“Unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive” (Rev. 2:8).
Though Judge, the Lord never forgets His people; in trial and suffering He is still with them. But His care is not shown now as in the Old Testament. Then He was not known as the Conqueror of death. His way of intervening for His saints was to save them from death, delivering them out of the furnace or shutting the mouths of the lions. Satan might try Job, but a limit was imposed: “Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life” (Job 2:6).
Here, however, is no such restriction; they were to be faithful unto death. No deliverance on this side of the grave is promised. And why? Because a believer now knows Christ, not only as able to save from death, but as having triumphed over death. He is the First and the Last—God having all power in Himself. He is also the One which was dead and is alive, for He, as man, has borne death in our place and has been “raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4). The believer is therefore totally secure. The death of the body is but a door which opens into Christ’s presence. From the second death, the lake of fire, he is already delivered.
T. B. Baines