It’s Better To Receive Than To Give

It’s better to receive than to give. Did you hear me wrong? Did I say that backwards? No I didn’t.

For most people, receiving is harder than giving because receiving is better than giving, and we as humans have trouble doing the better things in life. I am no exception to this rule, but let me explain:

I don’t mean to say that I can’t grow in how generously I give my money, resources, time and self. Certainly I can grow in this. Sometimes, giving is even hard. In the past, giving financially was really hard for me, but God has made me grow in my trust of Him as provider and lover. And now, I enjoy the exhilarating feeling it is to give generously.

Nevertheless, receiving is harder for me than giving. It is truly humbling. Here is why:

In order to ask anybody for anything and receive it, I must acknowledge first that I’m deficient in some way and need help. Receiving help is one thing, but asking for help is quite another level of humility. When I ask somebody for help, I’m unashamed to admit that I’m weak and need another person’s strength to support me.

Furthermore, when I ask somebody for help, whether that be financially or physically, I’m confessing that I’m weak whereas if somebody else offers help to me and I receive it, I don’t need to confess my weakness nearly as much as when I initiative the request for help.

When you give to somebody else, you put yourself on the strong part of the relationship. When you give to somebody else, even if it’s in a huge sacrificial way, you don’t need to admit that you are weak and needy. But rather, giving is your expression of strength and stability.

That is why it is harder to receive than it is to give because when you give, you don’t need to admit any kind of deficiency that you have. Hence, it is not humbling for you. But when you receive from somebody else, it is deeply humbling because you are admitting your weakness.

Of course there are exceptions to this. No doubt, some people know how to receive way too easily because they are greedy. Truly, our heart is deceitful. Nevertheless, most people find it hard to receive and find it easier to give.

This is why Heather and I did find it hard to ask for financial support with her lyme disease treatment. It was humbling because we recognized our deficiency.

If you aren’t so convinced that receiving is better than giving, then let me explain this from Scripture. Here are a few reasons that receiving is better than giving:

(1) Others benefit from giving to you. So receive it! In Acts 20:35, Paul mentions how Jesus was known for saying, “it is more blessed to give and to receive.”

You might say, “see, you are wrong Aaron! It’s not better to receive than to give. In Jesus own words, He said ‘it’s more blessed to give than to receive!'”

I understand that, and for that reason, I love giving to others and I always feel blessed because God blesses me when I give.

However, in order for this verse to work, if others will be blessed in giving, then it must mean that the recipients of their giving must be willing to receive it.

You see, if nobody will receive from me what I want to give them, then they’ve refused me a blessing, which is unkind. From experience, I always feel most blessed when I give to others. Therefore, when others receive from my giving, they are actually allowing me to be blessed. Their reception of my giving blessed me. This means that when they receive my gift, they bless me. For that reason, receiving is much better than giving.

Applying the same logic to others then, if I am going to bless others and not myself, then I must be willing to receive from them.

According to Jesus words, when you give, it’s divinely selfish in a good way because it blesses yourself. In the words of 2 Corinthians 8:10, “this benefits you.” But when you receive from somebody else what they want to give to you, you are allowing them to be blessed!

Therefore, in order for us to be truly selfless, we must become good receivers because in doing so, we bless others as they give to us.

For that reason, I kid you not, my wife and I decided to open up a gofundme account in order to ask for support during her battle with lyme disease. In doing so, we recognized that we would be giving our friends the opportunity to be blessed because truly, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” You see, by opening up the opportunity for us to receive, we were actually giving others the opportunity to be blessed. So really, when you receive, you are giving. You give somebody the opportunity to be blessed by giving to you.

Therefore, we hope that we’ve blessed many people by allowing them to receive the blessing of giving to us. We believe this with all of our heart because we believe in Jesus words.

(2) Another reason that receiving is better than giving is because behind all giving there is reception.

Therefore, giving must submit to receiving. 

To put it simply, all that you can give came from receiving what somebody else gave to you…a paycheck, inheritance, Christmas check, etc…

In 2 Corinthians 8-9, the Apostle Paul encourages the Church of Corinth to finish giving what they promised to give to other Church saints. In trying to persuade them to give, he uses reception language.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul tries to motivate the rich Christians of Corinth to give by explaining how God’s grace had fueled some poor Christians in Macedonia to give generously. He writes, “we want you to know, brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the Churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”

Notice the word grace. A synonym for grace is gift. And notice that this was not just some ordinary grace, this was ‘the grace of God.’ Now listen to the way that Paul opens up his commendation of the Macedonian Christians generous giving: “we want you to know, brothers about the grace of God that has been given among the Churches…” You see, Paul wants the Church of Corinth to know about God’s grace that has been given to the Churches. And it was out of these poor Churches of Macedonia reception of God’s gift that they were able to give so generously.

What did these poor Christians have to give? Like anybody, they could only give that which they had received. So what had they received? They received the grace of God. Without being willing to receive the grace of God, they would not have been able to give so generously.

