SALVATION is DEATH
A key metaphor for the Seals in Revelation 6–8
Audio Version!
I’ve written quite a bit about metaphor and hopefully you now have a basic sense of how metaphor works.
But to recap:
The visionary metaphor in Revelation is an image in one of John’s visions that represents a literal reality either physical, spiritual or theological.
As we will see in this post, the metaphor may seem paradoxical to the reality, but in fact is in line with the same or similar paradox in the rest of Scripture.
In this post we face what may be the most difficult metaphor to grasp in Revelation.
Before we get to the second seal, the need to understand this metaphor cannot be overstated.
The metaphor could be expressed in several different ways, but after considering a number of possibilities I’ve come up with the following:
SALVATION is DEATH.
Salvation is the reality, death is the metaphor that carries the reality in the visions.
In the first seal I proposed that Jesus with the bow was piercing people with the truth of the gospel leading to their salvation.
Metaphorically, the death from an arrow represents salvation.
This proposal may seem outlandish, even radical.
Yet, when we place Revelation alongside the rest of the New Testament, this proposal is not only reasonable, it is the perfect way to express what happens when a person comes to faith in Christ.
John’s revelatory visions show God’s active work through Christ to bring people into the Kingdom of God.
The metaphor in its various forms in Revelation appears a violent one, but actually opposite of physical violence.
Just as Jesus was physically slain on the cross (by the hand of men but in the purpose and foreknowledge of God), the gospel spiritually “slays” us, and our death is followed by resurrection to eternal life.
In this post I want to show that this theological idea is nothing new in the New Testament.
I encourage you to read everything I list in context—and to disagree or give an alternative if you have one.
As always, I am seeking the truth of Revelation.
(continued)
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Gospels
The fundamental basis for the SALVATION is DEATH metaphor is the fact of Jesus’s death and resurrection (which we are observing this week!)—though Paul is the one who develops this spiritual/theological truth in his letters.
Without the actual death of Jesus, salvation to new life would be impossible.
Jesus did prepare for this theology in his teachings though—in the upside down teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and numerous parables, but pointedly in the following two Matthew texts (parallels in Mark and Luke) and a similar one in John.
1. “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” Matthew 10:34. In my very first IPS post two years ago I wrote:
Not the sword of bloodshed, but a sword piercing the thoughts and intentions of each person. Jesus cut through the fat of self-lies to the beating heart motivations of every person …Though Jesus’s mission was to bring the peace of God into every life, the means of that mission was the sword of truth that divided truth from falsehood, the Truth of God’s reign from the lie that humans are divine and control their destiny at the expense of others. Jesus preached the former and exposed the latter. Only sacrificial love could counter the lie and Jesus was the author of this love on the cross, itself a sword of division until today.
The death of the Lie in every person by the sword of Truth is the way of salvation.
2. “Then Jesus said to his disciples, If anyone wishes to come after me, let him take up his cross and follow me, for whoever wishes to save his life (soul) will lose it, but whoever loses his life (soul) for my sake will save it” Matthew 16:24–25.
[Note: the Greek psyche is normally translated “life” here but as “soul” in the very next verse! They are the same.]
Death of the earth-bound soul is necessary for the reborn heavenly soul.
This death is not physical but the death of the old sinful self as this last passage implies:
3. “Truly truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falling to the earth dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it will bear much fruit. The one loving his soul (psyche) destroys it, but the one hating his soul in this world keeps it for eternal life” John 12:24-25.
Paul
Paul, who had to face his own murderous acts when Jesus met him on the Damascus road, deeply reflected on the implications of Jesus’s death and our own deaths to self.
Paul considered all of us dead already because of sin, but recognized that the death of Jesus Christ defeated Sin and Death.
As we participate in Christ’s death we die to death with the result that we live!
I do not have space to list all that Paul says about our death with Christ to the old life, but I will give a few especially pointed passages in Romans.
