Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation Part 1

Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation.

by S. D. Gordon.

PREFACE

Crowning the Christ is an intensely practical thing, whether taken in the _personal_ sense or the _world_ sense. He has been crowned in the upper world. With wondrous patience and graciousness He pleads for the personal crowning in our lives. Some day--no one knows just when--He will begin to _act_ as the crowned Christ _in all the affairs of our earth_.

The initiative of all action to-day on the earth is in man's hands. Some day the initiative of _governing_ action on the earth will be in the hands of the crowned Christ, even while the personal initiative of each man's life will still be in his own hands.

G.o.d is intensely practical. Jesus was never concerned about speculation nor mere discussion; He was too intent on helping people. The Bible is wholly a practical book. It is concerned only with helping us. It does not tell us all the truth there is; we shall be constantly learning more in the future life. But it does tell us all we need to know now. And its purpose in telling us what it does is wholly practical,--to urge us to right choice, and to lives that square with the choice. This is the purpose that decided just what truth should be told in the Book.

There is one book of the sixty-six devoted wholly to this subject of the crowned Christ,--"The Revelation of John." Every one of these books touches Him at some angle, and finds its deepest meaning in what He was to do and did do, and yields up its secrets only under the touch of His hand. But this book, the closing and climax of all, the knot in the end of the inspired thread, this deals wholly with the action of the crowned Christ.

No book of the sixty-six has seemed so much like a riddle and set so many a-guessing. And without doubt much of its meaning will be clear only as events work themselves out. Events will prove the only expositor of much. But it is with the deep conviction that this is wholly a _practical book_, written wholly from a practical point of view, and concerned wholly with our practical daily lives, that I have ventured to take it up in this series of simple, wholly practical, Quiet Talks. And it is only this side of its teachings that will be dealt with here. The Book is a street leading into the true overcoming life the Master would woo us to.

It is only after many years' study of this Book of the Revelation, and a special study the past three years and a little more, that I have ventured to put these talks together. And now they are sent out with the earnest humble prayer that others may find some little practical help in prayerfully reading, as I have found much in prayerfully studying, under the Master's gracious faithful touch.

I.--THE CHRIST CROWNED, THE FACT

"When G.o.d sought a King for His people of old, He went to the fields to find him; A shepherd was he, with his crook and his lute And a following flock behind him.

"O love of the sheep, O joy of the lute, And the sling and the stone for battle; A shepherd was King, the giant was naught, And the enemy driven like cattle.

"When G.o.d looked to tell of His good will to men, And the Shepherd-King's son whom He gave them; To shepherds, made meek a-caring for sheep, He told of a Christ sent to save them.

"O love of the sheep, O watch in the night, And the glory, the message, the choir; 'Twas shepherds who saw their King in the straw, And returned with their hearts all on fire.

"When Christ thought to tell of His love to the world He said to the throng before him, 'The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep--'

And away to the cross they bore Him.

"O love of the sheep, O blood sweat of prayer, O man on the cross, G.o.d-forsaken; A shepherd has gone to defend all alone The sheepfold by death overtaken.

"When G.o.d sought a King for His people, for aye, He went to the grave to find him; And a shepherd came back, Death dead in His grasp, And a following flock behind Him.

"O love of the sheep, O life from the dead, O strength of the faint and the fearing; A shepherd is King, and His Kingdom will come.

And the day of His coming is nearing."[1]

Coronation Gift.

Christ is crowned. Not in any vague far-fetched meaning, but in the plain common-sense meaning of the word, He is _crowned_.

For crowned means put in the place of highest power, with full right to exercise that power at will. And when the crucified Jesus went up that Olivet day, before the astonished eyes of the disciples, into the sightless blue, on the cloud, He was received in the upper world by the Father. And He was lifted up into the place of highest honour and greatest power. He sat down at the right hand of the Father.[2]

He had said it would be so. Breathing the air thick with bitter hate on the night of His trial, He had quietly said to the Jewish rulers that even so it would be, bringing at once about His person the bursting of the storm of hate.[3] Now His unfaltering trust in His Father has its sweet reward.

The Holy Spirit poured out on Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, was the gift of the _crowned_ Christ. The rus.h.i.+ng sound as of a mighty wind that filled all the house, the tongues of flame plainly seen, the bold talking to the crowds of foreign Jews of G.o.d's mighty power, the faithful witnessing about the crucified Jesus in the city that hounded Him to death, the convinced crowds openly declaring at the peril of their lives their belief in the despised Jesus, the strangely rare unselfishness even in money matters, and the winsome graciousness of spirit that marked, not only the inner circle, but these greatly increased crowds,--all this said one thing in clear unanswerable tones of unmistakable power, _Christ is crowned_.[4] For the sending down of the Holy Spirit was the act of the crowned Christ.

And every touch of the Holy Spirit's presence within trusting hearts,--the sweet peace, the quiet a.s.surance, the longing for purity, the drawing away to prayer, the hunger for G.o.d's Word, the intense desire to have others saved, the pa.s.sion to please this wondrous G.o.d of ours,--all these simple marks of the Holy Spirit's presence in our hearts, all tell us, and each tells us, in unmistakable tones, that Christ is crowned. For this wondrous Spirit within is the gift of the crowned Christ.

When Jesus went up from the earth, holding as His sure captive the captivity of suffering and death to which He had with such great strength yielded, He received gifts, coronation gifts. The Father gave Him all. He gave Him the disposal and control of all. This was the crowning.

