Fear Not

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.—Revelation 1:17-18.

It seems strange to us that St. John, of all men in the world, should be afraid of Jesus. He had spent with the Master so many familiar days. He had talked with Him on the highways, and listened to His voice by the seashore. He had joined with the inner circle of the disciples on the transfiguration mount, in the death chamber of Jairus’ house, and in the solemn stillness of Gethsemane by night. He had leaned on the Saviour’s breast at supper; and when the cross was upreared on Calvary, he had taken from the Lord’s dying lips the direction to receive Mary, the mother of Jesus, into his own home. And yet now, with all his experience of the Master, when the vision of the glorified Christ flashed upon him, he fell in consternation and terror at His feet.

But there was a great contrast between the vision which disclosed itself to the mind of St. John as he turned to see it and the memory which he cherished of the Lord as He was when he walked with Him in Palestine, or when he leaned on His breast at the supper table. St. John was the beloved disciple; he had been on terms of exceptional intimacy with his Master, but this was the risen and ascended Saviour; and so great was the contrast that he fell at His feet as one dead. He was overcome by the splendour of the vision; he was overwhelmed with the majesty of the Saviour. But it was the same loving Lord. “And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the Living one; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of death and of Hades.”

Martin Luther tells us himself that in his youth, while he was still a devout member of the Roman Catholic Church, he was walking one day at Eisleben in his priest’s robes following the procession of the Mass, when suddenly he was overcome by the thought that the Sacrament, carried by the vicar-general (Dr. Staupitz), was really Jesus Christ (as he then believed) in person. “A cold sweat,” he says, “covered my body, and I believed myself dying of terror.” Afterwards he confessed his fears to Dr. Staupitz, when the latter (one of the more enlightened of the old school) replied: “Your thoughts are not of Christ. Christ never alarms; He comforts.” “These words,” adds Luther, “filled me with joy, and were a great consolation to me.”1 [Note: J. Waddell.]

There are three great encouragements in the text—

I.  Fear not to Live: “I am the Living one.”

  II.  Fear not to Die: “I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.”

  III.  Fear not what comes after Death: “I have the keys of death and of Hades.”

I

Fear not to Live

“I am the Living one.”

1. The instinct of fear is deeply rooted in our nature. The thing that is unknown, yet known to be, will always be more or less formidable. When it is known as immeasurably greater than ourselves, and as having claims and making demands upon us, the more vaguely these are apprehended, the more room is there for anxiety; and when the conscience is not clear, this anxiety may well amount to terror. According to the nature of the mind which occupies itself with the idea of the Supreme, whether regarded as Maker or Ruler, will be the kind and degree of the terror. To this terror need belong no exalted ideas of God; those fear Him most who most imagine Him like their own evil selves, only beyond them in power, easily able to work His arbitrary will with them. The same consciousness of evil and of offence as gave rise to the bloody sacrifice is still at work in the minds of some who call themselves Christians. Naturally the first emotion of man towards the Being he calls God, but of whom he knows so little, is fear.

(1) Human experience is steeped in the fears brought by a guilty conscience. In all ages men have been terror-stricken as they thought of their sin. Even the most cultured peoples of paganism found no relief from such dread in turning to their gods. They did not think so well of their deities as to conceive of their pitying, helping, and saving. The favour of these monsters was to be won by pain, by suffering, and by surrender of what they loved the most; and so they hated their gods, and in their hearts bewailed the dire necessity of religion.

The ease of a guilty conscience is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Living One. It is in the touch of His right hand, in the hearing of the voice of Jesus, in the steadfast regard of what Jesus is, of what Jesus has done, and in the apprehension of the place that Jesus fills, and of the power that Jesus wields, that St. John is to find the ground of his fearlessness and steadfast confidence. This is one of the common places of Christian experience. Not in ourselves, not in our attainments, not in our circumstances, not in anything that is ours, not even in any suffering, surrender, or sacrifice, can we find any sure ground of confidence or of deliverance. It is in Christ, and in Him alone, that peace and rest can be found. While we look at Him, while we steadfastly contemplate Him, and dwell on His perfection, on His work, on the gracious relation He condescends to bear to us, we are safe from inward perturbation and from hesitation and doubt.

