The Sermons to the Seven Churches of Revelation

A Commentary and Guide

Weima, Jeffrey A. D.

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781493429516
• Categoría: Théologie et religion
• Categoría: Critique et interprétation bibliques

A top New Testament scholar, preacher, and tour guide to the lands of the New Testament offers an informed commentary on this challenging portion of Scripture with an eye toward preaching the text. Jeffrey Weima explains the meaning of the seven "sermons" of Revelation 2-3 and provides sample sermons that show how these ancient messages, despite their subtle Old Testament allusions and perplexing images, are relevant for the church today. The book includes photos, maps, and charts and is of interest to preachers, students, teachers, and Bible study groups.

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Ephesus

The Church of Loveless Orthodoxy

The Christ Title (2:1b)

In each of the seven sermons, the message opens not with the words of Christ through John to the particular congregation but with a title that Christ gives himself. More than one title is typically given, and virtually all of them are taken from the impressive vision of Christ that opens the book of Revelation (1:9–20).

In the sermon to Ephesus, the first of the two Christ titles identifies the one who is about to speak as “the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand.” This title conveys Christ’s power and emphasizes that power in two ways. First, whereas the opening vision portrays Christ in 1:16 as merely “having” (echōn) the seven stars, here Christ is “holding” (kratōn) the seven stars. This verbal change is significant because the latter term conveys greater power and has a variety of meanings, including “to take control of someone or something” (BDAG 564.3). Jesus not only “has” the seven stars, in the sense of possessing them; he “holds” the seven stars, in the sense of exercising sovereign control over them, which graphically reveals his power.

Second, Christ’s power is further stressed by holding the seven stars “in his right hand.” Since most people are right-handed, using this hand more than the left, their right hand naturally becomes stronger. This common cross-cultural phenomenon explains why the right hand appears repeatedly in Scripture as a metaphor for power and authority. Both the OT and the NT frequently allude to God’s sovereign control and power by referring to his “right hand” (Exod. 15:6; Pss. 16:11; 17:7; 18:35; 44:3; 45:4; 63:8; 98:1; 118:15; 139:10; Isa. 41:10; 48:13; Matt. 22:44; Acts 2:34; 7:55; Rom. 8:34; Heb. 1:3).

The power of Christ conveyed in the first title is stressed even further by the opening main clause, “he says these things” (tade legei). As noted in the introduction, this fixed expression occurs over 250 times in the LXX, where it appears as part of the fuller Hebrew phrase “thus says the LORD (Almighty).” By John’s day, however, this construction sounded old-fashioned, like the English expression “thus saith” would today (Aune 1997: 141). It would catch the attention of John’s audience, however, not just because of its old-fashioned sound but, more important, because it evokes divine power: like the One who spoke this formula in the OT, Christ is the divine and powerful God. Although “he says these things” introduces all seven of the sermons, its presence here supplements the notion of power conveyed by the first Christ title.

It is difficult to determine with certainty the meaning of the seven stars that Christ holds in his powerful right hand. Although the preceding chapter tells us that “the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches” (1:20), this answer simply raises another highly disputed question about what the word “angel” means here. This Greek word for “messenger” (angelos) is often used in the NT for God’s special envoys, angels. Proposals for what the word means here in Rev. 1:20 fall into two broad categories: angelos refers to (1) human beings, either messengers to or leaders of each church, or to (2) supernatural beings, either guardian angels who lead and protect each church or personified heavenly counterparts of the prevailing spirit of each church. Key considerations in this debate include the fact that elsewhere in the book of Revelation angelos always (69×) refers to a supernatural being, early Christian texts rarely use angelos to refer to a human being, and Jewish writings from this time period frequently depict heavenly angels as guiding and safeguarding the actions of earthly kings and nations (e.g., Dan. 10:13, 20–21). Therefore, the “seven stars,” which are the seven “angels,” most likely symbolize the guardian angels of each congregation (for a fuller discussion of the options and their relative strengths and weaknesses, see Aune 1997: 108–12; Osborne 2002: 98–99). Happily, our understanding of the first Christ title does not depend on resolving this disputed question. Regardless of what the seven stars refer to, the Christ title in the Ephesian sermon is intended to highlight Christ’s sovereign power. The one who is about to speak does not merely possess but firmly grasps the seven stars in his all-powerful right hand.

The power of Christ spotlighted in the first Christ title likely involves a polemic against Rome. Its emperors liked to present themselves on coins as demigods whose power extended beyond earth to control the planets and the stars. After the death of his ten-year-old son in AD 83, Domitian declared that the boy had become a god and that his wife, Domitia, became the mother of a god. He issued a coin to honor his deceased son (RIC 2:213) that portrays him sitting on a globe in a position of power over the world. Depicting his heavenly dominion over the whole universe, he holds seven stars, representing the seven planets, in his outstretched arms.