So it is with us. The reason that receiving comes before giving is because God is our source of wealth and riches and all that we have comes from Him. All that we give comes from receiving His gift of life. Even the money that we earn through arduous labor comes from the body that God so graciously gave us with energy in it to work for income.

In all giving, receiving comes first.

But these Macedonian Christians are interesting because they were extremely poor. So what did they have to give? How could they give?

Paul gives us the answer in chapter 8 verse 9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.”

That describes the Gospel.

So do you see it? In order for us to give as God wants us to give, we must receive Jesus Christ as our riches and what He gave to us, not what we can give to Him, but what He gave to us!

Giving then, flows out of receiving the gospel, the gospel being that Jesus Christ had to die for our sins. In fact, He became sin (2 Cor. 5:21) for us. That means that He became the debt of death that the wages of our sin earned. And He paid it off by becoming spiritually eternally poor on the cross.

What Jesus sought to do on the cross was make a spiritual bank transfer to us so that through His poverty we might become rich. It was His richly perfect life that He sought to give us in order to pay our eternal debt of death caused by our sin.

As Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death.”

Therefore, Jesus had to die for us.

In 2 Corinthians 9:13 Paul continues to explain how giving comes from our reception of the Gospel, “by their approval of this service (giving), they will glorify God because of your submission flowing from your confession of the Gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others…”

Paul is explaining the process of giving as submission, and the kind that flows out of confessing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is saying that when we give, we are confessing the Gospel. But when we confess the Gospel, we are confessing our spiritual poverty that has nothing to give to God for our sin. In fact, it’s more than that. When we confess the Gospel, we admit that it’s good news that Jesus Christ took away our bad news. And the bad news was that we had an eternal debt of death that we had earned for our sin. Therefore, when we confess the Gospel we confess that not only do we have nothing, but we have less than nothing. We owe God death debt. So in order to confess the gospel, we admit that Jesus took our death debt by dieing for our sins on the cross which we could only RECEIVE because we had nothing to give Him because we were in desperate debt. 

Therefore, the essence of the Gospel on our part is receiving, and God’s part is giving.

Therefore, when you give, you submit to your confession of  the gospel which is the process whereby you receive Jesus Christ’s richness. Therefore, giving always submits to receiving. In order to truly give, your giving must always humbly bow in your submission to receiving. Yes, to give is to receive. Giving can only follow receiving.

That is why the impoverished Macedonian Christians could give “above their means” (2 Cor. 8:3). They gave above their financial means because they had received the free “grace of God that was given (to them)” (2 Cor. 8:1). The grace of Jesus that they received was Jesus Christ’s riches of righteousness in replacement for their poverty of sin.  Because they had received the riches of righteousness found in God’s eternal gospel, they could give freely. They demonstrated Psalm 112:9 which Paul quotes later in 2 Corinthians 9:9, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endured forever.”

When our righteousness endures forever because we’ve received the rich righteousness of Jesus Christ as a free gift, then we can give freely to others because we’ve already confessed in the gospel of rich righteousness that acknowledges that we have nothing, but God has everything! Therefore, our God who has everything in Christ will certainly give to us so that we can give to others. But it all begins with reception.

We must receive Christ, and by receiving Christ instead of trying to give to Him, we learn the ways of giving:

God gives and we receive. This is what Romans 4:4 says, “⁴ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. ⁵ And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” 

Do you see it? We must learn the art of receiving if we will be righteous as God wants. And reception in Romans 4:4-5 is illustrating our faith in God through Christ.

So our part is faith/reception and God’s part is to give.

This is what Jesus says in Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus wants to serve us, we can’t serve Him. That’s what Jesus says. At least, we can’t serve Him in the sense that we give Him anything that He lacks. Because Jesus is God, and He is perfect, He doesn’t lack anything. Hence He doesn’t need served!

But He came to serve us. He came to give to us. And our part is to receive from Him His death that sought to clear our guilty debt and give us the riches of His grace so that we have something to give others in return.

Because what Jesus gives us is eternal, it means that we never run out of the ability to give out of our eternal bank of Jesus.

But you must receive Him first, which leads me to the final reason that it’s better to receive than to give:

(3) The way into the Kingdom of God is asking & receiving.

When you receive from other people, and especially when you ask them for help, you are practicing the way of the gospel that leads you to heaven.

Jesus says, “ask and it will be given to you; see, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

He also says that whoever would like to enter the Kingdom of Heaven must demonstrate child like faith. In Matthew 18:2-4, Jesus says as He calls a child next to Him, “truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Becoming like a child is what it takes to enter Heaven, which is apparently a humbling process. Why? Because children can only receive receive and receive some more! And as I mentioned before, this is humbling.

I have 2 little sons in my life right now. They are needy little guys. They can only receive from us. Yet, when my oldest one refuses to eat what my wife and I offer him, we aren’t happy because we want him to receive everything that we give him because we know that he needs it, although sometimes he thinks that he doesn’t!

