Revelation 5:1-4 And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.… The Lamb is said here to prevail to open the book. We often suppose that He prevailed by His sacrifice to alter the Divine purposes. We often say that the Divine will, or justice, or purity, demanded something of man which he could not render. That he was doomed to destruction for that failure; that the Lamb interposed to avert this sentence; that He paid the creature's debt; that so He satisfied the mind of Him who sat on the throne; that many threads are woven into this theory which are drawn from the practical faith of men, from their experience of their own wants, from the lessons they have learnt in Scripture, I gladly own. But that that practical faith has suffered, and does suffer cruelly, from the speculations which have been mixed with it; that the hearts of men crave for a satisfaction which this scheme of divinity does not afford them; that if they would listen to the teaching of Scripture they would find that satisfaction, I must maintain also. How naturally men conscious of evil wish to change the purpose of a Power which they think is ready to punish this evil; how eagerly they seek for mediators who they suppose may effect this change; how they may arrive at last at the conception of a Kehama who by prayers and sacrifice can bend the will of the gods wholly to his will, the mythology of all nations proves abundantly. Christian theology scatters such dark imaginations by revealing the Highest Ruler as the All-Good, Him who sits on the throne as a Being like a jasper or a sardine stone to look upon; by revealing the Lamb that was slain as the perfect sharer of His counsels; the perfect fulfiller of His will; the perfect revealer of His designs to mankind; the perfect Redeemer of the world from the dominion of false, hateful, cruel gods which they had imagined, and which upheld all falsehood, hatred, cruelty in the rulers; the perfect stoner of man with the Father of Light, in whom is no variableness nor the shadow of turning. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. |
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