(avg. read time: 12–24 mins.)
This concluding part of my series is dedicated to the “oneness” of the Trinity in that we are examining texts in Revelation from the emphasis on the fundamental unity of the Trinity. A fuller example of this kind of exercise would incorporate all that we have noted thus far and even look at potential implied Trinitarian dynamics in Revelation (e.g., considering how the Spirit is linked to water in John’s works in particular, could it be that the living waters flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb in the new creation signify the Spirit gushing forth therefrom?). But for the sake of simplicity for a series that was already over 19,000 words before this last part, I have decided to focus on texts where the dynamic of unity is most apparent.
Most of the first chapter is relevant for our purposes. First, the epistolary opening signifies the unity of the Godhead, as the grace and peace comes from the Father, the seven spirits/Holy Spirit, and from Jesus Christ (1:4–6). Revelation provides us with our most fully Trinitarian version of this benedictory opening formula in the NT.
As we have seen, the identification of God as “the one who is, the one who was, and the one who is coming,” or some variation thereof, applies to both the Father and the Son (cf. 1:8), and so it is not the strict “property” of either in exclusion to the other. The fact that the descriptor applies to both the Father and the Son shows that both are eternal. This has traditionally been conveyed in the language of them being “co-eternal,” and it likewise signifies that the Godhead, not the Father only, is the unifier of salvation history, as the faithful love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit holds together the past, present, and future. But we have also seen that Revelation fits with what we have seen elsewhere of the Father being the “source” of the Son, as also befits the names for each person. The combination of the source language with the fact of both being eternal confirms that the Father’s relation to the Son is one of eternal generation. As the Fathers affirmed in distinction from Arius, there was never a time when the Son was not. What, then, of the Spirit? Unlike our spirits/breaths, the life-giving Spirit is intrinsic to God and is so forever, as God did not receive the Spirit from anyone else and there was never a time at which the Spirit was not. As the Son is eternally generated by the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father (another way of saying this is that he is “spirated/breathed” from the Father).
It is also noteworthy that from this opening text the throne or ruling language is at the center of the presentation of God, as it is the most condensed symbol for the Creator/creature distinction in Revelation, and it conveys how God is ultimately in charge of the course of history. God the Father is the one primarily presented as the one sitting on the throne, but given how the Son and the Spirit are related to the throne throughout Revelation, one should understand this as the Father being the “source” of the throne in which the Trinity shares in that he is the un-generated fount of the Godhead. The Son is not yet presented as “on the throne,” though that will come later, he is still said to be the ruler of the kings of the earth, which essentially conveys the same point. The Spirit is said to be “before his throne” (1:4), which I have suggested is signifying how he is sent to work throughout the world, and that he is the active agent in this regard, carrying out God’s will, including in implementing Christ’s work in the world, though this will become more apparent in ch. 5. Christ’s work is itself described here in terms of being “the one who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood—and who made us a kingdom, priests to God and to his Father” (1:5–6). In this, he was executing God’s will for creation, salvation, and new creation, which is also signified by the fact that the gospel story is described as him being “the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (1:5). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share the same divine rule and Lordship, as well as worshipfulness, all of which is signified by the throne. Additionally, they have the same will and purpose, they participate in the same activity (though not with the same roles, as, for example, the Father did not become flesh), and they work by the same power in being the Almighty (1:8).
The unity also extends to the revelation and declaration of God and his will. From the beginning, John describes himself as being in his situation of persevering in suffering because of “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9; cf. 1:2), to which he adds that he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (1:10). Likewise, the opening of the book describes the text as “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants” (1:1). The vision of ch. 1 then involves John seeing a vision of the Son in which he resembles various OT images, including images of God (1:13–16). Indeed, the way the Son describes himself is reminiscent of God, including how he is First and Last (like Alpha and Omega), the Living One, that he is alive forever (cf. 4:9; although he died), and that he holds the keys of death and Hades (1:17–18). The Father, Son, and Spirit are commonly involved in revelation, but their roles are differentiated, with the Father being the ultimate source, the Son being the central content of revelation as the executor of God’s will and God’s Word (19:13), and the Spirit being the most immediate discloser of revelation who gives insight to prophets and others of God and God’s will.