This illustrates the way to Heaven. God has provides us with His Son Jesus as our Bread of Life. If we refuse Him, then we won’t be nourished and we won’t make it to heaven because we won’t live to get there.

We need to be like children who humbly receive.

Furthermore, we need to receive Jesus as the One Who makes us rich. Kids only have the riches that are in their parents bank account. Not only that, but they need their parents to spend the riches because the kids wouldn’t know how to use it even if they had it.

That represents us. We need the Lord’s provision. We’re too young to work for anything good. We must receive. Plus anything that we have to give is because our Heavenly Father gave us an allowance!

His allowance comes from Christ Jesus and is Jesus Himself.

God the Father provided us with Jesus Christ, sent from Heaven, born of a virgin, Who lived a sinless life, was crucified for our sins, paid our debt of death by dying, and rose from the grave in order to raise us with Him. And we will follow in His pathway to a glorious resurrection that blasts through death into life everlasting.

All we need to do is receive Him. 

You know, the only people who will be in Hell are those who wouldn’t receive Jesus Christ. There will only be givers in Hell. That is, there will be those who tried to give their life for God as if they had something to offer Him, while He, all along, was reaching out His hand through His Son Jesus to give them His gracious free gift and “get out of jail free” card. But they wouldn’t take it because in reaching out their hand to give, they clenched their fist shut as they held onto whatever they had to offer, and in doing so, they closed their fist to God and rejected opening up their hands to His gift of Jesus.

Yes, to be givers, we must first be receivers because receiving is the way to God and the way to Heaven.

I think that Psalm 23 illustrates this:

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” and the reason that we shall not want is because God has given us everything that we need through our Great Shepherd Jesus Christ Who we have received and we will follow into Heaven.

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*P.S. For those of you who might be reading this and have given to Heather and I in any shape and form, I don’t intend this post to be a rude response to your giving as if to say that we’ve done something better than you have by receiving what you’ve given. I certainly do not intend to say that. In fact, I intend to say the opposite.

We’ve been humbled by our neediness and your generosity. And we think that your giving flows out of your reception of the gospel. Like I said, in all giving there is receiving. Giving submits to receiving. Therefore, we are gladdened by the prospect that your giving has come from your submission of your confession of the Gospel. We assume that you’ve learned the art of receiving God’s grace for your life which has overflowed in generous giving to us. And we are recipients of the way that God has given through you. As God has given to you, which you have clearly received, your reception is blessing us!

Ultimately though, it’s only the Lord who gives and gives and gives without the need to receive, and He has given to us through you which started when you received from Him what you in turn gave to us! Thanks for being good receivers! We are blessed in return and abundantly thankful!

Psalm 46 – I Need Help To Help The Lord

I need help to help the Lord,
I can’t help him on my own,

He helped me, the gospel shown,
To help Him back, I can’t afford,

I need help to help the Lord,
Hence He gave His Holy Spirit,

Now God’s work, I don’t fear it,
My flesh is divinely bored.

I need help to help the Lord,
Be still, know that God is God,

His work is never flawed,
A new world comes by His sword,

I need help to help the Lord,
To trust in Him through His Word,

God’s promises aren’t absurd,
With His plan, I’ll jump on board,

I need help to help the Lord,
Christ alone gets the applause,

My job is be still and pause,
At Christ the hero who has scored,

I need help to help the Lord,
Exchanged life of Christ through me,

God’s sovereign work will always be,
God’s life in me, His power stored,

But…

God alone gets the reward,
Cause He’s the one Who sings the chord,

‘Be still and know I am Lord,
The earth is so badly torn,

You can’t make the land restored,
But I am God, I’ll be adored.’

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Psalm 46

“1God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.

² Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
    though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

³ though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Selah

 

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy habitation of the Most High.

⁵ God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
    God will help her when morning dawns.

⁶ The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;
    he utters his voice, the earth melts.

⁷ The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah

 

⁸ Come, behold the works of the Lord,
    how he has brought desolations on the earth.

⁹ He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
    he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
    he burns the chariots with fire.

¹⁰ “Be still, and know that I am God.
    I will be exalted among the nations,
    I will be exalted in the earth!”

¹¹ The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah”

Look Beyond The Hills

Psalm 121:1-2 says, “I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.”

It is not only important to understand where your help comes from, but it is of paramount importance to understand where your help does not come from.

In Psalm 121, the guy writing this Psalm looks to the hills and says, “nope, they won’t help me, but the Creator of them will.”

I think that this is profound.

Before you can recognize where your help comes from, you must know where it does not come from.

It doesn’t ultimately come from our planet earth or even the sky above it. Medicine which comes from different kinds of plants, healthy food that comes from plants or animals, and sunlight which comes from the sky above us, does not help us like the Creator of them does.

In times of a health crisis, it is very easy to depend on your medication plan and the doctors who treat you. And yet, your help does not come from pharmaceutics or people because pharmaceutical help comes from plants and people are molded from dirt–so both are coming from this earth.

