Posted 2020
1. 20:6 Blessed and holy is the one who takes part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
Before we get into the positive blessing aspect of this beatitude we need to say something about the first resurrection and second death. What is the first resurrection? Are we resurrected twice? No, the first resurrection is Christ’s! Those who believe and are baptized are said to take part in Christ’s death and resurrection by virtue of their joining him through their faith and his atoning and reconciling work accomplished with his death and resurrection. The Apostle Paul talks much of this in his letters. Baptism is often described as dying with Christ as we are symbolically washed with the water and then rising with him as the Holy Spirit fills us.
However, we all know we still die. But we also know that we will be resurrected. Indeed, scripture teaches that all will be resurrected for the final judgment day. Those of us who are resurrected in Christ will go on to eternal life with him. Those who have rejected him will go on to the second death. However, this death is not really an end either. But it is the death of all that is good. It appears to be some kind of eternally godless existence. We can only imagine what it must be like to exist forever separated from the God who created us and put his spirit in us. Everything positive and good in life will be denied these unfortunate souls. Some might ask, how can your supposed Christian God of love do this. My response is that it was not his will that this happen. Jesus himself said so when he was teaching his disciples. It happened because we have free will and some of us make that awful choice of turning our backs on or Creator. Those who reject God often don’t see the difference their choice makes in this life. This is deceiving. Because the spirit of God is still on this earth, especially in us believers who are the preserving salt – and light – of the world, life can be pretty good for these God-deniers. However, when the Spirit of God is removed, and with it all love and any other good quality we recognize as humans, the afterlife will be awful.
We can see now why it is said here that the second death has no power over us who believe, who are members of The Church Christ and his angels were addressing in Revelation. We rise again but once, and after that we live in the new earth, the new heaven, forever.
We are also described here as priests. This is also language used earlier in scripture, especially in the New Testament. When God established his order on earth in the process referred to as creation, the ultimate act was to create humans in his image. This is how we are priests of God. God lives in us. However, we also know this capacity suffered immense damage when our ancestors took things in their own hands and made unwise choices that were not in keeping with God’s purposes in creating them. We lost that priesthood, that special relationship with our Creator.
However, as we also know, all was not lost. God had a plan to make things right again. If we freely choose to go with his plan, which some describe as being saved, among other terms, we set foot on a path of restoring that relationship. On earth, it will still not be the same as it was in the beginning. However, with our new life, once more ‘in the Spirit,’ we will have a foretaste of what it will be like after the first death. And part of that renewed life is that our priesthood status is returned.
What or who are priests? They are those who mediate and pray to God on behalf of the rest of the world. We know that from what the roles the priests were assigned in the Old Testament. They also received sacrifices and offered them on peoples’ behalf to make atonement for sin. However, that is one role we no longer need to carry out. In this new age, post Christ (on earth), he has offered his life once for all as a sacrifice for us. The priest also burned, offered up, incense, which we see here in Revelation being compared with the offering up of the prayers of the saints, the priests. Another very important role that priests had, but which they rarely fulfilled in the Old Testament, pre-Christ era, was to teach the people how to live as those created in his image. This way of living no longer comes naturally to humanity. However, when we are again filled with the Spirit, we can learn, be enlightened, gain wisdom and help teach one another how to live. Importantly, we should do this by example as much as, or more so than, by word.
This verse also says we will reign with Christ. For many of us, this conjures up images of us as rulers as how we see them on this earth. No, that is not what God has in mind. Remember, even in his being tempted as a human, Christ rejected the political route to success. He did not come as a king as humans understood kings. This is not rule over one another.
This is an aspect of God’s creation we have never learned or understood well; that we were created to rule with God over the earth he created. That was another facet of being created in his image. We have done a bad job of this though. We have understood it in materialistic and economic terms, even political as I already alluded to. We have turned that into dominating and exploiting this wonderful earth. We have not looked after it in a God-like way at all, the way God intended, for the most part. In our time’s concern over climate change, voices are helping us see these things again, see how we have not done well and how we can do better. Indeed, some would say we must do better if we want to see this God-given earth continue in some semblance to how it was created.
Finally, it is said we will do this for 1000 years. Is this to be taken literally? Indeed, many interpreters of scripture, especially beginning in the 19th century, took it this way. However, in scripture, numbers are often used symbolically, representationally. I think we can accept this description as a finite way of describing something we cannot grasp, the concept of forever, of eternity. More of us now live beyond the once almost unbelievable age of 100. To live a thousand years is beyond our grasp though, just as much as eternity is.
So, I think I have painted already a picture that shows many aspects of the blessedness of being among those who take part in the first resurrection, as I described. Those who are included in that number will:
1. Live forever with God and Jesus in a new heaven and earth, where all that is negative will be removed, so we can relate to one another and our Creator as originally planned.
2. Will all share with one another the wonderful ability to be perfect and full mediators for one another with God. We know we don’t really need that when we live with him, but it will be in our nature to be that in how we live in the new order.
3. Will once again ‘rule’ the earth as God intended. Then we will really see what this earth and all in it created good, as we are told it was, can really be like. We will really get to enjoy all that the earth was meant to offer us with its beauty and complexity of which we still learn new every day.
Blessed indeed! What we have to look forward to!
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