once. turn the scale, and for ever, in favour of righteousness
and truth, is even at the door (Jam. v. 7, 9; Phil. iv. 5). Such a word of comfort
is this announcement here: “Yet a little while, and thy patience shall have its
full reward; only in the interval, and till I come, hold that fast which thou hast.”
That which Philadelphia
“had” we have just seen—zeal, patience, with little means accomplishing no little work:
“Continue as thou hast begun; hold the beginning of thy confidence firm unto the
end, that no man take thy crown.”
It may be needful to observe, as some have misunderstood
these last words, that they do not signify, “Let no man step into that place of
glory which was designed for thee;” for example, after the manner that Jacob stepped
into Esau’s place (Gen. xxv. 34; xxvii. 36); Judah into Reuben’s (Gen. xlix. 4,
8); David into Saul’s (1 Sam. xvi. 1, 13); Eliakim into Shebna’s (Isai. xxii. 15-25);
Matthias into Judas’s (Acts i. 25, 26); Gentiles into the place of Jews (Rom. xi.
11); men into that of angels; the number of the elect, as Gregory the Great concludes
from these words, remaining still the same, only some filling the places which others
have left empty (Moral. xxxiv. 20), and thus taking their crown. These received
indeed a crown, which others lost; they did not take it (the ‘accipiat’
of the Vulgate is wrong here; it should be rather ‘auferat’); and it is quite inconceivable that
any who should ever himself’ wear the crown, should be set forth as taking it from
another. This taking, or seeking to take, the crowns from others’ brows is the part,
not of the good who would wear them on their own, but of the wicked who would
have others discrowned
like themselves. Instead of ascribing to the words any such meaning, we must regard
them as simply equivalent to those of St. Paul: “Let no man beguile you of your
reward” (καταβραβευέτω ὑμᾶς, Col. ii. 18);
and as giving no least hint that what this Angel lost another would gain; the
crown which he forfeited, another would wear. “Thy crown” is not
the crown “which thou hast,” but “which thou mayest
have” (cf. 2 Tim. iv. 8:
ἀπόκειταί μοι ὁ τῆς δικαιοσύνης στέφανος).
“Let no man,” Christ would say, “deprive thee of the glorious reward laid
up for thee in heaven, of which many, my adversaries and thine, would fain rob
thee; but which only one, even thyself, can ever cause thee to lose indeed.”
Ver. 12. “Him that
overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more
out.”—It need hardly be said, except that some have denied it, that this is a promise,
as are all the others, of future blessedness, belonging not to the
members of the Church militant here on earth, but of the Church triumphant in
heaven. “Pillar” is not to be interpreted here exactly as it is at Gal. ii. 9.
There the “pillars” (στῦλοι) are certain eminent Apostles, the main supports, under Christ, of the
Church in its militant condition here upon earth; and, as such, towering above the
rest of the faithful. But there is no such comparative preeminence
indicated here; as is evident from the fact that the promise to every one of the
faithful, to each that has overcome, is, that he shall be made “a pillar in the temple of God;” Christ so speaks, as
Jerome (In Gal. ii. 9) says well, “docens omnes credentes qui adversarium vicerint,
posse columnas Ecclesiæ fieri.” To find any allusion here, as Vitringa and others
have done, to the two monumental pillars, Jachin and Boaz, which Solomon set up,
not in the Temple, but in the open vestibule before the Temple (1 Kings vii. 21;
2 Chron. iii. 15, 17), I must say,
appears to me quite beside the mark; and if there were any question on this
point, the words which follow, “and he shall go no more
out,” would seem perfectly decisive upon this point. The pillars just named were
always without the Temple; they would therefore have served very ill to set forth
the blessedness of the redeemed, who should be always within it. Other pillars might
do this, but certainly not these, which contradicted in their position the central
intention of Christ’s words here, which is to declare that he who overcomes
shall dwell in the house of God for ever. “He shall go out no more;” for, as the elect
angels are fixed in obedience, and have over-lived the possibility of falling, have
attained what the Schoolmen call the beata necessitas boni,
so shall it be one day
with the faithful. Gerhard (Locc. Theoll. xxxii. 2): “Erit perpetuus heres
æternorumn
bonorum, nec ullius ἐκπτώσεως
ipsi imminebit periculum, qui columna est, symbolum immobilitatis in statu
gloriæ cœ lestis.” Once admitted into the heavenly kingdom,
they are admitted for ever; the door is shut (Matt. xxv. 10),
not merely to exclude
others, but safely to include these. In that heavenly household the son, every son
who has once entered, abideth for ever (John viii. 35; cf. Isai. xxii. 23);
so that, in the language of Augustine, “Who is there that would not yearn
for that City, out of which no friend departs, and into which no enemy enters?”“Quis
non desideret illam Civitatem, unde amicus non exit, quo inimicus non intrat?”
“And I will
write upon him the name of my God.”—Christ will write this name of his God upon
him that overcometh—not upon it, the pillar. It is true indeed that there were sometimes
inscriptions on pillars,—which yet would be στῆλαι rather than στῦλοι,—but the
image of the pillar is now dismissed, and only the conqueror remains. In confirmation
of this, that it is the person, and not the pillar, whom the Lord contemplates now,
we find further on the redeemed having the name of God, or the seal of God, on their
foreheads (vii. 3; ix. 4; xiv. 1; xxii. 4), with probable allusion to
the golden plate
inscribed with the name of Jehovah, which the High Priest wore upon his (Exod. xxviii.
36-38). In the “kingdom of priests” this dignity shall not be any more the singular
prerogative of one, but the common dignity of all. Exactly in the same way, in the
hellish caricature of the heavenly kingdom, the votaries of the Beast are stigmatics,
with his name upon their foreheads (xiii. 16, 17; xvii. 5;
and cf. xx. 4).
“And
the name of the City of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out
of heaven from my God.”—What the name of this City is we are told Ezek. xlviii.
35: “The Lord is there.” Any other name would but faintly express the glory of
it; “having the glory of God” (Rev. xxi. 11, 23). He that has the name of this
City written upon him is hereby declared free of it. Even while on earth he had
his true πολίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς (Phil. iii. 20; see Ellicott thereon), the state,
city, or country to which he belonged was a heavenly one; but still his citizenship
was latent; he was one of God’s hidden ones; but now he is openly avouched, and
has a right to enter in by the gates to the City (xxii. 14). This heavenly City,
the City which hath the foundations, and for which Abraham looked (Heb. xi. 10;
cf. xiii. 14), is but referred to here; the full and magnificent description of
it is reserved as the fitting close of the Book
(xxi. 10-xxii. 5). It
goes by many and glorious names in Scripture. “That great city, the holy Jerusalem,”
St. John calls it (xxi. 10); claiming for it this title of
“the holy,” which the
earthly Jerusalem once possessed (Matt. iv. 5), but which it had forfeited for ever.
“Jerusalem which is above,” St. Paul calls it (Gal. iv. 26). It is
“the city of
the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Heb. xii. 22). It is the true
Καλλίπολις, ἡ ἄνω Καλλίπολις, as Cyril of Alexandria has strikingly named it; being indeed
that Beautiful City, of which Plato did but dream, when he devised this name (Rep.
vii. 527 c). It is the Οὐρανόπολις, as Clement of Alexandria (Pæd. ii. 12) has
called it, recovering and reclaiming for it this magnificent title; which Greek
sycophants in profane flattery had devised for another city (Athenæus, i. 36),
one, if we may trust the pictures of it drawn by those who saw it closest and knew
it best, far better deserving a name drawn from beneath than from above.
The epithet “new,” which is given here to the
heavenly City, “the new Jerusalem,” sets it
in contrast with the old, worn-out, sinful city bearing the same name; for καινός
expresses this antithesis of the new to the old as the out-worn; thus καινὴ κτίσις,
καινὸς ἄνθρωπος, καινὸν ἱμάτιον;
while νέα would but express that which had
recently come into existence, as contrasted with that which had
subsisted long;
thus Νεάπολις, the city recently founded. There would therefore have been no fitness
in this last epithet here, for this New Jerusalem, “whose builder and maker is God,”
is at once new, in that sin has never wasted it, and at the same time the oldest
of all. Bengel has well observed, that St. John writes always in his Gospel Ἱεροσόλυμα,
in the Apocalypse always Ἱερουσαλήμ;
and gives, no doubt, the true explanation of this: “Non temere Johannes in Evangelio omnibus locis scribit Ἱεροσόλυμα de urbe
veteri: in Apocalypsi semper Ἱερουσαλήμ de Urbe Cœlesti. Ἱερουσαλήμ est appellatio
Hebraica, originaria et sanctior; Ἱεροσόλυμα
deinceps obvia, Græca, magis politica.”
Strange conclusions have been drawn from the words that
follow: “which cometh down
out of heaven from my God.” The dream of an actual material city to be let
down bodily from heaven to earth, an “aurea atque gemmata in terris Jerusalem,” as Jerome
somewhat contemptuously calls it (In Isai. Præf. ad Lib. 18; and compare Origen,
De Princ. ii. 11. 2), has been cherished in almost all times of the Church by some,
who have been unable to translate the figurative language of Scripture into those
far more glorious realities of the heavenly πολιτεία, whereof those figures were
the vesture and the outward array. Thus the Montanists believed that the New Jerusalem
would
descend at Pepuza in Phrygia,
the head-quarters of their sect; and already, according to Tertullian (Adv. Marc.
iii. 24) there were vouchsafed from time to time signs and prophetic outlines in
heaven of the city which should come down to earth. For forty days, morning and
evening, the splendid vision and sky-pageant of this City had been suspended in
the sky. But if only it be a City “in which righteousness dwelleth,” it will little
matter whether we go to it, or it come to us; and in this shape assuredly it will
not come.Glorious things have been spoken of this City of God, and not in the
sacred Scriptures only, but also in the writings of uninspired men, in whose hearts,
while they have mused on that Heavenly Jerusalem, the fire has kindled, and they
have spoken with their tongues. Thus our own “Jerusalem, my happy home,” is worthy
of no mean place among spiritual songs. But the German and the Latin hymnologies
are far richer, both indeed are extraordinarily rich, in these hymns celebrating
the glories of the New Jerusalem. Thus in German how lovely is Meyfart’s
(1590-1642) “Jerusalem, du hochgebaute Stadt” (Bunsen, Gesangbuch, no. 495); but grander still,
and not in Bunsen’s collection, Kosegarten’s (1758-1818) “Stadt Gottes, deren diamantnen
Ring;” and in the Latin, Hildebert, not to speak of Prudentius (Psychom. 823-887),
Bernard of Clugny in his Laus Patriæ Cœlestis, and many others, has set forth
the beauty and the blessedness of that City of the living God, and his own longing
to be numbered among the citizens of it in verses such as these:
“Me receptet Sion illa,
Sion, David urbs tranquilla,
Cujus faber auctor lucis,
Cujus portæ lignum crucis,
Cujus muri lapis vivus,
Cujus custos Rex festivus.