1. Romans 6:3-8: “We who have died to sin, how shall we remain in it? Or don’t you know that as many of us baptized into Messiah Jesus were baptized into his death? Thus we were buried with him through baptism into death, so just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life. For if we have become planted together in the likeness of death, but also we shall be of the resurrection—knowing this, that our old man was crucified, so the sinful body might be destroyed, so we might no longer serve sin. For the one who dies is freed from sin. Further if we died with Christ, we trust that also we shall live with him.”
I could actually quote the entirety of Romans 6, but the basic idea is here.
The believer dies with Christ to the old existence.
2. Romans 7:1–2, 4–6: “Or don’t you know, brothers (for I am speaking to those who know the law) that the law rules over a person while he is still alive? For the married woman is bound to her husband by law. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband … so she does not commit adultery if she comes to another man. So, my brothers you were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so you might be for another, the One raised from the dead, so we might bear fruit to God.”
Here Paul uses the verb thanatoō in the passive “you were put to death … through the body of Christ.” The agent is God via the body of Christ (crucified).
3. Romans 8:13: “If by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the flesh you will live.”
Here the Holy Spirit participates with us in putting our old persons to death.
4. Romans 8:36: “Just as it is written, for your sake we are put to death (or killed) the whole day—we are considered as sheep for slaughter.”
This may be the most pointed illustration—the identification with Christ’s death as the slaughtered Lamb.
Paul goes on in 8:38: “But by all these things we are more that conquerers through the One who loved us.”
The language of death and victory are very similar to that of the visions of John in Revelation.
To finish with Paul, I will simply list several other passages in Paul’s letters that I encourage you to read: 2 Corinthians 5:14–15; Galatians 2:19-20; Colossians 2:20; 3:1–10 (especially 3:3).
(cont.)
The Metaphor in Revelation
In John’s visions there are many images of weapons, of armor, of war, of plagues, of natural phenomena that may appear ominous, even an image that seems repulsive (birds eating flesh in Revelation 19).
But what if they are all visionary metaphors? It remains to be seen what they point to, but the reality may be very different, even the opposite of the metaphorical image.
What I am suggesting here is exactly that.
SALVATION is DEATH appears paradoxical.
But in fact, theologically it is not a paradox because, spiritually, the death of ourselves is life to God, as Jesus and Paul state in clear terms.
As I currently understand it, in the seven seals of Revelation 6–8, the gospel is what brings about that death (resulting in salvation).
In the seals, the metaphor remains without explanation but with illustration: all who die are alive—beginning with the saints under the altar in the fifth seal and the multitudes of saints in Revelation 7.
The second seal (the next post), with its multiple visionary metaphors, will be an illustration of this primary metaphor in Revelation.
One last thought that may complicate all that I have said above is that death as death (not as a metaphor for salvation) is also present in Revelation.
When John speaks of “the second death” he is speaking of some sort of actual death.
And Death as a personified condition with a hold over humanity apart from Christ is also a spiritual reality unmediated by metaphor. Paul very nearly personifies Death as a power in 1 Corinthians 15 and even Romans 5, but in Revelation Christ holds the “keys of Death” and will cast Death into the lake of fire—another metaphor.
So what I am not suggesting with this post is that death as we experience it—physical death—is not also present in Revelation. It certainly is, beginning with the physical death of Jesus, and with it the multiple references to Jesus’s blood (which also a metaphor!).
Yet ironically what we will come to see in Revelation is that all who remain physically “alive” (=spiritually dead) cannot die because they won’t repent—but they are liable to spiritual consequences of the second death, likely a reference to physical death followed by judgment.
The metaphor SALVATION is DEATH that I present here, though, will be fairly apparent in contrast to the non-metaphorical uses of death as we go through the seals.
During this Holy Week, I encourage you to meditate deeply on this paradox that in the death of Christ and in our participation in his death through faith, we are raised with him to eternal life.