Revelation. Gordon D. Fee
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ruler of the kings of the earth. Given the present difficulties of the church at the hands of the Empire, one can scarcely miss the essentially prophetic nature of this final appellation. For John’s own readers it may look as though Rome were the ultimate power on the earth, since she not only ruled the greater portion of the so-called known world, but will be recognized later in the book as having dominion over the various petty “kings.” These latter John regularly designates as “the kings of the earth”; they are the local provincial rulers, similar to those mentioned by Luke at the beginning of his narrative about John the Baptist and Jesus (3:1: “Pontius Pilate . . . governor of Judea, Herod the tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanius tetrarch of Abilene”). But not so, says John—they are not earth’s true rulers; rather, the One who was slain by the Romans had in fact been raised from the dead by God the Father, and he has thus assumed the role of “ruler of the kings of the earth,” whether they currently acknowledge it or not. Indeed, later on in 17:14 and 19:16 Christ will be called “King of kings, and Lord of lords.” The present designation is therefore John’s way of reminding his readers that the “king of kings” is not the Roman emperor; rather, he is the One who was crucified by an earlier emperor, but, having been raised from the dead, has attained his rightful place as “ruler of the kings of the earth.” As such the risen Christ is in fact ruler over all those who have set themselves in opposition to God’s rule.
The very thought of this threefold acclamation about Christ—that God’s “faithful witness” is also “the first born from the dead” and has thus assumed his role as “the ruler of the kings of the earth”—causes John to burst into doxology. But typical of Johannine theology, the doxology it not offered to God the Father, but to Christ himself!—the first of many such remarkable moments in this book. This in turn sets the stage for the especially “high Christology” that marks the Johannine corpus as a whole. Thus, and now especially for the sake of his readers, John acclaims Christ in two ways, both of which are intended to turn the focus onto his readers, many of whom are already undergoing severe persecution. Christ, himself “the faithful witness,” is above all him who loves us and has freed7 us from our sins by his blood. It is of considerable interest, therefore, that John reminds the early believers in Asia Minor that, even though many are headed for persecution and martyrdom, they are nonetheless “free people” in Christ.
One should note in particular the present tense (“loves us”) followed by the past tense (“freed us from our sins”). It is of some interest that later scribes were disturbed by this apparent grammatical oddity and thus changed it to “who loved us and has freed us.” But these later scribes have missed John by several furlongs! For John’s readers, many of whom were already experiencing persecution, the first truth about Christ is that he (currently) “loves us” with a present love that gains its significance and power from the fact that he is the One who (already) “has freed us from our sins by his blood.”
All of this continues to be expressed in Exodus (now New Exodus) language. God’s own “firstborn” people, Israel, who became so by means of God’s sovereign election, have now been reconstituted through Christ and the Holy Spirit. But that is not all; the same Christ who “loves us and has freed us from our sins” is also the one who has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father. This somewhat ambiguous acclamation, using language borrowed directly from Exodus 19:6, probably means first of all that God’s newly formed people are a new kingdom, replacing the former Davidic kingdom. Redeemed by Christ’s sacrifice on their/our behalf, people like the recipients of this Revelation—and us—have been freed not from Egypt but from the power of sin itself, reconstituted to be God’s own newly formed people. At the same time they/we are to serve as his “priests” on behalf of others, especially those who continue to be slaves to sin and thus to the power of Satan.
This reminder sets John off in praise and acclamation, but he does so in a way that could seem quite ambiguous to the later reader since in English it is not at all clear as to whom the “to him” refers in the concluding acclamation, to him be glory and power for ever and ever! In order to remove the ambiguity the NIV has (rightly) put a dash before the “to him,” while the NJB reads “to him, then,” making sure the reader recognizes that the pronoun “him” here refers to Christ, not to God the Father. That this is John’s own intent is made certain by his use of the personal pronoun (“to him”) rather than the relative pronoun (“to whom”), which could only refer to the Father. The significance of this for the later reader is the especially high Christology that is assumed in this doxology, which is directed from beginning to end to Christ himself, the one “who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood.”
Furthermore, the praise that is due him (Christ) is that regularly offered to God the Father: “glory and power.” “Glory” is one of those biblical words that is so common that many, if not most, readers simply go on to what comes next. But if “glory” is sometimes an elusive word, difficult to pin down with precision, it is the word used in the Old Testament primarily to offer praise to the eternal God. At the very outset of the Apocalypse, John sets it out as the primary word of doxology now afforded to Christ. And such “glory” attributed to God is frequently accompanied by recognition and acclamation of his “power”; thus David sings of Yahweh, “Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor” (1 Chr 29:11). For John the acclamation of such “glory and power” is now directed toward the Son, “the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” What else, then, could John do but conclude with a resounding Amen!, which means something like “so it is and shall forever be.”
What happens next is even more surprising. One might well assume the “amen” at the end of verse 6 is to mark the end of the salutation as such, which in a sense it was undoubtedly intended to do. But before John moves on to identify himself and his readers, he bursts into acclamation. First (v. 7), John celebrates the coming of Christ, with special emphasis directed toward those who do not know him; and second (v. 8), he sets all of this out by way of divine affirmation. In so doing, he in the first instance echoes several moments from the Old Testament Prophets; then, second, he pronounces God the Father’s own stamp of approval on what John is about to record for the sake of his reader and hearers.
Thus John turns from doxology (vv. 5–6) to acclamation. Citing first a well-known passage from Daniel 7:13 and then reworking a passage from Zechariah (12:10) that had come to be understood as messianic, John acclaims Christ’s second coming up front in his Apocalypse. But his immediate interest is not on the salvation-of-God’s-people aspect of that coming, but on its affect on those who do not know him. Thus in the language of Daniel he first announces Christ’s coming: Look, he is coming with the clouds, language that suggests both his coming from the heavenly realm and doing so with great power. Then picking up from Zechariah, John adds, and every eye will see him. His reason for citing the Zechariah passage is found in the next line, having to do with the believers’ enemies, especially the Romans who were ultimately responsible for the crucifixion itself. That is, even though Jesus had been betrayed by his own people, he had in fact been turned over to the Romans for crucifixion, as one more messianic pretender. Thus John goes on with the Zechariah passage: among those who will see him are even those who pierced him, an indirect allusion to Rome’s implication in the crucifixion that could scarcely have been missed by John’s original readers.
John then concludes the citation from Zechariah by adding his own, much broader, application to the prophetic text. What in Zechariah was a prophetic word about the mourning in Jerusalem over the one who had been slain is made universal in John: all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.” It is not altogether clear what was intended by this extension of Zechariah’s prophecy, but most likely it is in anticipation of what it will be like for the Romans, who were responsible for the crucifixion, as well as for all others, when Christ appears again at what the later church has come to call his “second coming.” Thus this citation stands in direct contrast to the doxology in verses 5b–6. The coming of the one whose death “freed us from our sins” will at the same time bring great mourning to those responsible for it—a reality that is so certain, and thus anticipated, that John bursts