The Faithful and True Witness

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: "The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation..." (Rev. 3:14).

 

A while ago, I wrote on how it was interesting how when Christ addressed the seven churches in Revelation that the title He chose for Himself showed Him to be what was needed in each specific situation. I was going to post a link to that post here, but I am unable to find it myself. In this post, I would specifically like to look at the title Christ gave Himself when addressing Laodicea. To the blind and naked church which felt it had need of nothing, because of its material prosperity He addressed Himself as the Amen and faithful and true witness. In other words what He said was true reality which the church needed to hear and align itself with. The Laodicean church had deceived itself and had doubtless had teachers with itching ears who had told them what they wanted to hear, but Christ was the Amen, the So-be-it, whose word was final, and the faithful and true witness who would tell what was needful regardless of what they wanted to hear. Not only in regard to this church but in His earthly ministry and even as He relates to us in our lives Christ is the faithful and true witness. He told Pilate that the reason He was born was to bear witness to the truth, and He desires to also form us into faithful and true witnesses. To better prepare us to be faithful and true witnesses we should examine what is required to be a witness.

 

Firstly, we have to see something to be a witness. I realize that is very basic, but sometimes we can forget that to bear witness we have to have witnessed something first. Christ could bear witness to the Father because He saw Him and knew Him (Matt. 11:27). Christ could also judge situations and people rightly as Isaiah prophesied because He did not rely on His own sight and understanding (Isa. 11:3-4).

 

What we see is very important, and it is very much effected by what is in our hearts. The heart is the window through which we interpret what we see, this is why even though the twelve spies sent into Canaan all saw the same things, they still saw different things – ten had evil hearts of unbelief and two had hearts of faith. It is also interesting to note that the evil report given by the ten spies was not exactly false, it was basically factually accurate, but had a perspective of no faith in the power of God to overcome the giants (Num. 13:25-33). Having God's perspective is very important or we could state facts, and yet still bear a false witness.

 

Another example of this is Moses' tirade against the children of Israel, which kept him out of the Promised Land. It was very understandable, frankly, very deserved, but when struck the rock instead of speaking to it, he failed to bear witness to type God was bringing out, and in calling the rebellious people, "rebels" he forgot temporarily that they were also the called ones of God in spite of their wayward character. It would be hard to imagine as vexing a situation as Moses was in, but I think the apostle Paul shows a right response to similar situation in his Corinthian epistles. When he was faced with carnal bickering believers who questioned his authority challenged his leadership and allowed blatant sin in their midst, he still began his epistles by addressing them as saints - considering their greatly unsaintly conduct at the time that must have required grace on his part. Then having reminded them of who they were he proceeded to truthfully point out their faults and bring correction. Moses in losing his temper lost balance of perspective, Paul managed to see both the faults and also remember the good and the call given to these wayward Corinthians. In the letters to the seven churches, Christ not only addresses faults but also gives whatever commendation He could, as humans we tend to go to extremes, and see only people's faults or their good qualities at a given time, but Christ is able to weigh all at once, and we need to learn more balance in what we see.

 

Having seen something we then need to be faithful to share it at appropriate times. Christ did not indiscriminately spout off everything, but specifically taught in parables, and through much of His trial remained quiet. It was only when an oath by the High Priest forced Him to bear witness or be guilty of withholding truth that He plainly claimed to be the Son of God. The man born blind in John chapter 9 is another good example of a faithful witness, and interestingly enough right after he bore witness and was cast out of the synagogue Christ came looking for him. He found him and revealed Himself as the Son of God to him and received worship from him – a very rare privilege this man had to worship the pre-resurrection Jesus. This was given to him because he was faithful to witness what he knew and had seen and God trusted him with greater knowledge because of that. May we also bear witness faithfully that we might be found worthy to bear greater witness and please our Lord! Amen.