And to the angel of the assembly in Smyrna write These things says the first and the last, who became dead, and lived
Smyrna is the second of seven assemblies the risen Christ writes to, and the only thing He says about it is suffering. Before a word of instruction He names Himself — so why this title, and why does He speak of His own death before He mentions theirs?
The city's name carries the message of the letter.
Smyrna means myrrh. Scripture often mentions it in connection with preparing the dead for burial. Myrrh had to be crushed to give out its fragrance. This pictures the time when pagan Rome crushed the church under its heel. Yet the church never gave God such sweet fragrance as in those two centuries of almost constant martyrdom.
The suffering that follows was no accident of history.
In the letter to the angel of the church in Smyrna we meet a completely different state of things. This is a special case rather than the general one we have already seen. The church had fallen away from the purity of the apostles, and above all from its first love, and the Lord chose to afflict it. He let all kinds of trial come on His people by loosing the power of Satan, who worked through Gentile persecutors.
The phrase was not invented for this letter. It is a name God claims for Himself in the Old Testament.
Isaiah has three passages that call Jehovah, the God of Israel, "the first and the last" (41:4, 44:6, 48:12). In the same way, Revelation three times calls the Lord Jesus "the first and the last" (1:17, 2:8, 22:13). I would say for myself that this is conclusive proof that the Jehovah of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New.
For people about to be killed, that title does real work.
Some are called to meet the power of Satan and to face a martyr's death. What could hold them up and encourage them more than knowing they are in the hands of a divine Person — the First and the Last? He existed before every opposing power. He will still be there when the last enemy lies under His feet. He is therefore above all.
The title has four parts, and each one does its own work.
He is the first, so no one can get ahead of Him and block Him. He is the last, so no one but He can have the final word in any matter. He also died and came to life, and this guarantees that He uses resurrection power for those who belong to Him. If the believers at Smyrna grasped Him this way, it must have given them great strength for the troubles coming on them.
The same words also meet the fear of dying.
If they are called to face a martyr's death, Christ Himself has led the way down that path, for He suffered death at the hands of men. He died and came to life: seemingly defeated and killed, yet coming out in victory over the last and greatest of enemies. Death could not defeat Him, so death will not defeat those who are His.
To a people laid flat by suffering He offers no badge of authority — only Himself.
When Christ sees people laid flat, He does not begin with the badges of His office, which would dampen the heart and crush the spirit. He begins with Himself. "I am the first and the last, who died and came to life." I come to you as the One in whom you will find the answer to every trial you are in.
The Lord finds nothing here to correct.
The assembly at Smyrna, like the one at Philadelphia, is free from blame. The word He speaks to the angel is one of comfort and encouragement, suited to their special circumstances. So it reveals the heart of the Lord for His own.
- Crushed. Smyrna means myrrh, a burial perfume that gives off its scent only when crushed. Those crushing years gave God the sweetest fragrance of the era.
- Sent. The persecution was not outside the Lord's hand. The church had fallen from its first love, and He let Satan's power loose through pagan Rome.
- First. Isaiah gives this title to Jehovah, and Revelation gives it to Jesus. He stands before every power that opposes His people, and He outlasts the last enemy.
- Risen. He died and came to life. Resurrection power is not a theory offered to the dying, but a road He has already walked.
- Unblamed. To a suffering assembly He gives no rebuke, only Himself. That is His heart toward His own when they are at their weakest.
I know thy tribulation and thy poverty; but thou art rich; and the railing of those who say that they themselves are Jews, and are not, but a synagogue of Satan.
Smyrna was a church under pressure and with nothing, and the Lord's letter calls it rich. Two hard questions follow: how can a hunted, penniless church be rich, and who are these false Jews serving Satan?
The Lord's opening words are not a general statement about His omniscience. They speak to a specific pain. One writer links them to the way God spoke of Israel's suffering in Egypt.
Besides tribulation, they were in poverty, and He who knows all things knew it all. But that is not the form in which He gives His comfort. He shows them that He knows their sorrows in detail. It was not enough for their hearts, or His, to say that He knew them only as a group. As with Israel in bondage (Exodus 3:7), "I know their sufferings" — so here it is His heart speaking to their hearts.
The word covers more than ordinary hardship. It names what happens when the world turns on believers.
Nothing escapes the notice of Him whose eyes are like a flame of fire... Tribulation means the trials that come with persecution. That is its usual sense in the New Testament. The strong wind of persecution had set in once more on God's poor flock. The god of this world stirred it up, out of his hatred of Christ. We who live in a day when confessing Christ costs nothing... cannot easily understand the dangers surrounding the saints in the early centuries. Their neighbours and the state often treated them as enemies. Foes surrounded them like a pack of hungry wolves, trying to wipe them off the face of the earth.
