General Comments (Focused on This Passage)
1. Most commentators identify Revelation 5:1-14 as a single unit and as a pivotal part of the book. John has completed the messages to the seven Asia Minor churches, really a selection of messages for all the churches. Now will come his apocalyptic vision.
2. During worship (see yesterday's pass), John is transported to heaven. There, The New Interpreter's Bible commentary tells us:
...he hears about the one who will open the seal, the lion from the tribe of Judah. But he sees something different. In the midst of the worship and movement in heaven, John sees a Lamb "bearing the marks of slaughter," who comes to God and takes the scroll, the opening of which heralds the manifestation of the crisis described in subsequent chapters.3. The Lamb is also the Lion of Judah, Jesus, Who conquers through submission to the will of the Father and through His death on a cross. Writes Richard L. Jeske in Revelation for Today: Images of Hope:
The symbol of "the Lamb who was slain" has various antecedents in Old Testament tradition, all of which figure in John's use of it. It recalls the slaughtering of the Passover lamb and Israel's exodus from Egypt...Isa[iah] 53:7, "like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth," is applied to Jesus in Acts 8:32. The imagery of the conquering lamb is also found in the apocalyptic [literature predating John, such as 1 Enoch, which appears in the Apocrypha]...4. As Jeske tells us:
The symbol of the scroll is that all of world history is subject to the will and power of God. But the scroll is sealed and "no one in heaven or on earth was able to open the scroll or look into it" (5:3). No one is worthy to unravel the mystery of time and existence, of a hostile and fallen world and its future. No one, except "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," "the Root of David," "the Lamb who was slain" (5:5-6, 12)It's tempting to believe that this Biblical image of the suffering servant destined to reign over heaven and earth being the only one worthy to break the seal of the scroll must have informed one part of the Arthurian legend in England. In a dark age of lawlessness, the legend says, there was no one worthy to be king. That's because no one was able to pull a sword from a stone on which were inscribed the words, "Whoso pulleth out this sword is by right of birth King of England." As whimsically portrayed, first by author T.H. White and then Walt Disney in, respectively, a novel and a movie, each called The Sword in the Stone, a small, underestimated orphan boy called The Wart by his guardian, was the only one able to remove the sword from the stone. The Wart became King Arthur.
5. But if some find the notion of Lamb slain or a suffering servant winning victory over death through submission to a cross consoling, others spurn it. This Savior calls us to take up our crosses--to confess our sin, to own our mortality, to face up to our need of God. For the Christian, the cross is a symbol of liberation and new life. For those without hope in Christ, the cross is a symbol of folly, self-denigration, and defeat. They forget that Easter follows Good Friday! They also underestimate the power to work death that comes from our sin, the sin for which the sinless Christ went to the cross on our behalf and the sin which must, as Revelation tells us, must be bleached from our lives in the blood of the Lamb!
[Verse-by-verse comments tomorrow, I hope.]
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