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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Revelation 3:5 - 3:5
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
white - not a dull white, but glittering, dazzling white [Grotius]. Compare Mat 13:43. The body transfigured into the likeness of Christ’s body, and emitting beams of light reflected from Him, is probably the “white raiment” promised here.
the same - Greek, “THIS man”; he and he alone. So one oldest manuscript reads. But two oldest manuscripts, and most of the ancient versions, “shall THUS be clothed,” etc.
raiment - Greek, “garments.” “He that overcometh” shall receive the same reward as they who “have not defiled their garments” (Rev 3:4); therefore the two are identical.
I will not - Greek, “I will not by any means.”
blot out ... name out of ... book of life - of the heavenly city. A register was kept in ancient cities of their citizens: the names of the dead were of course erased. So those who have a name that they live and are dead (Rev 3:1), are blotted out of God’s roll of the heavenly citizens and heirs of eternal life; not that in God’s electing decree they ever were in His book of life. But, according to human conceptions, those who had a high name for piety would be supposed to be in it, and were, in respect to privileges, actually among those in the way of salvation; but these privileges, and the fact that they once might have been saved, shall be of no avail to them. As to the book of life, compare Rev 13:8; Rev 17:8; Rev 20:12, Rev 20:15; Rev 21:27; Exo 32:32; Psa 69:28; Dan 12:1. In the sense of the “call,” many are enrolled among the called to salvation, who shall not be found among the chosen at last. The pale of salvation is wider than that of election. Election is fixed. Salvation is open to all and is pending (humanly speaking) in the case of those mentioned here. But Rev 20:15; Rev 21:27, exhibit the book of the elect alone in the narrower sense, after the erasure of the others.
before ... before - Greek, “in the presence of.” Compare the same promise of Christ’s confessing before His Father those who confessed Him, Mat 10:32, Mat 10:33; Luk 12:8, Luk 12:9. He omits “in heaven” after “My Father,” because there is, now that He is in heaven, no contrast between the Father in heaven and the Son on earth. He now sets His seal from heaven upon many of His words uttered on earth [Trench]. An undesigned coincidence, proving that these epistles are, as they profess, in their words, as well as substance, Christ’s own addresses; not even tinged with the color of John’s style, such as it appears in his Gospel and Epistles. The coincidence is mainly with the three other Gospels, and not with John’s, which makes the coincidence more markedly undesigned. So also the clause, “He that hath an ear, let him hear,” is not repeated from John’s Gospel, but from the Lord’s own words in the three synoptic Gospels (Mat 11:15; Mat 13:9; Mar 4:9, Mar 4:23; Mar 7:16; Luk 8:8; Luk 14:35).