We have been working through a series on the book of Revelation. This book of the Bible can be difficult to understand for a variety of reasons, so we are taking it slow and studying it bit by bit together.

In Chapter 1 verse 18, John writes what Jesus says to him. “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death . . .”.

Jesus explains to John that He was dead and is now alive forever. For those of us who believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, it is easy to miss what Jesus is saying. He is confirming that He was dead. To better understand what Jesus is saying, we need to explore several questions. Did someone else have the keys of death? And if so, who and how did they get them?

The keys of death go all the way back before the Garden of Eden. Before God created the earth, God created angels (Job 38:4 – 7). One of those angels was named Lucifer. He was beautiful, talented and a worship leader among the angels (Isaiah 14:12). Lucifer served in the very presence of God the Almighty. But a problem arose when Lucifer wanted to be like God (Isaiah 14:13-15).

Lucifer became filled with pride and wanted the angels to worship him, not God. Lucifer’s pride was a problem for a few reasons, pride is sin and sin cannot be in the presence of God. The other problem for Lucifer is that God will not share His glory (Isaiah 42:8). This may make God sound selfish if we do not understand that God created human beings to worship Him. For those that choose not to worship God, they worship all kinds of other things. For example, some people worship animals, trees or other people, but all of these things die. Some people worship money, fame or power, all of these are temporary as well. God is saying that He created us to worship only Him, a loving Father who is eternal and all-powerful. Worshipping anyone or anything else only dooms us in this life and eternity.

Once Lucifer tried to steal God’s glory, he was thrown out of heaven. Jesus describes this in Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”. God not only kicked Lucifer out of heaven, but He also renamed him from Lucifer, which means light, to Satan, which means adversary. When Satan was thrown down to earth, he became the ruler of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4 and 1 John 5:19).

We know that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, “Sin entered the world because one man sinned. And death came because of sin. Everyone sinned, so death came to all people.” Romans 5:12. The keys of death were given to Satan by Adam. God gave man authority over the earth (Genesis 1:28 and Psalms 8:6). When Adam sinned, he handed to Satan the keys to death because “the one who sins is the one who will die” Eziekiel 18:1 and the “wages of sin is death” Romans 6:23.

All people are sinners; this means that we all fall short of perfection or being without sin (Romans 3:23). Once we sin, we are dead, spiritually dead. To be spiritually dead means to be separated from God and destined for hell, (which is different than Hades as we will see in a future post). Most of us sinned when we were children, we lied to get a cookie or took a toy that was not ours or any other number of things. Does it mean that we are still dead in our sin and separated from God if we have since tried to be good people? The answer is yes. We cannot be perfect, no matter how hard we try. Just looking at someone of the opposite sex and thinking a lustful thought is sin (Matthew 5:28). We all sin. So, what are we supposed to do?

Until Jesus died on the cross and shed His blood for our sins, there was no path to be reconciled to God except that of the Old Testament. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy describe the sacrifices that were required for the people to bring to God for forgiveness of their sins. They would sacrifice animals when they sinned, but the forgiveness was not permanent. Each time they broke God’s Law, they committed a sin. Then the people would need to go to the Temple and make another sacrifice. Why? Because without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22).

Jesus now holds the keys to death meaning that if we accept that we are sinners and He died on the cross for us, then we are free from death. We are free from spiritual death; this does not mean that we will live forever on earth and our bodies will never die. Our physical bodies will still die, but our spirits will go to heaven and spend eternity with Jesus. His sacrifice on the cross is a perfect, permanent sacrifice made for us. All we have to do is believe in Him.

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, thank You for Jesus. We believe that He died on the cross for our sins. Thank You that Jesus is the perfect and final sacrifice. Thank You for the wisdom that we have in the Bible. Lord, help us to apply Your Word in our everyday lives. Lord, help us to study Revelation and give us understanding. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.