Can't It Be Both?

The meaning of the Lamb, this book, and...well, life.

At last, we’ve reached the end of our survey of Revelation (although every good story should probably have an epilogue, *wink wink*).

My prayer is that this series of blogs has helped to reframe some of your questions, concerns, and even your view of Revelation as a whole. I hope you’ve come to see that from the very beginning, Revelation was more concerned with the real circumstances of God’s people than it was with satisfying our curiosity about future speculations. I hope you’ve come to see that our God is one who addresses and always has the final word to say to those who are suffering. I hope you’ve seen that Revelation acknowledges that life is filled with doubts and struggle, and that God sees you when you experience them. I hope you’ve grown in your assurance that God has you exactly where He wants you to be if you’ll just trust Him—and truly live out that trust—even though His reasoning may be unclear. I hope that God’s control over tomorrow’s outcomes teaches you nothing other than the certainty that today’s problems will all be worked out. That you don’t need to grasp for power or control over your situation because it was never about your ability to make a way for yourself in the first place. That there is a reality more real than the lies we constantly want to believe from people, things, or institutions that offer us a relief that is only fleeting. That the rhythms of life we rely on to get ahead in this world are not built to last.

And today, the kind of world that will outlast all the others.

We return to Revelation chapter 5, a scene in which some unnamed figure is seated on the throne in heaven. Receiving this message for the first time, the first readers of Revelation might have read through chapter 4 with a deep sense of anxiety, wondering who really sits on the throne, given that their God did not seem to be coming through on His promises while the powers that be continued to have their way. Why couldn’t John just tell us this mysterious figure’s name? Don’t we deserve to know who’s in control when our world is falling apart?

Then, right away in verse 1 of chapter 5, we’re told that this person is holding a scroll in his right hand.

Great. Just great.

Because that’s exactly what the Roman emperors looked like in their statues: 

Oftentimes, the emperor would be depicted with his right hand raised and a scroll in his hand. This was a symbol of authority to rule over all people.

Is that who John is seeing on the throne? Are control and security the ultimate goals in life, and are the people who have them the ones who define what is good?

It seems like the obvious connection. The emperor got whatever he wanted, and his kingdom was growing every day. How could Jesus be Lord if His kingdom had no such outward signs of success? And what good is it to be one of God’s people if human vanity and ideals still make the world go ‘round?

But the story doesn’t stop there.

We keep reading, and as it turns out, there is one other person in heaven with the authority to open the scroll…if you consider a dead lamb a person.

And yet, in verse 7, the Lamb gets up and takes the scroll. So it must not be dead. Maybe it just looks that way?

The startling “revelation” from this chapter is that the answer is both. The Lamb is alive even though it has died. And what’s more, it is because it has died that it has its position of authority as the one who can open the scroll.

Now what on earth does all of this mean?

The first readers of Revelation probably had a Jewish background, and in their minds, it would be hard to think of an image that screamed, “WE’VE BEEN RECONCILED!” more loudly than a lamb. Why? Because lambs were used in burnt offerings back in the Old Testament. 

Now many people take this idea and run with it, thinking God is bloodthirsty, and that the only way to please Him is if someone gets hurt. But there is a lot of symbolism involved here, and the point of it all was certainly not to hurt the animal. Instead, ancient Jewish thinkers believed that an animal’s blood was its life-force. And if you burned the blood on an altar, what happened? The smoke would rise up to “heaven.” The meaning of all this? The animal’s blood represented your own life, and when it rose to heaven, you imagined your very life rising up to experience communion with God.

And because these readers were Jewish Christians, they easily recognized that Christ is the perfect "Lamb of God." Because Jesus died and rose to be with the Father, we who are in Him have an even more perfect union with the God of the universe. 

We’re also starting to see why this Lamb in Revelation looks as if it has been slain: He has.

But there’s even more here than meets the eye. Remember the scroll? The one seated on the throne is holding it in his right hand. There’s another layer of meaning here: in some ancient cultures, the right hand was seen as the hand you use when you want to voluntarily give something to someone else.

So the Lamb doesn’t take the scroll by force. It is freely given to Him by the one who sits on the throne.

Which means the one on the throne can’t be the Roman emperor, the ruler of the world that killed the Lamb. Nothing else in this world can have power over us because the one seated on the throne does not represent a world that is opposed to what the Lamb stood for; He is working through the Lamb who died.

God has decided that only the One who suffers for His people has the right to rule. Only a world in which God literally moves (well, more like renovates) heaven and earth to get to us and meet our needs is built to last, because God desires to join us in the pains of our lives. He is near to us in these moments because He has identified with us through the pain of His own life. And who else can define human life but the Son of God who lived it perfectly? The meaning of life, then, is found not in how much distance we can create between us and suffering, or in how much security we can build up for ourselves, but in His nearness to the brokenhearted.

Jesus didn’t just make a way for us to be close to God; He took our suffering captive and united it to His own experience. Have you ever been betrayed? So was He. Lied to? So was He. Wondered where God is, or been deeply saddened by a child who has gone astray? So did He. Have you ever felt your body hurting or losing strength? So did...you know the answer.

The King Himself is not immune to suffering, rather He knows it well.

And for us? We don’t get a clear answer to why we suffer. But I’d rather have a God who suffers with me anyway.

Prev: Is It...Alive? | Next: No More Crying There (Epilogue)
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