(2) Men are oft overcome with fear as they face some great crisis in life. Again and again in life we are called to face emergencies, to take risks, to attempt the apparently impossible, to stand steadfast when confronted with opposition or trial or persecution. And the nobler the life is, the more numerous are the occasions on which this call comes to us. The true man, the man who feels the hand of the Almighty upon him, soon finds that life is full of episodes of this kind, often recurring with increasing frequency; that so far from becoming easier as it goes on, life often becomes more strenuous and more difficult; that the path which he is called to tread is no level highway, not even a graduated ascent to a predestined goal. It is an ascent indeed, but not always gradual or continuous. At times he finds that it is broken by obstacles that have to be surmounted, by dangerous chasms that have to be bridged over, by slippery places in which it is difficult to find a foothold, by storm and by tempest and by darkness and by false guides and by open enemies.

Man trembles as he enters into the cloud of sorrow. He would rather be let alone. He would prefer that his money-making, or his pleasure, or his sin should not be interrupted by sickness or misfortune. In prosperity he feels strong; in adversity his heart fails him. It is just then, in his hour of need, that a strong right hand is laid upon him, and a Voice whispers in his ear: “I will in no wise fail thee.” “Fear not.” Sometimes, when an electric car is mounting a steep street, the power fails, and the car sticks fast with half the height still to be climbed. But on the Hill Difficulty, or on the mountain of trial, the power of Christ will never come short. The most trying seasons of life are the seasons when His grace is most magnified and His arm strongest to save.

(3) There are those who fear to live because they can look forward to nothing day by day and year by year but the small dull round of toil, and its endless reaches of flat, straight, unchanging road oppress their souls. Every cyclist knows that the dead level is far more wearying than a road where he must climb even steep hills now and then. The same muscles are unceasingly exercised; one misses the fresh breeze and the expansive outlook of the uplands; one loses the rest that is born of change. So life on the dead level is in danger of exhaustion. Nowhere does one more plainly need to hear the Master’s voice saying: “Fear not.” In the dead monotonies Christ reveals His power. He brings blessedness into the dull round of toil—the bitter weariness of chronic pain, the wearing anxieties of unchanging years. The desert can be made to blossom like the rose. What we are in soul will determine what we are in work. St. Paul’s tent-making was never to him a monotonous desert. Let us try to catch the light of heaven, as we pursue our daily callings, whatever they may be, and we shall not fear to live through unchanging years.

To every thoughtful man life has its responsibilities, its cares, and its possibilities. Shall I be able to live worthily, to make a fit use of my opportunities? Shall I be able to live a rich, full, and gracious life, and be equal to the duties and the responsibilities which may devolve upon me? As we reflect on this, as we think out the situations and possibilities that open out to us as life proceeds and new horizons are disclosed, we feel the gracious power of this word, “Fear not to live; for I am the Living One.” It is as if the Lord said, “Fear not to live; I share your life. Through Me you will be able to grasp the opportunities of life, you will rise to the height of your calling, and when duty calls you will be able to answer all its demands. You will be able to say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ ”1 [Note: J. Iverach, The Other Side of Greatness, 139.]

2. Jesus, then, would have us meet every fear with the assurance that He is the Living One. “I am the first and the last, and the Living one”; not merely “the first and the last,” not merely God at the beginning and God at the end, a Creator who put the world-machine into working order and who will step forward again into view at the last day to judge and punish and reward; but a God who is the Living One from first to last, the Giver and Sustainer of life, upholding—carrying along—all things by the word of His power. In this picture is portrayed with a lightning touch the eternal being and the eternal activity of God.

The close connexion of clauses suggests that the claim made in the expression “the Living one” means more than that He was alive. It means exactly what Jesus meant when, in the hearing of this same Apostle, He said upon earth, “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given”—strange paradox—“so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself”—a life which, considered in contrast to all the life of creatures, is underived, independent, self-feeding, and, considered in contrast with the life of the Father with whom that Son stands in ineffable and unbroken union, is bestowed. It is a paradox, but until we assume that we have sounded all the depths and climbed all the heights, and gone round the boundless boundaries of the circumference of that Divine nature, we have no business to say that it is impossible. And this is what the great words that echoed from heaven in the Apostle’s hearing upon Patmos meant—the claim by the glorified Christ to possess absolute fontal life, and to be the Source of all creation, “in whom was life.” He was not only “the Living one,” but, as He Himself has said, He was “the Life.”

Stevenson in his essays insists upon “being vital,” as he calls it. Whatever else you are, he says, “be vital.” He is encouraging and seeking to foster a brave and cheerful optimism. Do not trouble about death, says Stevenson, make the best of life. Now there is truth in that, and wisdom in it; and in all literature there is nothing more touching than the zest with which Stevenson determined to live, though in his sickly body he carried all his days the sentence of death in himself.1 [Note: J. D. Jones, The Gospel of Grace, 132.]

II

Fear not to Die

“I was dead.”