The short phrase "but you are rich" stands against the last of the seven letters. There a church boasts of its own wealth.
He sees the tribulation they bore for His sake. He also sees their poverty in the world's eyes, which fitted so well with spiritual riches. The words here are commendation, not the kind we shall find addressed to Laodicea at the close. In Laodicea they too were rich — they had grown rich — but not with riches Christ could recognise. To Him, though they did not know it, they were the wretched and miserable, the poor and blind and naked. Here He sees the poverty they lived in at Smyrna. And He Himself reminds them how rich they still are.
Another writer sees an honour in their empty hands. It made them like their Lord on earth.
There was a special honour in being this close to Him, and this like Him, who had nowhere to lay His head. I have learnt this: Jesus is in a particular way the partner of His poor servants.
The blasphemy here targets the saints, not God. The claim to be "Jews" is a claim to a religious standing the Lord refuses to grant.
Some falsely called themselves Jews. That is, they claimed a religious standing before God on earth, as the people He recognised in the world. So they assumed that wealth and possessions were owed to them. And they rejected those in poverty and trouble. So they slandered and abused — for that seems to be the force of "blasphemy" here — those who were true saints of God... They were not Jews, but they were a synagogue, a word that means "a bringing together" — a synagogue of Satan.
Pressure often makes people bend. It did not here.
Their tribulation and poverty did not tempt them into tolerating evil. They rejected the false claim to the position of Jews, which is here called the synagogue of Satan. Judaism is a religion fitted for this world and for man in the flesh. So it put man under law, and had a worldly ritual and priesthood. This is exactly what Satan has brought into Christendom.
The city's own name paints the same picture.
Smyrna means myrrh. It is often mentioned in Scripture in connection with embalming the dead. Myrrh had to be crushed before it gave out its fragrance. This pictures the time when pagan Rome crushed the church. Yet the church never gave God such sweet fragrance as in those two centuries of almost constant martyrdom.
- Known. He does not say He knows their sorrows in general; He names them one by one, as He named Israel's in Egypt.
- Crushed. Their tribulation is persecution. Myrrh gives its fragrance only under crushing.
- Poor. Stripped of what the world values, they stood where their Lord had stood, with nowhere to lay His head.
- Rich. Laodicea called herself rich and was naked. The only voice that counts calls Smyrna rich.
- Slandered. The abuse came from people claiming God's ancient standing. The Lord calls their gathering a synagogue of Satan.
Fear nothing [of] what thou art about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give to thee the crown of life.
Smyrna is a church already in trouble — poor, pressed, and about to face worse. Here the Lord asks for faithfulness even at the cost of life, and promises a crown in return.
The warning and the comfort arrive together.
"Fear not," or "nothing," is a word of preparation for yet further trials, and is clearly taken from Revelation 1:17. There it came to John as he lay fainting, and it carried complete and unqualified assurance to his soul. Here it reassures the Church as the gathering storm is about to burst upon it. Tribulation and poverty were bad enough, and hard to bear. But worse still was in store.
He speaks as One who has been further down that road than they will ever go.
And He speaks to them as one who had known the depths of tribulation Himself. "These things says the First and the Last, who died and came to life." He had gone through the deepest sorrow, and through death itself — He had died for them, and was alive again. They had this blessed One to flee to in all their trials.
Christ does not promise escape.
Whatever the malice and power of Satan, at the most, if permitted, he has only the power of death. Christ is First and Last, beyond as before death, God Himself; but more than that, He has met and gone through its power. The saints were not to fear. Satan would work, be allowed to sift, to imprison. Let the saints only be faithful to the extreme point of his power; all beyond that was beyond him, was Christ's.
There is a mercy in the change of attack.
The attack by corruption had failed, so the Lord permitted the devil to turn to violence. As the Lord says, "The devil is about to throw some of you into prison." The devil's violence may indeed be painful to God's people, but it is safer for them than his schemes.
Whatever else the number means, it fixes an end to the trial before it begins.
It may seem to us that the world, or men of the world, have a victorious course ahead of them. It may seem that the power is all in their hands. But here we see the limit of suffering: "for ten days you will have tribulation." When faith grasps this, it can be still. It knows that God is greater; He is over all... The book of Job lifts the curtain off Satan's doings, and shows that Satan can only go as far as God allows him.
Commentators differ on what the ten days point to.
The 'ten days' of Rev. 2:10 may represent ten different persecutions, or refer to ten years' duration of persecution under Diocletian. In any case it gives the idea of limitation.
The phrase is often read as "keep going until you die naturally."
It is essential to see what this means. Faithfulness unto death is not faithfulness all through our natural lives. It is martyrdom for the sake of Christ and His word. It is a call to be faithful, even at the cost of life... What would create the temptation to unfaithfulness? The fear of death, or clinging to life in this world.
Christ puts it almost as an exchange.