With only one exception, it is absolutely true that human beings rely on everything that comes from the heavens above us (the sky) and the earth around us for our help.

The only one exception is the God who made our heavens and earth. In Psalm 121, this man looks to the One Exception, God Himself. He looks above the hills for his help and by doing so, he looks past his problems to the One Who is sovereign over everything.

The reason that He looks to God Who made heaven and earth and not heaven and earth itself is because he is not an evolutionist. To him, the hills were molded with care, but he knows that they don’t care for him.

Mother earth as we call her, is not so motherly. She does not care for us. She is unstable at best because at one moment she paints us a beautiful portrait in the sky at the break of dawn, but at the next moment she sends us a terrible tornado that ravishes a town. Mother earth is not so motherly.

Therefore, this Psalmist looks beyond our unstable world to the immutable One Who is Himself a Father that loves us.

And we know that He loves us because He, unlike the hills that show no mercy, did show us mercy and grace by sending His own Son down to the earth in order to be treated unkind by His own creation to prove that creation isn’t much help.

But the Maker of the heavens and earth is our help because He allowed His planet earth to kill Him through the hate of his people (made from the dirt), and an old rugged cross (made from a tree), planted on the hill of Calvary.

So look to that hill and you will find that it only crucified its Maker. But our Maker used His creation to bring no help to Himself so that He could become ultimate help to us.

By allowing God’s creation to kill Jesus, Jesus made a new creation out of us.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come” -2 Corinthians 5:17.

Therefore,  lift your eyes to the hills and ask yourself,  ‘where does my help come?’ Your help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. And He can remake you too.

 

Sharing in Suffering

I think I’m beginning to understand what it’s like to feel an eternal fraction of the pain that our Father God felt when He lost His Son. Jesus Christ died, but God lost His Son. That is to say, Jesus Christ felt one kind of loss and God the Father felt another type of loss. Jesus lost His body, but God lost His Son.

We often think about the one who suffers in their body from a disease and we pray for them. But we often forget about the parent of that child who suffers. And we often empathize for the husband who has brain cancer, but we overlook his wife.

Or might I say that we at least look at the one who has a chronic disease and assume that their physical pain is greater than their spouse’s emotional pain.

And then remember, God the Father lost His Son. As the good hymn says,

“How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

How great the pain of searing loss
The Father turns His face away
As wounds which mar the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory”

In other words, Christ suffered as His Father turned His face away but how great the pain of searing loss as God the Father lost His Son!

For that reason, I think when people go through physical pain, they experience God the Son’s pain. And when the sibling, parent or spouse of the one undergoing physical pain feels a knot in their stomach, they’re experiencing the Father’s pain. What a beautiful unity of pain that our Father and Son share for us!

I think that John 10:30 is a great verse that explains how God the Father and God the Son felt the pain of death and sickness together. Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.”

Therefore, they were also one in their affliction. Christ lost His Body but His Father lost His Son!

We are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) and one of the greatest ways that we mirror God’s image is by when a husband and wife unite together as a one flesh relationship. “…and they shall become one flesh” as Genesis 2:24 says.

In other words, just as God the Father and God the Son are one (John 10:30), He created marriage so that a man and woman can experience the oneness that God the Father and Son experience.

Therefore, when a husband or wife suffers, they both suffer together as one–one flesh. When the wife suffers, the husband suffers and when the husband suffers, the wife suffers just like when God the Son suffered, the Father suffered.

Of course, the suffering looks differently for the spouse who is healthy and the spouse who is sick as the one endures the physical pain and the other experiences a type of secondary pain. Although the pain shared feels different, it is still very real.

Just as Jesus Christ endured the loss of His body and His Father endured the loss of His Son–and they were one–a spouse will endure the loss of his/her body while the other will endure the loss of his/her spouse, and because they are one, this pain is shared.

But here is yet another dimension of how God designed the sharing of suffering:

Just as God the Father and God the Son are one (John 10:30), and a wife and husband are one (Genesis 2:24), the Church also is one with Christ (Ephesians 5:31-32).

Ephesians 5:31-32 very clearly explains how, just as a marriage union is a reflection of the Father and Son’s union, the marriage union between a husband and wife is also a reflection of the Church’s union with Christ. It says, “‘therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.” 

Therefore, the same united experience of pain that God the Father and His Son felt, and the same shared experience of pain that a husband and wife feel, is the same union of suffering that the Church and Christ feel.

What this means is that the Church should share in Christ’s sufferings too.

There are a whole slew of verses that reiterate this like:

1 Peter 2:21 says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”

2 Timothy 3:12 says, “ Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

Philippians 1:29 says, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake…”

2 Corinthians 4:10 says, “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

Colossians 1:24 says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,”

And finally, 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together;

You can hear the language of oneness in all of these verses. In particular, you can notice how the Church shares in Christ’s sufferings because of our oneness with Him.

