Revelation 2:11

Smyrna, the modern city of Izmir in Turkey, was a prosperous port known for its beauty, its wealth and its fierce loyalty to Rome. It was one of the first cities in Asia to build a temple to Tiberius Caesar, in AD 26, and a temple to Hadrian came later, so the worship of the emperor was part of being a good citizen. People were expected to burn a pinch of incense and declare “Caesar is Lord.” Christians who refused were branded atheists and traitors. Many trades met in guilds whose gatherings involved pagan rites, so a believer who kept away could lose his living. The church paid for its loyalty to Christ in poverty, social exclusion, confiscated property, prison and sometimes death.

The city also had a large Jewish community, some of whom were hostile to the young church and, it is likely, reported Christians to the Roman authorities. Smyrna had been destroyed and rebuilt in its long history and was called the “Phoenix City,” a fitting name for a church whose hope was resurrection. Some decades after this letter, around AD 155, Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna, was martyred there.

This is the second of the seven letters in Revelation 2–3, after Ephesus and before Pergamum. Each letter follows a pattern: a command to write, a title for Christ drawn from John’s vision in Revelation 1, his assessment of the church, praise, rebuke where it is needed, a call to hear and a promise to the one who overcomes. Ephesus was rebuked for losing its first love and Pergamum for tolerating false teaching, while Smyrna hears only praise, warning and promise.

The letter is sent to “the angel of the church in Smyrna.” The word ángelos means a messenger, one who brings tidings, and by implication it can mean a pastor. The angel of each church in these letters is most likely its leading pastor, who receives the message for the congregation and is responsible to bring it to them. The command to write, gráphō, is the ordinary verb for writing, whose early sense was to scratch and then to draw. The words are written down so that the church in Smyrna could read them, and every church since can read them too, as verse 11 makes plain when it speaks to “the churches.”

Christ chooses titles that answer to Smyrna’s need. “The first and the last” is a title of God himself. Through Isaiah the LORD says, “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). The word prōtos means first in time, place or order and foremost in rank, and set beside “the last” it takes in the whole span of history. Jesus had already spoken this title over John when he fell at his feet, saying, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:17–18), and he says it again at the close of the book: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13). The Word who was with God in the beginning made all things (John 1:1–3), and he will bring all things to their appointed end. So Jesus claims the eternity and authority of God, and the believers in Smyrna learn that their trials lie within the rule of the one who stands at both ends of their story.

“Which was dead, and is alive” speaks of the cross and the empty tomb. Isaiah foretold that the Servant would be “wounded for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5), and Paul sums up the gospel as Christ’s death for our sins, his burial and his rising on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Christ is risen as “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20), the first of a harvest that his people will share, and “death hath no more dominion over him” (Romans 6:9). For a church facing martyrdom this is the title that matters most. The Lord who writes to them has gone through death himself, so he knows from the inside what they fear, and he has come out of it alive. If they die for him, their death leads where his did, to life.

“I know” comes from eídō, a verb that properly means to see and then, by implication, to know. Christ sees the church in Smyrna clearly, and he knows its works, its tribulation and its poverty. Their works are their deeds and their faithfulness under pressure. The word for tribulation, thlîpsis, means pressure, and in the New Testament it is the usual word for tribulation, affliction and distress. It comes from a verb meaning to press, and it describes a heavy, oppressive weight of suffering. The poverty, ptōcheia, is real want, very likely the result of refusing to compromise with idolatry and being shut out of trade.

This knowing comes with sympathy. We have a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15), and “in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). The church in Smyrna is suffering in full view of a Lord who has suffered too.

Then Christ adds, “(but thou art rich).” The word plousios is set against their poverty. They are rich in faith, in endurance and faithfulness, and in the promise of eternal life, wealth that outlasts every possession they have lost. Paul describes his own ministry the same way, “as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 6:10), and James asks, “Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?” (James 2:5).

Their riches come from Christ’s own poverty. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). The church in Smyrna, poor in the city’s eyes and rich in his, is following the path its Lord walked first.