We could theoretically comment on all of the seven letters here, and a fuller project would require such, but for now we will pick just one illustrative example, that being the last letter to Laodicea (3:14–22). Jesus describes himself in ways that are both reminiscent of God and evocative of the gospel story in 3:14. The gospel story was all about his execution of God’s will, and his self-descriptions convey this in terms of his faithfulness to God’s will (the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness) and his achievement of the same (the First/Ruler of God’s creation). Furthermore, the result of this story was his victory that he allows the faithful to participate in, a victory which includes (implicitly) his resurrection and (explicitly) his exaltation to sit with the Father on his throne (3:21). This once again points to how God the Father is the “source” of the throne, which is connected here both with creation (since Christ is said to be First/Ruler over “God’s creation) and, primarily, new creation with the view to the consummation of God’s kingdom and the redemption of creation (especially through the redemption of humans), and so it signifies God’s authority and reign, as well as his worshipfulness and his power and will to save. Although it can be linked to God the Father as the “source” in that he is the “fount” of the Godhead, this does not undermine that the Son shares in his throne because he is the same God. They are on the same side of the Creator/creature divide, so that the Son is simply said to sit on his Father’s throne after his execution of God’s will while he must give to the others the authorization to sit on his throne with him (3:21). Finally, as with all the seven letters, the letter to Laodicea closes with the exhortation to hear “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (3:22). The Spirit has not had any distinct dialogue, but the words of Christ are what the Spirit is saying because they are fundamentally linked as one God with one nature having one will/purpose, one revelation, one message, and one authority, as well as one power and one faithful love to ensure the fulfillment of promises made in these letters.
Next, we will treat the scenes of chs. 4–5 together. The sequence is initiated with Jesus (“the first voice which I had heard speaking like a trumpet”) calling John up to heaven, and the Spirit bringing John in to see the one sitting on the throne (4:1–2). The one sitting on the throne is described in terms similar to Ezek 1, and just as the descriptions of Jesus drawing from divine descriptions in the OT reinforced, the impression given here is that this is the same God who revealed himself in the Scriptures of Israel as Creator, Judge, Savior, King, and so on. And this same one is seeing to it that his will and promises are fulfilled. The Holy Spirit/seven spirits also appears again as lamps burning before the throne (4:5) as the one who exercises God’s power and agency in the world. If any set of scenes best exemplifies how the one sitting on the throne is worshipful, it is these chapters, although they are certainly not the only ones. Even those who sit on their own thrones, as well as the multitudes of angels, fall before the one on this throne to worship him. Notably, the Spirit is never said to turn in worship, and this further implies how his position relative to the throne places him on the Creator side of the Creator/creature divide. He is before the throne and goes out from it, while others who are said to be before the throne are ones who ultimately face and bow down before the throne in worship.
God shares worship with no one, yet the Father shares it with the Son in 5:8–14. Moreover, he is not simply “worshiped” in some ambiguous sense of body language alone, but he is worshiped in the same terms as God the Father in what is ascribed to him, in the fact that the heavenly hosts sing to him, in how they otherwise declare worship to him in parallel fashions, in the fact that others in heaven are not worshiped (and even refuse it: 19:10; 22:9), and in the fact that activity is framed in the most explicitly worshipful way as “ascription of worth” in how they speak of what the Lamb is worthy of. After all, the Son/Lamb is the only one identified as worthy to open the scroll of God and to thereby execute his will for the future, since he has already executed God’s will in the gospel story (5:9–10), which he could only accomplish by the same power of God. And the Lamb is described as standing at the center of the throne (5:6), which is occupied by God alone, and if the transitive property can be applied to such imagistic language at all, which is not necessarily clear, the implication is that the Spirit is on the throne as well (i.e., the Son/Lamb is on the throne, the Spirit is attached to the Son in terms described as his horns and eyes, therefore the Spirit is also on the throne). In any case, the Spirit is certainly one with the Son in implementing God’s will through the gospel story, as this is what he is sent into all the world to do (5:6).