In Ephesians 1:3-13, we as God’s Church are described as “in Christ” 10 times. I say that to say that because we are in Christ, we share in His sufferings and He still suffers through us. Colossians 1:24 makes this apparent.

We are Christ’s Body, which means that He feels all of our suffering. But Christ is our Head, which means that we ought to also feel all of His sufferings too.

In 1 Corinthians 12:26, it makes the connection between suffering and union. “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” That means that as a Church Body of Christ, not only are we united to Christ alone, but we are united to Christ together. Therefore, we are united to one-another and that is why “if one member suffers, all suffer together.”

So I end with this question: Do we suffer as the Bride of Christ knowing what our Groom went through for us? You can be sure that Christ suffers for His Bride when every or any member of Her suffers.

And do we suffer when a member of Christ’s Body suffers? We should because we are united together in a spiritual one flesh relationship. We are united through our union with Christ by His Spirit.

Jesus lost His body but the Father lost His Son. A spouse may suffer in their body but the other spouse shares that pain. And one Church member will suffer but the rest of the Body feels that pain.

This is God’s union of pain. And not only is this a fact of life, but it’s a command from God:

“Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” -2 Timothy 2:3

Revealing Revelation

We’ve been going through the book of Revelation at our Church and I’m growing to love it more and more.

The book of Revelation is very confusing to many people and yet I’ve found that the very title of the book says something different. It’s the book of “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:1). That means, it’s a book that reveals not a book that conceals!

And it’s meant to reveal one main purpose throughout the entire book, and that is, the one main person throughout the Bible, Jesus Christ.

It’s a book filled with future events, but they ought to be interpreted in a Hebrews 13:8 kind of way: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forevermore.”

Therefore, the book of Revelation reveals the same and unchanging Jesus Christ from past settings, in the present environment and through future events. In Revelation 1:19, Jesus Christ Himself gives the divine outline for the book when He tells John, “Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this.”

But don’t forget that the things that John has seen, which are and those that are to take place are the things that are meant to help reveal Jesus Christ.

Keeping that in mind, what helps me understand the book of Revelation is imagining it as an opportunity to see a different characteristic of Jesus Christ revealed within a series of different environments.

The book of Revelation functions very similarly to that wisdom that you may have been told as you date to find a mate: “make sure that you observe your girl friend or boy friend in different environments before you decide to commit your future life to their future self. So watch how they respond to a traffic jam, or how they respond to their family. Watch them in stressful situations and watch them in good situations. How do they rejoice. How do they act around somebody that doesn’t like them very much?”

You get the point.

Revelation is like that. We are witnessing exactly how Jesus Christ acts and responds to the different environments on earth. Jesus as the Groom of His Church Bride is revealing Himself to us through mostly the stressful parts of this world. And there is nothing like a stressful environment to show one’s true colors.

In the book of Revelation, the true colors of Jesus Christ are shown with even brighter hues than the rest of the Bible. In fact, it kind of fills in some of the missing colors to what the rest of Scripture reveals to us about Jesus. Lets say that the Bible sketches the attributes of Jesus Christ for us and Revelation finishes the Bible’s masterpiece of Jesus by coloring it in for us!

With that perspective of Revelation, let’s dive a little deeper into it’s context so that we might see our Jesus Christ “yesterday,” our Jesus Christ “today,” and our Jesus Christ “forevermore” (Hebrews 13:8).

In other words, it’s not as if Jesus Christ is changing in Revelation. Hebrews 13:8 is saying that He has always been the same through the past, present and future. But the book of Revelation shows the “past, present and future” (Rev. 1:19) with the clear purpose of revealing Jesus Christ to us (Rev. 1:1). Therefore, let me emphasize what I’m rambling on about: Jesus Christ is revealed in Revelation through the different settings of past, present and future events (Rev. 1:1 +1:19) Yet, He is unchanging through it all.

So why is anything of Jesus Christ revealed to us at all in the book of Revelation if He doesn’t change? Shouldn’t we know Him Who is the same in a predictable way? No, because although Jesus doesn’t change, we as double minded human beings often change our mind on Jesus even though He doesn’t change His mind on us. Therefore, the book of Revelation will help draw out for us more of the unchanging character of Jesus Christ that has always been there, but that we do not always see so well.

So again, let’s actually dive into Revelation’s context so that we might see the unchanging character of Jesus Christ “yesterday,” our Jesus Christ “today,” and our Jesus Christ “forevermore” (Hebrews 13:8).

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If you can’t dive into a body of water without knowing how deep it is first, then you should never dive into the Bible without seeking the depth of its context.

And the book of Revelation has some really deep context because it comes after an entire story from God has been written. Revelation is like the Mariana trench in the ocean: it’s good for spiritual deep diving, not just spiritual snorkeling. This is the last chapter in God’s story. So really, you should swim through the entire Bible in order to grasp this.

