Revelation’s word for Christ, said twenty-nine times: a lamb standing with the marks of its killing, worthy, washed into, overcome by, and at the end the city’s temple and lamp
The Lamb on the Throne
The last book of the Bible almost never calls Jesus by his name. It calls him the Lamb, with a word no other book uses of him, a diminutive, a little lamb; and the first time it shows him he is standing as though he had been slain. Everything the series has followed since Abraham’s mountain arrives here, at a throne, and the mark of the knife is still on him.
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Lesson 11 of 12 · The throne
An elder tells John that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has overcome and can open the sealed book; John turns to look at the lion and sees a lamb, standing, as though it had been slain. That is Revelation’s whole method in one verse. From chapter 5 to chapter 22 Jesus is the Lamb, twenty-nine times, and the Lamb is never without the marks of its killing: worthy because he was killed and bought people for God with his blood out of every nation; a multitude no one can count who have washed their robes and made them white in his blood; martyrs who overcame the accuser by the blood of the Lamb; a book of life that is the Lamb’s. Then the city, with no temple in it, because the Lord God and the Lamb are its temple, and no sun, because the Lamb is its lamp, and a river running from the throne of God and of the Lamb. The Passover door, the daily altar, the veil and the mercy seat are gone, because the thing they pointed at is on the throne, and it is still a lamb, and it was still slain.
Standing as though slain
The scene is the throne room of chapter 4, with a scroll no one is found worthy to open, until someone is.
I saw in the middle of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the middle of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. — Revelation 5:6 · WEB
Read the comment on The Lion Who Is a Lamb
I saw in the middle of the throne, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes. Standing, which is alive; as though slain, which is the wound still showing; seven horns, which is all power; seven eyes, which is all sight. The elder announced a lion, and the reader who has followed this series knows why John saw a lamb instead. The conquering was done by being killed. The Lamb takes the book from the hand of the one on the throne, and heaven, which had been silent, starts to sing.
ἀρνίον arníon G721
diminutive from ἀρήν; a lambkin:--lamb.
A little lamb, a lambkin — the diminutive of the word for a lamb, and not the word the Baptist used. Outside Revelation it occurs once in the New Testament, when the risen Jesus tells Peter to feed my lambs. Inside Revelation it is used of Christ twenty-eight times and once of the beast from the earth, which has two horns like a lamb and speaks like a dragon, the counterfeit. Why John chose the small word for the one on the throne has been argued; the plain effect is the contrast, a lambkin with the scroll of history in its hand, and the point is the one the book keeps making, that the power that runs the world is the power that let itself be killed.
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Worthy
The song heaven sings says why.
They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God; and we will reign on the earth.” — Revelation 5:9–10 · WEB
Read the comment on A New Song
You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God. Worthy because killed: the reason is the wound. Bought with your blood: Peter’s redemption and Leviticus’s life-in-the-blood in one line. Out of every tribe and nation: the Passover saved a household and the Day of Atonement a nation, and this lamb’s blood reaches everyone the psalm of the seventh lesson said would remember and turn. Kings and priests: the people who stood outside the tent while one man went in are now the priests. The song is the series’ summary, sung.
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Washed in blood
A multitude appears in white, and John is told what the white cost.
I told him, “My lord, you know.” He said to me, “These are those who came out of the great suffering. They washed their robes and made them white in the Lamb’s blood. — Revelation 7:14 · WEB
Read the comment on Out of the Great Oppression
These are those who came out of the great suffering; they washed their robes and made them white in the Lamb’s blood. Robes made white in blood is a sentence that makes no sense as chemistry and complete sense as this series: Isaiah’s though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, and the priest’s he will be forgiven, and Paul’s justified by his blood. The robes are the twelfth lesson. What they are washed in is the eighth.
“saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who has been killed to receive the power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing!”” Revelation 5:12 · WEB
Worthy is the Lamb who has been killed to receive the power, wealth, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing: the second song, from every creature, seven things given to the one who was killed.
“They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony. They didn’t love their life, even to death.” Revelation 12:11 · WEB
They overcame him because of the Lamb’s blood, and because of the word of their testimony; they didn’t love their life, even to death: the accuser thrown down, and the weapon named.
“All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed.” Revelation 13:8 · WEB
Everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed: the verse older versions read as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," a difference of where a phrase attaches; either way the Lamb’s death is as old as the plan.
“There will in no way enter into it anything profane, or one who causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Revelation 21:27 · WEB
There will in no way enter into it anything profane, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life: the city’s gate, and the register that opens it.
The thirteenth chapter’s verse should be marked as read two ways. The King James and readers who follow its word order have the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, the cross decided before creation; this reader’s text, following the Greek order, has the names written from the foundation of the world in the book of a Lamb who has been killed. Both are in the book’s theology; the question is which this verse says. Neither reading has a Lamb that was not killed.
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No temple
The book ends with a city, and John notices what is missing from it.
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city has no need for the sun or moon to shine, for the very glory of God illuminated it and its lamp is the Lamb. — Revelation 21:22–23 · WEB
Read the comment on No Temple in the City
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city has no need for the sun or moon, for the very glory of God illuminated it, and its lamp is the Lamb. Every lesson of this series has been about a building and its furniture: a door, an altar, a veil, a gold lid, a fire that never went out. The city has none of it, because the Lamb is the temple. And the light of the city, the thing by which everything in it is seen, is the Lamb, the way the first tile of these guides had a lamp beside a scroll. Then the last chapter: a river of the water of life from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and no curse any more, and the Lamb’s servants seeing his face.
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What the throne asks
It asks for a song. Revelation is the only book of the Bible in which almost every response to the Lamb is sung, and the songs are not about what the singers have done. Worthy is the Lamb who was killed: the lamb of the second lesson, provided; the lamb of the third, whose blood was on the door; the lamb of the fourth, offered morning and evening; the servant of the sixth, led to the slaughter; the pierced one of the seventh; the blood of the eighth; the credit of the ninth and the faith of the tenth. All of it is on the throne, and the wound is showing, and the only thing left to do about it is what heaven does.
Read Revelation 5:1-14 and 7:9-17. Count how many times the Lamb is said to have been killed, and write down what each mention says the killing achieved. Then write one sentence on why John saw a lamb where he had been told to look for a lion.
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