Last time we carefully read through a heavenly scene in which Jesus is exalted to God’s side and worshiped alongside him.
We saw that it is indisputable that Revelation 4-5 holds forth Jesus as worthy of being worshiped.
But can this help us choose between the dueling arguments from the first post? Yes!
Given that we accept that Jesus ought to be worshiped, we must choose between Only God should be worshiped and Jesus isn’t God because we can’t consistently accept both of these, in addition to the claim that Jesus ought to be worshiped.
Based on our careful reading (Part 2, Part 3) of Revelation 4-5, let us ask which of these John would agree with?
Would John agree that only God should be worshiped?
Plainly not.
- Jesus is presented throughout as someone else. In these chapters, he comes into God’s throne room, receives the scroll of God’s secret plans from God, and is then honored alongside God.
- God, the one on the throne, silently approves of all this. He lets Jesus take the scroll. It is his mission that Jesus accomplished, because of which Jesus is worthy to now be exalted. And he stands by while people worship both him and Jesus. And he does not thunder “You lousy idolaters” – worship only me!” And he, he tacitly approves of this exaltation of Jesus.
- Smartly, the people present agree. (v. 14) No one calls out God for his wrongful advocacy of worshiping someone other than himself. Because he can do that – he can exalt his only Son in that way. And since he does, John is saying, you should fall on your face before the two of them, just like “the elders” present here do. Phooey on your scruples, if you object that you can’t worship the Lamb, because he isn’t God himself. God himself has so raised him over you. To not worship Jesus is to defy God.
- As we saw, Jesus is asserted to a man, a human being, and given the background assumptions of Judaism, the reader infers that he’s not God. In this is consonant with John throughout the whole book seeming to pointedly distinguish the two. From the very first verse (1:1) he assumes that Jesus, the immediate source of this series of revelations, is other than God himself, who is the ultimate source of them. This being one among many ways Jesus serves his God. (1:6)
- Nor is the reader supposed to think that the Lamb is worthy because he is numerically one with God, that is, just is God himself. To the contrary! He’s God’s agent, who has accomplished amazing things on God’s behalf, according to God’s will. You can’t act on someone’s behalf if you are that very someone. Here, God doesn’t have blood, and so can’t shed it. But this Lamb, being a man does, and did. God didn’t ever need to be exalted, but this Lamb did, and was. God already had a throne; Jesus now comes to share what was someone else’s throne.
Would John agree that Jesus isn’t God?
- John doesn’t say this anywhere, for the simple reason that it doesn’t need saying. We all assume that a thing can’t at one time differ from itself. And Jesus and God differ in many ways here. e.g. on the throne, not on it. holding scroll vs. not. taking the scroll vs. not. sending vs. not. being sent vs. not. being a servant of God vs. not.
- Again, that the Messiah is not God himself is an assumption of ancient Judaism.
- Nor do the characters, as it were, ever merge. We never find out that John’s been calling one being by two names.
- Because of their theoretical commitments, some will read all of this in ch. 4-5 as a big series of elaborate hints that Jesus just is God and vice-versa. But the climax passes (end of ch. 5) and the worshipers are worshiping two beings, addressing each one individually, seemingly oblivious to any deeper truth that the one just is the other. And the author goes right on talking of them as if he thought they are two. After more heavenly scenes and other action, there is a resurrection of people to be “be priests of God and of Christ” (20:6) – yes, servants of the both of them. And in ch. 22, in the vision of heavenly New Jerusalem, we’re told of “the throne of God and of the Lamb”. (22:3; cf. 21:22-3)
- Is that the crucial hint that they’re really one being, at long last – that they have a single throne? No – there’s just one throne of the one God, and Jesus was raised up to share it with him.
- Or maybe near the very end? Jesus there says “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (22:13) Aha! Smoking gun! For God himself said he was the Alpha and Omega back at the start. (1:8) In light of the above, what to make of this? Well, why can’t both be correctly called “Alpha and Omega”. Where is it written that only one can be truly so described? [Sound of crickets chirping.] What does this mean, here in ch 22? That he’s the First and Last, it says, the Beginning and the End. Of what? I would say, of the new creation. He the first born (1:5) of a new, better human race. Yes, this is a divine title now being extended to Christ. That doesn’t mean he’s divine. (There’s only one divine being.) Rather, it means that he’s been beet put in a God-like position in this new order. He bears other divine titles as well, e.g. 19:16. But he’s still the Word of God – his message and pre-eminent messenger, the “faithful witness” (1:5).
Conclusion: John would accept our second argument as sound. So should we.
Next, final post: But doesn’t this book say to worship God alone?
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