There is a defect, even a fatal defect, in the life of the church of Christ in the present day: a lack of true discipleship. For the genuine Christian, discipleship means forsaking everything to follow Christ. But for many of today’s supposed Christians—perhaps the majority—it is the case that while there is much talk about Christ and even much furious activity that is supposed to be done in His name, there is actually very little following of Christ Himself. And that means that in some circles at least there is very little genuine Christianity.
So we come to the end, to the very last word of the very last verse of the very last book of the Bible. It is “Amen.” It means “firm,” “faithful,” or “true.” When uttered as a response to some declaration it means “so let it be.” In the New Testament “amen” is found in 127 verses, but in many of these it occurs twice because Jesus frequently prefaced his teaching with the repeated words, “Amen, amen, I say to you.” The King James Version translates this as “Verily, verily.” Other versions say, “Truly, truly” (NASB) or “I tell you the truth” (NIV). In any case, it is a declaration by Jesus that what he is about to utter is the very truth of God.
But the verse that ends the Bible is also a wish, as I wrote earlier. It is a wish that “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ [might] be with God's people.” How are we to understand this? Thus far, nearly everything I have said about grace has been in the past tense, meaning that God has revealed his grace to us or has been gracious to us in Christ Jesus. Or else it has been a promise that God will continue to be gracious. How is it, then, that we can wish the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to be with anybody? Revelation 22:21 does not tell us itself, but by thinking of other Bible verses about grace, we can notice that there are at least four ways this can and should be done.
Revelation 22:21 does not contain all the elements of the more complete benedictions, but it is in line with them when it links the blessing of grace explicitly to Jesus Christ. In the early studies of this series we saw that although grace is known in the Old Testament, there is a sense in which it only became fully known with the coming of Jesus. Therefore, it is wrapped up in him and is related to him. Paul told Timothy, “This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:9, 10).
