Alexander MacLaren :: Kings and Priests (Revelation 1:6)

Kings and Priests

Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sine in His own blood.' — Revelation 1:6.

The Revised Version rightly makes two slight but important changes in this verse, both of which are sustained by preponderating authority. For 'loved' it reads 'loveth,' and for 'washed' it reads 'loosed'; the whole standing 'Unto Him that loveth us, loosed us from our sins by His blood.' Now the first of these changes obviously adds much to the force and richness of the representation, for it substitutes for a past a present and timeless love. The second of them, though it seems greater, is really smaller, for it makes no change in the meaning, but only in the figure under which the meaning is represented. If we read 'washed,' the metaphor would be of sin as a stain; if we read 'loosed,' the metaphor is of sin as a 'chain.' Possibly the context may somewhat favour the alteration, inasmuch as there would then be the striking contrast between the condition of captives or bondsmen, and the dignity of 'kings and priests unto God,' into which Jesus brings those whom He has freed from the bondage. Taking, then, these changes, and noting the fact that our text is the beginning Of a doxology, we have here three points, the present love of Christ, the great past act which is its outcome and proof, and the praise which should answer that great love.

1. We have here that great thought of the present love of Christ.

   The words seem to me to become especially beautiful, if we remember that they come from the lips of him whose distinction it was that he was 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.' It is as if he had said, 'I share my privilege with you all. I was no nearer Him than you may be. Every head may rest on the breast where mine rested. Having the sweet remembrance of that early love, these things write I unto you that ye also may have fellowship with me in that which was my great distinction. I, the disciple whom Jesus loved, speak to you as the disciples whom Jesus loves.'

   Mark that he is speaking of One who had been dead for half a century, and that he is speaking to people, none of whom had probably ever seen Jesus in His lifetime, and most of whom had not been born when He died. Yet to them all he turns with that profound and mighty present tense, and says, 'He loveth us.' He was speaking to all generations, and telling all the tribes of men of a love which is in active operation towards each of them, not only at the moment when John spoke to Asiatic Greeks, but at the moment when we Englishmen read his words, 'Christ that loveth us.'

   Now that great thought suggests two things, one as to the permanence, and one as to the sweep of Christ's love. With regard to the permanence, we have here the revelation of One whose relation to life and death is altogether unique. For though we must believe that the dead do still cherish the love that lighted earth for them, we cannot suppose that their love embraces those whom on earth they did not know, or that for those who are still held in its grasp it can be a potence in active operation to bless them and to do them good. But here is a Man, to the exercise of whose love, to the clearness of whose apprehension and knowledge, to the outgoing of whose warm affection, the active energy of that affection life or death make no difference. The cold which stays the flow of all other human love, like frost laid upon the running streams which it binds in fetters, has no power over the flow of Christ's love, which rolls on, unfrozen and unaffected by it. But not only does Christ's present love require that He should be lifted above death as it affects the rest of us, but it also demands for its explanation that we shall see in Him true Divinity.

   For this 'loveth' is the timeless present of that Divine nature, of which we cannot properly say either that it was or that it will be, but only that it for ever is, and the outgoings of His love are like the outgoings of that Divine energy of which we cannot properly say that it did or that it will do, but only that it ever does. His love, if I might use such a phrase, is lifted above all tenses, and transcends even the bounds of grammar. He did love. He does love. He will love. All three forms of speech must be combined in setting forth the ever present, because timeless and eternal, love of the Incarnate Word.

   Then let me remind you too that this present love of Christ is undiminished by the glory to which He is exalted. We find clear and great differences between the picture of Jesus Christ in the four gospels and the picture of Him drawn in that magnificent vision of this chapter. But the differences are surface, and the identity is deep- lying. The differences affect position much rather than nature, and as we look upon that revelation which was given to the seer in his rocky Patmos, and with him 'in the Spirit' behold 'the things that are,' we carry into all the glory the thought 'He loveth us'; and the breast girded with the golden girdle is as loving as that upon which John's happy head lay, and the hand that holds the seven stars is as tender as when it was laid on little children in blessing or on lepers in cleansing; or as when it held up the sinking Apostle, or lifted the sick from their couches, or as when it was stretched on the Cross and pierced with the nails; and the face, 'which is as the sun shineth in his strength,' is as gracious as when it beamed in pity upon wanderers and sorrowful ones, and drew by its beauty and its sweetness the harlots and publicans to His pity. The exalted Christ loves as did the lowly Christ on earth.

