Sunday School Notes: Revelation 21:5-8

⁵ And the one sitting upon the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” And he says, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.” ⁶ And he said to me, “They are done. I [am] the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give freely to the one who thirsts from the water of life. ⁷ The overcomer shall share in these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son. ⁸ But to the cowardly and unfaithful and detestable and murderers and sexually immoral and sorcerers and all who lie, their share [is] in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death.”

All Things Made New

As John’s vision continues, he hears a voice coming from “the one sitting upon the throne.” While we have no throne in the immediate context, we know from earlier in Revelation that the throne is representative of God. In 4:5 John described lightning and thunder coming from the throne, and those around the throne were saying, “Holy is the Lord.” He also spoke of the elders seated around this throne casting their crowns before it saying, “Worthy are you our Lord and God.” So the voice John hears is definitely a divine proclamation. The Lord draws his attention to the fact that he is “making all things new”–perhaps an allusion to and fulfillment of Isaiah 43:19: “Behold I am doing a new thing.” This is the point in redemptive history when God will fulfill the prophecies of a new heaven and earth (e.g., Isaiah 65).

Some universalists try to use this verse to support the idea that everyone will be saved, regardless of their sin or belief system. However, the context doesn’t support this view. “All things” here has a limited scope that’s defined in the text: it does not include everyone who will be consigned to the lake of fire as was mentioned at the end of chapter 20. This fact will be confirmed in verse 8.

Have Confidence in God and His Word

God then commands John to write, and the things the Lord will have John write are “faithful and true.” This phrase will appear again in 22:6, and seems to refer to the fulfillment of prophecy. He’s calling on John to believe the things he is about to see and hear even though they are not part of his (or our) present reality. These words are faithful, dependable, reliable, and factual. God is not attempting to deceive John. He is not a liar and does not go back on his word (Proverbs 19:21; Numbers 23:19). Indeed, God knows precisely how the future will unfold because he ordains it. As we’ve seen with the scrolls, trumpets, and bowls, the Lord is the one who brings about all that happens for his glory and the good of his people. So these things will infallibly come to pass.

The Lord tells John with regard to these things that “they are done.” In 16:17 when the angel poured out the seventh bowl, the last bowl, there was a loud voice from the throne saying, “It is done.” The verb translated “they are done” here is that same verb used in 16:17 to signify the end of the period of judgment. The Lord seems to be saying that the promised “making all things new” has been done (the verb is singular in 16:17 but plural here). As with the completion of the judgment period, this is not a statement on the state of affairs in John’s (or our) time. It’s a confident statement that the Lord’s work has, in his timing and from his eternal perspective, been done. To him, it’s all complete.

I believe the point of this is to bolster our confidence in God’s plans. There is no possibility that they will fail because as far as he’s concerned they’re all complete. To give further assurance that God is able to bring about the things he has promised, he declares to John, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” The Lord is here employing a rhetorical device called a merism, where two opposites represent those extremes and everything in between. Other examples of merisms in Scripture include:

• Malachi 1:11: “From the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations…” God’s name will be great among the nations all the time.
• Psalm 103:2: “As far as the east is from the west so does he remove our transgressions from us.” Our transgressions are totally and completely removed from us.
• Isaiah 44:6: “Thus says the Lord, the king of Israel and his redeemer, the Lord of hosts, ‘I am the first and the last; besides me there is no god.'” Similar to what we have here in Revelation 21:6. Everything has its meaning and existence from God, so he alone is the only source of ultimate reality in all of creation.
• Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This is, perhaps, an introductory statement to the book of Genesis that describes what you’re about to read in the following verses. God created all things, everything above us, everything below us, and everything in between. The rest of chapter 1 unpacks this statement.

The Alpha and the Omega

Notice that the Lord tells John that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He didn’t describe himself as the Aleph and Tau, the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This could be an example of divine accommodation, where the Lord uses language that would be understandable to John’s largely Greek-speaking audience. In an English-speaking context, we could translate this statement as “I am the A and the Z.”

By calling himself the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, God is declaring his supreme sovereignty, his all-powerfulness, and his all-encompassing grasp on the totality of history. This is why God’s promises are trustworthy and true: He is Lord of all things. He is the only one in control of every atom and molecule in the universe, which means he can be sure all his plans come to pass. There is no possibility of error or miscalculation. No possibility of deviation or something “going rogue.” This should give us 100% confidence that even the sin and mess we see around us (and within us) has a purpose because God is able to use it all for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28).

The Water of Life

The Lord promises to give to those who are thirsty from the spring of the water of life freely. That is, those who desire to drink of true life will be able to quench this thirst from the water of life without having to pay. This spring is available to those who thirst without charge. This “spring of the water of life” could be a reference to Isaiah 49:10. The Lord also provided springs of water to his people during the burning heat judgment of 16:8-9 that scorched the earth-dwellers. However, John 4:13 and John 7:37-38 may be more direct references.

