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§2 Greetings from John of Patmos to the Seven Churches of Asia (Rev. 1:4–20)

An author’s salutation is more than formal greetings; it usually contains a self-introduction and a description of the audience, which together define the relationship between the two. The author thereby deliberately creates the proper context for reading his composition as the word of God. In this light, then, John’s greeting, which actually extends through chapter 3, is of considerable theological and rhetorical significance for how one interprets the rest of the book.

The epistolary relationship between the author, John, and his audience, the seven churches in the province of Asia, is immediately established by the familiar salutation, grace and peace to you. John then embellishes this simple address, and reasserts the authority of his communication, by conveying the regards of the triune God to his audience. At the heart of his greeting, however, is a confession about Christ (1:5–7). While bracketed by two claims about God’s sovereign rule (1:4b, 8), the final triumph of God’s reign and the restoration of God’s people result from Jesus Christ’s actions toward God (1:5a), toward God’s people (1:5b–6), and toward God’s enemies upon his return to earth (1:7). The function of this christological confession within the context of the apocalypse, then, is to provide a summary of core convictions about God and God’s Christ which must be affirmed by the seven Asian congregations if John’s Apocalypse is to be read without distortion and for spiritual benefit.

1:4 / The formal greeting, grace and peace to you, is typical of other NT letters. Even though this phrase is a familiar epistolary convention, it carries significant theological freight. First, the greeting embodies the promise/fulfillment typology of early Christian preaching: the age of peace (shalom), promised by God to a restored Israel, has been inaugurated by the transforming grace of God through Jesus Christ. Second, such blessings are now granted to a restored Israel, the church, which includes not only believing Jews, who are characteristically greeted by “peace,” but also believing Gentiles, who are characteristically greeted by “grace.”

The formation of this eschatological Israel, in whose history the grace and peace of God are made known, is by the redemptive action of the triune God. Appropriately, John bears the Holy Trinity’s greetings to the seven churches, beginning with God, who is, and who was, and who is to come. John’s formulation of God’s name, based upon the name told to Moses in his theophany of the burning bush (“I AM WHO I AM”; Exod. 3:14/LXX), is important for two reasons. In continuity with the God of Moses’ Israel, the God of eschatological Israel is eternal; God’s sovereignty over the histories of salvation and creation is predicated by this claim (cf. Rev. 4). In addition to this tacit claim for God’s sovereign rule over history, John’s title suggests that God is involved within history in a purposeful way so that God, who is to come, awaits eschatological Israel at the consummation of the age.

John also bears greetings from the seven spirits. If the number seven symbolizes completeness or wholeness, then John does not have seven discrete spirits, or seven gifts (or some other manifestation) of the Holy Spirit, in mind. Rather, especially as part of a trinitarian confession, this phrase is a title for the Holy Spirit and suggests the wholeness of life which God continues to mediate through the Paraclete within the believing community (cf. John 14–16). This is further substantiated if the number seven is used to signify that which works and effects something real and concrete. According to John, the grace and peace of God are not theological abstractions. Like Paul, John suggests that divine grace always takes some form of transforming power, which is conveyed by the Spirit of the Risen Christ in the lives of those who follow after him.

1:5 / For a third time in short order, John uses the name Jesus Christ. His purpose is to draw his audience’s attention to the common source of both their blessing and this apocalypse; their future blessing, envisioned by John’s Revelation, depends upon their obedience to him. The seer’s extended description of Jesus’ authority that follows in verses 5–7 not only introduces the reader to the central images of John’s Jesus, but it offers again an elegant justification of his composition’s authority. Sharply put, to trust that Jesus is all this christological creed confirms him to be is to trust John’s book of visions to be true.

The claims made for Jesus fall into three broad categories: Jesus Christ is known and confessed (1) in terms of his relationship to God (1:5a); (2) in terms of his relationship with the community of faith (1:5b–6); and (3) in terms of his relationship with those who do not belong to the believing community (1:7). His mediating role results in the restoration of the covenant between God and the community of faith, which assures them that the promise expressed by John’s salutation is true: they have entered into the promised land where God’s grace and peace are fully realized.