In hâc urbe lux solennis,
Ver æternum, pax perennis:
In hâc odor implens cœlos,
In hâc semper festum melos;
Non est ibi corruptela,
Non defectus, non querela;
Non minuti, non deformes,
Omnes Christo sunt conformes.
Urbs cœlestis, urbs beata,
Super petram collocata,
Urbs in portu satis tuto,
De longinquo te saluto,
Te saluto, te suspiro,
Te affecto, te requiro:
Quantùm tui gratulantur,
Quàm festivè convivantur,
Quis affectus eos stringat,
Aut quæ gemma muros pingat,
Quis chalcedon, quis jacinthus,
Norunt illi qui sunt intus.
In plateis hujus urbis,
Sociatus piis turbis,
Cum Moyse et Eliâ,
Pium cantem Alleluia.”
“And I will
write upon h)im my new name.”—This “new name” is not “The Word of God” (xix.
13), nor yet “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (xix. 16).
It is true that both of these appear in this Book as names of Christ; but at the
same time neither of them could be called his “new name;”
the faithful having been familiar with them from the beginning;
but the “new name” is that mysterious, and
in the necessity of things uncommunicated, and for the present time incommunicable,
name, which in that same sublimest of all visions is referred to: “He had a name
written, that no man knew, but He Himself” (xix. 12); for none but God can search
out the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 12; cf. Matt. xi. 27; Judg. xiii. 18). But
the mystery of this new name, which no man by searching could find out, which in
this present condition no man is so much as capable of receiving, shall be imparted
to the saints and citizens of the New Jerusalem. They shall know, even as they are
known (1 Cor. xiii. 12).
Ver. 13. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit saith unto the Churches.”—Compare ii. 7. I cannot leave this Epistle, so
full of precious promises to a Church, which, having little strength, had yet held
fast the word of Christ’s patience, without giving a remarkable passage about it
from Gibbon (Decline and Fall, c. lxiv.), in which he writes like one who almost
believed that the threatenings and promises of God did fulfil themselves in history:
“In the loss of Ephesus the Christians deplored the fall of the first angel, the
extinction of the first candlestick of the Revelations; the desolation is complete;
and the temple of Diana
or the church
of Mary will equally elude the search of the curious traveller. The circus and three
stately theatres of Laodicea are now peopled with wolves and foxes; Sardis is reduced
to a miserable village; the God of Mahomet, without a rival or a son, is invoked
in the mosques of Thyatira and Pergamus, and the populousness of Smyrna is supported
by the foreign trade of the Franks and Armenians. Philadelphia alone has been saved
by prophecy, or courage. At a distance from the sea, forgotten by the emperors,
encompassed on all sides by the Turks, her valiant citizens defended their religion
and freedom above fourscore years, and at length capitulated with the proudest of
Ottomans. Among the Greek colonies and churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect—a
column in a scene of ruins,—a pleasing example that the paths of honour and
safety may sometimes be the same.”
VII.
EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH OF LAODICEA.
Rev. iii. 14-22.
Ver. 14. “And unto the Angel of the Church of the
Laodiceans write.”—Laodicea, called often
Laodicea on the Lycus, to distinguish it from other cities (there were no less than
six in all) bearing the same name, was a city in Southern Phrygia (Phrygia Pacatiana),
midway between Philadelphia and-Colosse. Its nearness to the latter city is more
than once referred to in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians (iv. 13, 15, 16).
Its earliest name was Diospolis, then Rhoas (Plin. H. N. v. 29). Being
rebuilt and adorned by Antiochus the Second, king of Syria, he called it
Laodicea, after his wife Laodice, by whom he was afterwards poisoned. In Roman
times it was a foremost city among those of the second rank in Asia Minor;
“celeberrima urbs” Pliny calls
it. Its commerce was considerable, being chiefly in the wools grown in the region
round about,
which were celebrated for their richness of colour and fineness of texture. The
city suffered grievously in the Mithridatic war, but presently recovered again;
once more in the widewasting earthquake in the time of Tiberius, but was repaired
and restored by the efforts of its own citizens, without any help asked by them
from the Roman senate (Tacitus, Annal. xiv. 27).
Some have supposed that the negligent
Angel of the Laodicean Church was that Archippus, for whom St. Paul, writing to
the Colossians, adds the message, “And say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry
which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it” (Col. iv. 17). The urgency
of this monition certainly seems to imply that St. Paul was not altogether satisfied
with the manner in which Archippus was then fulfilling the “ministry,” whatever
that might be, which he had undertaken; and affording a not inconsiderable support
to this conjecture is the fact that in the Apostolical Constitutions (viii. 46),
which with much of later times also contain much of the very earliest, Archippus
is actually named as first bishop of Laodicea. Let him have been the son of Philemon
(Philem. 2), a principal convert in the Colossian Church, whose son therefore might
very probably have been chosen to this dignity and honour, and it would be nothing
strange to find him some thirty years later holding his office
still; while it would be
only too consonant with the downward progress of things, that he who began slackly,
should in the lapse of years have grown more and more negligent, till now he needed
and received this sharpest reproof from his Lord. Whether the rebukes and threatenings
contained in this Epistle did their work or not, it is only for Him who reads the
hearts of men to know. But it is certain that the Church of Laodicea was in somewhat
later times, so far as man’s eye could see, in a flourishing condition. In numbers
it increased so much that its bishop obtained metropolitan dignity; and in 361 an
important Church Council, that in which the Canon of Scripture was finally declared,
was held at Laodicea, and derives its name front thence. All has perished now. He
who removed the candlestick of Ephesus, has rejected Laodicea out of his mouth.
The fragments of aqueducts and theatres spread over a vast extent of country tell
of the former magnificence of this city; but of this once famous Church nothing
survives. Recent travellers with difficulty discovered one or two Christians in
the poor village of Iski-Hissar, which stands on the site which Laodicea occupied
of old.
“These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness.”—“The Amen” (it is only here that the word is used as a proper name) is He who can add a
“Verily, verily,” an “Amen, amen,” to every
word which He
utters; as so frequently He does—the double “Amen” indeed only in the Gospel
of St. John, i. 51; iii. 3, 5, 11,
and often. He is “the Witness, the faithful
and the true,” in that He speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen.
The thought is a favourite and ever-recurring one in the Gospel of St. John (iii.
11, 32, 33); but does not appear in any other. It may be interesting here to call
to mind how the confessors of Lyons and Vienne, referring to these very words, put
back from themselves the name of “witnesses” (μάρτυρες), when others would have
given it to. them, saying that Christ was the faithful and true Witness, that this
name was his and not theirs (Eusebius, H. E. v. 2).
Of the two epithets, the first,
πιστός, expresses his entire trustworthiness. The word is employed in two very
different senses in the New Testament as elsewhere-now as trusting or believing
(John xx. 27; Acts xiv. 1), now as trustworthy or to be believed (2 Tim. ii. 22;
1 Thess. v. 27; 1 John i. 9). Men may be
πιστοί in both senses, the active and the
passive, as exercising faith, and as being worthy to have faith exercised upon them;
God can be only
πιστός in the latter. The Arians found this epithet applied to
Christ (Heb. iii. 2), and, as though the word was and could be only used in the
former sense, in that of exercising faith upon some
higher object, itself of course
a creaturely act, they drew from the application of this epithet to the Son an argument
against his divinity. I quote the clear and excellent answer of Athanasius, and,
as it has been well translated, use the translation (Library of the Fathers, Treatises
against Arianism, p. 289): “Further, if the expression, ‘Who was faithful,’ is a
difficulty to them from the thought that ‘faithful’ is used of Him as of others,
as if He exercises faith and so receives the reward of faith, they must proceed
to find fault with Moses, for saying, ‘God faithful and true,’ and with St. Paul
for writing, ‘God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye
are able.’ But when the sacred writers spoke thus, they were not thinking of God
in a human way, but they acknowledged two senses of the word ‘faithful’ in Scripture,
first believing, then trustworthy, of which the former belongs to man, the latter
to God. Thus Abraham was faithful because he believed God’s word; and God faithful,
for, as David says in the Psalm, ‘The Lord is faithful in all his words,’ or is trustworthy,
and cannot lie. Again, ‘If any faithful woman have widows,’ she is so called for
her right faith; but, ‘It is a faithful saying,’ because what He hath spoken hath
a claim on our faith, for it is true, and is not otherwise. Accordingly the words,
‘Who is faithful to Him that made Him,’ implies no parallel with
others, nor means that by having faith He became well-pleasing,
but that, being Son of God the True, He too is faithful, and ought to be
believed in all He says and does.”
It will be seen that the truthfulness of Christ as a Witness is asserted in the πιστός,
not, as might at first sight be assumed, in the ἀληθινός; that follows, or at least
in it only as one quality among many. Christ is μάρτυς ἀληθινός (not ἀληθής),
in that He realized and fulfilled in the highest sense all that belonged to a witness.
Three things are necessary thereto. He must have been αὐτόπτης;
having seen with his own eyes that which he professes to attest. He must be
competent to relate and reproduce this for others. He must be willing faithfully
and truthfully to do this. These three things meeting in Christ, and not the
presence of the last only, constitute Him a “true witness,” or one in whom all the highest conditions of a witness met.
“The beginning of the creation of God.”—There are two ways in which
grammatically
it would be possible to understand these words. They might say that Christ was
passively this “beginning of the creation of God,” as the first and most excellent creature
of God’s hands; thus Jacob addresses Reuben as ἀρχὴ τὲκνων μου (Gen. xlix. 3;
cf. Deut. xxi. 17). Or, on the other hand, they might declare of Christ that He
was the active source, author,
and, in this sense, “beginning” and beginner of all creation; as in the words of the Creed,
“by whom all things
were made.” But while both meanings are possible so long as the words are merely
considered by themselves, and without reference to any other statements
concerning Christ, the analogy of faith imperatively demands the adoption of the
latter. The Catholic Church has ever rejected the other as an Arian gloss;
impossible to accept, because it would place this passage in contradiction with
every passage in Scripture which claims divine attributes, and not creaturely,
for the Son. To go no further than these seven Epistles, all the titles which
Christ claims for Himself in them are either necessarily divine, or, at any
rate, not inconsistent with his divinity; and this must be so no less. He is
not, therefore, the “principium
principiatum,” but rather the “principium principians,”—not He whom God created the first, but
He who was the fountain-source of all the creation of God, by whom God created all
things (John i. 1-3; Col. i. 15, 18); even as elsewhere in this Book Christ appears
as the Author of creation (v. 13). The Arians, as is well known, explained these
words in the same way as they explained Col. i. 15, which is indeed the great parallel
passage, as though ἀρχή, was
“the begun,” and not “the beginning;” and they brought Job xl. 19 into comparison. But for
the use of ἀρχή
in the sense and with the force which we here demand for it, as “principium,”
not “initium” (though these Latin words do not adequately reproduce the distinction),
compare the Gospel of Nicodemus, c. 25, in which Hades addresses Satan as
ἡ τοῦ θανάτου ἀρχὴ καὶ ῥίζα τῆς ἁμαρτίας; and further, Dionysius the Areopagite (c.
