How Liberating Lamb Love Heals the World:
John’s Paschal Lamb, Cruciform Love and the Restoration of All
Susan Carson
St. Stephens University
Dr. Bradley Jersak
JOHN’S APOCALYPSE
Fall 2021 – BIB5726
April 9, 2022
The Apocalypse is an unfolding epic story, a full sensory immersion in the story of the Lamb, the revelation of Jesus Christ. The author John, exiled pastor, writer of the Gospel, Apostle, Beloved and friend of Jesus, writes this letter to his seven churches to give them a bigger, truer picture of reality. These churches, living in the shadow of the Roman Empire, are experiencing the pressures of persecution and martyrdom. Life is hard. How will they endure?
In this paper, I will explore the central figure of Revelation, the slain Lamb, focusing on Revelation 5:6-14. I will demonstrate that the Lamb refers to Christ crucified (the Paschal Lamb), displaying the healing power of cruciform love. To do that, I will focus on Lamb imagery in the Johannine tradition in light of Hebrew scriptures, commentaries, and ancient and modern voices, and propose that Christ as Lamb heals the world through self-emptying love that centers our worship and response.
In Chapter 1, John gives his readers his purpose. Jesus, the Anointed, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the Archon (or ruler) of all the kings (vs. 5)[1] is coming. Soon. This one who is pierced is the alpha and omega–the beginning and the end (vs. 7-8). This one is alive and has the keys of death and of Hades (vs. 18), and he is with the Church, among the lampstands (vs. 13). John is about to unfold the story of this Jesus in fuller measure.
In Chapter 4, John takes us from his seven churches on earth (Chapters 2 and 3) to a door opened in heaven (Rev 4:1), and we begin to see the heavenly reality as he shows us the things to come. Here the throne room opens, full of worship for the eternal one. And yet something is missing–the one who is worthy to open the scroll. In Chapter 5, in the midst of this worship, we see the one who is worthy, enthroned with God, as God, and unfurling the purposes of God.
In this scene, John gives us the revelation, the unveiling of Christ as the slaughtered Lamb, revealing the nature of God through the cross. Here we see the cosmic reality, the truth of what’s happening in a world where empire seems to be winning. Christ is coming to release justice and set all back in order. He is coming, in fact, for the healing of the nations. John peels back the veil to show the reality that was and is and is to come, to encourage the churches to endure.
With the crucified Lamb, we see the cross–death, resurrection and Pentecost all together–at the center of reality. And the seeing is the point. John intends for us to see Christ at the center so that we can be the Church, living lives of worship and witness that overcome.
John is narrating an apocalyptic story full of Old Testament imagery and meaning, epic and ultimate, culminating in the healing of the nations. This is the story God has always been telling–the revelation of the slaughtered Lamb as liberating love. Only this narrative of liberating Lamb love can heal us, can birth the worship and response that births a new creation. The seeing of this story becomes a creative and recreative act as the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of Christ[2]. As the living one on the cross conquers death by death–through self-giving, self-emptying, cruciform love–we see the resurrection of humanity and the healing of creation.
In Chapters 4 and 5, we find ourselves with John in the heavenly throne room of God. These two chapters, according to Michael Gorman, “belong inseparably together. They are like ‘two panels of a visionary diptych’” depicting “a blend of temple and throne room scenes from the Ancient Near East, as reflected in Isaiah 6 and Daniel 7, and from the Roman Empire.”[3] Here in the heavens, in the throne room of God, in the midst of worship, we hear the question from the angel that bridges Chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation. “Who is worthy to open the book and loose its seals?” (Rev 5:2).
John is weeping because no one has been found worthy. Then the good news comes. The elders tell him to look: “the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered, so as to open the book and its seven seals” (vs. 5). With these two ancient promises of Messiah—the lion of Judah (from Gen 49:8-12) and the root of David (Isaiah 11)—come the expectation of a powerful lion-like one who will restore the kingdom of Israel through conquest.[4]
Instead, in the midst of the throne, John sees, not a lion, but a suckling lamb (arnion in Greek, meaning little lamb) standing, like one that had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes—which are God’s seven Spirits sent forth into all the earth” (vs. 6).