"I have died for you; now be faithful unto death for Me."
The reward matches the loss. They give up life, and life is what Christ gives them as a crown.
The Lord delights to acknowledge the faith of His saints. If they have shown that they did not love their life in this world even to death, it shall be as though they had gained it in the world to come. Life shall be a crown to them there, as the glorious reward of their not having cared for it here.
And Christ hands it over Himself, at the moment of crossing.
You are tried for My name's sake, He says, perhaps are going into death for Me, and I have been through death for you. You are standing on one side of the river, and I on the other. You have to come through the waters to get to Me. But the moment your head comes above the waters on this side, I will put a crown of life on it.
- Measured — the suffering is real, but its length is set in advance. The devil cannot go one day beyond the Lord's ten days.
- Permitted — Satan is the visible agent, yet he moves only within limits God allows, as in the book of Job.
- Faithful — the call is not to last a lifetime but to hold to Christ even when that costs life.
- Grounded — the One asking it died and lives again, so He asks nothing He has not gone through first.
- Crowned — beyond the point where the enemy's power stops, Christ Himself gives the crown of life.
He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. He that overcomes shall in no wise be injured of the second death.
Smyrna is the church under pressure. Its believers faced loss of goods and even loss of life. Christ ends His letter to them with a word about death. He does not take away the first death. He takes away its fear, by naming a second death that the one who conquers will never meet.
Each church has its own battle, so "the one who conquers" carries a different weight in each letter. In Smyrna the enemy is not lost love but fear.
To overcome in Ephesus is to repent, to get back the first love they had lost, and to do the first works. Here it means being found faithful to death, being courageous for the Lord and His testimony in the face of all Satan's terrors. So a saint in Smyrna becomes an overcomer by keeping faithful, and by winning — only in the power of the Holy Spirit — over all fear and cowardice.
The pressure on them was brutal, and Christ was closest in it.
On one side the synagogue of Satan is raging. On the other side stands the pagan world. Both are determined to crush Christianity. Between the two stand the lowly people who confess Jesus of Nazareth, with patience and meekness as their only defence. What was the human prospect? Loss of character, of goods, and of life itself. To overcome in such terrible circumstances took strong faith and clear spiritual sight, as seeing Him who is invisible. Yet He is never nearer than when His saints seem forsaken. He is never more true and tender in sympathy than when He seems to have forgotten them.
The call to hear runs through all seven letters. But its place changes, and that change carries meaning.
This call appears seven times. In the letters to the first three churches it comes just before the promise to the overcomer. In the last four it closes each letter. The first group has the Church as a whole in view, and calls it to repent. In the second group the hopeless state of the Church is all too plain, so a remnant company stands apart from the mass.
So in Smyrna the Lord still speaks to the whole church, before the promise narrows to the one who conquers.
Scripture defines the phrase later in the book, and the promise is worded with great force.
He will in "no way," on no account — a very strong negative — be hurt by the "second death." That death is the lake of fire, the everlasting home and place of punishment for the devil and the wicked (Rev. 20:14; Rev. 21:8).
Some argue that the fire simply burns a person out of existence.
The second death is the lake of fire — it is punishment. They claim that it burns a person out in time, and that ceasing to exist is the second death. But Scripture says the punishment itself is the second death. Death never means ceasing to exist.
Christ does not promise Smyrna escape from the executioner. He promises that the executioner's work stops at the body.
The torturer's rack or the flames of a martyr's death may hurt the body. But the second death cannot hurt the believer's soul. A martyr's death may separate soul from body. The second death will never separate the believer's soul from God.
Death has changed for the believer because of what Christ did with it.
Do not fear the first death; it is only a servant to usher you into the presence of God: the second death will not injure you. The Lord is like that tree of old, thrown into the bitter waters of Marah. He went into the bitterest waters of death, and so they have turned to sweetness and refreshment for us.
This promise appears in Smyrna's letter, but it is not limited to Smyrna. Each promise stands where the saints needed it most, though it belongs to all believers.
It is certainly true that no saint will be hurt by the second death, and yet this promise appears only in connection with the overcomer in Smyrna. These promises are true for all believers. Yet certain saints get a special reminder of the promises that suit their own circumstances, for their comfort and encouragement.
- Hear — The call to hear comes before the promise here. In the first three letters the Lord still speaks to the whole church and calls it to repent.
- Overcome — In Smyrna, conquering is not recovering lost love. It is staying faithful to death, and the Holy Spirit gives the power.
- Die — Nothing here promises rescue from the stake. The body may die; that is the first death, and it only ushers the believer into God's presence.
- Untouched — The second death is the lake of fire. The words are as strong as language allows: on no account will it touch the one who conquers.
- Assured — The promise to persecuted Smyrna holds for every believer. It stands here because here it was needed most.