Figure 1.1. Left: Domitia, wife of Domitian. Right: Deceased son of Domitian seated on a globe and surrounded by seven stars. [Public domain]

Figure 1.2. Left: Wreathed head of Hadrian. Right: Crescent moon with seven stars. [Public domain]

The later emperor Hadrian (AD 117–138) issued a coin (RIC 2:202) with his image on one side and with a crescent moon and seven stars on the other. The not so subtle message is that Hadrian is powerful enough to control not only earthly events but also what happens in the heavens among the moon and seven stars.

Christ’s depiction in the first title as “the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand” should therefore be seen as a challenge to Roman power. The Jesus who has already been identified earlier in the book of Revelation as “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5) is once again portrayed as the one whose cosmic power exceeds the claims of Rome. As Beasley-Murray (1978: 70) notes, “When John declares that the seven stars are in Christ’s right hand, he is claiming that the sovereignty over this world resides not in the Caesars of Rome but in the Lord of the Church” (for more on the polemic here against Rome, see also Krodel 1989: 95; Beale 1999: 108).

The second of the two Christ titles identifies the speaker as “the one who walks in the middle of the seven golden lampstands.” While the first title conveys Christ’s power, this second title conveys Christ’s presence. This presence is emphasized by another subtle change from the opening vision of 1:9–20. In 1:13 Christ is seen simply as being in the midst of the seven golden lampstands (the Greek text has no verb); here Christ “walks” (peripatōn) among them. The opening vision identifies the seven lampstands with the seven churches (1:20); the second Christ title therefore portrays Jesus as intimately present with the congregations of Asia Minor and walking among them. He has power over life both on earth and in the heavens, and his sovereign control exceeds that of any Roman emperor; yet he is not a ruler who is distant and removed but is present and near his churches, including the Ephesian congregation.

Christ’s presence contains a dual aspect of both comfort and challenge. On the one hand, the believers in Ephesus are comforted by the knowledge that they are not alone: the all-powerful Christ is present and “watches over” them as they face false apostles, unorthodox teachings, and other threats to their spiritual well-being. On the other hand, they are challenged by the knowledge that the all-powerful Christ is present and “watches” them, which gives him an intimate knowledge of their spiritual condition (2:2, “I know . . .”) and reinforces his warning about the potential need for him to come and remove their lampstand (2:5).

The Commendation (2:2–3, 6)

Christ typically begins his address to each particular church by commending its members for what they are doing well, a pattern that begins here. Yet his praise of the Ephesian congregation is hardly a perfunctory act or token note of politeness before he turns to what he really wants to say in the complaint. Instead, the commendation in the Ephesian sermon is fulsome and strong, and this fact ought not to be downplayed (as, e.g., Wall 1991: 69, who claims that Ephesus, perhaps along with Laodicea, is the most severely condemned of the seven churches). Although Christ commends the church for a number of things, the ultimate characteristic that connects these items of praise together concerns the Ephesian believers’ orthodoxy—their passion for the truth and aggressive effort not to be misled by the wicked, whether they be false apostles or the Nicolaitans.

The Main Commendation (2:2–3)

The commendation begins with what will become a standard opening formula for all seven sermons: “I know.” The choice of the word for “know” is regarded as significant by some. They claim that the verb used here (oida) refers to “full or complete knowledge” in contrast to another Greek verb (ginōskō) that “speaks of progress of knowledge” (Thomas 1992: 133). However, this distinction in meaning is not supported by the use of these two verbs in the rest of the book of Revelation (oida: 2:2, 9, 13, 17, 19; 3:1, 8, 15, 17; 7:14; 12:12; 19:12; ginōskō: 2:23, 24; 3:3, 9). Nor must we rely on the verb to convey the idea of Jesus’s “full or complete knowledge.” The second Christ title has already introduced Jesus as the one who is walking among the seven lampstands, that is, the seven churches, and this means that he is fully aware of the situation of each church and thereby wholly justified in his commendation and his complaint. The object of this complete knowledge of Christ is “your works.” This same object is used with this opening formula in all seven sermons except two (2:9, Smyrna; 2:13, Pergamum). To Protestant ears, the word “works” may be associated with “deeds” as opposed to “faith,” to what people do in contrast to what people believe. Yet it is clear from the seven sermons as a whole that the word “works” refers to both. This is understandable when we remember that actions are intimately connected to beliefs. Therefore, all seven sermons deal not only with right and wrong conduct but with the right and wrong thinking that lies behind such conduct.