In the center of the throne, where we’d expected a fierce, imperial, messianic lion king, we’ve found one who rules as a little, slaughtered Lamb. This one, crucified and alive, is worthy. Having defeated death, the Lamb rules with perfect strength (seven horns) and wisdom (seven eyes), by and with God’s perfect Spirit.[5] This little Lamb has defeated sin and Satan and death.
Here we see what Eugene Boring calls “perhaps the most mind-wrenching ‘rebirth of images’ in literature.”[6] Concurring, Gorman says this Lamb becomes the “central and centering image, the governing metaphor, the focal point of Revelation: a slaughtered Lamb, a crucified Lord.”[7] The Lamb will appear a total of 28 times as the central character in this unfolding story of Revelation.
Gordon Fee tells us, “It is difficult to emphasize adequately the theological import of this thematic replacement of images, in terms of both Johannine Christology and soteriology (his understanding of the person of Christ and of his saving work). In a book like the Revelation, which ultimately is interested above all in God’s justice, no lion ever appears in heaven. But the lamb is there all the way through, even at the end.”[8]
Richard Bauckham helps us understand the import as John hears “‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, had conquered’. The two messianic titles evoke a strongly militaristic and nationalistic image of the Messiah of David as conqueror of the nations, destroying the enemies of God’s people…But this image is reinterpreted by what John sees: the Lamb whose sacrificial death (5:6) has redeemed people from all nations (Rev 5:9-10). By juxtaposing the two contrasting images, John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death.”[9]
This is not what Hal Lindsey and others would interpret as a lamb in his first coming who becomes a lion in his second coming. Instead, the “lion image is reinterpreted and replaced by the Lamb” who is Jesus, “definitive for the identity of God.” In this exchange of images, we find two mind-bending paradoxes: “The first is that God shares sovereignty and honor, expressed in the receiving of worship, with the Messiah Jesus. The second is that this Jesus who is worthy of worship has exercised his messianic office and power by being slaughtered.” [10]
Brian Blount sees the Lamb of Revelation less as a reinterpretation and more as an extension of the Lion. For Blount, the Lamb is a powerful force of love that conquers. “The slaughtered Lamb is a powerful conqueror….It conquers through predatory weakness.” The Lamb’s slaughter is how the Lion works out his power through active and aggressive resistance.S[11]
As this Lamb steps to the right hand of God to receive the scroll, the elders fall down in worship and begin to sing a new song. “The suckling lamb who was slaughtered is worthy to receive the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing” (vs. 12). The worship expands until it includes everything and everyone (vs. 13). The entire worship scenario is a “vivid enactment of the poetic text in Philippians 2:6-11, where the one who was obedient to death is acknowledged as Lord, worthy of the acclamation due God alone…. Thus the Lamb of God is clearly Jesus.”[12]
We are seeing, writes Peter Leithart, “the ascension of Jesus from the other side of the firmament, from heaven.”[13] This Lamb is Jesus at his enthronement, the crucified one who has conquered through the cross and is worthy to open the book. And with the opening of the book, the story of God and the victory of the Lamb, past, present, and future, unfurls. There, in this imperial throne room, the one seated, ruling over all, is not the lion of beastly empire, but Jesus, our crucified and risen savior, healer and king. With Brian Zhand’s help we see God ruling through “the nonviolent, co-suffering love power of the slaughtered Lamb.”[14]
This Lamb is not a weak victim of sacrificial slaughter. This is John’s Paschal Lamb, the Lamb of Passover, and the “lamb of God who is taking away the sin of the cosmos” (John 1: 29). In John’s understanding of Christ and his saving work, this Lamb, is central. Austin Farrer points out that “It is as the Paschal Lamb that Christ suffers his passion according to John’s Gospel. He is crucified in the afternoon while the lambs are being killed in the temple.”[15]
In Revelation, the Passover of Exodus 12 is mirrored through death and liberation, through blood-stained doorposts, plagues and plundering, and through the Lamb. Jesus is the paschal Lamb of the Exodus, and, with John, we are witnessing an eschatological exodus in the heavens. From Bauckham, “The central image is that of Jesus himself as the Passover Lamb (first introduced at 5:6, 9-10). This is, indeed, ‘the Anointed, our Passover’ who has been sacrificed (I Cor 5:7) taking his seat ‘at the right hand of the Majesty in the places on high once he has accomplished a purification of sins’” (Heb 1:3).[16]
Just as the Hebrew slaves were redeemed from slavery, so, too, have we been saved. From Bradley Jersak, “Just as Yahweh subsequently ransomed (Isa. 43:3) or redeemed (Mic. 6:4) out of Egypt, so Christ gave his life as a ransom (Matt. 20:28) and redeemed us from slavery to the world (1 Pet. 1:18), the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13) and the power of sin (Eph. 1:7).”[17]
John the Beloved brings us both the Gospel and the Revelation. The implications here are significant. John Behr tells us that “John's apocalyptic (unveiling) vision of the Lamb on his heavenly throne is none other than what he beheld at the foot of the Cross.”[18] There, enthroned in the heavens, we find Christ lifted up on the cross, highly exalted.
