Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Revelation · About this commentary
Grace from the One Who Is
Revelation 1:4-6
4 John, to the seven assemblies that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from God, who is and who was and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne; · WEB
The greeting flows from the throne in three streams, and the doxology gives Christ three titles for the past, the present, and the price.
John, to the seven assemblies that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace.
The letter-form begins, and the source of the grace is given in three persons. First, from God, who is and who was and who is to come — the divine name of the burning bush stretched across all tenses, with the future tense not who will be but who is to come: this God's future is an arrival. Second, from the seven Spirits who are before his throne — the Spirit in the language of Zechariah's sevenfold lamps and Isaiah's sevenfold endowment Zechariah 4:2 Isaiah 11:2, the fullness of the one Spirit toward the seven churches. Third, from Jesus Christ — and his titles get the whole rest of the sentence.
Three titles, in the order a persecuted church needs them: the faithful witness — the martyr-word; he has stood where they stand, before power, and told the truth at the cost of his life. The firstborn of the dead — rank over death's whole realm Colossians 1:18: he entered it and left it in charge. The ruler of the kings of the earth — the present tense that contradicts every appearance in Asia's law courts: above the governor, above the emperor, now.
And then the greeting breaks into the book's first doxology, and its verbs deserve exact notice: to him who loves us — present tense, continuous — and washed us from our sins by his blood — past tense, finished Revelation 5:9. The love is now; the washing is done. A church about to read visions of beasts and plagues is first shown its own standing: loved currently, cleansed already.
And he made us to be a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father Revelation 1:6 — Sinai's own commission Exodus 19:6 conferred on the seven congregations: a kingdom while Rome reigns, priests without a temple in sight. The book's politics and its liturgy are both in that clause — the believers' real citizenship and real service run through a throne no Caesar can see.
To him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. The first of the book's many doxologies — and the shape of all of them: glory returned to its owner, the reversal of every exchange that ever traded it away.
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