The threefold description of Jesus’ relationship to God, his Father, approximates the three decisive stages of Jesus’ messianic work, especially as it is interpreted by the Johannine tradition: (1) his faithful witness includes his entire messianic career, climaxed by his death, which embodied the liberating truth of God (John 8:12–32); (2) by his resurrection he became the firstborn from the dead, indicating the trustworthiness of his testimony about God; and (3) as glorified Lord, he became the ruler of the kings of the earth in order to inaugurate the victorious reign of God.

John frames his description of Christ’s love for the believing community as a doxology: eternal glory and power belong to the exalted Christ (v. 6), not only because his messiahship revealed his devotion to God, but also because it revealed his love for God’s people. The grammatical tension created by the shift from a present participle, To him who loves us, to two aorist participles, and has freed us … and has made us, suggests that the current benefits of Jesus’ past messianic work (aorist participles) are actually rooted in his continual love for the covenant community (present participle). Therefore, “even though the present time is full of suffering and persecutions for Christians, Christ’s love is now with them.” (Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation, p. 71).

1:6 / The concrete expressions of Jesus’ messianic love are understood typologically by the OT story of the Exodus. Therefore, the community’s entrance into God’s grace and peace is the result of a new exodus from its captivity to sin and its subsequent restoration as a covenantal people—understood by John as a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father (cf. Exod. 19:6). The meaning of the phrase, priests to serve his God and Father, should be considered in apposition to the more abstract idiom, kingdom. The essential and concrete result of Jesus’ messianic love is the creation of a new people who live under God’s reign as a community of servants, and who bear witness to God’s rule by offering themselves to the Lord in worship. Thus, John has not diluted the communal and covenantal aspects of the Exodus typology found in the prophetic writings. No doubt he is keen to emphasize this more corporate aspect of God’s love to counter early gnostic teaching, which viewed the effects of God’s salvation in individualistic and interior ways.

God is referred to here, and throughout Revelation, as the God and Father of Jesus (2:27; 3:4, 21; 14:1), indicating the special relationship between the sovereign God and God’s faithful Lamb. According to John, the entire history of God’s salvation is concentrated by this relationship: Jesus’ submission to God as crucified Christ ensures God’s triumph over evil powers and human sinfulness. Because of this relationship, which purposes to save the entire cosmos from evil’s effects, the believing community continues to confess God as the “Father” of Jesus Christ in whom it can hope to inherit the promised blessings of grace and peace.

1:7 / The community’s hope will be vindicated at Christ’s return when the clouds and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him, since then they will recognize that those who pierced him did so against the redemptive intentions of God for them. John has conjoined two OT texts (Dan. 7:13; Zech. 12:10) to interpret Christian hope in a manner similar to Matthew 24:30: the dramatic return of the Son of Man vindicates Christian faith before a cosmic courtroom. John does not say whether the lament, which issues forth from those who have rejected Christian faith, then results in repentance and a universal salvation; however, such a notion is not inappropriate to John (cf. Rev. 15:3–4; John 12:30–33).

1:8 / John concludes his initial salutation to the seven churches with an oracle from God that repeats his earlier confession about God’s eternality: God is who is, and who was, and who is to come (1:4b). Yet, in light of his confession about Jesus’ messianic love, John can also add that God is the Alpha and Omega, the Lord God … the Almighty. Alpha is the first and Omega the last letter of the Greek alphabet. Used together they symbolize entirety or wholeness. When used as a divine title, they refer to God’s sovereign rule over the history of creation. John couples this title with the OT name for a powerful God, Lord … Almighty, which signifies the rightful exercise of rulership over all people. When understood by the revelation of Christ’s love for his people (cf. 22:13), the power of God over all creation clearly intends that all people enter into the grace and peace now enjoyed only by the faithful church.

