A Title of Christ in Revelation: The Alpha and Omega

A Title of Christ in Revelation: The Alpha and Omega. 

“The revelation of Jesus Christ…” (Rev. 1:1). John the Divine left no doubt about the purpose of his Book of Revelation. His very first words in his prologue were that his vision was an unveiling of Jesus. His baffling and otherworldly writings in this book were not primarily about future events, or the destiny of human life on planet earth, or all those mysterious activities in the heavenly sphere. John was writing first and foremost about the Person of Christ, and he intended everything in the book to point back to Him. Revelation was a lifting of the veil on the full identity and activity of Christ. It is a revelation of Jesus, from God, concerning Christ Himself. The Godhead is both the primary source of John’s vision and its main subject. Everything in this extended vision that came to John straight from heaven is to be understood through the prism of Christ. Regardless of how dramatic, puzzling or profound its contents, everything in John’s vision is intended to help us discover more of Christ and deepen our knowledge of and love for Him. All these events in Revelation that seem to pique the reader’s curiosity are nonetheless streams that are meant to lead us back to the River of Life. Perhaps it would do us all well if we continue to remind ourselves of Paul’s declaration as we read John’s vision… “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2). So then, we can’t let ourselves get too sidetracked, too stuck in the weeds, with these fancy special effects in John’s vision… the beasts and the dragons and the angels, the numbers and colors and gemstones, the symbols and metaphors and poetic imagery… After all is said and done in Revelation, St. John has composed an essentially Christ-centered book.

Gold Mine: Another way of looking at the book of Revelation is to strap on your miner’s helmet and search for Biblical gold. In John’s vision are many gold mines that have Jesus Christ as the source… Mines like His appearance in His glorified presence, the Logos of God, the seven titles of Christ, the words to the seven churches, the seven Beatitudes, and the many songs of worship that come straight to us from heaven! And there is more! Mining all the gold in Revelation will make us wealthy with His treasure for all of eternal life. But all those fancy special effects in John’s vision are only fool’s gold if they distract us from Jesus.

“I AM the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Revelation 22:13).

This I AM statement of Jesus is different than all seven of His I AM references to Yahweh in the gospel of John. The timing is different, profoundly so. Here in Revelation we have an I AM claim of Jesus that comes after the Passion, after the Resurrection, after the Ascension, after He takes up His post at the right hand of the Father. His bold I AM claims of being co-equal with Yahweh, the Holy One, are now proven true in the spiritual world of divine experience. Jesus is now seated in the heavenlies, the ultimate fulfillment of all the I AM statements He made while on the earth. Jesus is indeed of one substance with Lord Yahweh. I AM is now reunited with the Great I AM. Jesus and the Father are now, have always been, will always be One, united, I AM What I AM, and I Will Be What I Will Be. The Lord of the Past tense, the Present tense, and the Future tense. The Lord of every tense imaginable, the ultimate “to be” verb, the I AM. Not only does Jesus fulfill all the final intentions of  grammar, Jesus incarnates the divine alphabet, from the first letter to the last, from A to Z, from Alpha (the first letter in the Greek alphabet) to Omega (the last letter). Jesus is first to Last, Beginning to End.

Jesus is A to Z, because He is eternal. He was there at the beginning, and He’ll be there at the end. He is the originator of all things, and the fulfillment of all things. He was the starting point of history, and He is its destiny. He is the origin of life, and He is the goal of life. He is the prototype of humanity, and its final glory. He embraces all the eternal truth of God’s knowledge, from the first letter of His first word to the last letter of His last word, from the beginning of time to the conclusion of time, from Creation to Restoration. Jesus is the essence of everything in God’s Reality.

Jesus is the Lord of Language. So naturally He refers to the Greek alphabet three times in the Book of Revelation (1:8; 21:6; 22:13). He owns every letter that can form a word that can state a thought. He is every word of truth that those letters communicate, for He is the ultimate truth, conveying all God’s thoughts, giving form to substance. Language is God’s gift to help us understand God’s thoughts, which means Jesus is the ultimate purpose of language. Words are intended to articulate the wisdom of God, and Jesus is the embodiment of wisdom, so Jesus is the goal of all human and divine language.

Jesus is the world’s only complete sentence. He completely spells out God’s being. He was the first Word, and He will be the last Word, on the path to Truth. Any letter forming any word that does not find its eventual home in Jesus does not contain the knowledge of God. Any such word ends up being nonsense, incomplete, pointless. Jesus is the origin and destiny of every true word, for He is the Truth and He is the Word. Jesus is the starting point and the ending point of all divine knowledge and Reality. Jesus transcends the grammar of tense and time. He is a mystery that will be fully revealed at the end of time. For now, Jesus is God’s complete sentence that cannot be diagrammed.

“Christ is God’s Word abbreviated, in the sense that all that God has to say is summed up in Christ.”  (Reardon*). The written Word can be summarized in the Living Word. God has even more to say, because His capacity for thought is unbounded. And even His unfettered thought is merely an extended version of one little Name. Christ is the essential thought in God’s mind. Christ is the essential truth in God’s Reality. When thinking of truth, Christ is everything God has to say on the matter. Jesus is the alpha to omega of God’s thinking, the A to Z of human and divine language.

Jesus contains every letter of the whole alphabet of Reality. He embraces all the in between letters, not just the beginning and end. He is our King of the in between when we walk with him after the beginning of our life (which is good), and before the end of our life (which will be good). Those in between letters are a vital part of Reality for us. “Each of us has been cast as the protagonist in the novel that is our life. We’re assured a happy ending to that novel. But whether we become a noble character or a tragic one depends on how we live out the truth of the gospel in the middle pages.” (Eugene Peterson).

• I am indebted to Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon for getting me on to this track of thinking. His article on Ps. 119 in Christ in the Psalms was instrumental to this piece. Thank you, Rev. Reardon.