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.
"Do not fear" spoken before the storm
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.
The devil's power and God's permission
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.
"Ten days": a measured trial
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.
What "faithful unto death" asks
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 crown of life
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.
Summary
- 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.