And in His great out-reaching love Christ received these gifts _on behalf of men_, His blood brothers. And at once He gave to men, to His trusting disciples, the all-inclusive gift, the Holy Spirit, His coronation gift.[5] So G.o.d came anew to dwell with men as originally planned.

This blessed Presence within tells me, by His mere presence, that Christ is crowned.

The writers of the New Testament make a chorus of sweet music on this chord, ringing out in clear tones the full notes of delight and joy.

Luke's simple narrative sounds the note four times. Paul swells it out with a joyous fulness that grows in volume and intensity as his narrowing prison walls shut out more and more the lower lights, and centres his upward gaze upon Jesus, "far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named," with "all things in subjection under His feet."[6] John's special companion and working partner, Peter, makes this note blend with and dominate the minor chord of suffering for Christ's sake.[7]

The Christian Hebrew who wrote so eloquently to his fellow-countrymen of the immense superiority of Jesus and so modestly withheld his own name, strikes this note five times with strong, clear touch.[8] He quotes that Eighth Psalm, which so wonderfully gives G.o.d's own ideal for man's mastery over all creation. And then he tells us that in Jesus the ideal will yet be fully realized. And that while the whole plan has not yet fully worked out as it will, yet _even now_ we see the Jesus who tasted death for every one, crowned with glory and honour as part of the plan which He carried out in suffering the extreme suffering of death.

And our Lord Jesus Himself, talking out of the glory to the man who was His bosom companion on earth, reserves as His last tender plea to us to live the overcoming life this--"he that overcometh I will give him to sit down with me in my throne as I also overcame and _sat down with my Father on His throne_."[9]

And so we find out just what this word crowned means. Jesus was received in the upper world, exalted, glorified, made to sit down at the Father's right hand, put far above all rule and authority, with a name greater in the sweep of its power than any other, and with all things put in absolute subjection under His feet. This is the simple, direct meaning of the sentence--Christ is crowned.

What a contrast the two faces of that glory cloud saw! The face looking down, and the face looking up! The one--the downward face--looked upon a cross, a Man hanging there with a mocking crown of thorns without and a breaking heart within, scowling priests, jeering crowds, deserting disciples, sneering soldiers, weeping women, heart-broken friends, a horror of darkness, a cave-tomb under imperial seal, and blackest night settling down over all.

The other--the upward face--looked upon a great burst of the upper glory, the countless angels singing swelling songs of wors.h.i.+p, the wondrous winged cherubim, the redeemed hosts from Eden days on reverently bowing and exultantly singing, the exquisitely soft-green-rainbow-circled throne, the Father's face, once hidden, but to be hidden now never again, the _shared_ seat on the Father's throne,--what a contrast!

Here crucified--there crowned. Crucified on earth, one of the smaller globes of the universe. On the throne of the whole universe of globes--crowned! From the lowest depth to the one extreme height. From hate's worst to Love's best. From love poured out for men to love enthroned for those same men; love triumphant each time, on cross and on throne. What a contrast! What a coronation! What a welcome home to a throne!

The Music of a Name.

It is most intensely interesting to recall that, of course, this is just what the very word Christ means,--the Crowned One. We sometimes get so used to a word that it is easy to forget its real meaning. The word Christ has been used so generally for so many centuries as a _name_ that we forget that originally it was a t.i.tle, and not a name.

And it still is a t.i.tle, though used chiefly as a name. Some day the t.i.tle-meaning will overlap the name-meaning. We may never cease thinking of it as a name, but there is a time coming when events will make the t.i.tle-meaning so big as to clear over-shadow our thought and use of it as a name.

It helps to recall the distinctive meaning of the words we use for Him who walked amongst, and was one of us. Jesus is His _name_. It belongs to the _man_. It belongs peculiarly to the thirty-three years and a bit more that He was here, even though not exclusively used in that way in the Book.

There's a rare threefold sweetness of meaning in that five-lettered name. There is the meaning of the old word lying within the name, before it became a name, victory, victor, saviour-victor, Jehovah-victor. There is the swing and rhythm and murmur of music, glad joyous music, in its very beginnings as a common word.

Then it has come to stand wholly for a _personality_, the rarely gentle, winsome, strong personality of the Man of Bethlehem and Nazareth, and of those crowded service-days. And every memory of His personality sweetens and enriches the music in the old word.

And then the deepest significance, the richest rhythm, the sweetest melody, come from the meaning His experiences, His life, pressed into it. The sympathy, the suffering, the wilderness, the Cross, the Resurrection, all the experiences He went through, these give to this victory-word, Jesus, a meaning unknown before. They put the name Jesus actually above every name in the experiences of tense conflict and sweeping victory it stands for. This threefold chording makes music never to be broken nor forgotten.

"There is no name so sweet on earth, No name so sweet in heaven, The name before His wondrous birth, To Christ the Saviour given."

Lord is a t.i.tle, of course. It was used of one who was a proprietor, an owner, or a master. It was commonly used as a t.i.tle of honour for one in superior position, as a leader or teacher. In speaking of Jesus it is coupled with the t.i.tle Christ as an interchangeable word,[10] as well as an additional t.i.tle. But peculiarly it is the _personal t.i.tle_ given Jesus by one who takes Him as his own personal Master,[11] while it still retains its broader meaning.

But _Christ_ is peculiarly _the official t.i.tle_ of Jesus. There is only one Christ. Lord is used of men. It is used of both the Father and the Holy Spirit, as well as of Jesus. But the name Christ is used of only one person, and can mean only that one. There could be only one Christ.