Revelation 3:12 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.
Yesterday we thought about the fact that God has books in which various things are recorded. We meditated on the honor of being born into God’s New Jerusalem and having our new birth recorded in the Book of Life.
Today I read the passage above - part of the letter to the church in Philadelphia that was dictated by the risen and ascended Christ and written down by John during his exile on the isle of Patmos. My eyes were drawn to the phrase that I have underlined. I started to realize that God Himself does a lot of writing in Scripture and (of course) that it is always important! So I thought we could spend a few minutes on this subject today, beginning here and working our way to other instances of writings specifically attributed to God.
In the passage above, Jesus is speaking of the reward He will give to members of this church that has only a little power and yet has patiently endured through affliction. It is so typical of our God to enable us to do something for Him, and then to reward us for doing it! It was by His Spirit in them that they had endured, but out of His generous heart He declares here that there will be blessings for them as a result!
Solomon set up two bronze pillars in the Temple in Jerusalem. They were there as monuments rather than for structural support (1 Kings 7:21-22). They were given names: “Jachin” (from a word meaning “He will establish”) and “Boaz” (from a word meaning “quickness”). It was not unusual in New Testament days for stately pillars to be erected in honor of Roman emperors and other prominent individuals, and for these to bear inscriptions - presumably about the ones being honored. In the same way, Jesus says that He will make the one who conquers in the church at Philadelphia a pillar in the heavenly temple. They themselves will form permanent and enduring monuments to God for His amazing grace through which they endured and triumphed. Accordingly, Jesus will write an inscription on them comprising the name of His God, the name of the City of His God (the church) and His own new name, because they belong to God, to the church and to the Son forever. We should be encouraged to think that Jesus will surely do the same to us when we endure trials and afflictions for Him! Now think again about our meditation yesterday, when we considered God writing our names into His book. And here today, we have Christ writing God’s name, the name of the Church and His own name onto us! There is a wonderful reciprocity here!
I have quite a lot of books in my library and I enjoy not only reading them myself but lending them out to others. I try to mark each one with my name to show that it belongs to me. I also write the name of each book into a catalog of all the books in my library. Each book is mine and they belong to a collection that is identified as mine. I think that is in some way reflective of what we are seeing here, and it is amazing! Since God is doing the writing in both cases, He is recording something permanent and irrevocable, which the imagery of the pillar also suggests.
I am sure there are many more instances of the writings of God that we could look at, but one more is worth thinking about here, because it is related.
When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments at Sinai, He inscribed them on tablets of stone. His own words, written by His own hand onto something hard and enduring. Those commandments were at the heart of the Mosaic Covenant but Israel found that they were unable to keep the Law because of their sin. Rather than giving life, all those commandments could do was to condemn the participants in that Covenant system. So God introduced the New Covenant, and when God announces it through Jeremiah, He says emphatically that it will not be like the Old one. For the purposes of this study, there was one very significant difference:
Jeremiah 31:31–34 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
God now inscribes His law on the hearts of the participants in this Covenant. Paul indicates that those who have this law written by Christ on their hearts are an open letter that anyone can read (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). Their hearts and therefore their lives are clearly changed.
Can we tie these reflections together? I think so. If God has written your name in the Book of Life, He has also written His law on your heart. Your life will show that you belong to Him. By His grace you will live in a way that honors Him, and He will reward you by making you an eternal monument to His grace, on which Jesus will write His Father’s and His own name on you forever, together with the name of His Church!