15): ὁ Θεὸς ἐστὶν πάντων αἰτία καὶ ἀρχή; and again, Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 25):
ὁ Θεὸς δὲ ἄναρχος, ἀρχὴ τῶν ὅλων παντελής. These and innumerable other passages
abundantly vindicate for
ἀρχὴ that active sense which we must needs claim for it
here.
Ver. 15. “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or
hot.”—ζεστός, from ζέω, ferveo, cf. Acts xviii. 25; Rom. xii. 11;
ζέοντες τῷ πνεύματι, love to God being a divine heat, a divine fire (Cant. viii.
6; Luke xxiv. 32). Ὄφελον, properly the second aorist of
ὁφείλω, but
now grown into an adverbial use (= “utinam”), has so far forgotten what at the first it was,
as to be employed promiscuously in all numbers and all persons; cf. 1 Cor. v. 8;
2 Cor. xi. 1. It governs an indicative, not an optative, here (ἦς, not
εἴης, is
the right reading), inasmuch as the Lord is not desiring that something even now
might be, but only that something might have been. In form a wish, it is in reality
a regret.
Shall we take this, “I would
thou wert cold or hot,” merely as the expression of a holy impatience at the half-and-half
position of this Laodicean Angel; without pushing the matter further, or attempting
to explain to ourselves how the Lord should put coldness as one of two alternatives
to be desired; as though He had said, “I would thou wouldst take one side or other,
be avowedly with me, or avowedly against me, ranged under my banner, or under that
of my enemies, that so I might understand how to deal with thee”? Hardly so. This
impatience, looked at more closely, would not deserve to be called holy. It is the
impatience of sinful man, not of the Son of God; to whom indecision between good
and evil must be preferable to decision for evil. The state of lukewarmness must
be in itself worse than even that of coldness, before the Lord could thus deliberately
desire the latter as a preferable alternative. But how? for there is certainly a
difficulty here. Lukewarmness is very inferior to heat, but seems
preferable to absolute coldness in the things of God. To have only half a heart
for these things is bad, but wherein is it better to have no heart at all? How
shall we then understand this exclamation of the Saviour, “I would thou wert cold or hot”?
Best, I think, in this way, namely, by regarding the “cold” as one hitherto untouched by the
powers of grace. There is
always hope of such a one, that, when he does come under those
powers, he may become a zealous and earnest Christian. He is not one on whom the
grand experiment of the Gospel has been tried and has failed. But the “lukewarm”
is one who has tasted of the good gift and of the powers of the world to come,
who has been a subject of Divine grace, but in whom that grace has failed to
kindle more than the feeblest spark. The publicans and harlots were “cold,”
the Apostles “hot.” The Scribes and Pharisees,
such among them as that Simon in whose house the Lord sat and spake the parable
of the fifty and the five hundred pence (Luke vii. 36-47),
they were “lukewarm.” It was from among the “cold,”
and not the “lukewarm,” that He drew recruits; from among them came
forward the candidates for discipleship and apostleship and the crown of life,
Matthew, and Zacchæus, and the Magdalene, and the other woman that had been a
sinner (if indeed another), and all those others, publicans and harlots, that
entered into the kingdom of heaven, while the Scribes and Pharisees continued
without. That woman which was a sinner, for example, having been “cold,”
passed from that coldness to the fervency of a divine heat, at which there is
little or no likelihood that the “lukewarm” Simon ever arrived (Luke vii. 47).
It is thus
that Gregory the Great explains these
words (Reg. Past. iii. 34): “Qui enim
adhuc in peccatis est, conversionis fiduciam non amittit. Qui vero post
conversionem tepuit, et spem, quæ esse potuit de peccatore, subtraxit. Aut
calidus ergo quisque esse, aut frigidus quæritur, ne tepidus evomatur, ut
videlicet aut necdum conversus, adhuc de se spem conversionis præbeat, aut jam
conversus in virtutibus inardescat.” Compare Origen (De Princip.
iii. 4): “Forte utilius videatur obtineri animam a carne,
quam residere in suis propriis voluntatibus. Namque quoniam nec calida dicitur
esse, nec frigida, sed in medio quodam tepore perdurans, tardam et satis
difficilem conversionem poterit invenire. Si vero carni adhæreat, ex his ipsis
interdum malis quæ ex carnis vitiis patitur, satiata aliquando et repleta, velut
gravissimis oneribus luxuriæ ac libidinis fatigata, facilius et velocius
converti a materialibus sordibus ad cœ lestium desiderium et spiritualem gratiam
potest.” Jeremy Taylor, too, in the second of his sermons, Of Lukewarmness and Zeal,
discusses this point, why the Lord preferred “hot” or “cold”
to “lukewarm,” at considerable length; and urges well that it is
the “lukewarm,” not as a
transitional,
but as a final state, which is thus the object of the Lord’s abhorrence:
“In feasts
or sacrifices the ancients did use apponere frigidam or calidam; sometimes they
drank hot drink, sometimes they poured cold upon their gravies or in their wines,
but no services of tables or altars were ever with lukewarm. God
hates it worse than stark cold; which expression is the more considerable,
because in natural and superinduced progressions from extreme to extreme, we
must necessarily pass through the midst; and therefore it is certain a lukewarm
religion is better than none at all, as being the doing some parts of the work
designed, and nearer to perfection than the utmost distance could be; and yet
that God hates it more, must mean, that there is some appendant evil in this
state which is not in the other, and that accidentally it is much worse: and so
it is, if we rightly understand it; that is, if we consider it not as a being
in, or passing through, the middle way, but as a state and a period of religion.
If it be in motion, a lukewarm religion is pleasing to God; for God hates it not
for its imperfection, and its natural measures of proceeding; but if it stands
still and rests there, it is a state against the designs and against the
perfection of God: and it hath in it these evils.”
I must not leave these words without observing that there is
another way of explaining this, “I would thou wert cold or hot,” which
has found favour with somne in modern times. Urging that food, when either cold
or hot, is pleasant to the taste, and only when tepid unwelcome, they make both
the “cold” and the “hot” to express spiritual
conditions absolutely acceptable
in themselves, the only tertium comparationis being the nausea created by the tepid,
and affirm that nothing further has a right here to be pressed. But assuredly there
is much more in these words than this.
Ver. 16. “So then because thou art lukewarm.,
and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”—The land of Canaan
is said to have spued out its former inhabitants for their abominable doings; the
children of Israel are warned that they commit not the same, lest in like manner
it spue out them (Lev. xviii. 28; xx. 22); but this threatening is more terrible
still: it is to be spued out of the mouth of Christ, to be rejected as with nausea,
with moral loathing and disgust, by Him; to exchange the greatest possible nearness
to Him for the remotest distance. At the same time, in the original the language
is not quite so severe as in our Version; the threat does not present itself as
one about to be put into immediate execution. The long-suffering of Christ has not
been all exhausted; μέλλω σε ἐμέσαι,
“I am about,” or “I have it in my mind,
to spue thee out of my mouth,” as the Vulgate seeks to express it, “incipiam te
evomere;” that is, “unless thou so takest to heart this threat that I shall never
need to execute this threat” (Jon. iii. 10; 1 Kings xxi. 29). But if executed, it
implies nothing less than
absolute rejection, being equivalent to that “I will remove thy candlestick out of his place”
(ii.
5), uttered against the Ephesian Angel. Not very different is the tropical use of
πτύειν, καταπτύειν,
and in Latin of “respuere,” “conspuere,”
as = “repudiare,” “abhorrere ab aliquâ re.”
Ver. 17. “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased
with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”—There is a question whether this verse
coheres the most closely with what goes before, or what follows after,—that is,
whether Christ threatens to reject him from his mouth, because he says, “I am rich,
and increased with goods, and have need of nothing;” or whether, because he says
he is all this, therefore Christ counsels him to buy of Him what will make him rich
indeed (ver. 18). Our Translators regard the latter connexion as the right one;
and, by the punctuation which they have adopted, join this verse with that which
follows after it, not with that which went before it—I doubt whether correctly.
I should have preferred to place a colon at the end of ver. 16, and a full-stop
at that of ver. 17, instead of the reverse, which they have done.—These riches
and goods in which the Laodicean Church and Angel gloried we must understand as
spiritual riches, in which they fondly imagined
they abounded. Some interpreters
take it in another sense, that they boasted of their worldly prosperity, their flourishing
outward condition, and found in this a sign and token of God’s favour towards them.
But assuredly this is a mistake; it is in the sphere of spiritual things that the
Lord is moving; and this language in this application is justified by numerous
passages in Scripture: as by Luke xii. 21; 1 Cor. i. 5; 2 Cor. viii. 9; above all,
by two passages of holy irony, 1 Cor. iv. 8 and Hos. xii. 8; both standing in very
closest connexion with this; I can indeed hardly doubt that there is intended a
reference to the latter of these in the words of our Lord. The Laodicean Angel,
and the Church which he was dragging into the same ruin with himself, were walking
in a vain show and imagination of their own righteousness, their own advances in
spiritual insight and knowledge. That this may go hand in hand with the most miserable
lack of all real grace, all true and solid advances in goodness, we have a notable
example in the Pharisee of our Lord’s parable (Luke xviii. 11, 12; cf. Luke xvi.
15; 1 Cor. xiii. 1); and so
it was here. Rightly Richard of St. Victor: “Dicis
quod sum dives et locupletatus, sive videlicet per scientiæ cognitionem, sive per
Scripturæ prædicationem, sive per secularis eloquentiæ nitorem, sive per sacramentorum
administrationem, sive per pontificialis
apicis dignitatem, sive per vulgi laudem inanem.”
Such was their estimate of themselves;
but now follows the terrible reality, namely, Christ’s estimate of them: “And
knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”
Here, as so often, our Version, to its loss, has taken no note of the article
which goes before the two first adjectives, and raises them to the dignity of
substantives, while the three which follow are added as qualifying adjectives.
Read rather, “And
knowest not that thou art the wretched and the miserable one,Compare, as an exact parallel,
and, singularly enough, much knore than a mere verbal parallel, Isai. xlvii. 8 (LXX.):
νῦν δὲ ἄκουε ταῦτα, ἡ τρυφερά ἡ
καθημένη, ἡ πεποιθυῖα, ἡ λέγουσα ἐν
καρδίᾳ αὐτῆς, Ἐγώ εἰμι; καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἑτέρα, κ. τ. λ.
and poor, and blind,
and naked.” Ταλαίπωρος,
“wretched,” occurs only here and Rom. vii. 24; it is commonly
derived by the grammarians from τλάω and πῶρος in the sense of grief, but thought
now to be a poetical recasting of ταλαπείριος, in which case we should find
πειρά,
a sharp piercing point, in the latter syllables. Ἐλεεινός,”miserable,” only here
and 1 Cor. xv. 19, the object of extremest pity (ἐλέους ἄξιος, Suidas), as in certain
peril of eternal death, if he should remain what he was. The charge of blindness
would seem to imply that the Laodicean Church
boasted of spiritual insight.
