The Johannine Prescript (1:4–8)
4John,
To the seven churches in the province of Asia:
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits3 before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and 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.
7“Look, he is coming with the clouds,”4
and “every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him”;
and all peoples on earth “will mourn because of him.”5
So shall it be! Amen.
8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”
John follows his first introduction, which informed his readers that what follows is an apocalypsis from Jesus Christ, with a second, formal introduction that has all the earmarks of a first-century letter (vv, 4–5a). However, this is then joined by several features that mark off this Apocalypse as something unique in the history of literature: first (vv. 5b–6), a benediction with an appropriate “amen” at the end; second (v. 7), an invitation to the reader to be looking for Christ’s coming, using well-known language from Daniel, Zechariah, and Genesis, which also concludes with an “amen”; and finally (v. 8), an announcement from “the Lord God,” who is identified twice with language that emphasizes God’s being the eternal God, thus the only God there is.
To get there John begins with the standard greeting of a first-century Greco-Roman letter: author, to the recipient, greetings. Since he has already identified himself (in v. 1), he now begins with the simple identifier John. The addressees are also put simply: to the seven churches in the province of Asia, who will be identified as to the specifics in verse 11. The salutation itself is very Pauline, and probably reflects his influence on the church at this early period. John has also kept the Pauline word order, “grace to you and peace,” which, as elsewhere in the New Testament, is changed in translation to a more normal English order, grace and peace to you. “Grace” in this context refers to all the benefits that come from God to his people, while “peace” reflects the standard Jewish greeting, shalom. Thus the one benefit (“grace”) comes from God, his goodness bestowed on his people; the other (“peace”) is the resulting benefit that God’s people experience in their relationships with one another—and thus is not here a reference to the internal peace of a “well-arranged heart.”
At this point the salutation takes on a decidedly Trinitarian character, which is unique to this document in the New Testament, both in appearance as such (especially in their order of appearance) and the fact that only Christ is specifically named. Two matters are significant about John’s order. First, by his sandwiching “the seven spirits” between the Father and the Son, John makes it clear that he intends this to be a symbolic reference to the Holy Spirit. The order itself makes any other interpretation so highly improbable as to be nearly impossible. Second, John places Christ in the final position deliberately because of our Lord’s significance to the Revelation itself, which is made clear by the doxology that follows (vv. 5b–6). At the same time, each designation has its own significance.
John first identifies the “grace and peace” as coming from God the Father: him who is, and who was, and who is to come, a designation that will occur twice more in the book (1:8; 4:8). In 11:17 and 16:5 God is designated simply as “the One who is and who was,” because both of these later references have to do with God coming in judgment. The designation itself is a deliberate play on the divine name found in Exodus 3:14, where with a play on the verb “to be” God reveals himself to Moses as “I am who I am” (or perhaps “I will be who I will be”). In John’s narrative this becomes simply a means of identification; it will be elaborated further in verse 8.
The present Johannine designation of the Holy Spirit, the seven spirits [or “sevenfold Spirit”] before his throne, will occur three more times in the Revelation (3:1; 4:5; 5:6). It is used by John only when the perspective is that of heaven. When he refers to the Spirit’s activity on earth John uses more traditional language, notably as the one responsible for his visions (see esp. 1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10) and as the bearer of the prophetic word that is being spoken to the churches (as at the conclusion of the seven “letters” in chs. 2 and 3: “. . . what the Spirit says to the churches”; see also 14:13b and 19:10). The background to John’s present usage lies (typically) with two passages from the Old Testament: Isaiah 11:2, where the Spirit of God is prophesied to rest on the Davidic Messiah, who is designated by six characteristics (in three doublets), which in the Septuagint became a sevenfold designation for the Spirit (Spirit of God, Spirit of wisdom, Spirit of understanding, etc.); and Zechariah 4:2–6, where Zechariah sees a golden lampstand with seven lamps on it and with two olive trees on either side (for a continuous supply of oil), which is explicitly interpreted by the prophet in terms of the Spirit. John now blends these two Old Testament moments as his symbolic way of speaking about the one Holy Spirit. These turn out to be the first of some two hundred echoes of, or references to, John’s and his readers’ Bible, which we now know as the “Old Testament.”
In especially Christian fashion John also includes the exalted Son of God as the source of the “grace and peace” he wishes for them. Thus he adds and from Jesus Christ, who is then identified by three further phrases, each of which is especially pertinent to the “Revelation” that follows. And just as the designations for God the Father and the Spirit are derived from the Old Testament, so are these for Christ—in this case from the very important Psalm 89, which begins (vv. 1–37) as a song of rapturous delight in the Davidic kingship but ends (vv. 38–51) as a bitter lament over its present demise (from the perspective of Ethan the Ezrahite).
First, Christ is the faithful witness, language derived from (but not reflecting the context of) Psalm 89:37, where “the moon” is called “the faithful witness in the sky.” That language is now transferred to Christ. The word translated “witness” (martyrus), which eventually came to mean “martyr,” is here a forensic term, and thus a live metaphor for John, reflecting Christ’s having stood trial and then being sentenced to death. Indeed, this language will occur again only in 2:10 and 13, where it clearly refers to those who have borne witness “unto death.” Thus “Antipas, my faithful witness, . . . was put to death in your city” (2:13). In turn these linguistic realities are what caused the Greek word to make its way into English not as a word for “witness” but as a reference to someone who is put to death by others “on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause.”6
But, second, Christ is also the firstborn from the dead, language that echoes Psalm 89:27 (“I will appoint him to be my firstborn”), a passage that reflects the psalmist’s confidence in the continuation of the Davidic kingship. Here is language that carried meaning for John’s own readers but could get lost on contemporary ones, since it is based on the reality of primogeniture in these cultures, where the firstborn son was the primary heir, and thus had both position and privilege. The significance of this designation is to be found in Exodus 4:22, where Yahweh says to Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son”—even though historically he was in fact second. Eventually this language was applied to David and his heirs (see esp. Ps 2:2 and 7, where the Davidic king is addressed, “you are my Son”). For John, of course, Christ is not just God’s “firstborn” in terms of position, but is especially “the firstborn from the dead,” who thus through his own resurrection