Christ: The Faithful Witness

      Revelation 1:5 - “Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth.” Those are three characteristics of Christ, He's the witness, the firstborn, and the ruler. From these three titles, we can see a foreshadowing of three major roles that Christ will play throughout the book of Revelation. First, He is the faithful witness. When we look at Revelation from a legal angle, we will see that Christ is the Judge. Second, we see that Christ is the firstborn of the dead. Christ is the most important person to ever come back from the dead. He is the Firstborn. Lastly, He is the ruler of kings on earth. Not only will He conquer the earth, but He will rule with a rod of iron and on high for all eternity. I'm going to split these three up into separate posts, right now I'll focus on Christ the faithful witness.

      If you were to look at the phrase “faithful witness” in Gk., it would be martys ho pistos. This phrase is most commonly translated “faithful witness”, and amazingly it means just that. If you want, you can add in all the synonyms or other possible English transliterations and it would read something like this: the “true, sure, trustworthy, believable, worthy of credit” person “who has information or knowledge of something, and hence... can give information, bring to light, or confirm something” (The Complete Word Study Dictionary New Testament, p. 947, 1164). Nonetheless, this is not a phrase whose meaning grows much with an understanding of the original language. The more important area to look at in order to see the phrase's significance is its context, so I am going to endeavor to interpret this in light of the rest of the book of Revelation.

      There are two other places in Revelation that show Christ in a similar light, chapter 3 verse 14 and 19:11. Revelation 3:14 is the beginning of Christ's letter to Laodicea, one of the seven churches, it's His introduction to the church. When Christ speaks to each of the churches, He always includes an introduction that relates to what He says to the corresponding church. Laodicea is no different. Christ opens His letter to them in this way, “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.” He then goes on to rebuke the Laodiceans because they were riding the fence, so to speak. They were neither cold nor hot, neither rejecting the Lord nor following and obeying Him.

      Now we must ask, why does Christ introduce Himself to the Laodiceans as the faithful and true witness? The answer is because the Laodiceans were blinded, deluded, as to what their true spiritual condition was. Christ therefore manifests Himself as not only the faithful but also the true witness. So we see, first, that Christ is true. John 14:6, He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Then we see that Christ is faithful, He holds fast to the truth, He is credible, believable, trustworthy; He is true and He remains true to truth. Lastly, He is the witness. He has a knowledge of the truth, He is preserving that truth, and now we see Him able to “bring to light” or “confirm" that truth. Applied here we see that Christ is able to bring to light the true spiritual state of the lame Laodiceans. They think that they are rich, prosperous, and need nothing; Christ contradicts that by stating that they do not realize it but they are really wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. He then goes on to explain to them how to remedy their problems. Nonetheless, the point has been made: Christ is the truth, He remains true (or faithful) to the truth, and He testifies (or witnesses) to that truth.

      The other reference we're going to look at is Revelation 19:11. This time, Christ is not writing to His church, but He is returning to the world. It says, “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges [the world] and makes war.” Do you see the repeated phrase? Christ is “faithful and true”, we now know what that means. Lets press on to the next part, “in righteousness he judges [the world].” First off, righteousness?, how is Christ judging righteously? As the faithful and true witness, He is able to judge righteously because He knows all the facts and bears witness to the truth.

     Do you remember, when we went through Jude, the character study we did on God as the Judge? There were three major points: God knows the context (the people and events involved), God makes a decision, and God reinforces His ruling (consequential punishment or reward). Now, we've taken a look at the first part, Christ knows the truth and bears witness to it. Now we see Him judge the world with righteousness and He is able to do this because He knows the truth. No judge can judge rightly if his judgment is based on error, but since Christ's judgment is based on the truth to which He bears witness, His judgment is righteous. Then, to wrap this up, the last part of the quote is “and make war”, there we see Christ reinforce His ruling. He's got the truth, He keeps the truth, He makes His ruling righteously, and now He wars on the wicked.

      I've finished covering this characteristic of Christ, at least as far as I'm going to take it, but I haven't done the application part, or the instructions from this for us the believers. That's in the works, and I'll either update this post and add it in or just create a new post. Until then...