1:9 / In the second half of his greetings (vv. 9–20), John expands his earlier prescript (v. 4a) by relating the remarkable christophany by which the Risen Christ commissions him to write Revelation. Such a commissioning vision is not unique to John; it is the normal vehicle by which God commissioned the OT prophets, and then Paul, who received his call through a christophany while traveling on the Damascus Road (cf. Acts 9:1–9). The function of such visions is twofold: the first and more explicit function is to clarify the nature of the prophet’s task, while the second and more implicit function is to confer divine authority upon the prophet for the task at hand. The latter function would have been especially important for Paul, for example, whose apostolic authority derived not from his association with Jesus of Nazareth, but from his Damascus Road encounter with the Risen Christ. Similarly, John shares his own visionary experience with the Risen Christ, not only to state the circumstances that occasioned the writing of this book of visions, but also to evoke the recognition of his authority for doing so. Like Paul’s, John’s authority derives in part from his commission by divine revelation (cf. Acts 22:3–21).

God calls insiders to the prophetic task; the word of God is brought by champions who are called to represent God because they also earnestly seek after the salvation of God’s people. Appropriately, then, John first establishes his ecclesial credentials for the call he will receive from Jesus by placing himself on the same level with his audience: I, John, your brother and companion. This identification suggests that John views himself as one who participates (i.e., as companion) with his Christian audience (i.e., as brother) in their various experiences of suffering, to which they respond with patient endurance, because they share equally in the same kingdom as priests (1:6).

John’s use of the suffering motif has led some to find here a subtle reference to a more general persecution of Christians that occasioned the commissioning of this book. John’s use of the motif, however, is best understood in terms of the sociology of an apocalyptic community to which he belongs: the suffering of God’s people is understood eschatologically, in terms of their future status in Jesus. John’s own response to suffering, then, is one of patient hope for Christ’s return and God’s final triumph over the very evil powers that cause human suffering (cf. Matt. 24:13–14).

The penal island of Patmos, off the west coast of Asia Minor, was settled by exiled political enemies of the Roman government. The exact circumstances of John’s imprisonment are still contested among scholars. John understands his banishment to Patmos to be the result of his proclamation of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. In a world where civil religion was considered the duty of every good citizen, the public proclamation of the Christian gospel would have been viewed as a political threat. John’s own experience may help explain his interpretation of the surrounding sociopolitical order as anti-Christian and in conflict with God’s sovereign reign. Perhaps it is for this reason that he describes both his composition and his imprisonment as ingredients of the same reality: the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (cf. 1:2). In this sense, John’s imprisonment for the Christian gospel is an “acted parable” of the message of Revelation that envisions the fundamental conflict between two kingdoms, one divine and the other demonic.

1:10a / John’s vision took place on the Lord’s day, while he was celebrating the exaltation of Christ as Lord of the church. The seer was in the Spirit, inspired by the Spirit of prophecy to see and hear the revelation from God.

1:10b–11 / The commission itself is repeated here and again in 1:19, thus bracketing off and explaining the importance of John’s vision of the Danielic “son of man,” sandwiched in between (1:12–18). Scholars disagree over the identity of the one who first commissions John. While John recognizes the “son of man” who commissions him to write Revelation in 1:19 as the exalted Christ, he first hears a loud voice like a trumpet which, according to 4:1, belongs to an angel. In our view, the angel does not commission John; rather, its voice provides a trumpetlike fanfare for John’s subsequent commission from Christ to write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches.

1:12 / The distinctive voice prompts John to turn around in order to see the voice that was speaking to me. His first impression is to see seven golden lampstands, which Jesus later interprets for John as representing the seven churches to whom the seer has been commissioned to write a book of visions (1:20).

1:13a / This image explains the importance of John’s impression that the voice belonged to someone like a son of man, whom he locates among the seven lampstands. John recognizes him as one like Daniel’s a son of man (Dan. 7:13), choosing this identity rather than the more definitive messianic title for Jesus in the NT Gospels, “the Son of Man.” John’s decision seems entirely appropriate. According to the promise contained in Daniel’s vision, “the one like a son of man,” will come on the clouds (cf. Rev. 1:7) to receive “sovereign power” from God as the authorized representative of God’s people (Dan. 7:27). John finds the fulfillment of Daniel’s promise in Christ Jesus, who now stands among the lampstands, symbols for the “true” Israel of God, as exalted Lord.