One should also note the effect of the gospel story in terms of not only purchasing a people for God, but also making them “to our God a kingdom and priests, and they will reign on the earth” (5:10). Again, this is Christ making it possible for humans to fulfill God’s creative will in the new creation. But we should also note how this effect is described throughout Revelation. Here and in the similar 1:6, it is said that Christ makes the people priests to God, and the implication here is that they are also kings. This is further supported by the fact that Christ promises to give authorization to those who participate in his victory to participate in his rule by sitting on his throne with him in 3:21. But in 20:6 it also says that they will be priests “to God and Christ” and will reign with him. We will address the last text about the promise of reign for the saints later, but it is important to observe that being a “priest to Christ” is to be a “priest to God,” as one is not serving two gods but one God.
We should also attend to how the Trinity is active in ch. 11. The content of the two witnesses’ testimony is never given, but it is easy enough to imagine that they share with the other witnesses of Revelation that they attest to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, which are parallel ways of describing the same referent. After all, they are even said to die in the great city where their Lord was crucified (11:8; cf. 11:4, 15, 17). We have noted throughout this series how various names and titles are applied to multiple persons in the Trinity to signify that the terms are equally applicable to them by virtue of being the same God, and it also clearly applies here with the use of “Lord” to refer to Jesus. After they are killed for their testimony, the involvement of the Trinity is extended with the description that the “Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood on their feet” (11:11). Again, the Father is identified as the ultimate “source” of the action, and the one implementing his will here is the Spirit, who has the same life-giving power as God, not simply a similar power, but the same “source” of power. As in Ezek 37, God raising the dead by sending his Spirit into them was not him sending something foreign to himself, but giving of himself and communicating his own life that conquers death. And so the two witnesses are raised from the dead and then exalted into heaven like their Lord (11:12), who also shares this power to raise the dead and make them live forever (2:7, 10–11; 3:5; 22:1).
This text also stresses that God and Jesus share one throne and one rule: “The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and his Messiah’s, and he will reign forever and ever” (11:15). This once again places God and Jesus on one side of the Creator/creature divide from everyone else, as signified also by the fact that they, as one God, are alone worshipful (11:15–19). The declarations are built off what God has accomplished in Christ in the gospel story, as shown in chs. 1–5. This is now reaffirmed after the imitation of the same with the two witnesses. These declarations also show how God’s throne of rule is also a throne of judgment, since the time is coming when he will judge the dead, in the process vindicating his servants, prophets, and saints, the small and the great who fear his name. Of course, this has been signaled by the fact that God has raised Jesus (cf. Acts 17:31) and reminded people of the same with raising the two witnesses. The God who raised Jesus will also raise us and give us everlasting life with him. In each of these ways, God the Father and Jesus the Son (and by extension the Holy Spirit who bears the same authority, and has already previewed his role in raising the dead) share in the judgment of the dead that is coming. Their roles are not utterly identical, but the fact that they are equally involved in what is solely the divine prerogative in judging the dead is telling. They are not two judges but one God who is one judge passing one sentence for each person.
Chapter 14 provides a similarly remarkable scene. Those who were earlier said to bear the seal of the living God on their foreheads (7:3–4; 9:4) are now said to have “his [the Lamb’s] name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads” (14:1; cf. 3:12). Nothing changed in between chs. 7 and 14 in this regard; it is simply that the latter provides the fuller description of this seal and confirms that the Father and the Son/Lamb are the singular living God. This is further confirmed by the fact that they are said to be “first fruits to God and to the Lamb” (14:4). They are not split in being devoted in allegiance to multiple gods, with some being the first fruits of one and the others being first fruits of the other, but they are devoted in allegiance to the one God who deserves it, the one known more fully as the Father and the Son/Lamb.
Also from this chapter, we are told that the perseverance of the saints is defined by their keeping the commandments of God and the faithfulness of/in Jesus (14:12). As with the “testimony of Jesus” this refers to the gospel story and, by extension, the life apposite to the same for the faithful. (Alternatively, if the phrase is an objective genitive, it would refer to faith “in” Jesus, similarly to “faith in God.”) What they attest to as faithful witnesses is that which makes them holy so that they can be called “saints.” That sanctification is shaped by the gospel story because the same Spirit of God who was at work in Jesus in that story is now implementing it in the lives of others.
