Revelation 5

Today’s Passage: Revelation 5

We are still in the room. Nothing has moved, the throne is still occupied, the creatures are still saying that He is holy, and the elders are still on the floor. But now John notices something he had not mentioned before: there is a scroll in the right hand of the One on the throne, written on both sides and sealed shut with seven seals. An angel with a voice big enough to fill heaven asks a single question, whether anyone anywhere is worthy to break those seals and open it. And the answer comes back in the most terrible silence in the Bible. Nobody. Not in heaven, not on earth, not under the earth. And John, who has been calm through fire and thunder and living creatures full of eyes, breaks down and weeps. Then an elder touches him with a word: stop crying, the Lion of the tribe of Judah has triumphed. So John turns to look at a Lion. And what he sees is a Lamb, standing, looking as though its throat had been cut. That is the hinge of this book, and if you understand nothing else in Revelation, understand that. From that moment the chapter simply widens and widens. The Lamb takes the scroll out of the Father’s hand, and the whole room goes down. Then a new song. Then a ring of angels beyond counting. Then every creature that exists, in heaven, on earth, under the earth and in the sea, all of them saying the same thing at once. This is the summit of the book, and quite possibly the summit of Scripture’s worship. Take your time.

As you read, hold this: John is told to look at a Lion and turns to see a Lamb standing as though slain, and heaven says that this, this crucified One, is what worthiness looks like.

Revelation 5:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Then I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One seated on the throne. It had writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals. ² And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” ³ But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look inside it. ⁴ And I began to weep bitterly, because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or look inside it.

The scroll lies in the open right hand of God. It is not locked in a vault; it is held out, as a thing waiting to be taken. What is written on it? Believers have answered in several ways. Some read it as the covenant, sealed like the deeds and testaments of the ancient world. Some read it as the title deed to a creation that has been in the wrong hands since Eden. Some read it simply as the whole purpose of God for history, all that must happen after these things, which is what the voice promised to show John at the start of chapter four. What is beyond dispute is what happens when it is opened, because the rest of this book is what happens. To open that scroll is to set God’s purposes in motion and bring them to their end. And it is sealed, and it is full, and it is in the Father’s hand.

Then the angel’s cry goes out, and it echoes down through three levels of the universe, heaven and earth and under the earth, which is the ancient way of saying everywhere there is anybody at all. The question is not who is willing, or who is powerful, or who is curious. The question is who is worthy (ἄξιος) axios, pronounced AX-ee-oss. Strong's G514, worthy, of matching weight, deserving. Axios comes from the world of the balance scale. It meant, at root, of like weight, bringing something down to the same level, and from that it came to mean deserving, fit, of matching value. When a Greek said a man was axios of an honour he meant the man’s worth and the honour’s worth balanced. Hold that picture and read the angel’s question again. God’s whole purpose for the world lies sealed in His hand, and the question is whether anything in the created order weighs enough to balance against it. Nothing does. Not the highest angel, not the best man who ever lived. This is the word that will carry the entire chapter, sounding four times before it ends. It is the word of the empty silence in verse three, and then, in a turn that ought to lift you out of your chair, it becomes the word of the song in verse nine and the shout of the angels in verse twelve. The same scale, the same weighing, and now Someone in the balance who brings it down. Remember also where you last heard it: the elders sang it to the Father as the Creator at the close of chapter four. Here it is sung to the Lamb, in identical terms, without a word of apology or explanation. That is not a compliment paid to a great creature. That is worship, offered to the One who is God. . And the answer comes back empty. Not one angel of the ranks that surround the throne. Not one saint of all the generations. Not one prophet who wrote or patriarch who believed, not Abraham, not Moses, not David, not Isaiah, not John himself. Nobody was even able to look inside it. Heaven is crowded, and heaven is silent, and the emptiness of that silence is the point.

And John weeps. The Greek is not delicate about it; he wept and went on weeping, the loud grief of a man at a graveside. Do not skip past this or explain it away as an old man’s sentiment, because it is one of the most honest moments in Scripture and the reader is meant to feel exactly why. Think about what an unopened scroll would mean. It would mean that the purposes of God stay shut. It would mean that the churches at Smyrna and Pergamum go on being crushed and no one ever answers for it. It would mean that every wrong stays unrighted, every grave stays closed, every promise God ever made stays folded up in His hand with no one qualified to break the seal, and that history is simply a long series of events going nowhere in particular. If that scroll is not opened, there is no resolution, and if there is no resolution, then the murderers really do get the last word, and the tears of God’s people really are wasted. John is not crying because he is disappointed. He is crying because for one moment it looks as though nothing means anything. Anybody who has stood at a hospital bed or a graveside and wondered whether the whole thing adds up has stood, for a moment, where John is standing here.