Christ is speaking about a particular group in Smyrna who said they were Jews and who slandered the church. The “blasphemy” he knows is blasphēmia, slander, reviling and injurious speech, here aimed at the Christians, and it was most likely the false accusations that fed their persecution. These people were Jews by birth and claimed the heritage of God’s people. By rejecting Christ and attacking those who belonged to him, they showed that they did not truly share it, and so Christ says they “say they are Jews, and are not.”

Paul makes the same distinction. He writes that being a Jew is a matter of the heart and of the inward man (Romans 2:28–29), and that those descended from Israel are not all Israel (Romans 9:6). Jesus told some who were seeking to kill him, “Ye are of your father the devil” (John 8:44), because their deeds showed whose purposes they served.

The word synagōgḗ means an assembly of people and, especially, a Jewish synagogue, whether the meeting or the place where it met. A synagogue was a gathering for the worship of God, and Christ calls this one “the synagogue of Satan” because in slandering and hounding his people it was doing the adversary’s work. The phrase is a severe judgment on a gathering and its allegiance, and the building itself is beside the point. It lays bare a truth that runs through Scripture: an outward religious claim counts for nothing when a person’s heart and deeds are set against God and his people. Christ also shows that this opposition has already been defeated. On the cross he “spoiled principalities and powers” and made “a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15).

Christ’s next words are a command: “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.” He tells them plainly that suffering is coming, and he calls them to meet it with courage, because their safety rests in him. The word “behold,” idoú, draws their attention to what follows. “The devil shall cast some of you into prison.”

Every one of the seven letters carries this call (Revelation 2:7, 2:17, 2:29, 3:6, 3:13, 3:22). To have an ear is to be ready to receive what God says and take it to heart. The word pneûma means breath or wind, and by analogy a spirit. Here it is the Holy Spirit, through whom Christ’s words come to the churches, so the letter carries the authority of God. The message goes “unto the churches,” in the plural. What Christ says to Smyrna he says to every church, and each believer in every congregation is called to hear it.

The one who overcomes is the believer who stays faithful to Christ through every pressure to give him up. The verb nikáō means to subdue, conquer, prevail or get the victory, and it is a key word of Revelation. For Smyrna, overcoming meant enduring poverty, slander, prison and the threat of death without denying Christ. Revelation shows how it is done: “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).

The victory belongs to Christ first. “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Believers overcome by being joined to him through faith, in the strength of his Spirit. In all things “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37), and “thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54–57).

The second death is God’s final judgment, the lake of fire, which Revelation sets apart from the death of the body. The word deúteros means second in time, place or rank, and thánatos is death, in its literal or figurative sense. Revelation names it again when it describes the end: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power” (Revelation 20:6). Death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, and whoever is not found written in the book of life is cast there too (Revelation 20:14–15). The unbelieving and the wicked “shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). It is final condemnation and separation from God for those who reject Christ.

The promise to the overcomer is that he “shall not be hurt” by it. The verb adikéō means to do wrong or to injure, and the Greek, ou mē adikēthē, uses a strong double negative to make the protection absolute and certain. Some in Smyrna would suffer the first death for their faith. The second death will never touch them.

This safety rests on Christ’s sacrifice. He bore the judgment for sin in the place of those who believe in him. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23), and God gave his only begotten Son so that whoever believes in him should have everlasting life (John 3:16). The letter that began with the Lord “which was dead, and is alive” ends with his people kept from the death that lasts.

This short letter shows the risen Christ as the eternal God, the first and the last, who has gone through death and lives. He sees his people’s tribulation and poverty, and he values them by his own measure, calling the poor church rich. He names the enemy behind their suffering and still holds that enemy’s work inside limits he has set, ten days and no more, and he turns it to the testing and proving of their faith.

What he promises is a crown of life from his own hand, and the certainty that the second death has no hold on those who are his. Whatever you suffer for his name is known to him, and its end is fixed by him. The one who says “Fear none of those things” is the one who was dead and is alive for evermore.