The Gospel of the Exalted Jesus (Pt. 1)

Revelation as the Fifth Gospel

Grace to you and shalom from the One who is and the One who was and the Coming One and from the Seven Spirits which are before his throne and from Jesus Messiah—the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn from the dead and the Ruler of the kings of the earth—to him who loves us and released us from our sins in his blood (indeed, he made us a kingdom, priests for God and his Father), to him be the glory and the power forever and ever, amen.

Behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him and those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Yes. Amen. 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, the One who is and the One who was and the Coming One, the Almighty. Revelation 1:4-8

This passage at the beginning of Revelation merits three posts (in addition to the post I’ve already written on The Letter of Revelation). The second of the three (Pt. 2) will be on the Jesus the King and his return, and the third on the trinitarian theology of Revelation, a topic clearly visible in this passage with the mention of God the Father, the Spirit (called the Seven Spirits) and Jesus the Son.

—Just a reminder, I have a audio podcast  version of this post in the extras section for paid subscribers (or the seven day free trial)—

Some Intriguing Data

In this first post I want begin with some data: the disproportionate number of words given to Jesus in this passage—and throughout Revelation. 

By disproportionate I don’t mean unusual, but rather not balanced when compared with God the Father or the Spirit. 

In these verses, the focus on God the Father encompasses thirty-three words in Greek, the Spirit nine words, and Jesus seventy two words—if we add the rest of chapter one, the number of words about or spoken by Jesus balloons to over 250 words (while God and the Spirit remain the same).

Jesus is clearly the center of attention in chapter one. 

When we add chapters two, three, and five, the data grows so large as to be overwhelming, not to mention Revelation 19, and all of the hymns throughout Revelation praising Jesus for what he had done on the cross and who is currently is as reigning King. 

As we make our way through Revelation over the next months, this disproportionate emphasis on Jesus will become more and more conspicuous.

To make my point crystal clear, Revelation is about Jesus not judgment, about what Jesus has done as the crucified and victorious risen King, not the abortive and even puny attempts of Satan to thwart God’s purposes fulfilled in Jesus. 

When we get through our brains that Revelation is about Jesus, even many of the visions and their contents prove to be about the cross.

Admittedly, I am making some huge claims here—only in the months ahead can I fully explain them. 

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Revelation and the New Testament

The second task for this post is simply to zero in on the verses set out above. 

How do they cohere with what we already know about Jesus from the rest of the New Testament? 

Are they the same or is there something new?

The short answer: they are the same! 

Revelation has the same view of Jesus as all of the NT books prior to it. 

And this includes the four Gospels, may be especially the four Gospels.

In the passage quoted, Jesus is referred to as Messiah, the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn from the dead, the Ruler of the Kings of the earth, the one who loves us, the one who releases (or forgives) us from our sins, the one who made us a kingdom of priests for God, and the one to whom glory and power are due (just like God). 

Further, Jesus’s return is referred to in 1:7 using a pastiche or mashup of two passages in the Old Testament: Daniel 7:13 (“He is coming on the clouds”) and Zechariah 12:10-14 (“And those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will will mourn over him”).

None of this is new! All of it occurs previously in multiple places across the New Testament.

The Gospel

The word for gospel/good news—evangelion—only occurs once in Revelation 14:6. 

But the content of the gospel pervades Revelation. 

What is the gospel? 

The gospel is the story of Jesus. 

This story begins with God who invades humanity in the human body of Jesus. The earthly story ends with Jesus’s death at the hands of humans and his resurrection, then continues with his exaltation and reign at the right hand of God, and finally culminates with his return and the inauguration of a new heavens and new earth.

This whole story is either explicit or presupposed in the entirety of the New Testament—and certainly Revelation.

The four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John center primarily on the human incarnation of Jesus. 

The Gospel of John begins in eternity past (“In the beginning was the Word”), and Luke 24 ends with the ascension of Jesus, but the bulk of the Gospel narratives begin with Jesus’s birth (Matthew, Luke) or his ministry (Mark) and conclude with resurrection stories. 

Revelation refers to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection many times as past events, but concentrates on the ascended and glorified Jesus who reigns with God the Father and who will return with the white-robed armies of heaven to defeat death and Satan once for all.

The Gospel of the Exalted Jesus

What does this make Revelation? The Gospel of the Exalted Jesus. 

If the Four Gospels spotlight the earthly Jesus, then Revelation is “the rest of the story.”

In another place in the New Testament, Paul’s exquisite poem about Jesus in Philippians 2:6-11 illustrates the functions of the four Gospels in the first three verses and the function of Revelation in the final three (with overlap):

Who being in the form of God

did not consider equality with God

something to be grasped

John 1:1-18—the preexistence of Jesus

————————————————

But he emptied himself

taking the form of a slave

coming in the likeness of humans;

Matthew/Luke birth narratives, John 1:14

————————————————

and being found in the bodily form of a human

he humbled himself 

becoming obedient to death, even death of a cross. 

Matt/Mark/Luke/John

————————————————

Wherefore also God highly exalted him

Matt/Mark/Luke/John/Revelation

————————————————

and gave the name to him above all names

that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bow 

in heaven and earth and below the earth

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord

to the glory of God the Father.

Revelation

It is not that the exaltation and return of Jesus is not talked about in the four Gospels—Matthew 24-25, Mark 13, Luke 21 and John 13-16 include Jesus’s own words on these topics, but they are clearly future oriented—they only follow the passion and resurrection to come.