   How different this prosaic, worried present would be if we could carry with us, as we may if we will, into all its trivialities, into all its monotony, into all its commonplace routine, into all its little annoyances and great sorrows, that one lambent thought as a source of light and strength and blessing, 'He loveth us.' Ah! brethren, we lose tremendously of what we might all possess, because we think so of 'He loved,' and travel back to the Cross for its proof, and think so comparatively seldom 'He loveth,' and feel the touch of His hand on our hearts for its token.

   But here we have not only the present and permanent love, but we have the sweep and extent of it. 'He loveth us.' And though John was speaking primarily about a little handful of people scattered through some of the seaboard towns of Asia Minor, the principle upon which he could make the assertion in regard to them warrants us in extending the assertion not only to men that respond to the love, and believe in it, but right away over all the generations and all the successive files of the great army of humanity, down to the very ends of time, 'He loveth us.'

   That universality, wonderful as it is, and requiring for its basis the same belief in Christ's Divine nature which the present energy of His love requires, has to be translated by each of us into an individualising love which is poured upon each single soul, as if it were the sole-recipient of the fulness of the heart of Christ. When we extend our thoughts or our sympathies to a crowd, we lose the individual. We generalise, as logicians say, by neglecting the particular instances. That is to say, when we look at the forest we do not see the trees. But Jesus Christ sees each tree, each stem, each branch, each leaf, just as when the crowd thronged Him and pressed Him, He knew when the tremulous finger, wasted and shrunken to skin and bone, was timidly laid on the hem of His garment; as there was room for all the five thousand on the grass, and no man's plenty was secured at the expense of another man's penury, so each of us has a place in that heart; and my abundance will not starve you, nor your feeding full diminish the supplies for me. Christ loves all, not with the vague general philanthropy with which men love the mass, but with the individualising knowledge and special direction of affection towards the individual which demands for its fulness a Divine nature to exercise it. And so each of us may have our own rainbow, to each of us the sunbeam may come straight from the sun and strike upon our eye in a direct line, to each of us the whole warmth of the orb may be conveyed, and each of us may say, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.' Is that your conception of your relation to Jesus Christ, and of Christ's to you?

2. Notice the great proof and outcome of this present love. Because it is timeless love, and has nothing to do with the distinction of past, present, and future, John lays hold of a past act as the manifestation of a present love. If we would understand what that love is which is offered to each of us in the present, we must understand what is meant and what is involved in that past act to which John points: 'He loosed us from our sins by His own Mood.' Christ is the Emancipator, and the instrument by which He makes us free is 'His own blood.'

   Now there underlies that thought the sad metaphor that sin is captivity. There may be some kind of allusion in the Apostle's mind to the deliverance from Egyptian bondage; and that is made the more probable if we observe that the next clause, 'hath made us kings and priests unto God,' points back to the great charter of Israel's national existence which was given immediately after the Exodus. But, be that as it may, the notion of bondage underlies this metaphor of loosing a fetter. If we would be honest with ourselves, in our account of our own inward experiences, that bondage we all know. There is the bondage of sin as guilt, the sense of responsibility, the feeling that we have to answer for what we have done, and to answer — as I believe and as I think men's consciences for the most part force them to believe — not only here but hereafter, when we appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. Guilt is a chain. And there is the bondage of habit, which ties and holds us with the cords of our sins, so as that, slight as the fetter may seem at first, it has an awful power of thickening and becoming heavier and more pressing, till at last it holds a man in a grip that he cannot get away from. I know of nothing in human life more mystically awful than the possible influence of habit. And you cannot break these fetters yourselves, brethren, any more than a man in a dungeon, shackled to the wall, can file through his handcuffs and anklets with a pin or a broken penknife. You can do a great deal, but you cannot deal with the past fact of guilt, and you can only very partially deal with the present fact of tyranny which the evil habit exercises on you.

