With Justice He Judges and Wages War

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. - Revelation 19:11-12

One of the keys to unlocking the book of Revelation is asking the power question. As with most of the scriptures, they are written for those who are suffering at the hands of the oppressor. At the time of Revelation, the Romans were treating the Christians (and others) with brutal violence, as well as running an empire based on economic exploitation. So the images and themes of Revelation emphasize power differentials all the time. The war Jesus wages is a war on injustice.

What we saw in the Gospels in single acts of subversive kindness, in Revelation we see widened to a cosmic battle against what other authors of scripture call ‘the powers and principalities.’ The Jesus who comes to the fore in the book is one who overtly tears down those power structures, who cares about justice.

It’s been a lot easier for Christians through the ages to try to decode some secret timeline out of the events in Revelation than to face the reality that it’s simply another invitation into the Jesus-shaped life of caring for the least-of-these, dismantling racism, and building costly bridges across the chasms dividing people from each other.

How does this reading of Revelation strike you today? What might it mean to you to shift in how you see this major theme?