Revelation 2:16 Repent; or else I will come to you quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. The giving of the white stone with the new name is the communication of what God thinks about the man to the man. It is the Divine judgment, the solemn holy doom of the righteous man, the "Come, thou blessed," spoken to the individual. In order to see this, we must first understand what is the idea of a name — that is, what is the perfect notion of a name. The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol — his soul's picture, in a word-the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is, or even, seeing what he is, could express in a name-word the sum and harmony of what he sees. To whom is this name given? To him that overcometh. When is it given? When he has overcome. Does God then not know what a man is going to become? As surely as He sees the oak which He put there lying in the heart of the acorn. Why then does He wait till the man has become by overcoming ere He settles what his name shall be? He does not wait; He knows his name from the first. It is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can he understand what his name signifies. The name is one "which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." blot only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him — can understand God as no man else can understand Him. This or that man may understand God more, may understand God better than he, but no other man can understand God as he understands Him. As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man He has a secret — the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. See, now, what a significance the symbolism of our text assumes. Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the spiritual garden of God — precious, each for his own sake, in the eyes of Him who is even now making us — each of us watered and shone upon and filled with life, for the sake of his flower, his completed being, which will blossom out of him at last to the glory and pleasure of the great Gardener. For each has within him a secret of the Divinity; each is growing towards the revelation of that secret to himself, and so to the full reception, according to his measure, of the Divine. Every moment that he is true to his true self, some new shine of the white stone breaks on his inward eye, some fresh channel is opened upward for the coming glory of the flower, the conscious offering of his whole being in beauty to the Maker. Each man, then, is in God's sight of great worth. Life and action, thought and intent, are sacred. And what an end lies before us! To have a consciousness of our own ideal being flashed into us from the thought of God! (George MacDonald, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. |
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