That is why the faithful are said to die “in the Lord” (14:13) to signify their salvific union with Christ/the Lord by the Spirit, which the Spirit himself confirms by the promise that the faithful dead will rest from their labor and their works will follow them. The Spirit is the one who ensures this, for the Spirit is the one who performs the work of sanctification in the faithful. Moreover, he is the one who unites believers to Christ, and his sanctifying work upholds this union. Finally, since this is said of the dead in Christ/the Lord, the Spirit is pointing forward to his own work in bringing about their resurrection to everlasting life, which will involve their works following them and him giving them rest. All of this concerns what the Spirit is the most immediate agent of, but at each point he is involved in the same action as God the Father and God the Son in bringing about this promised salvation.
As for ch. 19, for our purposes, we will only be addressing vv. 10–16 this time. The first verse in this portion mentions all three persons, as the angel prevents John from worshiping him, as he reminds him that he is only a fellow servant and brother having the testimony of Jesus, and he tells him to “worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy” (19:10). The Spirit is thus inherently tied with the proclamation and faithfulness to the gospel. Indeed, this text is reminiscent of 1 Cor 12:3 and its statement that the declaration that Jesus is Lord comes from the Holy Spirit. And the ultimate root of the gospel story that is the testimony of Jesus is, of course, God the Father. Worshiping God is thus the proper response to the testimony of Jesus and the Spirit who proclaims it through others. The Spirit acts through the story and the proclamation of the same to bring to fruition the prophecies he has inspired for a long time, showing once more that the God who was at work in the OT is the same God bringing that work to fruition now.
Likewise, Jesus is presented as the executor of God’s will in the rest of this portion. After all, he is the one who will “squeeze out the grapes of the wine of the wrath of the anger of God Almighty” (19:15). When he comes to earth, he is coming to execute the judgment of God (cf. 19:17). This is intrinsic to who he is as the Word of God (19:13). He is the one through whom God’s will for creation was first implemented. He is the revealer of God, especially in his incarnate life and his return. And ultimately, he is the one who will fulfill the plan of God by bringing his salvific will to fruition in raising the dead, executing the final judgment, and establishing the new creation. He is the executor of God’s will from creation to eschaton and beyond.
Indeed, when Jesus actually appears in this chapter, he is called “Faithful and True” (19:11). This resonates both with the description of him as faithful and true witness, and with the descriptions of God in the OT, as we have observed above. God makes grand promises and is faithful to keep them; his word is truth and his action is reliable; his power serves to guarantee that he will make his word come true; his faithful love is thus inexorable. Jesus, the executor of God’s will, thus bears this name as he is in his very person the bearer of God’s faithfulness and truth. He has already fulfilled and is fulfilling many wonderful promises God has made and so we can have confidence that the rest will yet have their “Yes” in him as well (cf. 21:5). Here, his work in executing God’s will is applied specifically to executing his judgment in righteousness/justice by going out to do battle (19:11, 15). This is also related to him executing God’s will by participating in the divine rule, as he is said to wear many diadems on his head (19:12; in contrast to the parody kings that demand worship in the dragon and his beast in 12:3 and 13:1), and his garment is dipped in blood to signify his execution of God’s will in his death that purchased God’s people (19:13; as his death is elsewhere in Revelation and the NT connected to his exaltation via his resurrection).
He is also identified with God—though not the Father per se—in being referred to as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (19:16). The exact name does not appear in reference to God elsewhere in Revelation, but in light of how we have seen God referred to as “King of the nations,” “Lord,” “Lord God Almighty,” and so on, the implications of this name clearly identify Jesus with God, even if not with the Father as such. His victory foretold in ch. 17 and realized in the rest of the book is a result of who he is. With God the Father (and the Holy Spirit), he is the King who is also the Creator, Judge, and Savior, and he is able to conquer all usurping powers that attempt to destroy his creation and kingdom. This is demonstrated in the gospel story, but the gospel only revealed what was true of who he was all along.