But for lack of time or speed reading ability, I’ll summarize the story of the Bible with a  relatively quick summary of it and by showing how Jesus Christ fulfills a revelation of Himself from the (1) past of the Bible, (2) the  present and (3) forever future through the book of Revelation:

Let’s begin with the way that Jesus Christ is revealed from the past:

(1) Jesus Christ Is Revealed As The Second Adam from Genesis 1-3. 

The end of the chapter in God’s story reflects the first chapter of God’s story. Therefore, Revelation can be understood very well if you understand Genesis. Believe it or not, you can gain a lot of insight into the story of the Bible by reading Genesis and then Revelation.

Therefore, Revelation comes after God dictates His grandiose purpose of humanity to Adam in Genesis 2:26, “‘And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.'”

In Genesis 3 we find that Adam fails to have dominion/rein over God’s earth well because he allows an evil scaly snake call the shots over his wife’s life, who ends up calling the shots over his life, which ultimately oversteps God’s rule. All in all, Satan, manifested as a snake, creates anarchy by turning God’s latter of authority on its head. Instead of God ruling man who loves His wife who together (1 Peter 3:7) both care for God’s creatures, Satan the creature rules the woman who rules her husband who makes it appear like he rules over God (a reversal of how 1 Corinthians 11:3 describes it- “…the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.”).

Therefore, Satan came creeping on earth in the form of a snake on purpose. He also came crawling to the woman instead of the man on purpose, because Satan was after rebellion. He wanted to flip God’s rule on its head. He knew that God created God to rule over man who rules over woman who together (as ‘co-heirs’) rule over the animals.

Therefore, Satan came as the animal in an effort to rule over the woman who would rule over her husband who would together try to overstep God’s rule. This was Satan’s plan and he seemed to succeed.

In fact, today, we see the world as if Satan has succeeded (Hebrews 2:8), even though He hasn’t.

Even by God’s own admission, Satan is “the prince of the power of the air” according to Ephesians 2:2.

Therefore, the result is, now, for humanity to only know an earth that is mostly categorized as a rebellion against God with Satan as the leader of it all. People are more sensitive to their pet animal & the sound of their bark than they are to God & the sound of His Word. This is led by Satan, the serpent of old who’s animal voice Eve listened to over the voice of God. Seriously, people often let animals rule their world more than they do God. This is the design of Genesis 3 with Satan the snake as the criminal mastermind.

Therefore, the book of Revelation is a renewed ‘Genesis.’ Literally, that translates into a “new beginning.” Revelation is the new “genesis” as Jesus does what Adam could not.

Therefore, Jesus is the second Adam in Revelation. He is the Romans 5:14 man…a type of Adam to come.

Therefore, in the book of Revelation, Jesus reverses the upside down rule of this world in order for God to rule man, with man & woman to rule the world filled with all of the plants and animals.

Psalm 24 is a wonderful Psalm that gives a foretaste of Revelation.  It says, “1 the earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein., for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. 3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully…7 Lift up your head, O gates! And be lifted up O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!…” 

You see, in the book of Revelation, Jesus is the King who comes back to His planet that He founded. It rightfully belongs to Him. He wants to have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heaven and everything that moves on the earth, in a way that Adam did not. But it won’t come without a battle from the One Who is “mighty in battle,” our LORD of hosts.

The only reason that we see some great battles in Revelation as well as throughout the Old Testament is because people are in rebellion against God, the creator of His world, and they won’t give back to God the rightful rule over His land, His earth, and His people, which they stole and Satan initiated.

Therefore, in Revelation Jesus, the Son of Man, displays perfect dominion over all of creation and regains the right kind of dominion that God created man to show over all of creation. But it won’t come without a fight.

Therefore, Jesus does what Adam would not do by crushing the head of the serpent in order to protect His Bride, the Church.

(2) Jesus Christ Is Revealed As Protecting His Bride & God’s Children To Prepare A Wedding And Set up A Home

This leads me to look at the second way that Jesus is revealed in Revelation. He is revealed in more detail as our present Groom of the Church & Older Brother of God’s Children.

I describe Jesus Christ as our present Groom in Revelation because the book of Revelation is addressed to God’s Church Bride (1:4, 22:16) and ends with “the Spirit and the Bride say ‘come.'” In other words, the present attributes of Jesus Christ as Groom of our Church is really brought out in the book of Revelation:

Here is how it looks:

In Revelation, Jesus does what Adam didn’t when he allowed the snake to trick his wife into ruin. Adam passively sinned. But in Revelation we see Jesus aggressively righteous. He delivers justice. His patience has finally run out over the history of mankind’s rebellion and He is filled with vengeance towards Satan with a passion to protect His Bride (Revelation 2-3, 19). Therefore, Jesus does what Adam did not by protecting His Bride against the serpent,  and throwing Satan the Serpent into Hell (Revelation 20:10).

All of this, God does, because He loves His Bride!

With that in mind, in Revelation you see Jesus revealed doing what Deuteronomy 32:43 says so well! “Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods,
for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries.
He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land” (this same purpose statement is reiterated almost verbatim in Revelation 12:17, 16:6, 18:20, 24 & 19:2).