1. Man naturally fears death. Through fear of death men are all their lifetime subject to bondage. Though, under high motives and devotion to great causes, men have often subdued the fear of death, yet this fear is really a feeling common to all men. For men do not know what it is to die. It is an experience that is strange to men, and no one returns to tell others what it is to die. No traveller returns from the other land, and the experience of death lies before each man as new and as strange as if no one had ever had that experience. No one had ever before said, “I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.”

It is said that George Morland, the painter, who killed himself by drinking, was possessed of such an unreasonable fear of darkness that, if the light happened to go out, he would creep towards the fire or the person next him, and he could never sleep without two lights in his room, lest one by some accident should be put out. That is something like the intolerable fear that most men have of death. They may reason themselves out of it, but the instinctive dread remains. Darwin used to go to the London Zoological Gardens, and, standing by the glass case that contained the cobra, put his forehead against the glass, while the cobra struck out at him. He was trying to conquer an instinctive fear; but though he knew that the glass was between, every time the creature struck out the scientist dodged. The same instinct makes most men fear the termination of earthly life. They may be firmly convinced in their minds that death is no enemy, but like Samuel Johnson they look forward with something very like terror to the “awful hour of their decease.” And yet, when the time came for Johnson, he was able to face death with calmness and Christian fortitude.1 [Note: J. Waddell.]

2. Christ does not teach us to make light of death; He says nothing to weaken a right sense of its awfulness and solemnity. Had we no shrinking from it, we should be lacking in the ordinary instincts of self-preservation and in due reverence for the sanctities of that human life which man may destroy but can never replace. Had we no native horror at the shedding of human blood, we might rush on suicide or murder, with the ferocious delight of savages or brute beasts. Yes! there is a rightful fear of death which is associated with a sense of the blessing and value of God-given life and in fullest accord with all the primary instincts of our being and well-being. We cannot suppose that this laudable fear is meant to be impaired by the gospel. No! the Lord’s words here do not mean that we are to have nothing of that natural fear of death which is one of the strong safeguards of our own life and that of others. It is only the tyrannous, embarrassing, distracting, oppressive, mischievous terror that becomes simply a curse and a snare for all who come under its sway, to which this command “Fear not” applies, and from which it is part of the gracious Saviour’s design to deliver us.

That man must be a coward or a liar who could boast of never having felt a fear of death.2 [Note: The Duke of Wellington.]

3. Christ bids us master the fear of death by remembering that He passed through its dark portals. “I was dead.” This announcement would remove all doubts from the mind of the Apostle as to the person addressing him. Whatever disparity between His present appearance and what He was when the Apostle saw and conversed with Him in the world, this declaration would remove all doubt. In the glorious One now in the midst of the golden candlesticks, and holding the seven stars in His right hand, and clothed with indescribable glory and majesty, he beholds the One whom he knew on earth as the “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”—the One whom he saw arrayed in mock royal robes and the crown of thorns, the One whom he saw arraigned before an earthly tribunal and there unjustly condemned, the One whom he saw in indescribable agony in the gloomy precincts of Gethsemane, the One whom he saw nailed to the accursed tree, and whose cry of bitter agony he heard while under the hiding of His Father’s countenance, and whom at last he helped to commit to the dark and lonely grave. But what a contrast now! No longer the “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”; no longer the object of the hateful scorn and derision of the wicked; no longer the suffering Jesus, crushed with the burden of sins not His own—bearing the cross on which to lay down His life a ransom for many; no longer the seemingly conquered of death and the tenant of the grave, but the mighty conqueror risen to the possession of an endless life.

The actual words are, “I became dead”—a mysterious paradox, in which a most wonderful event is inserted, incorporated, into that eternity of being. In this short phrase He intimates the whole mystery of the Incarnation; but He presents just that aspect of it which sinful man, prone at His feet, most needs. He does not articulate the thought now of His blessed birth, or of His life, His speech, His labour, His example; there is nothing said here of Bethlehem, or of the years in Nazareth, or of the fair borders of the Lake with the furrowed fields, and the floating fishing-craft, and the listening multitudes upon the flowery slopes. It is all the cross; it is only and altogether the precious death and burial. “I became dead.” We read that sentence in the light of the long Apocalypse, and what do we see within it? The shame and glory of the crucifixion, the atoning and redeeming blood, the sacrifice of the Lamb, the Lamb not of innocence only but of the altar—“as it had been slain.”