   'He loosed us from our sins by His own blood.' This is not the place to enter upon theological speculations, but I, for my part, believe that, although I may not get to the bottom of the bottomless, nor speak about the Divine nature with full knowledge of all that it is, Scripture is pledged to the fact that the death of Jesus Christ is the Sacrifice for the world's sin. I admit that a full theory is not within reach, but I do not admit that therefore we are to falter in declaring that Christ's death is indispensable in order that a man's Bin may be forgiven, and the fetters broken, in so far as guilt and condemnation and Divine disapprobation are concerned.

   But that is only one side of the truth. The other, and in some aspects a far more important one, is that that same blood which shed delivers them that trust in Jesus Christ from the guilt of their sin, imparted to men, delivers them from the power of their sin. 'The blood is the life,' according to the simple physiology of the Old and of the New Testament. When we read in Scripture that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, as I believe we are intended to understand that word, the impartation of Christ's life to us purifies our nature, and makes us, too, in our degree, and on condition of our own activity, and gradually and successively free from all evil. So as regards both aspects of the thraldom of sin, as guilt and as habit: 'He has loosed us from our sins in His own blood.'

   That is the great token and manifestation of His love. If we do not believe that, how else can we have any real conviction and proof of anything worth calling love as being in the heart of Jesus Christ to any of us? To me it seems that unless a man accepts that great thought, 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me,' and is daily working in my nature to make it and me more like Himself, he has no real proof that Jesus Christ cares a jot for him, or knows anything about him. But I, for my part, venture to say that looking on Christ and His past as this text does, we can look up to Christ in the present as the seer did, and, behold, enthroned by the side of the glory, the Man, the Incarnate Word, who loves with timeless love every single soul of man.

3. So, lastly, let me point you to the praise which should answer this present love and emancipation.

   'Unto Him,' says John, 'he' — or is — 'glory and dominion for ever and ever.' That present love, and that great past act which is its vindication and manifestation, are the true glory of God. For His glory lies, not in attributes, as we call them, that distinguish Him from the limitations of humanity, such as Omniscience and Omnipresence and Eternal Being and the like; all these are great, but they are not the greatest. The divinest thing in God is His love, and the true glory is the glory that rays out from Him whom we behold 'full of grace and truth,' full of love, and dying on the Cross. When we look at that weak man there yielding to the last infirmity of humanity, and yet in yielding to it manifesting His dominion over it, there we see God as we do not see Him anywhere besides To Him is the glory for His love, and His 'loosing' manifest the glory, and from His love and His loosing accrue to Him glory beyond all other revenue of praise which comes to Him from creative and sustaining acts.

   'Unto Him be dominion,' for His rule rests on His sacrifice and on His love. The crown of thorns prepared for the 'many crowns' of heaven, the sceptre of reed was the prophecy of the sceptre of the universe. The Cross was the footstool of His Throne. He is King of men because He has loved us perfectly, and given everything for us.

   And so, brethren, the question of questions for each of us is, Is Jesus Christ my Emancipator? Do I see in Him He that looses me from my sins, and makes me free indeed, because the Son has made me free and a son? Do I render to Him the love which such a love requires? Do I find in Him my ever-present Lover and Friend, and is His love to me as a stimulus for all service, an amulet against every temptation, a breakwater in all storms, a light in every darkness, the pledge of a future heaven, and the beginning of a heaven even upon earth? I beseech you, recognise your fetters, and do not say 'we were never in bondage to any man.' Recognise your Liberator, put your trust in Him; and then you will be able to join, even here on earth, and more perfectly hereafter, in that great storm and chorus of praise which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, saying, 'Blessing and honour and glory and power be unto Him that sitteth on the Throne and to the Lamb for ever and ever.'