Statesman63
Admin
Posts : 287
Points : 631
Join date : 2010-09-30
Location : Cleveland, OH
 | | Subject: Revelation Chapter 1 (Part 3) (verses 5b - 6) Fri Oct 10, 2014 5:42 pm | |
| Revelation Chapter 1 (Part 3) (verses 5b - 6)
We are now at the doxology in verse 5: “To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, [6] and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve His God and Father—to Him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” The “Him” of course, is Jesus. The last part says “to Him be glory and power,” which again speaks to Jesus’ deity. Of the four Gospel writers, the Apostle John stresses Jesus’ deity the most. This is the same John who wrote Revelation, and he throws in the point that Jesus is God quite often. These are John’s words. Verses 1-7 are all John’s words. His words will soon be interrupted by Jesus’ words. A doxology means giving praise to God. John gives us several reasons why we ought to praise Jesus and why He is worthy of our praise. John says that He loves us (present tense). The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:39). Biblical love is sacrificial. We have a God who doesn’t just say that He loves us, but rather, One who has paid the ultimate sacrifice and showed us how much He loved us through the death of His Son to rescue us from death and save our souls for eternal life.
The doxology says two things about our nature. Firstly, we have been freed from sin. I’m not going to go too much into it here, but the Bible says that we have a new nature that has been set free from sin. Romans 6:7 says, “...because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” We die to sin the moment we accept Christ, as our old nature becomes attached to the death that Jesus bore on the Cross, and at the same time our faith in Him connects us to Jesus’ resurrection; thus, our nature rises to new life and takes on the likeness of His nature. Sin no longer has legal ownership over us once we have accepted Jesus. By this new birth, your spirit literally changed into a righteous, but your righteous spirit still resides in a fleshly body of death. The reason why Christians still struggle with sin is not due to their old nature, which died with Christ, but due to not living by the Spirit which overrides the flesh (our sinful bodies) that we are still living in. Sin used to own you before you knew Christ. Now the Spirit owns you and you are no longer a slave to the standards of sin or the law. Sin no longer has the same power over you. God gave you emancipation papers in Christ. He gave you power to overcome all sin and to be overcomers. We still sometimes fall to sin because the only sin that is left in us resides in our flesh or bodies. Our spirits were raised to new life and perfected, but not our fleshly bodies. It’ll take leaving your body (when you physically die) to be fully without sin. And one day God is going to raise up new perfect bodies for us.
Secondly, concerning our current nature, the doxology says that He made us a kingdom and priests. The word “kingdom” has several overlying meanings, but here it refers to God’s heavenly agenda on this Earth and in history. We will later see that the Kingdom of Heaven is a reward that the faithful and overcomers inherit. It goes on to say that we were made priests. He gave us priestly rights to enter the holy of holies. In fact, the holy of holies has entered you because you are the temple of God. We can be called priests because Jesus made us righteous. He gave us His righteousness. 1 Peter 2:9 says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation...” You have a new identity. You are no longer a “sinner” if you believe in Jesus. We are now saints who sin. We will pick back up at verse 7.
| |
|