“And behold, I am alive for evermore.” This existence after death is special, and different. It is not a mere reassertion of what had been already included in His great word, “I am the Living one.” It is something added. It is an assurance that in the continued life which has once passed through the experience of death there is something new, another sympathy, the only one which before could have been lacking with His brethren whose lot it is to die, and so a helpfulness to them which could not otherwise have been, even in His perfect love. This new life—the life which has conquered death by tasting it, which has enriched itself with a before unknown sympathy with men whose lives are for ever tending towards and at last all going down into the darkness of the grave—this life stretches on and out for ever. It is to know no ending. So long as there are men living and dying, so long above them and around them there shall be the Christ, the God-man, who liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore.

Death and darkness get you packing,

Nothing now to man is lacking;

All your triumphs now are ended,

And what Adam marr’d is mended

Graves are beds now for the weary

Death a nap, to wake more merry.1 [Note: Henry Vaughan.]

4. Because Christ lives, His people must live too. They cannot die. He made Himself one with His people, so much one with them that His life was their life, His dying their dying, and His work their work. The closeness of that union is illustrated on the other side as well. Their life is His life, their dying is His dying, and their work is His work. So the Apostle of the Gentiles says to the Colossian Christians, “Ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” So close is the unity between Christ and His people that St. Paul could say, “If one died for all, then were all dead.” If we trace this thought, as set forth in its fulness in Scripture, we find that the fear of death is overcome because the bitterness of death is past. It is no mere figure of speech which affirms that the Christian has died when he became a Christian. Nor is it only the case that when Christ died all His people died with Him. But the other side of the twofold experience is also true. Christ shares the death of His people. He is with them in the valley of the shadow of death. It is no lonely death that they die, when body and spirit part for the time. Christ is with them, and keeps them company in their dying hour. The sting of death has been withdrawn, and the bitterness of it has been taken away. For in virtue of the faith which has made him one with Christ, a Christian has died to sin, has passed into the state where there is no more condemnation.

It is told of Leonardo da Vinci that on his death-bed the king came to visit and cheer him. He talked to his majesty “lamenting that he had offended God and man in that he had not laboured in art as he ought to have done.” Suddenly he was seized with a paroxysm, and the king, taking him in his arms to give him comfort, the weary penitent “died in the arms of his king.” The words are a parable of that which awaits every Christian in the hour of death. He will die in the arms of his King, “the Eternal God, his refuge, and underneath the everlasting arms,” and so the pathway will not be strange.1 [Note: J. Waddell.]

III

Fear not what comes after Death

“I have the keys of death and of Hades.”

Two things in the rendering of the Authorized Version have given rise to much misapprehension. One is the order in which, following an inferior reading, it has placed the two things specified. And the other is that mistranslation, as it has come to be, of the word Hades by the word “Hell.” The true original does not read “hell and death,” but “death and Hades,” the dim unseen regions in which all the dead, whatsoever their condition may be, are gathered. The Hades of the New Testament includes the Paradise into which the penitent thief was promised entrance, as well as the Gehenna which threatened to open for the impenitent.

Here it is figured as being a great gloomy fortress, with bars and gates and locks, of which that “shadow feared of man” is the warder, and keeps the portals. But he does not keep the keys. The kingly Christ has these in His own hand.

When land on both sides of a river is held by the same farmer he also has the rights of the water. In the same manner Jesus Christ is the owner, on this side as well as the other side. Consequently He has the rights of the river which divides the two worlds.2 [Note: Richard Jones.]

1. Jesus went into death and Hades to become their Master on behalf of men. It was not necessary for Him to seek the keys of death and Hades for Himself, for He was in Himself the Lord of Life, and death and Hades were His vassals. It was humanity that had lost the keys, and was in bondage to death and Hades, and it was for humanity, and as its representative, that Jesus “became dead,” in order that He might “become alive again” and bear for us the keys of death and Hades. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

Because He was the “Living one,” He broke death’s power, and Hades could not detain Him. It is a Divine paradox that the Lord of essential life should enter into death and Hades at all, but it would have been more than a paradox, it would have been the subversion of eternal truth and reason, if they had been able to detain Him. By voluntary surrender He entered into their domain, and by His will He burst their bands asunder and shattered their prison. They were compelled to admit into their stronghold One stronger than they, and they were conquered in their own citadel. They who had conquered millions were at last conquered for men by the Son of Man. With the majesty of invincible life all was measured out beforehand, not only the entrance into death’s domain, but also the rising on the third day. Conquering all the dark domain, He came forth bearing the keys of death and Hades. “I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.”

There is a well-known engraving of Monica and her son St. Augustine. They clasp hands in the twilight, and look wistfully into the open sky. They are not gazing at the stars, their eyes are turned towards the infinite; they are asking—Beyond the horizon, what? Who will read for us the everlasting riddle? There is a little poem by George MacDonald—

Traveller, what lies over the hill?

