Revelation 2:1-7 To the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things said he that holds the seven stars in his right hand… This first of the sevenfold promises to the victors carries us back to the earliest pages of Scripture. The end circles round to the beginning. The fruit is accessible again, not now, indeed, by man's reaching out his own hand to it, but as a gift from the Captain under and by whom the victors fight. This recurrence of the early possibility as a finally-accomplished reality is significant. Whatever Adam threw away Christ brings back. "There shall never be one lost good." But there is more than that. Paradise is better than Eden. I. THE GIFT. In the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, Life and its antithesis, Death, are two of his key-notes. In these letters to the Seven Churches the frequent recurrence of the same significant word Life, and its correlative, Death, is one of the main links of connection which, with all differences of form, bind together the Apocalypse and the Gospels. Now I cannot persuade myself that by this great word the writer means nothing mole than continuous existence. He means that, but he means something more than that; and the something more is what warrants him in calling continual existence life. He means, in fact, the whole aggregate of blessednesses which makes the State of men whose lives are passed in communion with, and likeness to, God. This is his conception of what life consists in. Wheresoever a heart is knit to God, there is the germ and the beginning of the only real Life. And the highest promise that can be given for the blessedness of that blessed and far-off future is, "I will give him to cat of the Tree of Life." It is well and fitting that this most comprehensive and general promise should be the first in the sevenfold series. Those which follow unveil various portions of its contents, and show us various aspects of its glory. Then, mark, it is the life of Jesus Christ Himself which He gives. He is the Life of our lives, the Soul of our souls, the Heaven of our heaven; and in Him is all that we need. Then, note how, in the other reference in this Book to that Tree of Life, we have set forth, very beautifully, the infinite variety and unbroken succession of the blessednesses that result to those who partake of it. The last chapter of this Revelation tells us that "it bare twelve manner of fruits," and that "every month." The former of these symbols sets forth that all delights and nutriments which spirit, heart, will, intellect, and whatever else may make up the immortal man can require are to be found there. Whatsoever is pleasant to behold, or sweet to taste, is all in Jesus Christ. And the other symbol of "yielding fruit every month" suggests the unbroken succession of delights and blessednesses and sustenances. Sparkle will touch sparkle as in the moon's path across the sea, making a broad and continuous band of silvery shimmer. So "in Thy presence are pleasures for evermore." Then note, further, that this Life must begin here ii it is to be perfected hereafter. Here we must begin laying hold of that Lord in whom are the life and the light of men, if we are ever to stand by His side, and receive from His hand fruits from the Tree of Life. They are sent across the sea to us in our island home, though it be planted in a happier and sunnier clime, and we dwell here amidst frost and snow. But the perfecting will be when we shall go to it. Fruit tastes best if fresh plucked from the tree. II. THE GIVER. This ascended Christ speaks in royal fashion. He assumes to be the Bestower of the fruit from the Tree of Life. And that suggests large thoughts about Him. I believe that in all senses of the word Life, from the lowest physical up to the highest spiritual, immortal, and eternal, the revelation of the New Testament, is that Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, and the Agent of all creation and of all preservation, is its Giver and its Source. By virtue of His Divine nature He gives physical life to all that live. In Him "was life, and the life was the light of men." But it is not His Divine nature alone which has made it possible for Him to give to us the better life, of which my text speaks. He is the Source thereof, because He Himself has experienced the opposite. He died that He might be the Lord and Giver of Life; and rising from the grave, by the power of His death, and the merit and might of His sacrifice, He has become, for all who will trust Him, the Source of that life which standeth in the knowledge of God, and is perfected hereafter in immortal felicity and blessedness. Further, there is involved in this representation of Jesus Christ as the Giver of Life, the thought that, through eternity, all who live that blessed being in the heavens shall be as dependent upon Him for every moment (if we can speak of moments in the timeless state) of their continual existence as we are here below. He is the Fountain who hath life in Himself. We are the empty vessels that are filled from Him. III. THE RECREANTS. In the original the language is made very emphatic: "To him that overcometh, to him will I give." And that emphasis is very significant, ii we remember how strongly this same John, especially in his Gospel, sets forth the thought that the condition of receiving life here and hereafter is faith. Faith without fighting is nothing. Fighting without faith, indeed, is impossible; but it is not enough that a man shall exercise an idle and inoperative trust, unless he can show his faith by his works. It is not the same whether you, calling yourselves Christian people, live in the daily struggle with the evil that besets you, or indolently let yourselves be carried unresisting along by the stream. It is the victor, that is crowned. Then, again, observe that martial metaphor. "To him that overcometh." Then the highest conception of a noble life on earth is conflict. God has set us here, not to enjoy ourselves, but to wrestle and to run and to fight. Shame on us ii we choose the indolent, self-indulgent, luxurious, and fatal course [ What is it to overcome? The sailor who trims his sails and sets his helm so that adverse winds and opposing currents help him to run his course has conquered, though they howl about his ears and beat upon his barque. And the man who does not let the world hinder him from godly obedience, who does not allow it to divert him from the path of duty, who does not let its dainties spoil his appetite for the bread of heaven, who does not permit its near and flaunting beauties to affect his heart so that he sees no beauty in God and Christ, who does not take its good for his best — that man has conquered it. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; |
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