In John’s vision, the nature and character of God, in heaven and on earth, throughout all time, is identified in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on the cross. With the cross firmly at the center of the throne with the Lamb, John shows us how we are to see God. This is how we understand God, as self-emptying, self-giving love.
This love is at the center of John’s Gospel and letters. God is love (I John 4:8). And “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (I John 3:16). This love is at the center of all things, from the foundation of the cosmos (Rev 13:8), bringing life from death. John’s Gospel and Apocalypse share this narrative of Lamb love, the self-emptying, cruciform love of Philippians 2. And it is this love that ransoms us from sin and makes all things new.
Christ’s life-giving death on the cross, says Behr, “is not understood by John as a response to sin but rather as principally deriving from the love that God himself is (cf. 1 John 4:8) and has for the world (John 3:14-16). It is precisely this love, shown in this way, that has liberated human beings from the condition of being slaves to that of being friends (John 15:15), members of the household of God, enthroned in the Temple as sons alongside the Son, and the commandment that Jesus gives as his own is simply ‘that you love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15:20). Now, however, we know what is involved in such love.”[19]
Melito of Sardis gives us this reality in even more beautiful words in his sermon On Pascha, showing us that this understanding of Jesus as the Paschal Lamb is rooted in the ancient theology of the Church.
“Come all families of people,
Adulterated in sin,
And receive forgiveness of sins.
For I am your freedom,
I am the Pascha of salvation
I am the lamb slaughtered for you,
I am your ransom,
I am your life,
I am your light,
I am your salvation,
I am your resurrection,
I am your King,
I shall raise you up by my right hand,
I will lead you to the heights of heaven,
And there shall I show you the everlasting Father.”[20]
The slaughtered Lamb who liberates through self-emptying, self-giving love redefines power and messianic expectations. The strength of this love leaves no one behind, leaves no one in bondage, and leaves nothing of beastly empire. As we behold this Lamb love, we are transformed. “But all of us with face unveiled, mirroring the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Lord’s Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). Our worship and resistance in response become re-creative acts as we become cruciform love that heals the world.
In John’s heavenly vision, we see the Lamb surrounded by worship, not just in Chapters 4 and 5, but throughout the revelation (7:9-17, 14:1-3, 15:2-4, 19:6-10). Worship is the natural and supernatural response to the glory of Christ crucified and risen, the worthy one. But this worship is not an end in itself.
From Leithart, “John ascends to heaven, witnesses and partially participates in a heavenly liturgy. But worship is not a retreat from the challenges the churches face…. the liturgy rightly orients John (and all worshippers) toward earthly challenges…To see what must take place, and to see what it all means, and to be prepared for faithful witness, the churches need the perspective of the heavenly sanctuary because heaven is the place where the future happens first, the place from which the future arrives.”[21]
This heavenly liturgy immerses us in truth we’re meant to experience and helps us see what was, is and is becoming true. In Eugene Peterson’s words, “The intent of revelation is not to inform us about God but to involve us in God.”[22]
As we see the victory of cruciform love, as we join in worship of the slaughtered Lamb, we are formed and liberated by Lamb love to live through our death, through our witness and worship. This radical and re-creative work of death of the false in us and everything that sets itself up in opposition to love and the Lamb, births new life. “We have been redeemed from a culture of death by the death of the Lamb for faithfulness to death–all of which is, paradoxically, life itself.”[23]
In this sense, worship becomes a political act[24] that heals as we begin to live and love differently. It is, ultimately, our resistance and repentance that heal us and heal our world. We become collaborative partners, the bride, one with Christ in the work of making all things new. And this oneness, this union is the point.
