Exegesis: Some Thoughts on Revelation 1:1a

"The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place." 

Revelation 1:1a, ESV 

The word here for "revelation" (ἀποκάλυψις, apokalupsis) means "to cause something to be fully known," and thus it refers to an uncovering, a disclosing, or a revealing (Analytical Lexicon, Friberg). In the NT, the word is used “only of disclosure implicitly linked with a divine plan, purpose, or action” (see Rom 2:5; 8:19; 1 Cor 14:6; Eph 1:17) and it is “explicitly associated with Jesus...with a focus on recipients” (see Luke 2:29-32; Rom 16:25-27; A Greek-English Lexicon, Danker). 

Therefore, it is neither unusual nor surprising that John calls his book "the revelation of Jesus Christ," a phrase which has three distinct and interrelated meanings. First, the revelation John is about to unfold belongs to Jesus Christ, for it was given to him by the Father. Second, the revelation John is about to unfold was communicated to him by Jesus, even if through his chosen angel (1:1b). Third, the revelation John is about to unfold is ultimately Jesus himself. Of course, more than his being and glory are made visible in these sacred pages, but all that is revealed is ultimately centered on him. 

Accordingly, Revelation is essentially a capstone of biblical theology, for it draws on and brings to crescendo much, if not all, of what's already been revealed by the Father about the Son from Genesis to Jude. As Daniel Akin notes, “In 404 verses, with 285 Old Testament citations and as many as 550 Old Testament allusions, we discover not a closed book but an open book” (Christ-Centered Exposition: Exalting Jesus in Revelation, 4). That is, Revelation is intimately and intricately interwoven with the entirely of the divine, specific revelation of Christ, and thus, in order to properly interpret it, we must learn to look backward more than forward. In other words, the certain revelation of Genesis to Jude is a better interpretive guide to Revelation than the uncertain circumstances and events of present and future history.