Traveller, tell to me;

I am only a child at the window-sill,

Over I cannot see.

A verse in Richard Baxter’s hymn answers it well—

My knowledge of that life is small,

The eye of faith is dim;

But ’tis enough that Christ knows all,

And I shall be with Him.1 [Note: F. Harper, A Broken Altar, 47.]

2. Jesus now carries the keys. Keys are symbols of authority and law; and the keys of death remind us that government and order prevail in the realm of mortality. Having regard to events which we constantly witness, it might seem that death is entirely lawless. Sweeter than the virgin rose, the young perish with the rose, whilst the very aged wearily grow older still; the strong are broken by sickness in a day, whilst the feeble linger on in helplessness and pain; the good cease from the land, whilst the vicious remain to torment and pollute. We know not when death will make its appearance, or whom it will strike; it seems the most fitful of agents, setting at naught all probability and prophecy. But just as the meteorologist sees, and sees ever more clearly, how law governs the wind which bloweth where it listeth, so the actuary discerns regulating principles under the apparent capriciousness of death, and bases his insurance tables upon those ascertained principles. However it may seem, the dark archer never draws his bow at a venture. The gate of the grave is not blown about by the winds of chance; it has keys, it opens and shuts by royal authority.

To have the key of any experience means to have entered into it and passed through it and endured it, and learned its secrets and made them your own.

Now Jesus knows what dying is like, and He knows what comes after. By the grace of God He tasted death for every man. He Himself felt that fear of it which makes cowards of us all. He Himself shrank from it, as we do. He Himself endured it, as we must. He suffered far more than any other man ever did or ever need, suffer. Of all men He was most solitary and forsaken. He trod the wine-press alone. He died deserted, in the dark. He Himself gave up the ghost, and went down into a human grave. He was crucified, dead and buried, and He descended into Hades. He went wherever we, in our turn, must go. He passed the mysterious gateway, and as Man He entered the unseen world, and all the secrets of that unutterable experience belong to Him.

One of the most profound and suggestive legends of ancient Greece was the legend of the Sphinx. The Sphinx, according to the old story, was a monstrous creature, half human, half animal, who had a riddle to propound to any travellers who passed her way. What exactly the riddle was does not matter to us just now. All that concerns us is that here was a creature propounding her riddle to men and exacting their lives as forfeit if they failed to answer it. Traveller after traveller, the legend says, tried and failed and perished. But at last there came one who discovered the answer, and the Sphinx, her secret discovered, destroyed herself. Whenever I think of that Greek legend I feel that from first to last it is nothing but a parable of death. Death is the Sphinx. Ever since the world began death has been in it propounding to mankind this tremendous riddle, “If a man die, shall he live again?”—challenging them to discover her own secret, saying to them, “Explain me or pay the forfeit in a life passed in fear and bondage.” And generation after generation tried to discover the secret and explain the riddle. The greatest sages and philosophers and teachers tried and failed. The psalmists and prophets of the Old Testament tried and failed. Death remained the terrible and inscrutable Sphinx. But there came One at last who “became dead” and went down into the grave, and on the morning of the third day came out of it again. And now He says to the world, “I have the Key.”1 [Note: J. D. Jones, The Gospel of Grace, 128.]

3. The keys of death and Hades are in the hand of Him who is seated on the judgment-seat. “He openeth, and no man shutteth; he shutteth, and no man openeth.” Nor is the consolation derived from the thought that all power is in the hand of Jesus Christ. That would be an untrustworthy source of comfort. For the Christian would not desire or wish that the power should be strained on his behalf, or that an unworthy verdict should be given. For on that day it will be found that those who obtain the sentence of acquittal and of reward have become worthy of their place in the Father’s Kingdom. They have become the righteousness of God in Christ. They have become like Christ, have really obtained the Spirit of adoption, and have learned the language of the Father’s family, and are really the sons of God. The final procedure recognizes all that has been done for them, and all that is accomplished in them, and the verdict is given accordingly. Justified by grace, and yet judged according to works, is the final wonder of the Christian experience.

The weary child, the long play done,

Wags slow to bed at set of sun;

Sees mother leave, fears night begun,

But by remembered kisses made

To feel, tho’ lonely, undismayed,

Glides into dreamland unafraid.

The weary man, life’s long day done,

Looks lovingly at his last sun;

Sees all friends fade, fears night begun,

But by remembered mercies made

To feel, tho’ dying, undismayed,

Glides into glory unafraid.

Fear Not

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