The language of the Mirror Study Bible helps us see the transformation: “Your blood redeemed mankind’s authentic identity in God. You rescued them from everything that could possibly define society before and brought them out of the confines of their dwarfed mindsets. This includes the entire spectrum of people-groupings: our tribal identities, our language-specific dialect preferences, out political and religious associations, as well as every form of racial identity!” (Rev 5:9).[25]
The epic story of Revelation unfolds through time, showing us the story that’s been true all along. We’ve just not been able to see it. Lost in our own self-will and sin, we’ve abandoned our first love like the church of Ephesus, and we’ve become lukewarm like the church of Laodicea. We find ourselves in John’s churches—a bit of a mess, blessed to endure, and called to conquer through a witness that leads to death. Peterson tells us “The task of the apocalyptic imagination is to provide images that show us what is going on in our lives.”[26] And yet, facing our tribalism, our preferences and prejudices, and dying to self-will is the last thing we’re inclined to do.
In the American Church, our idolatry and self-will have bred a civil religion. Like the Lion of Rome and nothing like slaughtered Lamb, increasingly we see government and churches together acting oppressively with power deemed “sacred and granted devotion and allegiance.”[27] Churches look and sound more like political parties and less like the cruciform God. Divides widen through party dualisms as we “other” the others, failing to act justly for people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, refugees, the poor, elderly and weak among us, and for our environment. Obsessed with our personal rights, we assert ourselves always. We preserve equality for ourselves and our people because we are, after all, right. We withhold equality from those unlike us, afraid of losing our rights. Afraid of losing our economic advantage we act from self-protection, willing to resort to violence to protect what we believe to be ours. This orientation toward self-preservation leaves us looking more like the angry, violent Lion. And so we alienate the world looking for a Church that looks much more like Jesus, the Lamb.
The violence of the fragmenting and the dividing leaves us living less than human. “Sin fragments us, separates us, and sentences us to solitary confinement. Gospel restores us, unites us, and sets us in community.”[28] Revelation expands our social and moral imaginations to see the truly human one, living in the truly human way—the way of self-emptying, self-giving love.
We need to see a different way to be a different way. From Gorman, Revelation becomes for us “a prophetic, pastoral, visionary guide to worshiping and following the Lamb, a template for faithful witness against civil religion and for true worship of the true God. It calls us to unlearn and abandon the false but often seductive gospel of empire and civil religion as it calls us to learn and practice, in worship and witness, the truth of the Lamb’s eternal gospel.” [29]
This visionary guide expands our imaginations to see a way to live together that becomes the answer to Jesus’ prayer: “That all may be one, just as you, Father are in me and I in you, that they too might be in us, so that the cosmos may have faith that you sent me forth. And I have given to them the glory you have given me, that they may be one just as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they might be brought to completion in one, so that the cosmos might know that you sent me forth, and loved them just as you loved me” (John 17:21-23).
Here, in John’s Gospel, we hear the deepest intention of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection. In a world increasingly fragmented, fearful, and partisan, the answer to this prayer seems impossible. And yet, in John’s Revelation, we see the end of the story. We see the fulfillment of the greatest commandment: that we would love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. And we see that we become the answer to this prayer as we submit to one another in love.
In the end, and today, we conquer through the cruciform shape of love, setting the welfare and well-being of others before ourselves, as we learn to be truly human together. No longer driven by self-protective power, we become like the Lamb, living lives of sacrifice, living death to life in the power of self-emptying, self-giving love. No longer centered in self-will, we are enthroned as the Lamb’s bride, one with him. This is nothing less than the healing of the nations.
From Gorman, “The grand narrative that began with creation now ends in new creation….The original garden that became a source of curse and death because of human disobedience is now an urban garden, the place where millennia of human civilization come to fulfillment and nations finally live in peace, where blessing and life replace the original curse and death.”[30]
In Revelation 5:6-14, we see Christ as the Lamb who heals the world through self-emptying love that centers our worship and response. All reality and all history unfold from the heavenly enthronement of Christ crucified and risen. As we see with John the story that’s always been true, we are called to worship this Worthy One and repent of our self-will.