1:13b–16 / John’s interpretation of his vision is conveyed by his subsequent description of the commissioning Christ. It is a dramatic “light and sound show” of the Lord’s power and majesty, full of echoes from the OT prophetic writings that evoke a sense of God’s glory. Simply put, John describes a vision of Christ’s lordship over the congregations for which he now writes.

Revelation 1:20 re-focuses the reader’s attention on the seven stars (cf. 1:16), which are the guardian angels of the seven Asian congregations. Their presence in heaven as “celestial doubles” of these churches envisions an important theological point: the effectiveness of the church’s historical witness to God’s reign is guaranteed by its heavenly representation (cf. Eph. 2:6–7). Significantly, in this regard, Jesus holds the seven stars in his right hand, a symbol of his political authority. John’s vision of the stars suggests that the church’s ultimate destiny is tied to Christ rather than to Rome, whose triumph is temporary.

1:17–18 / John’s response to his christophany testifies to its truth: I fell at his feet as though dead. Christ, who at last identifies himself, prohibits John, with some irony, from responding as he surely must: Do not be afraid! Yet, the reasons for comfort and assurance are found in Christ’s self-introduction as the First and the Last. Christ addresses John as exalted Lord; he asserts divine authority, equal to “the Alpha and Omega” (cf. 1:8), thus legitimizing his representation of God’s people on God’s behalf. Further, he claims his authority over death; as the Living One, Christ has custody of the keys of death and Hades and is therefore able to unlock God’s people from their captivity to sin and its consequences.

1:19–20 / The conjunction therefore makes clear that Jesus’ exhortation to John in 1:17–18 prepares him for his commission found in 1:19. While the power of John’s christophany is sufficient to compel him to obey the commission to write what you have seen (i.e., the christophany), the commission also includes what is now and what will take place later, thus indicating a profoundly hopeful perspective toward the visions John has not yet received. The Living One who gives the vision and then commissions John to write it down is the exalted Lord who confidently promises God’s people that they too will follow in his destiny from death into life for ever and ever.

The grammar of this commissioning statement is notoriously difficult and makes any definitive interpretation of this crucial text impossible. In our opinion, the statement is most naturally divided into two parts. The first phrase is best understood as a generic formula of commission: write what you have seen. John is to compose a book consisting of all the visions the angel of Christ delivers to him. The next two phrases, (1) what is now and (2) what will take place later, qualify the entire composition, which in turn has immediate relevance for John’s audience. Thus, everything that John writes down reflects what is already true (in heaven) and what is not yet true (on earth). This conclusion does not vitiate our contention that the main body of the composition envisions a sequence of past-present-future “moments” within salvation’s history which can be observed at a macroscopic level. John’s apocalypse tells the gospel story; however, it is instructive in each of its parts for how human life and Christian faith are currently construed. When John focuses a particular part of the whole vision, the other parts are also present. The reader, then, is asked to consider the importance of what is now, while retaining a sense of what will take place later. This dialectic between “the already but not yet” is, of course, characteristic of NT eschatology. Within John’s Revelation, both the realized (christological) and not yet realized (eschatological) truths of the gospel story will constantly frame and form what constitutes a proper response to God.

According to many scholars, 1:19 organizes Revelation into discrete visions of the past, present, and future of salvation’s history. Such arrangements seem artificial to us and actually disturb the dynamic interplay throughout the book between past, present and future elements of God’s redemptive work. Our own interpretation of Revelation will suggest that current Christian existence, characterized by historical ambiguity and spiritual struggles, can be understood only when we look backward into the past and ahead into the future of God’s promised salvation. The gospel of God, realized and promised through Jesus Christ, is never conveyed as a static set of timeless convictions; rather, it is the truth about God, disclosed once and for all in the messianic event, adapted again and again, generation after generation, to the ever-changing situations of those who share life “in Jesus,” who is “the Living One.”

Finally, notice that 1:20 shifts from symbolic to non-symbolic language. This feature of apocalyptic literature intends to provide the reader with a cipher for decoding more obscure images found in the immediate context of the vision. These “clues” are found frequently throughout Revelation—no doubt added by the seer—and always yield critical keys to help the reader along the way.