Like some before them, being blind, they yet said, “We see” (John ix. 21). This
blindness, of course, was not absolute and complete; else the eyesalve which the
Lord presently bids them to obtain of Him would have profited little. They were
μυωπάζοντες, as St. Peter (2 Ep. i. 9) speaks of some,
he too joining τυφλός and μυωπάζων.
Ver. 18. “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire,
that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that
the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.”—There is a certain irony, but the irony
of divine love, in these words. He who might have commanded, prefers rather to counsel;
He who might have spoken as from heaven, conforms Himself, so far as the outward
form of his words reaches, to the language of earth. To the merchants and factors
of this wealthy mercantile city He addresses Himself in their own dialect. Laodicea
was a city of extensive money transactions; Cicero, journeying to or from his province,
proposes to take up money there (Epp. ad. Div. ii. 17; iii. 5); Christ here invites
to dealings with Him: I-Ie has gold so fine that none will reject it. The wools
of Laodicea, of a raven blackness, were famous throughout the world; but He has
raiment of dazzling white for them who will put it on. There were ointments
for which certainly
many of the Asiatic cities were famous; but He, as He will presently announce, has eyesalve more precious than them all. Would it not be wise to transact their chief
business with Him? Thus Perkins (Exposition upon Rev. i. ii. iii., Works,
vol. iii. p. 363): “Christ saith, I counsel thee to buy of Me; where He
alludeth to the outward state of this city, for it was rich, and also given to
much traffic, as histories record, and therefore He speaks to them in their own
kind, as if He should say, Ye are a people exercised in much traffic, and
delighted with nothing more than buying and selling. Well, I have wares that
will serve your turn, as gold, garments, and oil; therefore come and buy of Me.”
But first on those words, “buy,” and “of
Me.” We must not fail to put an emphasis on that “of Me.”
“In Me,” Christ
would say, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Christ’s Apostle
had once before to remind the Colossians, neighbours of the Laodiceans, that this
was so; and that there was no growth for the Church, or for any member of the Church,
except through holding the Head (Col. ii. 3, 19); that all self-chosen ways of will-worship
might have a show of wisdom, but puffed up, and did not build up (ii. 10-15); and
out of the deep anxiety which he evidently felt for both these sister Churches
alike (ii. 1), he had desired
that the Epistle to the Colossians should be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans
(iv. 16). But they had not learned their lesson. St. Paul’s
“great conflict” for
them had been well nigh in vain; and now the Lord, repeating his servant’s lesson,
gathers up into a single point, concentrates in that single phrase, “buy of
Me,”
the whole lesson of the Epistle to the Colossians.
The “buying” of Christ, who
in so many more passages is described as making a free gift of all which He imparts
to men, is drawn from Isai. lv. 1, with which we may compare Matt. xiii. 44, 46.
The price which they should pay was this, the renunciation of all vain reliance
on their own righteousness and wisdom; the price which in another Epistle St. Paul
declared he had so gladly paid, that so he might himself win Christ (Phil. iii.
7, 8); the ἀποτάσσεσθαι πᾶσι, which the Lord long before had declared to be
the necessary condition of his discipleship (Luke xiv. 33).
This is the price, as it is contemplated rather in its negative aspect; in its
positive it is the earnest striving after, and longing for, the gift, the
reaching out after it, the opening of the mouth wide that He may fill it.
Vitringa: “Quæ beneficia Dominus vult ut
emant, h. e. secundum conditiones fœderis gratiæ pro iis expendant pretium abnegationis
sui ipsius et mundanarum
cupiditatum; quod hic non habet rationem meriti, sed tamen pretii,
quia in regeneratione homo allis quibusdam, rebus sibi hactenus caris renunciat,
ut pretioso dono justitiæ Christi potiatur.”
And what does the Lord counsel him that he shall “buy;”
which, when he has made them his own, he shall be no longer “poor and blind and naked”?
Three things; and, first, as he is “poor”—“gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest
be rich.” A comparison with 1 Pet. i. 7 (cf. Zech. xiii. 9; Matt. iii. 3; Prov.
xvii. 3; Jam. i. 3) teaches us that by this is intended faith; for faith being a
gift of God, must therefore be bought of Christ (Luke xvii. 5; cf. Ps. lxxii. 15,
according to the right translation); and such faith as would stand the test, would
endure in the furnace of affliction, in the πύρωσις (1 Pet. iv. 12);
Vitringa: “Vera et solida fides, quæ sustinere possit
afflictiones.” Then shall he be rich
indeed; this is the true πλουτίζειν (1 Cor. i. 5), better than that spoken of in
the book of Job (xxii. 23, 24); though that, as God’s gift, might be good; then
should he be indeed one εἰς Θεὸν πλουτῶν (Luke xii. 21), rich toward God, not
walking, as now, in a vain show of wealth which he had not.
Πεπυρωμένον ἐκ πυρός = δοκιμαζόμενον διὰ πυρός, 1 Pet. i. 7; for, in the words of the Latin poet,
“Omnia purgat ignis edax, vitiumque metalli
Excoquit.”
But, secondly, as he is “naked,” he shall “buy”
of Christ “white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and
that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.”—Instead of the αἰσχύνη here, we
have in the parallel passage, xvi. 15, ἀσχημοσύνην, translated also
“shame,”
but better, “unseemliness,” or “uncomeliness;” cf. τὰ ἀσχήμονα,
1 Cor. xii. 23. “Do not appear” is too weak a rendering of μὴ φανερωθῇ.
Translate rather, “be
not made manifest;” φανεροῦσθαι being constantly used for the manifestations or
revelations which God makes of the hidden things of men (John iii. 21; 1 Cor. iv.
5; 2 Cor. v. 11; Eph. v. 13); either now, or at that last day when every guest that
has not on a wedding garment is at the same instant discovered and cast out (Matt.
xxii. 11-13; compare Isai. xlvii. 3: ἀνακαλυφθήσεται ἡ αἰσχύνη σου). As stripping,
and laying bare the nakedness, is a frequent method of putting to open shame (cf.
2 Sam. x. 4; Isai. xx. 4; xlvii. 2, 3; Ezek. xvi. 37; Hos. ii. 3, 9; iii. 5; Nah.
iii. 5; Rev. xvi. 15), so the clothing with comely apparel those unclothed or ill-clothed
before, of imparting honour; cf. Gen. xli. 42; Esth. vi. 7-11; Luke xv. 22; Zech.
iii. 3-5; and above all, Gen. iii. 7, 21, where it is shown that God, and not himself,
is the true coverer of the nakedness of man; for while he can discover his own shame,
it is God only who can cover, it. This, the shame of
the nakedness
of him who, professing Christ, has not put on Christ (Col. iii. 10-14), may be,
and often is, revealed in the present time; it must be revealed in the last day
(Matt. xxii. 11-13; Dan. xii. 2; 2 Cor. v. 10). Therefore is it that the Psalmist
exclaims, “Blessed is the man whose sin is covered” (Ps. xxxii. 1);
and those interpreters seem to me to give too narrow a range of meaning to this
“white raiment,” who limit it to the graces of the Christian life, and
the putting on, in this sense, of the Lord Jesus Christ. We should understand by
it not merely the righteousness of Christ imparted, but also that righteousness
imputed; for both are needful, the one as needful as the other, if the shame of
our nakedness is not to appear. So Vitringa: “Vestimenta
alba, h. e. justitiam Christi, verâ fide acceptam, quæ nos obtegat quâ parte
nudi, id est, expositi sumus ardenti iræ Dei; tum quoque habitus Christianarum
virtutum, quæ faciunt ut quis cum fiduciâ absque pudore coram Deo et sanctis
ausit comparere, inter quas eminent caritas, simplicitas, humilitas et zelus.”
“And anoint
thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.”—The eye for which this salve is
needed is, of course, the spiritual eye, the eye of the conscience, by which spiritual
things are discerned and appreciated; which eye may be sound or simple (ἁπλοῦς,
Matt. v. 29), or which may be evil (πονηρός,
Matt. vi. 23; cf. 1
John ii. 11); and according as it is this or that, the man will see
himself as he truly is, or see nothing as he ought to see it. The beginning of
all true amendment is to see ourselves as indeed we are, in our misery, our
guilt, our shame; and to enable us to do this is the first consequence of the
anointing with that eyesalve which the Lord here invites this Angel to purchase
of Him. The Spirit convinceth of sin, and by this “eyesalve” we must understand the illuminating grace of the
Holy Ghost, which at once shows to us ourselves and God. And if it be true of the
medicinal eyesalves of antiquity that they commonly caused the eye to smart on their
first application (Tob. xi. 8, 12), “mordacia collyria,”
“acre collyrium,” as
Augustine therefore calls them (In Joh. Tract. xviii. § 11; Conf.
vii. 8), this may fitly set forth to us the wholesome pain and medicinal smart
which belong to the spiritual eyesalve as well; making for us discoveries so
painful as it does, causing us to see in ourselves a nakedness and poverty which
had been wholly concealed from us before; while yet only through the seeing and
through the confessing of this can that poverty be ever exchanged for riches, or
that nakedness for “durable clothing.”
It has been already remarked (p. 211), and assuredly is very well worthy
of notice, that the two
Churches which
are spiritually in the most sunken condition of all, that, namely, of Sardis and
this of Laodicea, are also the two in which alone there is no mention made either
of adversaries from without, or of hinderers to the truth from within. Of the absence
of heathen adversaries there has been occasion to speak already; but more noticeable
still is the fact that there neither appear here nor there Nicolaitans, or Balaamites,
or Jezebelites, or those who say they are Jews and are not; seeking to seduce Christ’s
servants, and making it needful for them earnestly to contend for the truth, if
they would not be robbed of it altogether. In the coldness andl deadness of these
Churches, which had no truth to secure or defend from gainsayers, we may see a pregnant
hint of all which the Church owes to the heresies and heretics that, one after another,
have assailed her. Owing them no thanks for what she has gained by them, her gains
themselves have been immense, and there are remarkable acknowledgments to this effect
made by more than one of the early Fathers. Contending against these she has learned
not merely to define more accurately, but to grasp more firmly, and to prize more
dearly, that truth of which they would fain have deprived her. What would the Church
of the second century have been, if it had never learned its strength, and the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge which
it had in Christ Jesus, in
the course of that tremendous conflict with the Gnostics which it then sustained?