Revelation 5:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.” ⁶ Then I saw a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. ⁷ And He came and took the scroll from the right hand of the One seated on the throne. ⁸ When He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

One of the elders comes over to the weeping man. There is something wonderfully homely about that in the middle of all this glory, and it is worth noticing that heaven’s answer to John’s tears arrives as a person speaking to him. Do not weep. And then two titles, both of them straight out of the promises. The Lion of the tribe of Judah goes back to the deathbed of Jacob, who gathered his sons and said over the fourth one:

"Judah is a young lion—my son, you return from the prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down; like a lioness, who dares to rouse him?" Genesis 49:9 (BSB)

And the Root of David goes back to Isaiah’s promise of a shoot springing from the cut stump of Jesse, a banner that the nations would seek. Two of the oldest hopes of Israel, the royal lion and the royal branch, and the elder says they have arrived, and that this One has triumphed. The verb is past and finished. The victory is not scheduled; it has been won already, and the opening of the scroll is not the winning of the battle but the enforcing of a verdict.

So John turns to look at a Lion. And now read verse six as slowly as you have ever read a verse in your life, because what he sees is not a lion at all. He sees a Lamb (ἀρνίον) arnion, pronounced ar-NEE-on. Strong's G721, lamb, little lamb. Arnion is a diminutive, a little lamb, a lambkin, and John’s choice of it is deliberate and startling. There was a perfectly good ordinary word for a lamb, and it is the word used when John the Baptist points at Jesus by the Jordan. This one is smaller and gentler still, the word for the animal a child would carry. And John uses it twenty-eight times in Revelation, more than any other title for Christ in the book, which means that from this chapter to the last page the dominant name for the Lord Jesus in the Bible’s most fearsome book is the little Lamb. Everything is said about Him under that name. The Lamb opens the seals. The wrath of the Lamb makes kings hide in caves. The saints conquer by the blood of the Lamb. There is a marriage supper of the Lamb, and a book of life belonging to the Lamb, and in the end the city has no temple because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple, and no sun because the Lamb is its lamp. Do not let familiarity dull it. Heaven’s settled name for the Almighty Son of God is the name of a sacrificial victim, and heaven never once feels the need to upgrade it to something more impressive. . Not a ram in its strength, not a war-beast, but the small, mild, defenceless animal that a family brings to be killed. It is standing in the very centre of the throne, at the exact middle of everything, with the creatures and the elders arranged around it. And it looks as though its throat has been cut.

Now hold the two pictures together, because this is the hinge on which the whole of Revelation turns and it will not do to be vague about it. John hears Lion. John sees Lamb. Both are true and neither cancels the other, but the order matters enormously: the Lion conquers by being the Lamb. The triumph the elder announced was accomplished on a Roman cross outside a city wall, where the strongest thing that has ever happened in this universe looked exactly like defeat. And notice that the Lamb still bears the marks. He is standing, alive, in the middle of the throne, and He still looks as though He had been slain (σφάζω) sphazō, pronounced SFAD-zo. Strong's G4969, to slay, to slaughter, to cut the throat. Sphazō is not a polite word. It is the word for cutting a throat, used of butchering an animal for sacrifice and of murdering a person, and Greek writers used it for slaughter in war. John could have chosen a gentler verb for the death of Jesus and he refuses to. He uses this one, and he uses it in a form that carries a completed act with a permanent result, so that the Lamb standing in glory is forever the Lamb who was butchered. That is why Isaiah’s picture fits Him so exactly, the servant led like a lamb to the slaughter, silent before the shearers, opening not His mouth. Every Passover lamb, every morning and evening sacrifice, every offering carried up the temple steps for fifteen hundred years had been pointing forward to a real death on a real afternoon, and here is the astonishing thing: the death is over and the marks are not. Risen, glorified, holding all authority, He still bears in His body what was done to Him. The one thing our world cannot bear to look at, a wounded man, is the very thing heaven cannot stop looking at. Praise God for a Saviour whose scars are His glory. . The wounds did not vanish at the resurrection; they are the credentials He carries in heaven forever. So when you come, later in this book, to a Rider on a white horse and to armies and to terrible judgments, you must read every one of those images through this substitution or you will get the book wrong. The power of God in Revelation is cruciform power. It is not the world’s kind of power with a religious label on it. If a reader takes only one thing from this whole series, let it be this: the victory was won by being killed, and the crucified One is the only being in existence found worthy to open the purposes of God.

That is why the Lord’s own forerunner had pointed at Him by the Jordan with the word that has stood over every Christian generation since:

"The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" John 1:29 (BSB)

The seven horns and seven eyes belong to the same picture, and they are not decoration either. A horn in the Old Testament is strength, and seven is fullness, so a Lamb with seven horns is a slain Lamb with all authority. The seven eyes the text explains for us, as the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth, which speaks of the fullness of God’s Spirit and of a gaze that reaches every corner of the world. The weakest-looking figure in the room is the one who holds all power and sees everything. Then comes verse seven, and it is one sentence and it changes the universe: He came and took the scroll from the right hand of the One seated on the throne. No hesitation, no challenge, nobody asking Him what He thinks He is doing. He walks up to the throne of God and takes the sealed purpose of history out of the Father’s hand, because it is His by right, bought and paid for.

