THE throne symbolizes dominion, and so as last and highest honor this also is promised to him, who in this spiritual struggle overcomes, that, when once the realm of glory is ushered in, he shall sit with Christ in His throne.
That this highest honor is ascribed to the church of Laodicea, does not mean in the least, as speaks for itself, to limit this most illustrious honor to Laodiceans. Also this richest promise applies to the redeemed at large. Does it not follow immediately after: “He that hath an ear, let him hear, what the Spirit saith unto the churches”? Yet here too there is connection between this highest token of honor and the Laodicean faint-heartedness. Never is the struggle more difficult, and consequently victory more precarious, than where you live amid the luke-warm and irresolute. The cross of persecution weighs heavily, but stimulates at the same time to resistance. A bald revelation of sin as under Jezebel is dangerous, but by reaction impels one to lead a quiet and holy life. But what wears, without ever stimulating, is, when there is never a spring that is pressed down, and faint-heartedness became the tone of life. Then there is nothing that supports and carries you. Then every impulse must waken from your own faith. And therefore, he who then perseveres, and goes on, and overcomes, overcomes unto the end, he has fought the toughest fight, he has been most painfully martyred, as hero of the faith he precedes the others.
Now to obtain a part in kingly honor and royal dominion among us is unthinkable, but it was far from rare in the East. Did not Pharaoh have Joseph clothed in royal apparel, and was not power given him over all Egypt? Do we not read in Esther (6, 8) that the elect of the king should be clothed in the garment which the king used to wear, and that the royal crown should be placed upon his head? Is it not told of Daniel, how Belshazzar promised him similar royal honor? Did not David sing of Messiah how God had declared to Him: “Sit at my right hand (i.e., upon My throne) until I make thine enemies thy footstool”? In brief, was the Grand-vizier, who actually exercises all power and enjoys honor as the king himself, not throughout the entire East the ruler to whom every one looked?
For this reason the sitting of Jesus as King at God’s right hand seemed strange to no one in the days of the apostles, and even the inquiry what then remained of the Kingship of God Himself, was raised by no one.
Only, what Christ received, exceeded in one particular all Eastern honor of court. Pharaoh gave Joseph all power over land and people, and even the royal palace, but he added: “only in the throne will I be greater than thou” (Gen. 41, 40). But even that throne God has appointed His Anointed.
The exalted Mediator sits with the Father in His throne. And sitting in that throne He continues the prayer: “Father, I will that where I am, there they will be with me, whom Thou hast given me”; and it is to this prayer that the promise brings the Amen: Even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne, so also in the day of my glory shall you sit with me in my throne (Rev. 3, 21).
OF course with this it comes to the grant of power and dominion. Of a visible throne there can here be no mention. For do not forget, that this honor is accorded to all the blessed. He who did not overcome, but succumbed, does not enter into blessedness. And what a lifeless mock-representation it would be, to imagine Jesus seated on a throne, which afforded room for all God’s elect, innumerable as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the sea-shore.
The throne here is symbol. Symbol of power, of dominion and majesty.
Yet it is not the “power over the Heathen” that had been promised before. And neither does it refer to the judging power, of which Jesus said to the apostles, that they would sit with Him on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19, 28), and of which St. Paul declared that “the saints shall judge the world and “the angels” (1 Cor. 6, 2, 3).
All the Patmos promises to the victor presuppose that the judgment is ended, and refer to the glory, which afterward waits to be revealed.
What then is this honor, this highness, this lustre of the dominion promised here? Also for this mystery the key lies in Paradise.
In Paradise the child of man created after the image of God, and therefore and by reason of it the word spoken to him in Paradise: Have dominion. That would have been the sitting with God in His throne, clothed with royal power over the whole creation.
Priest and Prophet, but also King by the grace of God was man, in the image of God created.
That dominion man did then reject, did not desire, trod under foot, and at Satan’s whisper reached after another dominion, after a power over against and above God.
So the king became slave, slave of sin, slave of Satan, slave of the world, slave of his own desires and ways.
For this it is that in this dispensation, also in the way of salvation it remains and must remain: not rule, but serve. Christ Himself Who appears before us, does not come to rule, but to give His soul for a ransom.
The unconverted a slave. The one converted to God willingly wills nothing else than serve.
And this continues, and this keeps on, until the Image of God shall be altogether restored, after soul and body.
But then it also turns.
Then he who was slave becomes master, who willingly served is called to dominion, and then all the blessed will wear the “crown of life,” and sit with the Mediator in His throne.
AND then the choir of the blessed sings a new song, on golden cithern, to the Lamb, saying: Thou hast made us unto our God kings and priests, and we shall reign as kings on the earth.
All the endless creation, with its elements, its powers, its bewildering wealth, subjected to God’s elect, who are then redeemed in Christ, bearing the Image of God also in its majesty.
All that is in heaven and earth, restored in its organic unity and in its original coherence united under spiritual superior power. God eternally along two ways glorifying Himself in His Creation. First immediately, insofar as He upholds all things by the word of His power. But also mediately, by man, by the creature with His Image, and that man dominating the whole Creation, not with difficulty, but of himself, by his spiritual overhighness, and thus consecrating unto God His creation as an offering with thanksgiving and in worship.
In Christ everything is “gathered together” again, or as it reads literally: organically articulated again under one head. And so literally the blessed sitting with Christ in His throne. For it is one power, it is one dominion, the immediate almightiness whereby God Himself carries all things, and woven therein the mediate dominion in and by men, whereby the whole creation becomes an offering unto God.
THAT with the blessed there will also be power over Satan, is hereby not denied; yet here it is not mentioned. That power is implied with the power over the Heathen or the heathen nature.
That with the blessed there will also be power of higher grace of one over the other, speaks of itself. In every organism the finer organ exercises power over the weaker. Yet of this also there is here no mention. That power lies expressed in the special position of the apostles and of the four-and-twenty elders. But that can not be intended here, since the power in question here is accorded to all the blessed, and that other is just given to one to be exercised over the other.
No, what this sitting with Jesus in the throne promises, is to be King with Jesus; and Scripture itself interprets this as being a king on earth, a king over creation, a return of the glory of Paradise, and that glory of Paradise carried up to yet greater splendor.
And whether this dominion of victors does not take away from the dominion of God?
Surely not, for theirs is no dominion, save that which rests in the being conformed again to the Image of the Son, i.e., after the Image of God, so that it is not man in himself, but the reflection of God, which shines out in the blessed, to which such royal might and such kingly dominion is awarded.
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