Would the Church itself have ever been the true Gnostic, except for these
false
ones? Again, what an education for it were the fast-succeeding conflicts of the two
next centuries; and not in intellectual education only, but “as iron sharpeneth
iron,” so the zeal of the adversaries of the truth served often to excite the zeal
and love, which might else have abated, of its friends. Assuredly it was not good
for the Sardian and Laodicean Churches to be without this necessity of earnestly
contending for the truth. Perhaps they gloried in their. freedom from conflicts
which were agitating and troubling the other Churches around them. But we may be
bold to say that in a world of imperfections like ours, it argued no healthy spiritual
life that there should have been none there to call the truth into question and
debate. Misgrowths are at all events growths; and if there is a spiritual condition
which is above errors, so also there is one which is beneath them, when there is
not interest enough in theology, not care enough to know any thing certain about
God, or about man’s relation to God, even to generate a heresy. As we read the
history of the Church, we may perhaps find some consolation in thoughts like these.
Assuredly in reading many a page in that history, we need the
strongest consolations
which we can any where find. But to return from this digression.
Ver. 19. “As many
as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent.”—He, the great
Master-builder, polishes with many strokes of the chisel and the hammer the stones
which shall find a place at last in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem (cf. Prov.
iii. 12; Job v. 17; Heb. xii. 6; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 11-13; Ps. xciv. 12).
And this is a rule which endures no exception. In that “as many” (ὅσους)
here lies the same emphasis as in the “every son” of Heb. xii. 6.
All whom He loves are included
in the same discipline of correction, are made sooner or later to be able to say,
“Thy loving correction shall make me great” (Ps. xviii. 35). Of
all it is true that,
if not scourged, they are not sons (Heb. xii. 8); if not rebuked and chastened,
they are not loved. Not a few, if their prosperity lasts a little longer than that
of others, fancy that they are to be exceptions to this rule; but it is never so.
They can only be excepted from the discipline through being excepted from the sonship;
as Augustine excellently well (Serm. xlvi. § 11): “Flagellat,
inquit, omnem filium quem recipit. Et tu forte exceptus eris? Si exceptus a
passione fiagellorum, exceptus a numero filiorum.” Many other beautiful passages to the same effect may be found
in his writings; thus
Enarr. in Ps. xxxi. 11; in
Ps. xciii. 14; in Ps. cxiv.
and παιδεύειν are often found together,
as here; thus Ecclus. xviii. 13; Ps. cxl. 5; so too παιδεία
and ἔλεγχος, Prov.
vi. 23, and compare Heb. xii. 5; but they are very capable of being distinguished. Ἐλέγχειν
is more thanἐπιτιμᾶν, with which it is often joined; see my
Synonyms of the New
Testament, § 4. It is so to rebuke that the person rebuked is brought to the acknowledgment
of his fault, is convinced, as David was when rebuked by Nathan (2 Sam. xii. 13);
for, in the words of Aristotle (Rhet. ad Alex. 13),
ἔλεγχος ἐστι μὲν ὃ μὴ δυνατὸν
ἄλλως ἔχειν, ἀλλ᾽ οὕτως ὡς ἡμεῖς
λέγομεν; and this rebuking, or convincing of sin,
is eminently the work and office of the Holy Ghost (John xvi. 8; cf. iii. 20; Ephes.
v. 13). See upon this subject an admirable note by Archdeacon Hare in his
Mission
of the Comforter, vol. ii. p. 528. Παιδεύειν, being in classical Greek to instruct,
to educate, is in sacred Greek to instruct or educate by means of correction, through
the severe discipline of love (παιδεύειν and μαστυγοῦν are joined together, Heb.
xii. 6), “per molestias erudire,” as Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii. 66), tracing
the difference between its sacred and profane uses, explains it. As David had found
his ἔλεγχος
when he exclaimed, “I have sinned against the Lord”
(2 Sam. xii.
13), so his παιδεία was announced to him in the words which followed:
“The child
also that is born unto thee shall surely die” (ver. 14)which passage is alone sufficient
to refute those who affirm that we have in the ἐλέγχω καὶ παιδεύω a
ὕστερον πρότερον.
Not so. It will indeed continually happen that the same dealing of God with men
is at once ἔλεγχος and παιδεία, but only παιδεία through having been first ἔλεγχος.
This therefore, namely the ἔλεγχος,
rightly precedes. Brightman: “Observandum est
illum arguere et castigare; id est, convincere et plectere. Simul
enim sunt hæc duo conjungenda. Inutilis est animadversio, ubi verba silent,
verbera sæviunt. Unde recte vocatur castigatio, disciplina quâ delinquens una
dolet et discit.”—For
ζήλωσον of the received text, read rather
ζηλεῦε, from θηλεύω, another form of
ζ͓λόω. This word, through ζῆλος connected
with ζέω and thus with ζεστός (ver. 15),
is chosen as the word of exhortation, with special reference to the lukewarmness
which the Lord so indignantly saw in the Laodicean Church. It was warmth, heat,
fervency, which He required of it. St. Paul uses ζηλοῦν in a good sense, Gal. iv.
18, and also, which are the best parallels to its employment here, 1 Cor. xii. 31;
xiv. 1.
Ver. 20. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”—The Hellenistic κρούω
is here, as always
in the New Testament, the
word used to describe this knocking at the door (Luke xii. 36; xiii. 25; Acts xii.
13, 16). The Greek purists preferred κόπτω; yet see Lobeck,
Phrynichus, p. 177.
We have in these gracious words the long-suffering of Christ as He waits for the
conversion of sinners (1 Pet. iii. 20); and not alone the long-suffering which waits,
but the love which seeks to bring that conversion about, which knocks. He at whose
door we ought to stand, for He is the Door (John x. 7), who, as such, has bidden
us to knock (Matt. vii. 7; Luke xi. 9), is content that the whole relation between
Him and us should be reversed, and instead of our standing at his door, condescends
Himself to stand at ours,—θυραυλεῖν, as the Greeks termed this waiting and watching
at the door of the beloved. Very beautiful on the matter of this infinite condescension
on his part are the words of Kicolaus Cabasilas, a Greek divine of the fourteenth
century: ὁ περὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἔρως τὸν Θεὸν ἐκένωσεν.
οὐ γὰρ κατὰ χώραν μένων καλεῖ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν,
ὃν ἐφίλησε δοῦλον, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὸς ζητεῖ κατελθών, καὶ
πρὸς τὴν καταγωγὴν ἀφικνεῖται τοῦ πένητος ὁ πλουτῶν, καὶ προσελθὼν δι᾽ ἑαυτοῦ
μηνύει τὸν πόθον, καὶ ζητεῖ τὸ ἴσον, καὶ ἀπαξιοῦντος οὐκ ἀφίσταται, καὶ πρὸς
τὴν ὕβριν οὐ δυσχεραίνει, καὶ διωκόμενος προσεδρεύει ταῖς θύραις, καὶ ἵνα τὸν
ἐρῶντα δείξῃ, πάντα ποιεῖ,
καὶ ὀδυνώμενος φέρει καὶ
ἀποθνήσκει.
“If any man
hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him,
and he with Me.”—Christ does not knock only; He also speaks; makes his
“voice” to be heard—a more precious benefit still! It is true indeed that we cannot in our
interpretation draw any strict line of distinction between Christ’s knocking and
Christ’s speaking. They both represent his dealings of infinite love with souls,
for the winning them to receive Him; yet at the same time, considering that in this
natural world a knock may be any one’s and on any errand, while the voice accompanying
it would at once designate who it was that was knocking, and with what intention
(Acts xii. 13, 14), we have a right, so far as we may
venture to distinguish between the two, to see in the voice the more inward
appeal, the closer dealing of Christ with the soul, speaking directly by his
Spirit to the spirit of the man; in the knocking those more outward gracious
dealings, of sorrow and joy, of sickness and health, and the like, which He
sends, and sending uses for the bringing of his elect, in one way or another, by
smooth paths or by rough, to Himself. The “voice” very often will
interpret and make intelligible the purpose of the “knock.”
But that “knock” and this “voice” may both remain unheard and unheeded. It is in the power
of every man to close his ear to them; therefore the
hypothetical form which this gracious promise takes: “if any man hear my voice, and open the door.” There is
no gratia irresistibilis here. It is the man himself who must open the door. Christ
indeed knocks, claims admittance as to his own; so lifts up his voice that it may
be heard, in one sense must be heard, by him; but He does not break open the door,
or force an entrance by violence. There is a sense in which man is lord of the house
of his own heart; it is for him to open, and unless he does so, Christ cannot enter.
And, as a necessary complement of this power to open, there belongs also to man
the mournful prerogative and privilege of refusing to open: he may keep the door
shut, even to the end. he may thus continue to the last blindly at strife with
his own blessedness; a miserable conqueror, who conquers to his own everlasting
loss and defeat.
At the same time these words of Christ, decisive testimony as they
yield against that scheme of irresistible grace which would turn men into mere machines,
and take away all moral value from the victories which Christ obtains over. the
sullenness, the pride, the obstinacy, the rebellion of men, must not be pushed,
as some have pushed them, in the other direction, into Pelagian error and excess;
as though men could open the door of their heart when they would; as though repentance
was not
itself a gift
of the exalted Saviour (Acts v. 31). They can only open when Christ knocks; and
they would have no desire at all to open unless He knocked, and unless, together
with the external knocking of the Word, or of sorrow, or of pain, or whatever other
shape it might assume, there went also the inward voice of the Spirit. All which
one would affirm is that this is a drawing, not a dragging—a knocking at the door,
not a breaking open of the door. Hilary has here some words very much to the point
(In Ps. cxviii. 89): “Vult ergo semper introire;
sed a nobis ne introeat excluditur. Ipse quidem semper ut illuminet promptus
est; sed lumen sibi domus ipsa obseratis aditibus excludit. Quæ si cœ perit
patere, illico introibit, modo solis, qui clausis fenestræ valvis introire,
prohibetur, patentibus vero totus immittitur. Est enim Verbum Dei Sol justitiæ,
adsistens unicuique ut introeat, nec moratur lucem suam repertis aditibus
infundere.”
Some, wishing to decry the Song of Solomon, to take
it from its place in the Canon, and to set it down as a mere human love-poem, an idyl of an earthly love, have affirmed that there is no single allusion to it in
the New Testament. This statement is altogether without warrant. In the words we
have been just considering there is an undoubted allusion to Cant. v. 2-6; where
indeed the very
language which Christ uses
here, the κρούει ἐπὶ τὴν θύραν, the summons
ἀνούγειν recurs. Nor is the relation
between the one passage and the other merely superficial and verbal. On the contrary,
it lies veiy deep. The spiritual condition of the Bride there is in fact precisely
similar to that of the Laodicean Angel here. Between sleeping and waking she has
been so slow to open the door, that when at length she does so, the Bridegroom has
withdrawn, and she has need to seek for and to follow Him (ver. 5, 6). This exactly
corresponds to the lukewarmness of the Angel here. See the two passages brought
into closest connexion in this sense by Jerome, Ep. xviii. ad Eustochium. Another
proof of the connexion between them is this,—that although there has been no
mention of any thing but a knocking here, Christ goes on to say, “If any man hear my voice.”
What can this be but an allusion to the words in the Canticle which have just gone
before, “It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister”?
