I Am Alpha And Omega

Having spent some weeks upon the Lord’s seven ‘I am’ sayings in John’s Gospel, I felt it suitable to add a further two ‘I am’ titles provided for us by John in his ‘Revelation of Jesus Christ’, the final book in our Bible. Here the Lord Jesus Christ tells us, ‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last’. Then He says, ‘I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star’. We shall come to this latter saying next week, God willing.

God with us

Running through all the Lord’s ‘I am’ sayings is an emphasis on our Saviour’s divine nature. Each is built upon the Lord’s name revealed to Moses in Exodus, ‘I AM THAT I AM’. ‘And he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.’ Here in Revelation, Christ’s divinity is, once again, asserted prominently. Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Omega is the last. Like A and Z in our English alphabet, there is nothing that comes before, nor anything that comes after. There is no one comes before our Saviour and no one can come after Him. He is the eternal, everlasting God. 

First and Last

This is the language of our Great God in both testaments. He tells Isaiah in chapter 44, ‘Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God’. Christ our King and Christ our Redeemer is, with the Father and the Spirit, the One True God. Here, as John opens His Revelation of Jesus Christ, it is to confirm to the Church that Jesus Christ is Jehovah from the beginning and shall be evermore.

Christ’s own testimony

Our Lord Jesus Christ assumes these titles to Himself without reservation or limitation because He is the eternal God. They are His attributes by right. He is first and last in all things. He is the beginning and the ending of all things. It is not John the Apostle who speaks these words of Christ. The Lord Himself is the speaker as though present with John. Christ’s words are interjected between John’s tributes to the Saviour in verse 6, and his explanation of his commission in verses 7ff., where he is told, ‘What thou seest, write in a book’.

Our superlative God

Alpha is by usage a term for excellence and primacy. It denotes that which is first and best, the most prominent, the highest in quality, distinction and merit. Christ is the Alpha, the chief as to His divine nature, ‘who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.’ He is unique above angels and men as the Son of God. In His Mediator offices He is King of kings, Lord of lords. He is the Great High Priest, the great Prophet and Preacher of His church. He is ‘highly exalted’, with ‘a name which is above every name’.

Our condescending Saviour

Christ may also be said to be Omega, the last, in His humanity, being made lower than the angels and despised and rejected of men. Christ’s was a double humiliation. He humbled Himself first and was ‘found in fashion as a man’, then again ‘he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross’. He was born in the lowliest of circumstances. Though He was rich He became poor. He had nowhere to lay His head. Even His clothes were taken from Him and He was laid in a borrowed tomb. 

Our all-encompassing Christ

Our Saviour may also be considered to be the whole in the sense that Alpha and Omega encompasses all else. All revelation concerns Him who is the living Word with God. Every phrase, every sentence, every book and all spoken words are comprised of letters encompassed and contained within the confines of Alpha and Omega. Nothing can exist outside of Christ. ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made.’ He upholds all things ‘by the word of his power’. 

Potentate of time and eternity

Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, tells us He is ‘the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty’. Christ is eternally Almighty. The Potentate of heaven and earth. He is omnipotent and omniscient now, in the history of the world, in all the affairs of men in time. He was so before time began, before He created the world and all that in it is, and before Man fell. He was so on the cross when He purchased our redemption. He will be so when He comes again to judge the world in wisdom, righteousness and power.

Far above all

It has been said, ‘your God is too small’. Who among us is not guilty of limiting our Lord, Jesus Christ, who is infinite in faithfulness, mightiness, goodness, wisdom and love. The extent and dimensions of Christ’s primacy and superiority is beyond what we can humanly conceive or imagine. He is, says Paul, ‘Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come’. All things are under his feet. He is ‘the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all’.

Amen.