Ver. 12-18. The Lord here announces Himself to the angel of the church in Pergamos as One who was armed with all-searching power by the word of God, the piercing word that judges. In the book of Revelation, the sharp sword is at the command of the Lord Jesus, as the instrument of judgment. What the sword does in the hand of man, the word of searching judgment does which the Lord applies in power; it decides all questions that have to do with Him. There is always a great and beautiful connection between the way or title in which He presents Himself and the state of the church which He is addressing. It was because the word was no longer that which had living energy to judge in the church, that the Lord Jesus takes care to show that it had never lost its power in His hands. As the first church shows us declension set in, even in the days of the apostle John, and Smyrna the time of persecution from the heathen, so here we have a totally different state of things. Pergamos is the scene of Satan's flattering power or seduction, which was just what he used after the violence of persecution had spent itself. It was a more dangerous device than the second; for when our hearts are set on anything that is wrong, there is nothing that more shows God against our ways than His giving us up to our own will. “Ephraim is joined unto idols: let hive alone.” In the case of Smyrna it was the contrary of this; it was the Lord intercepting the power of Satan through persecution from without, which was used of God to hinder the growing corruption within.
After that, the god of this world promised Christians every worldly advantage. The emperor himself offered to become a Christian, though he put off baptism till his death-bed. There was no plainer proof how completely the church has fallen and had departed from the Lord's name, than when it accepted the emperor's terms and the patronage of the world. Even those who were saved had entirely lost sight of what the church was, as not belonging to the world but of heaven. The Roman empire was essentially the world's power. The church had been called out to be the standing witness of these two things: first, of the world's ruin; and secondly, of God's love. But when we see the church shaking hands with the world, all is gone, and the church falls right down into the mind of this age. If the world gains in some respects, the church loses in everything; and no wonder, because it is at the cost of the will and glory of Christ.
Satan's “throne” is the sense: in presence of it, who does not see the propriety with which the Lord presents Himself, as armed with the sharp two-edged sword? It is the same word as is used for “seat,” as well as “throne” in other parts of this very book; but here it is properly a “throne,” because Satan is spoken of in respect of authority. It is obvious that all this exactly describes the state of things in Constantine's time. “Instead of being at the stake and suffering for Christ's sake, the church was now yoked with the world in a mere profession of Christianity; for as the world did not really rise to Christ, the church must sink to the world's level. No wonder the Lord says thereon, “Thou dwellest where Satan's throne is.” Yet He allows all that He can, even where this miserable association was found—His assembly dwelling where Satan's throne was. They maintained still His name, and did not deny the faith which was given to the Saints; but that was all. They had just come out of the great persecution in which Antipas was slain. But now the church at Pergamos, instead of suffering, was dwelling quietly in the world. Like Lot, they too had their righteous souls vexed with the ungodliness of those around.
The Lord, accordingly, brings forward the things of which He had to warn them. “Thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam.” (Ver. 14). What was the leading feature we see in the son of Beor? He was led by his covetousness to try and serve the bad king of Moab by cursing the people of God. When God gave him an answer, he goes to God a second time, because his heart wanted its own way. And it is solemn to learn that if God gives you up, you may get what you want. Balaam afterward falls into even worse evil. He was indeed a man whose heart was not with God. He said some true things, but his spirit was not in them. He always speaks as it were from without, as a miserable man, afar from the blessing which he saw. “I shall see him, but not now; I shall behold him, but not nigh,” &c. He goes on, step by step, until he lends himself to be the corrupter, through the world, even of God's chosen people. And so it was with the church. Even the philosophers began to take up Christian truth, and in the writings of the fathers we find pretty much what we have here. What fornication is in moral things, such was their illicit commerce with the world in the things of God. There were, I doubt not, witnesses who were made very little account of, save in heaven; but one of the men who had the largest and most lasting influence of all, Augustine, was a true saint of God, and, though that is not saying much, the greatest light of the western church. He had held the name of Christ and had not denied his faith. All agree that these epistles applied primarily to the churches to which John wrote: but many do not see that they also apply to different stages of the Church, and describe its various states successively.