In the face of this, and much more of the same kind which might be adduced, Ewald
asserts, “Cantico nunquam utuntur Scriptores Novi Testamenti;”
and rather than look there for this “I stand at the door and knock,” he prefers to find an allusion
here to Peter’s standing and knocking at the door of Mary’s house after he was
released from prison by the Angel (Acts xii.
13, 14)! We shall not go far before we find further
evidence of the intimate relation between these words of Christ and those of the
Bridegroom in that Book. We trace it in the words which immediately follow:
“and will Sup with him, and he with
Me.” There
may possibly be in these a more immediate reference to Luke xii. 36; but that to
the Song of Solomon, because it lies deeper, must not therefore be overlooked. There
too the mutual feasting of Christ with the soul which opens to Him, and of the soul
with Him, is all set forth. There too the bride prepares a feast for her Beloved:
“Let my Beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits” (iv. 16); but
He had first prepared one for her: “I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste” (ii. 3). Few, I suppose, would be disposed
to deny a mystical significance to that meal after the Resurrection on the shores
of the Sea of Tiberias, recorded with so much emphasis by the beloved disciple (John
xxi. 9-13); which wonderfully fulfils the same conditions, being made up of what
the disciples bring and what Christ brings. This mutual feasting of Christ with
his people, and of his people with Him, finds in this present life its culminating
fulfilment in the Holy Eucharist; which yet is but an initial fulfilment; it will
only find its exhaustive accomplishment in the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev.
xix. 7-9; Mark xiv. 25).
Ver. 21. “To him that overcometh
will I grant to sit with Me in my throne.”—A magnificent variation of Christ’s words
spoken in the days of his flesh: “The glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them. . . . Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where
I am” (John xvii. 22, 24); as also of the words of St. Paul,
“If we suffer with
Him, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Tim. ii. 12). Wonderful indeed is this promise,
which, as the last and the crowning, is also the highest and most glorious of all.
Step. by step they have advanced, till a height is reached than which no higher
can be conceived. It seemed much to promise the Apostles themselves that they should
sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28); but here is
promised to every believer something more than was there promised to the elect Twelve.
And more wonderful still, if we consider to whom this promise is here addressed.
He whom Christ threatened just now to reject with loathing out of his mouth, is
offered a place with Him on his throne. But indeed so it is; the highest place is
within reach of the lowest; the faintest spark of grace may be fanned into the mightiest
flame of divine love. It will be observed that the image here is not that of sitting
upon seats on the right hand or on the left of Christ’s throne (1 Kings ii. 19),
but of sharing that throne itself. To understand
this,
we must keep in mind the fact, that the Eastern throne is much ampler and broader
than ours; so that there would be room upon it for other persons, besides him who
occupied as of right the central position there (Matt. xx. 21).
“Even as 1 also
overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”—The Son is σύνθρονος
with the Father (Wisd. ix. 4), as the early Church writers loved to express it,
with a word employed already in the heathen mythology, perhaps borrowed from it
(see Suicer, s. v.); his faithful people shall be πάρεδροι
with Him. These words, “I overcame,” remind us of other words spoken by the Lord while as yet
He had
not so visibly overcome as now: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world”
(John
xvi. 33); and the manner in which the overcoming the world and the sitting down
with his Father in his throne are brought together here, puts this passage in closest
connexion with Phil. ii. 9: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given
Him a name which is above every name;” cf. Heb. i. 3.—On
this “my throne,” and “my Father’s throne,” Joseph Mede says well (Works, p. 905):
“Here are two
thrones mentioned. My throne, saith Christ; this is the condition of glorified
saints who sit with Christ in his throne; but my Father’s (i.e. God’s)
throne
is the power of Divine majesty; herein none may sit but God, and
the God-man Jesus Christ.
To be installed in God’s throne, to sit at God’s right hand, is to have a
godlike royalty, such as his Father hath, a royalty altogether incommunicable,
whereof no creature is capable.”
Ver. 22. “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
saith unto the Churches.”—Compare ii. 7.
A few words in conclusion upon the order
in which the promises of the seven Epistles follow one another. It is impossible
not to acknowledge such an order here,-an order parallel to that of the unfolding
of the kingdom of God from its first beginnings on earth to its glorious consummation
in heaven. Thus the promise of Christ to the faithful at Ephesus is, that He will
give them to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God (ii. 7); thus
taking us back to Genesis i. and ii. But sin presently entered into Paradise, and
death, the seal and witness of sin (Gen. iii. 19); but for the faithful at Smyrna,—and
the promise that is good for them is good for the faithful every where,—this curse
of death is lightened. It shall be but the gate of immortality, for “he that overcometh
shall not be hurt of the second death” (ii. 11). The next promise, that to the
faithful at Pergamum, brings us to the Mosaic period, to the Church in the wilderness:
“To him that
overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna” (ii. 17);
and if the interpretation of the “white stone” which has been ventured here is the right one, that promise
will also fall in perfectly with the wilderness period and the institution of the
high-priesthood, which at that period found place. In the fourth, that namely to
Thyatira, we have reached the full and final consummation, in type and prophetic
outline, of the kingdom, the period of David and Solomon,—the triumph over the nations,
the Church sharing in the royalties of her king (ii. 26, 27). Every reader will
recognize this as a characteristic feature of those reigns (2 Sam. x. 19; xii. 29,
30; 1 Chron. xvii. 1-13).
Here there is a pause; and with this consummation reached,
than which in type and prophecy there can be nothing higher, a new series begins;
the heptad falling, as is so constantly the case, into two groups; either of three
and four, as in the Lord’s Prayer, or of four and three, as here. And now the scenery,
if I may use the word, changes; it is not any longer of earth, but of heaven. The
kingdom, not of David, but of David’s Son, has come; all his foes are under his
feet; his Church is not any longer contemplated as militant, but triumphant; and
in the succession of the three last promises we learn that even for the Church triumphant
there are steps and
advances from glory to glory. Thus, in the promise addressed to the Angel of Sardis,
we have the blessings of the judgment-day, the name found written in the took of
life, Christ’s confession of his own before his Father, the vesture of light and
immortality, in other words, the glorified body which it shall be then given to
the saints to wear (iii. 5). This, however, is a personal, a solitary benefit, belonging
to each of them alone; not so the next. In the promise made to the faithful at Philadelphia,
it is declared that as many as overcome shall have right to enter by the gates into
the heavenly City, where City and Temple are one, shall be themselves avouched members
of that heavenly πολιτεία, and shall have their place in it for evermore (iii.
12). And then, it having thus been declared what they have in themselves, namely,
the glorified body, and what they have in and with the company of the redeemed,
the citizenship of the heavenly Jerusalem, it is, last of all, in the concluding
words to the Angel of Laodicea, declared what they possess with God and with Christ;
that it shall be granted to them to sit down with Christ on his throne, as He has
sat down with his Father in his Father’s throne (iii. 21). There can be nothing
behind and beyond this; and with this therefore is the close. It is here, to compare
divine things with human, as in the Paradiso of Dante. There, too,
there are different
circles of light around the throne, each, as it is nearer to the throne, of an intenser
brightness than that beyond it and more remote, till at last, when all the others
have been past, the throne itself is reached, and the very Presence of Him who sits
upon the throne, and from whom ll this light and this glory flows.
EXCURSUS.
ON THE HISTORICO-PROPHETICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE EPISTLES
TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA.
IT is, doubtless, familiar to as many as have at
all gone into the history of the exposition of these seven Epistles, that a large
body of interpreters, several of these distinguished for their piety and their learning,
have not been content to take them merely for what they seem to announce themselves
to be, seven Epistles of instruction, warning, consolation, addrest by the great
Bishop of the Church to seven Churches of Asia; but have loudly proclaimed that
they look much farther than this, that they contain far deeper mysteries than
these. In the Scripture are such depths of meaning, so much remains to be
discovered in them, in addition to all which has yet been discovered, that any
one, whose incapacity is not patent, has a right to claim from us a patient and
attentive ear, when he offers to lead us into these depths, to show us that,
where we thought there were but golden harvests, the food of all waving
upon the surface,
there are also veins of richest metal below, the wealth of those who will be at
the pains to dig for these hid treasures. And yet, at the same time, before we accept
any such discoveries of treasures hid in the field of Scripture, it will be good
always to remember, that there is a temptation to make Scripture mean more than
in the intention of the Holy Ghost it does mean, as well as a temptation to make
it mean less; and that we are bound by equally solemn obligations not to put upon
it something of ours, as not to subtract from it any thing of its own (Rev. xxii.
18, 19); the interpretation in excess proving often nearly, or quite,
as mischievous as that in defect. One has well said, “Mali moris est sensum in S. Scripturam
inferre,
non efferre;” and yet it is a practice which is by no means unusual. To inquire into
the motives which induce to it would lead mle too far from nmy immediate subject;
and some of them will, I think, appear before this essay is concluded.
But what,
it may be asked, is this wider horizon, which, if we would meet the Divine intention,
it is declared to us we should ascribe to these Epistles, and what the deeper mysteries
which they contain? Before I attempt to answer this, let me first, by way of clearing
the ground, set down what all are agreed on, matter on which there is no dispute;
and then secondly, that which, if not all, yet tile greater
number of competent persons
would admit; that so, this done, and these points of universal or general. agreement
separated off, we may better present to ourselves what are the precise points on
which the controversy turns.
All, then, are agreed, and would freely allow, that
these seven Epistles, however primarily addrest to these seven Churches of Asia,
were also written for the edification of the Universal Church; in the same way,
that is, as St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, or to Timothy, or St. James’ to
the Dispersion, were written with this intention. The warnings, the incentives,
the promises, the consolations, and, generally, the whole instruction in
righteousness in these contained, are for every one in all times, so far as they
may meet the several cases and conditions of men; what Christ says to those here
addrest He says to all in similar conditions. So far there can be no question.
“All Scripture,” and therefore this Scripture, “was written for our
learning.”