And heaven collapses in worship. The four living creatures who have not stopped saying holy since before the world began, and the twenty-four elders on their thrones, all of them go down before the Lamb. Each one has a harp, and each is holding a golden bowl full of incense, and then John tells us what the incense is, and you should not read this line quickly. The incense is the prayers of the saints. Not a symbol of prayer in general. The prayers of ordinary believers, the ones prayed in the dark and the ones prayed badly and the ones you were sure had bounced off the ceiling, are in golden bowls in the hands of the highest beings in heaven, at the centre of the throne room, at the very moment the scroll of history is opened. David sang for that once and did not know how literally it would be answered:

"May my prayer be set before You like incense; my uplifted hands, like the evening offering." Psalm 141:2 (BSB)

If you have ever wondered whether your praying goes anywhere at all, here is the answer, and it is better than you dared hope. It goes into a golden bowl in front of the throne of God, and it is handled like something precious, and it is present in the room when the Lamb takes the scroll.

Revelation 5:9–14 (BSB)

⁹ And they sang a new song: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. ¹⁰ You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth.” ¹¹ Then I looked, and I heard the voices of many angels encircling the throne, and the living creatures and the elders. And their number was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. ¹² In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” ¹³ And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever!” ¹⁴ And the four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

They sing a new song, and in the Psalms that phrase always follows a fresh act of God: something has happened, and the old songs are not big enough for it. And listen to the reason the new song gives. Chapter four said God is worthy because He created all things. Chapter five says the Lamb is worthy because You were slain. Creation and redemption, the two great works, and both of them ground worship in something God has done rather than something we have felt. There is nothing in this song about the singers’ worthiness at all. Every syllable of it is about His.

Then the line that tells you what the cross actually accomplished: by Your blood You purchased (ἀγοράζω) agorazō, pronounced ag-or-AD-zo. Strong's G59, to buy in the marketplace, to purchase as one's own. Agorazō comes straight from the agora, the marketplace at the centre of every Greek town where goods and slaves changed hands. It is not a religious word at all. It is the word for going to market and buying something, paying the price and carrying it home as your own. When the New Testament uses it of what Christ did, it keeps that commercial edge deliberately: a price was named, a price was paid, and the transaction is complete. Peter reminds his readers that they were not redeemed with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot. Two things follow, and you should hold both. First, if you belong to Christ, you were not rescued cheaply and you were not rescued vaguely. A cost was counted out, and it was His own blood, and no other currency in existence could have covered it. Second, purchased people belong to the purchaser. You are not your own. The same word that guarantees your safety also settles the question of who you now serve, and the song puts those two together without embarrassment: bought by His blood, made a kingdom and priests to serve our God. That is not a burden laid on top of the gift. That is what the gift is. for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. Note the price, which was blood and not silver. Note the recipient, which is God Himself; they were bought for God, not merely bought out of trouble. And note the reach, four words piled up to say the whole human race, every language group and ethnic family and nation on the map. This is a hymn that a persecuted minority in a hostile province is singing about a harvest they cannot yet see, and it is worth telling any believer who feels small and outnumbered: the Lamb’s people are not a sect, they are a countless multitude drawn out of every people that has ever existed, and their number is already settled in heaven.

And what does He make of the people He bought? A kingdom and priests, to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth. Those are the words spoken over Israel at Sinai, now spoken over slaves and shopkeepers and fishermen’s widows from every nation on earth. It means every believer has direct access to God with no human middleman, and every believer is given real dignity and a real future under the Lamb’s rule. Christians have long differed over how and when the reigning upon the earth is realised, and this study will not tell you which of those readings to take. What the song plainly says is that the people the Lamb bought are not merely spared, they are crowned, and the God who bought them intends them for a glory they have not seen yet.

Now watch the circles widen, because John has built this ending like a rising tide. First the creatures and the elders, a company you could count. Then he looks again and there are angels around them, and he reaches for the biggest numbers his language has: myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. A myriad was ten thousand, the largest single number word in Greek, and he multiplies it by itself and then adds more, which is his way of saying that counting has failed. Their shout is a sevenfold ascription, power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing, seven qualities for the fullness of everything there is to give, and every one of them laid at the feet of a Lamb who was slain. And then the circle widens one last time until it cannot widen any further: every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them. Everything that exists. Nothing left outside. The whole created order, which chapter four said God made by His will, opens its mouth at once and blesses the One on the throne and the Lamb together, forever and ever. And the creatures say Amen, and the elders go down on their faces one more time, and the chapter simply stops there, because there is nothing else to say.