Revelation 2:15

Each of the seven letters in Revelation 2–3 follows a similar pattern: an address to the angel of the church, a description of Christ drawn from John’s vision in Revelation 1, praise, rebuke, a call to hear, and a promise to the one who overcomes. “Write” is gráphō, the ordinary verb for writing, and with it Christ has John set down his message for the church.

Christ introduces himself as “he which hath the sharp sword with two edges”. In John’s vision this sword comes out of his mouth (Revelation 1:16), so it stands for his word. “Hath” is échō, to have or hold. The sword is a rhomphaía, a large, broad sword or sabre, a heavier weapon than the machaira, the shorter everyday sword. “With two edges” is dístomos, literally “two-mouthed”, a blade that cuts both ways.

The picture runs through Scripture. The Servant of the LORD says that God has made his mouth like a sharp sword (Isaiah 49:2). Hebrews says, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). At Christ’s return the same sword strikes the nations: “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations” (Revelation 19:15). The book moves on from there to the final judgment of Revelation 20.

To a church that is letting false teaching stay in its midst, this title is the first word of warning. The one who speaks can tell truth from error and read the hidden thoughts of the heart, and his word does what it says. He is the Word through whom all things were made (John 1:1–3), and by him all things were created and hold together (Colossians 1:16–17). The authority that made the world now examines one church in one city, and the sword comes back in verse 16.

Pergamos, also called Pergamum and today Bergama in Turkey, was a leading city of Asia Minor and the capital of the Roman province of Asia. Its library was second only to the one at Alexandria. It had temples to Zeus, Athena and Dionysus, and it was a centre for the worship of Asclepius, the god of healing, whose symbol was a serpent. The great Altar of Zeus stood over the city on its acropolis. Above all, Pergamos was a leading centre of emperor worship. It held the first temple in Asia built to a Roman emperor, dedicated to Augustus in 29 BC, and later ones to Trajan and others followed. Public worship of the emperor as a god set every believer in the city against the claim that Jesus alone is Lord.

Christ begins, “I know thy works”, as he says to each church, to Ephesus among them (Revelation 2:2). Here he adds “and where thou dwellest”. “Dwellest” is katoikéō, to live in a place in a settled way, and the verse closes with the same verb: “where Satan dwelleth”. The believers in Pergamos had their homes in the very city where Satan had made his.

“Seat” is thrónos, a throne, a seat of authority. The New Testament uses the word for the throne of God and of Christ, and also for the seat of Satan and of the beast. To call Pergamos the place of Satan’s throne means that his rule was felt there with special force. Christ leaves unnamed which part of the city’s life he has in mind, and it may well be all of it together: the idol temples, the imperial worship, the serpent of Asclepius and the great altar of Zeus. Jesus called Satan the prince of this world (John 12:31), and Paul says that our fight is against spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12). Christ sees all of it and names it plainly to the people who live under it.

“Thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith.” In such a city, to hold fast his name meant keeping their allegiance to Jesus as Lord, owning his authority above any god or emperor, when others demanded sacrifice to the gods and worship of Caesar. To keep his faith meant holding to their belief in him and to his teaching under that pressure. A believer who refused could lose his standing in the city and his trade, and even his life. Jesus told his disciples that the one who endures to the end shall be saved (Matthew 10:22), and Peter writes to believers who suffer for bearing Christ’s name (1 Peter 4:12–19).

Antipas is named only in this verse, and we know nothing else of his life. Christ calls him “my faithful martyr”. The word is mártys, a witness, and by analogy a martyr, one whose witness to Christ costs him his life. By naming him Christ shows that his death and the persecution in Pergamos were real, and that he remembers each one who dies for him. The title is close to the one Christ takes for himself in the letter to Laodicea, “the faithful and true witness” (Revelation 3:14).

Christ knows this kind of suffering from the inside. He lived among us in a world under the prince of this world, met Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11), humbled himself to death on the cross (Philippians 2:8), and there triumphed over principalities and powers (Colossians 2:15). The church’s faithfulness rests on him, the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2). Revelation later says of his people, “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11). The victory over Satan’s seat is the Lamb’s, and Antipas’s witness points to his.