But further, it may
not meet with such universal acceptance, yet will, I suppose, be admitted by many
thoughtful students of God’s Word, probably by most who have entered into the mystery
of the heptad in Scripture, that these seven Churches of Asia are not an accidental
aggregation, which might just as conveniently have been eight, or six, or any other
number; that, on the contrary,
there is a
fitness in this number, and that these seven do in some sort represent the Universal
Church; that we have a right to contemplate the seven as offering to us the great
and leading aspects, moral and spiritual, which Churches gathered in the name of
Christ out of the world will assume. No one, of course, affirming this, would mean
that they could be contemplated as exhaustive of these aspects; for the infinite
depth and richness of that new life which Christ brought into the world testifies
itself in nothing more than in this, the rich variety of forms which this new life
of his, embodying itself in the lives of men, will assume, the very malformations
themselves witnessing in this way for the fulness of this life. But though not exhaustive
(for what could be that?), they give us on a smaller scale, ὡς ἐν τύπῳ, the grander
and more recurring features of that life; are not fragmentary, fortuitously strung
together; but have a completeness, a many-sidedness, being probably selected for
this very cause; here, perhaps, being the reason why Philadelphia is included and
Miletus past by; Thyatira, outwardly so insignificant, chosen, when one might have
expected Magnesia or Tralles. Then what notable contrasts have we here,—a Church
face to face with danger and death (Smyrna), and a Church at ease, settling down
upon its lees (Sardis); a Church
with abundant means and
loud profession, yet doing little or nothing for the furtherance of the truth (Laodicea),
and a Church with little strength and little power, yet accomplishing a mighty work
for Christ (Philadelphia); a Church intolerant of doctrinal error, yet too much
lacking that love towards its Lord for which nothing else is a substitute (Ephesus),
and over against this a Church not careful nor zealous, as it ought to be, for doctrinal
purity, but diligent in the work and ministry of love (Thyatira); or, to review
these same Churches from another point of view, a Church in conflict with heathen
libertinism, the sinful freedom of the flesh (Ephesus), and a Church or Churches
in conflict with Jewish superstition, the sinful bondage of the spirit (Pergamum,
Philadelphia); or, for the indolence of man a more perilous case than either, Churches
with no active forms of opposition to the truth in the midst of them, to brace their
energies and to cause them, in the act of defending the imperilled truth, to know
it better and to love it more (Sardis, Laodicea). That these Churches are more or
less representative Churches, and were selected because they are so; that they form
a complex within and among themselves, mutually fulfilling and completing one another;
that the great Head of the Church contemplates them for the time being as symbolic
of his Universal Church, implying as
much in that mystic
seven, and giving many other indications of the same,—this also will be accepted,
if not by all, yet by many.
But the Periodists, as they have been called, the upholders
of what may be fitly termed the historico-prophetical scheme of interpretation,
are by no means satisfied with these admissions. They demand that we should recognize
in these Epistles very much more than this; they affirm that we have in them, besides
counsels to the Churches named in each, a prophetic outline of seven successive
periods of the Church’s history; dividing, as they do, into these seven portions
the whole time intervening between Christ’s ascension and his return in glory. As
in making a statement for others, especially for those from whom one is about to
dissent, it is always fairest, or, at any rate, is most satisfactory, to cite their
own words, I will here quote two passages, one from Joseph Mede, another from Vitringa,
in which they severally set forth that historico-prophetical scheme; which they
both favoured and upheld; and certainly the statement of the case could scarcely
be in more prudent or in abler hands. The modesty with which the first propounds
it, is in striking contrast with the arrogant confidence of some others, who were
well nigh disposed to make here a new article of faith, and the acceptance or rejection
of this interpretation
a test of orthodoxy.
These are his words; they occur in one of his sermons (Works, 1672, p. 296):
“It belongs not much to our purpose to inquire whether those seven Epistles concern
historically and literally only the Churches here named, or whether they were intended
for types or ages of the Church afterwards to come. It shall be sufficient to say,
that if we consider their number, being seven (which is a number of revolution of
times, and therefore in this Book the seals, trumpets, and vials also are seven);
or if we consider the choice of the Holy Ghost, in that he taketh neither all, no,
nor the most famous Churches then in the world, as Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and
many other, and such, no doubt, as had need of instruction as well as those here
named; if these things be well considered, it will seem that these seven Churches,
besides their literal respect, were intended (and it may be chiefly) to be as patterns
and types of the several ages of the Catholic Church from the beginning thereof
unto the end of the world; that so these seven Churches should prophetically sample
unto us a sevenfold temper and constitution of the whole Church according to the
several ages thereof, answering the pattern of the Churches named here;” compare
p. 905. Vitringa (Anacrisis Apocalypsios, p. 32): “Omnino igitur existimo Spiritum
S. sub typo et emblemate
septem Ecclesiarum Asiæ nobis mystice et prophetice voluisse
depingere septema variantes status Ecclesiæ Christianæ, quibus successive
conspiceretur usque ad adventum Domini et omnium rerum finem, phrasibus
desumptis a nominibus, conditione et attributis ipsarum illarum Ecclesiarum Asiæ
nobiliorum, quæ ad hunc usum et scopum sapienter adhibuit; sic tamen ut ipsæ
illæ Ecclesiæ Asianæ simul in hoc speculo se ipsas videre, suasque tam virtutes
quam vitia ex illis epistolis cognoscere, et quæ in iis sunt admonitiones et
exhortationes ad se ipsas quoque referre et applicare possent; quippe quod summa
suadet jubetque ratio. Quod enim alterius rei typum et figuram sustinebit
symbolicam, ita affectum esse oportet ut attributa subjecti analogi in ipsâ illâ
re figurante omnium primo demonstrari possint.”
I have cited these two writers of a later age;
but the scheme itself, in one shape or another, may be traced to a much earlier
date; though, indeed, it is very far from being as old as its favourers would have
us to believe, claiming, as not seldom they do, several of the early Fathers, as
early at least as Augustine and Chrysostom, for the first authors and upholders
of it. They are, however, quite without warrant in this. No passage has been quoted,
and I am convinced none could be quoted, bearing out their assertion here. In the
eager debate carried on upon this subject for a considerable part
of a century, the opponents of this interpretation repeatedly challenged the
advocates to bring forward a single quotation from one Father, Greek or Latin,
in its support; but none such was ever produced; so that Witsius has perfect
right when he affirms, “Nullibi id dicunt [antiqui] quod
viri isti eruditi volunt, quibuscum hæc nobis instituta disputatio est; nimirum
proprie, literaliter atque ex intentione Spiritûs Sancti verbis harum
Epistolarum delineari, non quod Johannis tempore in Asiæ Ecclesiis agebatur, sed
quod in universali Ecclesiâ septem temporum periodis ordine succedentibus
futurum erat. Id non liquet antiquorum ulli vel in mentem venisse.” This quotation is from his essay, De Septen Eccles.
Apocalyp. sensu historico an prophetico (Opp. t. i. pp. 640-741), remarkable for
the fairness and moderation with which all that can be said on one side and the
other is considered. It is quite true that Augustine, with others before and after
him, recognized that symbolic representative character of these Epistles, of which
I just now spoke; saw a mystery in the seven;Andreas,
the earliest commentator on the Apocalypse whose work has reached us, gives this
as the reason why the Lord, through St. John, addressed Himself exactly to seven
Churches; διὰ τοῦ ἑβδοματικοῦ
ἀριθμοῦ τὸ μυστικὸν τῶν ἁπανταχῆ
ἐκκλησιῶν σημαίνων. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvii. 4), explaining
the Canticle of Hannah, in which it is said, “The barren hath born seven”
(1 Sam.
ii. 5), goes on to say, “Hic totum quod prophetabatur eluxit agnoscentibus numerum
septenarium quo est universa Ecclesiæ significata perfectio. Propter quod et Johannes
Apostolus ad septem scribit Ecclesias, eo modo se ostendens ad unius plenitudinem
scribere;” or, as the last clause of a similar statement reads elsewhere (Exp. in
Gal. ii. 7): “quæ [Ecclesiæ] utique universalis Ecclesiæ personam gerunt;” cf.
Ep. xlix. § 2. And Gregory the Great almost word for word (Moral.
xvii. 27): “Unde
et septem Ecclesiis scribit Johannes Apostolus, ut unam Catholicam, septiformis
gratiæ plenam Spiritu designaret;” cf. Præf. c. 8.
but to recognize them as
historico-prophetical
is quite a different matter, and of any allowance of this there is no vestige among
them; or that it had so much as come into their minds.
The Spiritualists, or extreme
Franciscans, are the first among whom this scheme of interpretation assumed any
prominence. It is well known to those who are at all familiar with this wonderful
body of men, what an important part the distribution of the Church’s history into
seven ages played in their theology, and what weapons they found in this armoury
for the assault of the dominant Church and hierarchy of Rome. Looking every where
in Scripture for traces of these seven periods, it is not strange that they should
have found such in these seven Epistles. At their first rise, one but recently dead,
high in reputation for sanctity throughout
the Church, himself regarded
as little short of an apocalyptic seer, I mean the Abbot Joachim of Floris (he died
in 1202), had already shown the way in this interpretation;For
an account of Joachim of Floris’ seven ages, see Hahn, Gesch. d. Ketzer im Mittelalter,
vol. iii. p. 112; and Engelhardt, Kirch. Gesch. Abbandl. p. 107.
and the Spiritualists
did not fail to adjust the seven ages of the Church and the seven Epistles prophetic
of them, so as these should prophesy all good of themselves, and all evil of Rome.
It is evident that when the scheme was adopted two or three centuries later by theologians
of the Reformed Church, it would require readjustment and redistribution throughout,
at once chronological and dogmatic. This, however, was easily effected. The whole
thing was a subjective fancy of men’s minds, not an objective truth of God’s Word,
and would therefore oppose no serious resistance. It was easy to give it what new
shape was required by the new conditions under which it should now appear. After
the Reformation, the first in whom I meet this interpretation of the seven Churches,
as predictive of the seven ages of the Church and foreshadowing their condition,
is an English divine, Thomas Brightman (b. 1557, d. 1607). He belonged to the Puritan
school of divines, as they existed within the bosom of the Anglican Church,
and though in opposition
to its spirit, not as yet separated from it; but his work, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos,
1612, avouches him a man of no ordinary gifts, and of warm and earnest piety;
and Marckius has perfect right when he says of this work, “eruditionem et pietatem
non vulgarem spirat.” But although he, and Joseph Mede, as we have seen (he died
in 1638), and Henry More,Prophetical Exposition of the Seven Epistles sent to the Seven Churches
in Asia from Him that is, and was, and is to come,—Theological Works, London, 1708,
pp. 719-764; first published in 1669.
lent to this suggestion the authority of their names,
it never seems to have struck any vigorous root in England, nor to have stirred
up much controversy for or against it. It was in the Reformed Churches of Holland
and Germany, but predominantly in the former, that this periodic interpretation
first assumed any prominence or importance. There indeed, during the middle and
latter part of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth, it was debated
with animation, and often with something more than animation. The very able Præfatio
de Septem N. T. Periodis, which Marckius has prefixed to his Commentary on the Apocalypse,
1699, shows how very angry the disputants could be on one side and the other.