The works of the Ephesians that Christ fully knows are clarified as “your labor and perseverance.” The Greek text lists all three nouns in a simple sequential manner that literally reads, “I know your works and labor and your perseverance.” Based on its similarity to 1 Thess. 1:3, where these three nouns are listed in the same order, some see here not just a triad but “a traditional Christian triad” (Beasley-Murray 1978: 74; see also Aune 1997: 142; Michaels 1997: 70). However, there are compelling reasons not to view the three terms equally as objects of what Christ knows but instead to see the second and third terms as specific explanations of the first generic term: (1) “works” occurs in the plural, in contrast to “labor” and “perseverance,” which are in the singular; (2) none of the four subsequent sermons that have “works” as the object of what Christ knows include both “labor” and “perseverance” (see 2:19; 3:1, 8, 15); (3) the personal pronoun “your” is included with the first and third terms but not with the second, suggesting that it applies to the last two terms and that the terms belong together (“your labor and perseverance”); and (4) the second and third terms are picked up and repeated in the immediately following clauses, but the first term is not. Therefore, the conjunction (kai) that appears before the second term almost certainly has an explanatory function (BDAG 495.1.c) so that the commendation should read: “I know your works, namely, your labor and perseverance” (as many commentators agree).

This conclusion is not merely a technical grammatical point but an important clue for understanding the structure of the rest of Christ’s commendation of the Ephesians, as the two explanatory terms are further explicated. The word “labor” is explained in the rest of 2:2, which deals with the church’s active response to those challenging orthodoxy, and the word “perseverance” is elucidated in 2:3, which describes the church’s passive response to the situation they face (so Charles 1920: 49; Thomas 1992: 133; Osborne 2002: 112). Forms of these two terms appear in subsequent verses (the noun “labor” in v. 2 has the same root as the verb “to grow weary” in v. 3; “perseverance” in v. 2 is repeated in v. 3). Likewise, the double use of a third term (“to endure” in v. 2 also appears in v. 3) lends lexical coherence to this subunit (i.e., the commendation of 2:2–3) within the sermon. All of these observations strengthen the case that the structure proposed above is not merely imagined by modern exegetes but was intended by the ancient author. This two-part structure of the commendation can be seen more easily when the text is presented as follows:

“Labor” refers to the Ephesian church’s active response to those challenging orthodoxy, which is explained in the rest of verse 2: “and you are not able to endure wicked people, and you tested those who call themselves apostles—and they are not—and you have found them false.”

“Perseverance” refers to the Ephesian church’s passive response to those challenging orthodoxy, which is explained in verse 3: “and you have perseverance and you have endured [wicked people] on account of my name and have not grown weary.”

The labor of the Ephesian church is first explained as “You are not able to endure wicked people.” This church’s concern for orthodoxy is revealed in their refusal to tolerate anyone who can be called “wicked.” The congregation in Ephesus does not succumb to the temptation to avoid conflict by simply putting up with those in their midst whose character and conduct are evil; instead, the church’s passion for the truth makes them unable to endure such folks.

The depth of the Ephesian congregation’s defense of orthodoxy becomes even clearer in the second way that their labor is explained: “You tested those who call themselves apostles.” The word “apostle” has three different meanings in the NT and early Christian literature. (1) It sometimes refers narrowly to the twelve disciples of Jesus (see Rev. 21:14)—a meaning that is impossible here in 2:2, since it is far-fetched to believe that anyone at this late date would try to pass themselves off as one of the original disciples or that Christ would commend the Ephesian church for discerning such an obvious falsehood. (2) On a few occasions, the word “apostle” refers to those who are simply messengers without any extraordinary status other than the authority of the person or church sending them on a mission (John 13:16; Phil. 2:25; 2 Cor. 8:23). (3) The term “apostle” most often, however, refers to “highly honored believers with a special function as God’s envoys” (BDAG 122.2.c). Such apostles include not only well-known leaders such as Paul, James (Gal. 1:19), and Barnabas (Acts 14:14) but also more obscure figures such as Andronicus and Junia (Rom. 16:7) as well as unnamed individuals who claimed divine commissioning and authority (see 2 Cor. 11:5; 12:11). Those whom the Ephesians tested claimed to belong to this third category. They were not merely messengers but missionaries who called themselves “apostles,” thereby invoking divine authority for their teachings.

The danger faced by the Ephesian congregation was common in the early church. The Letter of 2 John exhorts its readers not to welcome into their house-church gatherings itinerant preachers “who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh” (2 John 7; see also 1 John 4:1–3a). The Letter of Jude addresses the problem of “shepherds” (i.e., leaders, Jude 12) from outside the local church who “have secretly slipped in among you” and “who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 4). The Letter of 2 Peter warns its readers that, just as “there were false prophets” among the people of God in OT times, so also “there will be false teachers among you” (2 Pet. 2:1). The Didache, an anonymous Christian treatise dating to the late first century or earl...