“But I have a few things against thee” turns from praise to rebuke. The church that stood firm against threats from outside was letting harm stay inside. “Thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam” means that people in the fellowship held this teaching and the church let them stay. “Doctrine” is didachḗ, teaching, both the act of teaching and what is taught.

Balaam’s story is told in Numbers 22–25. Balac, the king of Moab, hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. When Balaam was unable to curse them, he advised Balac on another way to bring them down: Israel was drawn into fornication with the women of Moab and into their idol feasts. Moses later traces that sin directly to Balaam’s counsel (Numbers 31:16).

The stumblingblock is skándalon, which first meant the bait-stick of a trap and so came to mean anything that trips a person and makes him fall. Balaam’s counsel was exactly that kind of snare. Israel could be tempted where it could be cursed by no one, and the snare brought on them the judgment the curse was meant to bring. The plague that followed killed twenty-four thousand (Numbers 25:9).

“Things sacrificed unto idols” is eidōlóthyton, “idol-sacrifice”, meat or food offered to a false god in a ritual or feast. In Pergamos the trap had the same two parts it had in Moab. Civic life, the trade guilds and social meals often involved rites and food offered to idols, and sexual immorality went along with many of those feasts. The apostles had already written to the Gentile churches to keep away from meats offered to idols and from fornication (Acts 15:29), and Paul warned the Corinthians that their liberty must never make a weaker brother stumble (1 Corinthians 8:9).

“So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.” “Also” is kaí, “and, also, even”, and it adds a second group beside the first. “Thou” is sý, the singular pronoun, spoken to the church as one body and holding it answerable for the people it keeps. “Hold” is kratéō, to seize or keep hold of something, and these people kept this teaching as their own. “Doctrine” is the same word, didachḗ, as in verse 14.

“Repent” is metanoéō, a change of mind that turns a person from one course to another, with sorrow for the wrong. The call goes to the whole church, both to those who held these teachings and to the church that let them stay. Jesus gave the same call in the Gospels, with the warning that the unrepentant perish (Luke 13:3).

“Or else” is ei dè mḗ, in a longer form ei dè mḗge, and it sets out the alternative. “I will come unto thee quickly” uses érchomai, the ordinary verb for coming, and tachý, “quickly”, gives it its urgency. This is a coming in judgment on this church, and it will be soon unless they turn.

The warning is spoken to “thee”, the church, while the fight is “against them”, the people holding the false teaching, and “against” here is metá. Christ comes to his church to deal with those inside it who lead others astray.

“The sword of my mouth” brings back the title of verse 12. The sword is the same word, rhomphaía, now joined with stóma, “mouth”. His weapon is his word, which judges, convicts and carries out his will. Paul names the word of God as the believer’s weapon too: “And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). Revelation shows the same sword in the hand, or rather the mouth, of the rider on the white horse when Christ returns to judge and make war (Revelation 19:11–16).

The word that threatens here is the word by which Christ made all things, and the word by which he cast out spirits and healed the sick (Matthew 8:16). His warning comes from love. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, so that he might present it to himself without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:25–27). The threat of judgment is there so that his church will turn, and his sacrifice will have its full fruit in a pure people.

“He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches” stands in every one of the seven letters. What Christ says to Pergamos the Spirit says to all the churches, and to every believer who will listen.

“Overcometh” is nikáō, to conquer, prevail, get the victory. In Revelation it describes believers who, by Christ’s power, stand firm against persecution, false teaching and the pull of the world. Christ himself said, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and John writes that it is faith in Jesus as the Son of God that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4–5). In Pergamos, overcoming meant refusing both the sword of persecution and the snare of compromise.

This letter shows a Lord who knows exactly where his people live, the city, the pressures and the cost, and who names a faithful man like Antipas with his own words of honour. It also shows a Lord whose love is holy. He praises what is good in a church and still names its sin, warns before he judges, and gives time to repent.

The promises answer the temptations of Pergamos one by one. To people pressed to eat at the idol’s table, he offers manna from God’s own store. To people accused and condemned by their city, he offers a white stone of acquittal. To people who could keep their place in society only by giving up his name, he offers a new name of his own giving. Everything the doctrine of Balaam held out, Christ outgives, and the one who holds fast his name is held fast by him.