The doctrine of the Nicolaitanes seems an evil from within, as that of Balaam was rather from without. Such it was in principle and doctrine now. We read of their deeds in Ephesus, but this went farther and deeper. It was a corruption of grace, a turning it to licentiousness. Sanctity is the greatest snare if it be not real, yea, if it flows not from the truth; yet nothing more terrible than that where grace is known or at least talked of, it should be abused. If we search our own hearts and ways, we shall find that it is the very thing we all tend to do. Grace has set us completely free through Him who died and rose again, and what claim has it not on our hearts? Do we not often treat God's grace to us in the very same way that our children in their most hardened mood treat us? They then take all as a matter of right. Though creation has been brought under subjection to vanity on account of Adam's sin, yet there is no moral evil connected with its lower forms. But in man's case it is not so. Knowing the evil, he yet goes on in it. And even when we have got the certainty of deliverance, if the joy of it have passed away in a measure, we begin to use the Lord's grace just to serve ourselves. This, carried out without conscience, is Nicolaitanism. God's grace was meant to bind us thoroughly to Himself. We might see a person fall into evil (and this, of course, is sorrowful indeed, in a Christian); but there is a great deal more of evil that others do not see. God gives us the opportunity of judging ourselves when no one else, perhaps, knows anything about it. If we do not judge it, then the end here below is that the judgment of the world comes, and we may be sure what a vast amount of evil must have gone on in secret, when God allows us to fall so that the very world judges our course as evil. But we must not be discouraged. It is just where the truth is most preached and held, that Satan will invariably try to bring in the worst of heresies, in order to bring shame upon the testimony of God. When a man slips from the highest pinnacle, of course he will have a more terrible fall; as also it will be much more manifest to the world than if he had merely upset on the plain.
The Lord does not say, “I will fight against thee with the sword of my mouth,” but “against them.” (Ver. 16.) The sword of judgment may, it is true, act in taking them away by death, as in the case of the Corinthian saints, who were judged of the Lord here below that they might not afterward be condemned with the world. Christian discipline does not mean putting away those who are not Christians from those who are; rather it contemplates the purging out of Christians who are walking wrongly, in order to maintain the honor and holiness of the Lord in their midst. Mercy is the great motive of discipline, next to the maintaining of Christ's character in the church. It is at the bottom of the Lord's ways with us, and surely it should be so for us with others.
The fact of the church's getting into the world isolated at once the faithful Christian. The church only became invisible through sin. It was not God's intention, it is not according to His heart, that it should ever be so, though I believe that all was permitted and ordered wisely. God did not make a light to be hid, but to be set on a candlestick. Such was the fact now: Catholicism reigned, if you take the protracted view, which soon paved the way for Popery. But if the word. penetrated him who had an ear hear, it gave secret fellowship with Christ when the public position had become settledly false. Hence to a true-hearted saint, amid all this ruin and confusion, He says, “I will give to eat of the hidden manna.” (Ver. 17.) The manna represents Christ Himself as He came down from heaven and took a place of abasement in the world. Those who were slipping away into the world are reminded of the place which Christ took down here. The “hidden manna” refers to the use which was made of the manna for the ark: a certain portion of it was taken into the holy place as a memorial before God. The faithful are to eat not of the manna only, but of the hidden manna.
It is not merely that we shall share in and enjoy with Christ all His glory as exalted on high and as displayed before the world.; but God will give us special communion with Christ as He was here below. The sweet thing in the glory will be that the blessed One, who has brought us into all the enjoyment and peace of heaven, is the same One we have known in all His path of sorrow and rejection in this world, with whom we have shared it ever so feebly here, feeding on Him as our portion even now. The white stone was a mark of entire acquittal. May we be thus looking forward to Christ; and may God give us to taste His own delight in His Son as He was here below, in His outcast position I May we have, besides, the white stone, the portion of the faithful in a state of things like that of Pergamos when the church and the world were enjoying themselves together! When in heaven such will enjoy the same food that sustains them here. Christ will still be your food even in the glory, and you will have the white stone, “and on the stone a new name written, which no one knoweth save he that receiveth it” (i.e. the expression of Christ's own secret satisfaction in the way in which you have suffered for Him and served Him below). Assuredly the heart will most prize what Christ will give between Himself and it alone—what none will know but ourselves and Himself. The Lord grant that we may have tokens of love for Him, although none should know them but Himself now. Even in glory the joy of His secret approval will not be lost but known more profoundly than ever.