In John 4, Jesus encounters the woman at the well. He tells her that whoever drinks of the water that he gives will never thirst and that water will, in fact, become a spring welling up to eternal life. The water given freely by God is water that produces eternal life. In other words, the water of life is a euphemism for Jesus. Just as Jesus offered “eternal” water to the woman that she would not thirst but have life, so Jesus offers water (himself) to his thirsty people that they may have eternal life.

John 7:37-38 further confirms this view. Speaking at the feast of booths, Jesus announces to the people there, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'”

Recall that after the Fall, in Genesis 3:22-23, God cut man off from the Garden of Eden and, particularly, the Tree of Life. Once mankind had fallen into sin, God did not want them to live eternally in their corrupt, sinful condition. Only when that sin had been dealt with could mankind once again have access to eternal life. We can, perhaps, see in this free offer of Jesus, the water of life, a reversal of that curse.

The Heaven-Dwellers vs. the Earth-Dwellers

In verse 7, the Lord adds to the promises Jesus gave to “the overcomers” in his letters to the seven churches (chapters 2 and 3). He says to the overcomer, “I will be his God and he will be my son.” Interestingly, the Greek here is phrased in a very Hebraic form: esomai autō theos kai autos estai moi huios–literally “I will be to him God and he will be to me a son.” This is not how you would normally indicate possession in Greek. But it is how you would, grammatically, indicate possession in Hebrew. I think the reason for using this Hebraic phrasing is to evoke memories of God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. In Christ, the water of life, the Lord has fulfilled this promise and established David’s kingdom, his people, forever in a right relationship with him.

The Lord then reminds John of the contrast between the destiny of the heaven-dwellers and that of the earth-dwellers. While the heaven-dwellers get to drink from the spring of life, the earth-dwellers suffer the lake of fire. The earth-dwellers consist of:

• The cowardly (deiloi): The fearful, the timid, perhaps those who professed Christ but preferred the favor and blessings of men rather than the favor and blessings of God.
• The unfaithful (apistoi): Those who deny Christ, or refuse to put their trust and confidence in him (i.e., faithless). These may overlap somewhat with the cowardly since fear can lead to unfaithfulness, as Peter demonstrated (see, e.g., Luke 22:54-62).
• The detestable (ebdelugmenoi): This term is also used in 17:5 to describe the Great Prostitute. It could be associated with idolatry, and almost certainly speaks of practices associated with pagan or false worship.
• Murderers (phoneoi): Another term that may have pagan worship associations, thinking particularly of child sacrifices. Murderers were also willing agents of the Beast in the persecution of God’s people. In 17:6, the woman is described as being drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.
• Sexually immoral (pornoi): These are those who willfully and joyfully indulge in sexual practices prohibited by God, including those who practice cultic prostitution.
• Sorcerers (pharmakoi): This is, indeed, where we get the English word “pharmacy,” since ancient pharmakoi were those who were skilled at using herbs and drugs. Undoubtedly, these herbs and drugs were employed for magical purposes, which is where we get the association with sorcery and divination. Many false religions at the time used some form of “sorcery” (see, for example, Leviticus 19:26 and 31, where “magic arts” are prohibited). Whether or not the “magic” was real is irrelevant. The problem with such “sorcery” is the dependence upon herbs, drugs, and magic and not on the Lord. It’s not uncommon in modern medicine to find people who virtually worship “science” as if “science” has all the answers if we would only put our faith in it. This is idolatry. The Lord has given us medicine and science to help us better manage creation, but we must remember that our dependence is upon him and always put our hope in the giver of the gifts, and not the gifts themselves.
• Idolaters (eidōlolatrēs): While idolatry is implied in some of the previous categories of people, here the Lord explicitly calls out idolaters. We’ve seen idolatry implied or on full display previously in Revelation. For example, the second Beast in chapter 13 draws people to worship the first Beast. Whether your allegiance is to Christ or the Beast is one of the main dividing lines between earth-dwellers and heaven-dwellers in chapters 13 and 14.
• Every liar (pas ho pseudēs): This could be a reference to all those with a false profession of faith, who say they are Christians and love Jesus but whose doctrine and lifestyle betray them as liars. In 2:2, Jesus refers to those who call themselves apostles and are not. False believers can do a lot of damage to the church as John himself was well aware (1 John 2:18-19; 2:26; 4:1-16).

Those who truly belong to the Lord, heaven-dwellers, can (and will from time to time), in this life, exhibit cowardice, unfaithfulness, idolatry, and even harbor sexually immoral or murderous thoughts (Matthew 5:21-30). However, Christians recognize these things as sins and repent of them. The earth-dwellers described in this list are those whose lives are characterized by such sin. They willfully and gladly indulge these things and see nothing wrong with them.

While the heaven-dwellers, the brave, faithful, believing people of God get the life-giving water, the earth-dwellers, those listed above, get the lake that burns with fire and sulfur (see 14:10 on fire and sulfur). We’re reminded that this is the second death–the death that only the earth-dwellers receive. If you are a heaven-dweller, you are part of the first resurrection and will never face the second death (20:14-15).