So in one way, Jesus is protecting His bride in the book of Revelation. In another way, Jesus is protecting God’s children. That is, Christ is defending His household against the world that has broken into it. Christ is sending deadly plagues and catastrophes in order to show that He is the Man Who exercises perfect dominion over His household of children on His plot of land.

Unlike Adam, Jesus won’t stand by and do nothing about evil that comes intruding into His household. He won’t let a snake slighter through the cracks of His home. Jesus will protect His family and He does.

Jesus will “repay those who hate Him and cleanse His people’s land” (Duet. 32:43). The world is His land, and He will do anything in order to protect His children and newly married bride from evil and harm. Revelation 22:14-15 captures this point well:

“¹⁴ Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. ¹⁵ Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.“

This shows how God intends to both prepare a dwelling place for His children & protect His future city of children from evil with a boundary line of protection. The mention of  ‘gates’ pictures a wall around God’s future city (set up on a renewed earth).

Therefore, all of Revelation can be seen as God working at trying to rebuild a city for His children with a wall of protection around it (think of the story of Nehemiah 4). As God seeks to rebuild His land with His city and a ‘fence/wall’ around it, the world fights against His construction project because they think that it is their world. They don’t want to give it up, neither do they want God to be their ruler or builder. They (& we) want it for our-self, ruled by us and not by God.

Furthermore, I think it’s also very important to add that in the book of Revelation as well as all of God’s Word, when God wages war on people, it’s always because people have first initiated the fight against God. Revelation 17:14 captures this so well: “they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings…”

So you can see how Jesus doesn’t pick a fight with people; they pick a fight with Him. We the people of this world throw the first punch at God. God responds appropriately as the King of kings and Lord of lords. And Revelation makes it abundantly clear that throwing the first punch at God means coming against His family: both His Bride and kids. Therefore, Jesus avenges their blood. In order to fully see what I’m saying I strongly encourage you look at Revelation 12:17, 16:6, 18:20, 24 & 19:2. 

Revelation 19 reinstates how Jesus Christ is revealed as our Protective Groom. Verse 1 begins this way: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God…”

In other words, the King of Glory has walked through His gate and is ready to have His right dominion over the world (Psalm 24). And what kind of dominion is that?

It’s one that saves – “salvation.” Yes, the all powerful King of glory has come to save His Bride, because that is what comes next.

In Revelation 19:6, finally, the “marriage supper of the Lamb” has come! Christ is ready to marry His Bride, the Church. So you get the feeling that all of the earth shattering events that have demolished the world has been a demolition effort to prepare a safe place for a banquet of celebration for Christ’s Bride. All that God has been working in Revelation and throughout the history of the world has been for His Bride (us, His Church!)!

Even amidst Him being the LORD of Hosts Who kills, yet “salvation belongs to the Lord (v1).” Why is God characterized with salvation in Revelation 19 after all of the wrath & destruction from the previous chapters?  It’s because in all of the war & plagues throughout Revelation and in the Bible, Jesus is forced to it because He is in love with His Bride, the Church, who He seeks to save. All of Christ’s war on humanity has been in a holy self defense of His family of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and all who have been born again through Him–His children.

In the words of Deuteronomy 32:43, “…for He avenges the blood of His children and takes vengeance on His adversaries. He repays those who hate Him and cleanses His people’s land.” 

Finally, Deuteronomy 32:43 has been fulfilled and God has cleansed His people’s land and made a home for His bride!

Therefore, in Revelation 20, it finally finally declares the end of Satan and even calls him by the name, “ancient serpent” (20:2), which should remind us of Genesis 3, where Satan comes slithering into God’s land for invasion & attacks Adam’s bride. Therefore, Revelation 20 declares the final reversal of anarchy & final act of self-defending love for Christ’s Church Bride. At last, Jesus Christ has regained eternal dominion over His land and He is ready to renovate the earth for His Bride.

Therefore, Satan is thrown into Hell for an eternity and all who follow him are as well. Rebellion is silenced and Jesus Christ’s voice reigns throughout the new earth instead of Satan’s whispering voice deceiving the world.  Instead of Satan reigning through His voice of lies (Gen. 3:1) and as the father of lies (John 8:44), God’s voice reigns through His voice of truth as the Father of truth through His Son Jesus Christ.

(3) Jesus Christ is Revealed as our Forever Lamb

In Revelation, I think that the revelation of Jesus Christ as our “immutable forevermore” (Hebrews 13:8) is Jesus being revealed as a Lamb.

I think that this point is quite stunning. In the New Testament, the word “lamb” is used 38 times and 29 of those mentions come in Revelation as a title for Jesus Christ.

Sure, Jesus Christ is the past Adam revealed as the Second Adam Who forever demonstrates dominion over the world, and Jesus Christ is the Groom Who will forever be the Church Bride’s Husband, but no other title for Jesus Christ is so clearly reiterated and repeated like Jesus being our Lamb of God in Revelation.