Finally, we should conclude with a brief examination of the triune God at work in the new creation. The Spirit is again the one who makes the revelation of this vision of the new creation possible, as John sees what he sees “in the Spirit” (21:10). The new Jerusalem, the city/people of God (19:7–9; 21:2, 9–11; 22:17), which descends from heaven is said to be “from God” and prepared for her husband, who is the Lamb (21:2, 9). Interestingly, in ch. 19 the adornment is said to be shining pure linen that is the righteous deeds of the saints (19:8). Then in ch. 21 it is said to be the glory of God that adorns this bride (21:9–11). The glory ultimately comes from God and the righteous deeds have the shape of Christ, not only because of the Spirit’s work in conforming the people to Christ, but because here, as elsewhere in Revelation, the faithful are marked by the testimony of Jesus in the declaration of the gospel and in being faithful and true witnesses in testifying as he did (19:10). The Spirit forms her glory, which comes from God through Jesus Christ in what he accomplished in him in the gospel.
We see how the work of the three persons of the Trinity is inseparable and directed to one purpose. They inseparably work to bring about the promises the one God made to dwell with his people and to fulfill his creative vision while also making it even better. Yet again, this conveys that the same God has been at work from creation to now, and will yet bring his work to completion in the new creation. This is assured by the one who is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end/goal, a description applied to more than one person in the Trinity because it applies to God. And that reality is described as humans dwelling with God and the Lamb as if the whole city/creation is the sanctuary simply because God and the Lamb manifestly dwell there, as that is where the throne of God and the Lamb will be (21:22; 22:1, 3). Their singular divine glory gives the city its brilliance, so that it has no need of any other light source (21:11, 23; 22:5). Everlasting life flows from them as well, for it is the life of the one God that makes others live everlastingly (21:6; 22:1–2). Those who can enter it and receive what God gives can only do so by having their names written in the Lamb’s book of life (21:27), which is used in the final judgment (20:12, 15) and represents the sole divine prerogative in making such everlasting judgment, as shown in the OT, and which Christ and the Spirit have spoken with one voice about being able to write in or blot out names from the book (3:5).
There is even an interesting grammatical shift here. Typically, John preserves a plural pronoun when referencing God and the Lamb to keep consistent with him referring to multiple persons, even though they are one God. But here, even that is dropped. We are told that “the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him” (22:3). This treats God the Father and the Lamb as a singular subject because the servants are the servants of the one God, the worship is due to the one God, and they are both the one God. Likewise, the promise is that the people will see “his” face and that “his name will be on their foreheads” (22:4). As we saw from chapter 14, it is the name of the Father and Lamb that is on their foreheads, which means that the name is seen as a singular divine name because they are the living God. In this same vein, 22:5 promises “the Lord God will shine on them,” but in light of the ambiguity in the use of this name throughout Revelation and the immediate context referring to both God and the Lamb shining on the new Jerusalem, “Lord God” refers to the triune God and not to any specific person.
The promise that the saints will reign forever and ever (22:5) in this light of God relates to texts we have already noted from 1:6; 3:21; 5:10; and 20:4–6. Clearly, this reign is participatory in God’s own reign in his eternal kingdom and does not exist apart from his throne. What God has by nature, believers will receive the authority to partake in by his gift, which will in turn fulfill his purpose in creating humans. As noted previously, a similar connection between God’s everlasting reign, the coming kingdom of God, and the reign of the saints appears in Daniel (7:14, 18, 27: 12:2–3). The saints are those who fulfill the fundamental human vocation God designated in Gen 1:26–30, that humans should be priestly kings who rule over the earth as representative stewards of God’s own rule over creation and their eternal fate is thus reflective of that image-bearingness. As this promise of 22:5 is the supreme fulfillment of God’s creative purpose for humanity, it is fitting that it should be the last promise of this vision of the new creation as its counterpart in the old creation was the last part of the Gen 1 creation narrative. The one God who created all things has been at work from the foundation of the world (and even before there was time) and will bring his world to its consummation. For this one God made promises of such to Israel, this one God has shown his faithful love throughout the OT and the NT, and this one God will do it because he has shown that he will do so in Jesus’s execution of God’s will and the implementation of the Holy Spirit. The three persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit guarantee this in unison because they are one God.