The
theologian who by his adoption of the historico-prophetical interpretation gave
an importance
to it, and procured
for it an acceptance, which in any other way it would scarcely have obtained, was
Cocceius (1603-1669). It is indeed with him only the part of a larger whole—one
among many testimonies for a divinely-intended division into seven periods of the
whole history of the Church. This division found favour with many; but in no one
does it recur with so great a frequency, exercise so powerful an influence on his
interpretation of Scripture, constitute so vital a portion of his theology, as in
him. The fame of Cocceius, if it ever reached England, has now quite passed away;
but his influence for good oil the Protestant communities of Holland and also of
Germany, as the promoter of a Biblical in place of a scholastical theology, leading
as he did those Churches from the arid wastes of a new scholasticism to the living
fountains of the Word of God, was immense, and survives to the present day. But
this distribution into seven periods of the Church’s history, seven before Christ’s
coming, and seven after, is a sort of “fixed idea” with him. It is indeed his
desire to make Scripture the rule in every thing, and to find all that concerns
the spiritual life and development of man cast in a scriptural framework, this desire
in season and out of season, which has led him astray. And thus it is that he finds,
or where he does not find he makes, a prophecy of these periods
every where; in
the seven days of creation, in the seven beatitudes, in the seven petitions of the
Lord’s Prayer, in the seven parables of Matthew xiii.; not seldom forcing into artificial
arrangements by seven, Scriptures which yield themselves not naturally and of their
own accord, but only under violent pressure and constraint, to any articulation
of the kind, as Hannah’s Prayer, the Song of Moses, of Deborah, the Song of Songs,
not a few of the Psalms, and, I dare say, much else in Scripture besides.Let me rescue
from vast unread folios of his, as not very alien to the matter we have in hand,
one noble passage, and he abounds in such, on the analogy of faith, and the help
which the different portions of Scripture mutually afford to the right understanding
of one another. It is from the Præfatio ad Comm. in Proph. Min., Opp.
tom. v., without pagination: “Habet enim divina institutio Scripturæ instar augusti palatii,
in quo ordine consideant innumeri seniores, qui viritim admissum novum discipulum
erudiant, a collegis suis dicta confirment, roborent, explicent, illustrent, nunc
fusius dicta contrahant, nunc contractiora diffundant et diducant, generalius dicta
distinguant, distincta generatim innuant, regulas exemplis fulciant, exempla in
regulis judicent, ita ut omnium de eâdem re agentium dictorum is sensus accipi
debeat, qui est ullius, et qui nulli refragetur, et plena institutio ea demum censeri
quæ omnium virorum Dei sit vox, συμφωνία et ὁμόνοια.”
With
all his excesses, however, I do not think Cocceius ever refused to these Epistles
a true historical foundation. The historico-prophetic meaning was no doubt far the
most precious in his eyes; and it had good right to be, if only it had
been designed by the Spirit;
but he did not deny that there had been actual Churches at Ephesus, Smyrna, and
the rest, which were primarily addrest, and to whose condition, at the time they
were written, these Epistles fitted. Others, however, have proceeded to far greater
lengths. They have refused to see’ any reference whatever to Churches actually,
at the time when this vision was seen, subsisting in these cities of Asia, and to
their spiritual condition. These they regard merely as the machinery for the conveyance
of the prophecy; the seven Epistles not in the least expressing, except, it might
be, here and there by accidental and undesigned coincidence, the actual condition
of these seven Churches. Despite of any thing which these Epistles seem to affirm
to the contrary, the Church of Ephesus, according to their view, may at this time
have been tolerant of false teachers, and Thyatira intolerant; Philadelphia may
have been slack in deeds of faith and love, and Laodicea fervent in spirit, and
Sardis with not a few only, but many names, that had not defiled their garments.
No Antipas had actually resisted to blood at Pergamum; there was no tribulation
of ten days imminent upon Smyrna.Floerke, in an able work on the Millennium,
Lehre vom tausendjährigen Reiche, Marburg, 1859, is the latest denier in toto of
an historical element in these Epistles; see p. 59 sqq.
This extravagance
may be dismissed in a few words. Origen is justly condemned, that, advancing a step
beyond other allegorists, who slighted the facts of the Old Testament history for
the sake of mystical meanings which they believed to lie behind them, he denied,
concerning many events recorded there as historical, that they actually happened
at all; rearing the superstructure of his mystical meaning, not on the establishment
of the literal sense, but on its ruins. Every reverent student of the Word of God
must feel that so he often lets go a substance in snatching at a shadow, that shadow
itself really eluding his grasp after all. He who in this sense assails the strong
historic substructures of Scripture, may not know all which he is doing; but he
is indeed doing his best to turn the glorious superstructure built on these, which,
though resting on earth, pierces heaven, into a mere sky-pageant painted on the
air, a cloud-palace waiting to be shifted and changed by every breath of the caprice
of man, and at length fading and melting into the common air. It was not without
reason that Augustine, himself not wholly to be acquitted of excesses in this direction,
did yet urge so strongly the necessity of maintaining, before and above all, the
historic letter of the Scripture, whatever else to this might be superadded (Serm.
ii. 6): “Ante omnia, fratres, hoc in nomine Domini et admonemus
quantum possumus
et præcipimus, ut quando auditis exponi sacramentum Scripturæ narrantis quæ gesta
sunt, prius illud quod lectum est credatur sic gestum quomodo lectum est, ne subtracto
fundamento rei gestæ, quasi in aëre quæratis ædificare.” Similar warnings in
his writings continually recur. Who indeed could continue sure that any thing presented
in Scripture as history, with all apparent marks of history about it, was yet history
at all, and not something wholly different, parable, or allegory, or prophecy, if
these Epistles, which St. John is bidden to send to the seven Churches of Asia,
which profess to enter minutely into their spiritual condition, were yet never sent
to them at all, had no relation whatever to them, more, that is, than to any other
portion of the universal Church?
But leaving these, and addressing ourselves only
to the more moderate upholders of the periodic scheme of interpretation, to those,
namely, who admit a literal sense, while they superinduce upon it a prophetical,
we ask, what slightest hint or intimation does the Spirit of God give that we have
here to do with the great successive acts and epochs of the kingdom of God in the
course of its gradual evolution here upon. earth? Where are the fingerposts pointing
this way? What is there, for instance, of chronological succession? Does not every
thing, on the contrary,
mark simultaneity, and not succession? The seven candlesticks are seen at the same
instant; the seven Churches named in the same breath. How different is it where
succession in time is intended; see, for instance, Dan. ii. 32, 33, 39, 40; vii.
6, 7, 9. On this matter Marckius says very well (Præf. § 52):
“Attamen ut Ecclesias
has agnoscamus pro typicis, sive significantibus ex Dei intentione alias Ecclesias
aliorum locorum et temporum, oportet nos a Deo doceri. Typos enim, non magis quam
allegorias, pro lubitu nostro in Scripturam inferre licet, cum non sit ἰδίας ἐπιλύσεως, propriæ interpretationis, 2 Pet. i. 20.
Non sufficit ad typum constituendum nuda convenientia, quæ inter res, personas,
et eventus plurimos a nobis observari potest, sed oportet nobis amplius constet
de divino consilio quo rem similem servire voluerit alteri præsignificandæ,
cogitationibusque nostris illuc ducendis.”
But
all such objections, with all those others which it would only be too easy to make,
might indeed be set aside or overborne, if any marvellous coincidence between these
Epistles and the after-course of the Church’s development could be made out; if history
set its seal to these, and attested that they were prophecy indeed; for when a key
fits perfectly well the wards of a very complicated lock, and opens it without an
effort, it is difficult not to
believe that they were
made for one another. But there is nothing here of the kind. There is no agreement
among themselves on the part of the interpreters of the historico-prophetical school.
Each one has his own solution of the enigma, his own distribution of the several
epochs; or, if this is too much to affirm, there is at any rate nothing approaching
to a general consensus among them. Take, for instance, the distribution of Vitringa.
For him Ephesus represents the condition of the Church from the day of Pentecost
to the outbreak of the Decian persecution; Smyrna, from the Decian persecution to
that of Diocletian, both inclusive; Pergamum, from the time of Constantine until
the close of the seventh century; Thyatira, the Church in its mission to the nations
during the first half of the middle ages; Sardis, from the close of the twelfth
century to the Reformation; Philadelphia, the first century of the Reformation;
Laodicea, the Reformed Church at the time when he was writing; compare Lange, Das Apostolische Zeitalter, vol. ii. p. 472, for a nearly similar distribution.
There
are two or three fortunate coincidences here between the assumed prophecy and the
fact; without such indeed the whole notion must have been abandoned long ago as
hopeless; such could scarcely have been avoided. Smyrna, for instance, represents
excellently well the ecclesia pressa in its
two last and most terrible struggles with heathen Rome; so too for
such Protestant expositors as see the Papacy in the scarlet woman of Babylon,
the Jezebel of Thyatira appears exactly at the right time, coincides with the
Papacy at its height, yet at the same time with judgment at the door in the
great revolt which was even then preparing. But I would ask any one fairly
grounded in the subject whether there is any true articulation of Church history
in the distribution above made? any general felicity of correspondence between
what are averred to be the prophetic outlines with the historic realities
adduced as fulfilling them? Take, for instance, Philadelphia, as representing
the Reformation period. The praise bestowed on the Philadelphian Angel may be
said to culminate in these words, “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no
man can shut it” (iii. 8). Can any
thing, on the contrary, be sadder than the way in which, when “an open door” was set before the Reformers, they suffered it to
so great an extent to be closed on them again? There was a time, some five and twenty
or thirty years after Luther had begun to preach, when Austria and Bavaria and Styria
and Poland, and, in good part, France, had all been won for the Reformation. Thirty
years more had not elapsed when they all were lost again; and it was confined within
the far narrower limits which
it occupies at the present
day (see Ranke, , History of the Popes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)—this
door, once open, having been closed mainly through the guilt of those contests,
any thing but Philadelphian (for the names too are pressed into service) among the
Reformers themselves.
Then, again, other interpreters, as I have already observed,
distribute the epochs according to schemes altogether diverse from this. Thus it
is far more common among the Protestant theologians of the seventeenth century to
apportion, not five Churches, but only the first four, to the pre-Reformation period;
to claim, as Brightman does, Philadelphia, with all its graces, for themselves,
and, as must necessarily follow, to contemplate Sardis as representing the Church
of the actual Reformation. Certainly the Reformation had blots and blemishes enough;
but its faults were those of zeal and passion; had nothing in common with that hypocritical
form of godliness, that death under shows of life, imputed to Sardis; and one might
have expected that any dutiful child of the Reformation, who at all felt the immense
debt of gratitude which he and the whole Church owed to it, notwithstanding all
its shortcomings, would have hesitated long as to the accuracy of a scheme which
should brand it with this dishonour. See on this, Marckius, Præf.
§ 55; and on the other
hand as saying, and saying well, whatever there is to be said in support of the historico-prophetical school in this particular aspect, see Henry More, at pp. 756
sqq., in his treatise already referred to.
Much more might be urged on the arbitrary
artificial character of all the attempted adaptations of Church history to these
Epistles; but this Essay has already run to a greater length than I intended; and
indeed it is not needful to say more. Where there were no preestablished harmonies
in the Divine intention between the one and the other, as I am persuaded here there
were none, it could not have been otherwise. The multitude of dissertations, essays,
books, which have been written, and still are being written, in support of this
scheme of interpretation, must remain a singular monument of wasted ingenuity and
misapplied toil; of the disappointment which must result from a futile looking into
Scripture for that which is not to be found there,—from a resolution to draw out
from it that which he who draws out must first himself have put in. Mien will never
thus make Scripture richer. They will have made it much poorer for themselves, if
they nourish themselves out of it with the fancies of men, in place of the truths
of God.
THE END.