Through the re-creative, healing act of seeing the true, we believe and become our true selves. Through our worship and response, we become collaborators, partners with the Lamb in the making new of all things. Living lives of liberating Lamb love, re-formed in the cruciform shape of love, we live undivided. All become friends. All become bride. Nothing of beastly empire, division, darkness, Satan and death remains. All that remains is the love that heals the world. His kingdom comes. His will is done. On earth as it is in heaven.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Behr, John. John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Blount, Brian K. Can I Get a Witness?: Reading Revelation through African American Culture. Louisville, KY: West Minster John Knox Press, 2005.
Boring, M. Eugene. Interpretation: Revelation. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1989.
Brian Zhand, “Revelation 5,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online., 2021.
“Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers,” n.d. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/revelation/5-5.htm.
Farrer, Austin. The Revelation of St. John Divine. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1964. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ok9LAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=revelation+of+st+john&ots=dhUR8Ke44n&sig=a3sEUkSSvt_7wDnnDYUaCwr58uE#v=onepage&q=revelation%20of%20st%20john&f=false.
Fee, Gordon D. Revelation: New Covenant Commentary Series. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011.
Gorman, Michael J. Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011.
Hart, David Bentley. The New Testament. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017.
Jersak, Brad. “Q&R: How Is Christ a ‘Sacrificial Lamb’?” Christianity Without the Religion, January 7, 2019. https://www.ptm.org/q-r-how-is-christ-a-sacrificial-lamb-brad-jersak?highlight=lamb.
John Behr, “Revelation 11,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online., 2021.
John Behr, “Revelation, Historical Background,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online, Sept 9, 2021., n.d.
Leithart, Peter J. Revelation 1-11. New York, NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018.
Melito of Sardis. On Pascha. Crestwod, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. https://sachurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/On-Pascha-Melito-of-Sardis.pdf.
Peterson, Eugene H. Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988.
Toit, Francois du. Mirror Study Bible: The Romance of the Ages. Vol. 2020. South Africa: Mirror Word Publishing, 2012.
Zhand, Brian. Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News. New York: Waterbrook, 2017.
[1] David Bentley Hart, The New Testament (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017). All Scriptures are from this version unless otherwise noted.
[2] John Behr, “Revelation 11,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online., 2021.
[3] Michael J. Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011). 102-103.
[4] “Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers,” n.d., https://biblehub.com/commentaries/revelation/5-5.htm.
[5] Brian Zhand, “Revelation 5,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online., 2021.
[6] M. Eugene Boring, Interpretation: Revelation (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1989). 109.
[7] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 108.
[8] Gordon D. Fee, Revelation: New Covenant Commentary Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). 80.
[9] Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 74.
[10] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 103.
[11] Brian K. Blount, Can I Get a Witness?: Reading Revelation through African American Culture (Louisville, KY: West Minster John Knox Press, 2005). 87-88.
[12] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 110.
[13] Peter J. Leithart, Revelation 1-11 (New York, NY: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018). 218.
[14] Brian Zhand, “Revelation 5,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online.
[15] Austin Farrer, The Revelation of St. John Divine (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1964), https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ok9LAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=revelation+of+st+john&ots=dhUR8Ke44n&sig=a3sEUkSSvt_7wDnnDYUaCwr58uE#v=onepage&q=revelation%20of%20st%20john&f=false.
[16] Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation. 74.
[17] Brad Jersak, “Q&R: How Is Christ a ‘Sacrificial Lamb’?,” Christianity Without the Religion, January 7, 2019, https://www.ptm.org/q-r-how-is-christ-a-sacrificial-lamb-brad-jersak?highlight=lamb.
[18] John Behr, “Revelation, Historical Background,” BIB5726: John’s Apocalypse (Class Lecture, Open Table/SSU, Online, Sept 9, 2021., n.d.
[19] John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019). 192.
[20] Melito of Sardis, On Pascha (Crestwod, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), https://sachurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/On-Pascha-Melito-of-Sardis.pdf. 103.
[21] Leithart, Revelation 1-11. 210.
[22] Eugene H. Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1988). 113.
[23] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 177.
[24] Brian Zhand, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News (New York: Waterbrook, 2017). 150.
[25] Francois du Toit, Mirror Study Bible: The Romance of the Ages, vol. 2020 (South Africa: Mirror Word Publishing, 2012).
[26] Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination. 145.
[27] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 46.
[28] Peterson, Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination. 42.
[29] Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness, Following the Lamb Into the New Creation. 54.
[30] Gorman. 161.