"Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen". Revelation 1v6.
Here we have the response of the church to such a glorious person. The phrase "unto Him " is used again in chapter 5v13; chapter 7v10; chapter 7v12; and chapter 19v1. In summary the whole of heaven and earth and hell will acknowledge Him as Lord. There is here evoked from the saints a cry of praise to their eternal Lover. To the One who faithfully declared God, to Him who went into death, and to Him who will reign supreme over all .... to Him be glory. We have read of " grace from Him, " and "peace from Him, " now we have "glory unto Him, " it is the expression of gratitude from the hearts of the redeemed. Three things are said concerning what He has done:
- Him that loved us. The tense is aorist continuous present. This means He loved us in the past, He loves us now and He will love us forever. Sometimes we fail to grasp the meaning of New Testament love; it is unconditional love, it seeks no return. It does not mean He likes us, or our ways, and certainly not our sins. It is not that He is blind to our faults, it is that He loves us no matter what because He has dealt with all our faults. He loved us from eternity, He loved us at Calvary, He loves us now, He will love us forever. It is not an emotionally, soppy, kind of love; it is a settled love, an act of the Divine will to seek and to promote all that is best for us.
- He has washed us from our sins in His own blood. The extent of that love was Calvary. Some put "loosed" instead of "washed," but it makes little difference because both are true. Washed refers to the filth of sin; loosed refers to the chains of sin. Jesus has by His own blood both cleansed and freed us from sin, both its filthiness and its power. We are now free, we are now clean. References in John 13v10; 1st Corinthians 6v11; Titus 3v5 all point to the fact that believers in Christ have been washed clean. It is said in Ephesians 5v26 that "Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." If we think in terms of loosing from sins we look to John 8v36 " If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Again in the following scriptures; Romans 6v7; v12; v14; v18; v22; and chapter 8v2, we find that Christ has set us free, liberated us from the chains of sin that bound us. This involved nothing less than the shedding of His own life blood to take us from a life of filthiness (morally speaking), and a life of enslavement to sin.
- And made us kings and priests unto God and His Father. We are now collectively a kingdom (for He is King) and individually we are priests to God. The offices of king and priest were never combined in the Old Testament. Only in Christ are these offices combined and they are now given to all believers. The idea behind this is that only in a perfect man could be combined matters of state government manward and at the same time matters of priestly activity Godward. Thus only in Christ could this happen, and only in perfect believers will this happen. Today we are all priests to God, which will be the subject matter of the next blog, but only when we are perfected will we be able to rule in state for God, as well as being priests towards Him.
The subject matter is quite extensive and we need to understand more; meanwhile, what in essence this is saying is that God has now made us useful to Himself, when in our former state He could not use us because of our sins. Since Jesus Christ has dealt with the offending sins we are now able to fulfil a function for God as priests who will ultimately one day also reign as kings. The whole teaching is amazing and we should elevate our thoughts of ourselves to the high status that God has placed us in Christ.
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