For that reason, I think that Jesus Christ is mostly revealed as our forever Lamb.

What I mean is that perhaps this title of Lamb is how we will most often refer to Jesus by in heaven forever because it’s clearly the most popular title for Him in the book of Revelation. I don’t know. This is just my speculation.

Let me give you a few examples of Jesus Christ revealed as our forever Lamb of God:

In Revelation 19:7, it says, “for the marriage supper of the Lamb has come…”

And in the final 2 chapter of Revelation, Jesus Christ is called “Lamb” 7 times…

Revelation 21:23 says, “ And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”

And Revelation 22:3 says, “No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.”

You see, Jesus is so clearly revealed as our forever Lamb in Revelation.

But why?

I think that Jesus described as Lamb does 2 things for us:

(1) It ties God’s story of redemption together as well as the book of Revelation together.

Let’s review the story of redemption in shepherding terms:

The first shepherd in the Bible was Adam’s son Abel (Genesis 4:2) who also offers the first recorded sacrifice to God: the firstborn from his flock. (Gen. 4:4). What happens to Abel? He gets murdered by his brother Cane.

In other words, Abel is the first type of Christ’s Gospel. He is the first shepherd and the first man to die. Why does he die? He get’s murdered by his own brother because he offers his firstborn lamb from his flock and it causes outraged jealousy that leads to murder.

This should sound familiar to us in a gospel way Jesus Christ is “the firstborn of creation” (Col. 1:15, Rev. 3:14), and God’s “only begotten Son” (John 3:16) Who is “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29) and was murdered by His own Jewish brothers (Acts 7:52).

And in Genesis 4:10, God says about Abel’s blood, “the voice of your brothers blood is crying to me from the ground.”

As Hebrews 12:24 says, “Jesus…the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

You can clearly see how Jesus Christ has always been envisioned as this lamb that would be slain on our behalf…from us as His human brothers just like Cane killing His brother Abel.

That story sets the stage for the rest of the Bible as God commands that a bloody slaughtered lamb be at the front of His people’s mind. God both demonstrates and then institutes the Passover:

In Exodus 12:3-6 God tells Israel to demonstrate the Passover, “3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household….⁵ Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, ⁶ and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.”

And in Exodus 14:14 God sets up the Passover as a statute forever,  “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.”

Notice the word, “statute forever.”

Therefore, is it a coincidence that Jesus Christ is so often referenced as “the Lamb” in Revelation? Not at all! What Revelation is doing is finishing a full revelation of Jesus Christ as lamb forever.

As 1 Corinthians 5:7 says, “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”

In Revelation, this theme of Christ as our Passover Lamb hits it’s pinnacle of revelation by showing a second Exodus and the finalization of redemptive history, thus we see Jesus Christ often and intentionally called “the Lamb.”

Therefore, it makes perfect sense that there is so much wrath in Revelation, and in Revelation 6:16 the wrath is rightfully attributed to Jesus Christ as those who are being tormented on earth blame “the wrath of the Lamb.”

Revelation reveals the wrath of the Lamb by showing that only those who experience the wrath of the Lamb for themselves are those who would not repent and receive the wrath of the Lamb on Himself. In other words, Revelation is a book about those who either experience the wrath of the Lamb negatively for themselves or positively through Christ.

Revelation 12:11 describes those who receive the wrath of the Lamb in a positive sense as it says, “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony…”

Do you see it? the book of Revelation makes sense out of God’s wrath by describing Jesus Christ in lamb language. Those who conquer in Revelation are those who have a testimony to tell about how they received Christ’s blood for their death earning sin, and those who are conquered by Christ the Lamb in Revelation (as well as the rest of the Bible) are those who would not humble themselves enough to allow God to love them by placing His wrath against their rebellion on His Son Jesus, as the Lamb.

Therefore, the eternal destiny of people in Revelation hinges on what they’ve done with the title “Lamb,” and that is why Jesus Christ will be remembered as our Lamb forever.

(2) The title of Lamb keeps our mind on the gospel forever.

I think the reason that Jesus Christ is so often referred to Lamb is because we will be celebrating the new Passover feast (communion) that was instituted in Exodus 14:14 because we will be commemorating Jesus Christ’s death on our behalf forever. And by recognizing Jesus Christ as our Lamb, we will be acknowledging the whole entire story of the Bible, God’s story of redemption. Therefore, by understanding Jesus to be our “Lamb,” we will understand God, as Christ fully revealed to us!…

His love, sacrifice and humility…

Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He was always the Lamb from eternity past. He is our Lamb today and He will be our Lamb forever.

No doubt, He will also be our Second Adam forever and our Groom forever. But I think most of all, we will call Him “the Lamb of God Who was slain” forever, because this so clearly pictures the gospel, which also sums up the book of Revelation.

It is a book that seeks to reveal the gospel of Jesus Christ!