But for Revelation, the exalted Jesus is a present reality and his return is certain. The entirety of Revelation concerns this reality.

Jesus Messiah the Witness, the Faithful One, the Firstborn from the dead

But John made very sure that his readers would definitively connect the Jesus of the Four Gospels with the Jesus of Revelation.

In this string of names in 1:5, John set out the trajectory of Jesus’s earthly existence: 

1. He was named Jesus. 

2. He fulfilled all of the prophetic implications for the coming Messiah—the one who would deliver his people in the line of David, who would be a prophet like Moses (and Elijah), who would become the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who would be the Son of Man in Daniel.

3. He witnessed to the truth about God and about humanity even to death.

4. He was faithful to God in fulfilling all things the Father told him to do even to death.

5. God raised him from the dead.

In this string of monikers John summarized the Four Gospels.

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The Ruler of the kings of the earth

John added a phrase though, “the Ruler of the kings of the earth.”

With this phrase, John moved to a primary theme of Revelation: Jesus (who on the cross was called “King of the Jews”) has now moved to exalted status. He has fulfilled the entirety of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110.

God made Jesus King of kings.

Jesus in his resurrection and exaltation to heaven is now the Lord of all, he reigns supreme over all the powers and authorities on earth.

In Revelation from this point until the return of the king in Revelation 19, Jesus fulfills the role of the Ruler of the kings of the earth. 

None of the “events” in Revelation—the content of all the visions—happens apart from the knowledge and allowance of the exalted Jesus who sits on the throne with God the Father.

I will develop this entire section in Part 2 of this post.

To him who loves us and released us from our sins in his blood …

John then moved to the theological results of what Jesus accomplished for humanity as crucified, risen, and exalted King.

In form, Revelation 1:6 is a doxology to Jesus that ends with, “To him be the glory and the power forever, amen.”

In substance, though, the doxology distills the benefits Jesus has bestowed on those who trust in him (I explain the grammar in Observations on the Greek Text):

Jesus loves us. Everything Jesus did proceeded from God’s love flowing through the heart of  Jesus from his incarnation to the cross, and that love continues.

Jesus released us from our sins. This phrase is so much larger in scope than “forgave us.” Jesus has set us free from our sins. They not only don’t exist anymore, but we are free from bondage to all that the world throws at us—no guilt, no shame, no ought-ness to the world demands. We are totally released to serve our God with our whole hearts.

In the blood of Jesus. Jesus did not just pronounce release, he accomplished it on the cross through the pouring out of his blood—his life—in our place. We (each and every one of us) crucified Jesus along with the rest of humanity. On the cross Jesus showed us who we are as sinful humanity and who he is as the loving God taking on the sin of the world. He became the scapegoat for us in the most public and shameful way possible.

… (indeed, he made us a kingdom, priests for God and his Father) …

The ultimate outcome of the cross is the creation of a new humanity, those whom Jesus has transformed into a new type of person: priests for God. This transformed humanity is a kingdom of priests. 

What does this even mean? 

Priests are those who offer service to God in the Temple. 

Jesus (as Romans 3:25 and a good portion of Hebrews explains) is our Great High Priest and our Atoning Sacrifice and we are the great congregation of priests under his priestly kingship. As priests our sole responsibility is to serve God with all of our being in response to his great love.

This priesthood is the current reality for the believer who trusts in what Jesus has accomplished for us. Jesus reigns and we are in his kingdom no matter the chaos is the world around us.

… to him be glory and power forever, Amen.

These words are a doxology (the doxa of “doxology” means “glory” or “reputation”), a common form of praise in the New Testament. 

Technically these words could be directed to “God and his Father,” yet the context plainly indicates Jesus as the focus of the doxology (I show why in Observations on the Greek Text).

The proper response to who Jesus is (Messiah, Witness, Faithful, Firstborn from the dead, Ruler of the kings of the earth) and what he has accomplished (loves us, freed us, made us priests) is an outpouring of doxological praise: glory and power are justly rendered to Jesus, just like God the Father!

A Prayer

Thank you, dear Jesus for all you are and all you have done. Thank you for loving us. Bring us to yourself, to gaze upon you and to delight in your salvation and your eternal reign. Amen.

In the next post, I will develop the “Ruler of the kings of the earth” as Jesus’s current reign in the cosmos and the words about his return in Revelation 1:7.

Observations on the Greek Text of Revelation

and Audio Version of this post.

Revelation 1:4 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἑπτὰ πνευμάτων ἃ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου αὐτοῦ 5 καὶ ἀπὸ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ μάρτυς, ὁ πιστός, ὁ πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν καὶ ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς. Τῷ ἀγαπῶντι ἡμᾶς καὶ λύσαντι ἡμᾶς ἐκ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ, 6 καὶ ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς βασιλείαν, ἱερεῖς τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας [τῶν αἰώνων]· ἀμήν.

1. For comments on verses 4 and the first half of 5, see my post “The Letter of Revelation.”

2. Τῷ ἀγαπῶντι ἡμᾶς καὶ λύσαντι ἡμᾶς … αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας [τῶν αἰώνων]· ἀμήν. Doxologies are found throughout the letters of the New Testament: Romans 16:25-27; Galatians 1:5; Ephesians 3:21; 2 Timothy 4:18; Hebrews 13:21; 1 Peter 4:11 (closest to this one); 2 Peter 3:18 and Jude 24–25.