Thank you for helping to support Peace Devotions through your prayers, likes, and shares.
If you’d like to support our ministry financially, you can donate here.
Hidden Manna
What's the point of salvation? What is it for? What are our lives for?
Revelation 2:17
My favorite Bible passage is Revelation two, verse 17. It goes.
Let him who has an ear hear with the spirit says to the seven churches. To the one who conquers. I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone. And on the stone a new name written, which no one knows except him who receives it. (Revelation 2:17)
What I like about this passage is it answers some of the basic questions of life. As Lutherans, we’re really good at answering one of those questions, which is sort of how do you sleep well at night? How do you have peace with God? And we’ll tell you that nobody can stack up enough good works. We’ll do enough evil that we can’t really properly be called good. We can’t earn that favor. But Christ has lived a perfect life and died in innocent death in our place to win forgiveness and righteousness for us. And he gives that to those who believe that he’s done it for them.
And so that’s kind of resolved. We can stand before God in righteousness. But a sort of question that follows, that is, why would you want to? What’s the point of salvation? What is it for? What are our lives for? That’s the question, the Christians in Pergamum to whom John wrote this letter were struggling with. They had teachers among them who were saying, yes, God has reconciled us through Christ to himself, but that now we’re just sort of left to find meaning on our own. God doesn’t really care what happens to us after that point. And so these people, they’re going to the pagan temples, they’re eating the nice meat. They can eat there. They’re sleeping with whoever they feel like. They’re just generally looking for meaning in whatever they can grasp, whatever fulfills their desires.
And I think for us, that’s a pretty relatable instinct. We live in an age of abundance. If I want food, I’ll go get whatever I feel like at fast food. One of six different varieties. If I want to gratify my desires of any kind, you know you’ve got the flashing screen that can do it for you. And so I think we’re similarly tempted to find meaning and identity in all these things around us. But God doesn’t want us to do it that way. He cares about how we live and what we do because he, I mean, he died on that account. He died to pay for the evil in what we do. He doesn’t want us to return to it. And so he does say to the Christians in Pergamum and us that if we don’t repent, he will send his sword, the sword of his mouth, against us to drive us back to him.
But he doesn’t just say repent. He also gives these people who are hungry for meaning something to latch on to. He says, I will give to the one who conquers some of the hidden manna, and that hidden manna is Christ Himself. It is the God who is the source of meaning in the flesh, who on the day he returns to us, we will see with our eyes. And when we look at him, who is the source of meaning, we will really have fulfillment, satisfaction from the God who made all of the individual things that please us in this life. And that’s the sort of proper source to look to. But even more than that, even more than looking at the source of all meaning God promises to give to each of us the reason for our own existence. He says, I will give to the one who conquers also a white stone. And on that stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it.
This new identity, this righteousness, is something we do have now. Christ covers us in our baptism, and yet at the same time, that righteousness that covers us will one day be our entrance to God Himself. That’s how we get that vision of the source of all meaning. And when we do so, when we look on the God who made us in his image, we will see what image we were made in. We will see what aspect of God we each individually reflect. When I look on God Himself, what I’m hoping to receive is my own name. The reason I exist. The way I’m intended to reflect God. The name which no one will know except for me when I receive it. And that same hope is laid up to you, to the glory of God, from whom and through whom, and for whom are all things. Amen.
