This note is interpretation, not translation, and the readings marked as Jon’s are his. It is written for anyone who has read Revelation 21:8 and been afraid. What it argues is that the list in that verse is of people who are those things and will not change, not of God’s children who have done them, or who still struggle with them.
What the verse says. It follows a promise. The one who comes through it will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be my son (21:7). Then: But as for the cowardly and the unfaithful and the detestable, and murderers and the sexually unfaithful and sorcerers and idol-worshippers and everyone who deals in lies — their share is in the lake burning with fire and sulphur, which is the second death (21:8). It opens with but: the list is set against the son. In the Greek there are eight kinds. Three are adjectives used as nouns (deiloi, the cowardly; apistoi, the unfaithful; pseudeis, the liars), four are nouns for people by what they do (phoneis, pornoi, pharmakoi, eidōlolatrai), and one is a verb form used as a noun, ebdelygmenois, a perfect passive participle, something like “those who have been made detestable”. A Greek noun like phoneus names a person by what he does, and says nothing by itself about whether that was once, or always, or all he is. The grammar alone does not settle what the list means; what settles it is the text around it.
Everyone has lied. The last kind on the list is everyone who deals in lies. But Paul says let God be true, and every person a liar (Romans 3:4), all sinned and fall short of the glory of God (3:23), and James, we all stumble in many ways (3:2). John says if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). If the list meant anyone who has ever lied, or been afraid, or done any of the rest, nobody would be outside it, and the same Paul says that all who sinned are justified freely by his grace (Romans 3:24). The list cannot mean everyone who has ever done these things. It has to mean something narrower, and the book itself says what.
What narrows it. First, the verse before it. The one who inherits is the one who comes through, in the book’s own word the conqueror, and John says elsewhere who that is: everything born of God conquers the world; and this is the conquest that has conquered the world: our trust. Who is the one conquering the world if not the one who trusts that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:4–5). In this book they beat him by the blood of the Lamb and by the message they testified to (12:11). So the people on the other side of that but are those who do not trust Him. Second, the book gives the same cluster of sins at 9:20–21 — idols, murders, sorcery, sexual unfaithfulness, thefts — and says of them that they did not change their minds. Of Jezebel it says she does not want to change what she is doing (2:21); of the scorched, they did not change their minds and give him glory (16:9). The people in the lake are the ones who refuse. Third, the summary at 22:15 says everyone who loves and practises what is false: loving it, and practising it, present tense, a life that stays in it.
Every kind on the list has been forgiven in scripture.The cowardly:deilos is in the New Testament only three times, and two are Jesus’ own words to His own disciples in the boat in the storm, why are you cowardly, you of little trust? (Matthew 8:26; Mark 4:40), and He calmed the sea. The unfaithful:apistos, without trust. Jesus says to Thomas do not be without trust, but trusting (John 20:27), and Thomas answers my Lord and my God (20:28). Liars, and the cowardly again: Peter, asked if he was one of the disciples, said I am not (John 18:17, 25) and denied Him a third time (18:27), and after the resurrection Jesus asks him three times do you love me? and gives him His sheep to feed (21:15–17). Murderers: David — I have sinned against the LORD, and Nathan said the LORD has also put away your sin; you will not die (2 Samuel 12:13) — and Paul, who persecuted this Way to the death (Acts 22:4) and calls himself first of sinners, to whom mercy was shown (1 Timothy 1:13–15). The sexually unfaithful: Rahab the prostitute (Hebrews 11:31). Sorcerers: believers in Ephesus came confessing and declaring their practices, and many who had practised magic arts burned their books in front of everyone (Acts 19:18–19). Idol-worshippers:how you turned to God from the idols to serve a living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9).
Paul’s own list. In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 Paul gives a list that is close to this one: do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be led astray: neither the sexually unfaithful, nor idol-worshippers, nor adulterers … nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit God’s kingdom. And in the next breath: and some of you were these things. But you were washed, but you were made holy, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus the Anointed and in the Spirit of our God (6:11). Paul uses were. The same kinds of people are on the list, and the ones who trusted Him are described as no longer on it. The book says the same of its own people: they washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (7:14), and happy are those who wash their robes, so that they have the right to the tree of life (22:14).
The gospel stands on top of all of it.The good confession.If you confess with your mouth Lord Jesus, and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart it is trusted into righteousness, and with the mouth it is confessed into salvation (Romans 10:9–10). Paul calls it the good confession, which Timothy made before many witnesses and which Christ Jesus made before Pontius Pilate (1 Timothy 6:12–13). And what it brings, in four places, is all of it: — If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7); if we confess our sins, he is trustworthy and just, so that he forgives us the sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness (1:9). — Having forgiven us all the trespasses (Colossians 2:13). — Through this man forgiveness of sins is announced to you, and from everything from which you could not be justified in the law of Moses, in this man everyone who trusts is justified (Acts 13:38–39). — Who forgives all your iniquity (hasoleach lekhol avonekhi) … as far as the east is from the west, he has removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:3, 12). And the one who comes is not turned away: the one who comes to me I will not throw out (John 6:37). The book ends on the same note: let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge (22:17).
A mistake, and what a person is — Jon’s reading. There is a difference between making mistakes and being something evil, and the gospel stands on top of both. A child of God can be afraid, can fail, can lie, can struggle for years with something, and is still washed. A righteous person falls seven times and rises (Proverbs 24:16). The list in 21:8 is of people who are those things: who live in them, love them, and do not want to change. John writes both sides in one letter. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves (1 John 1:8) and everyone born of God does not practise sin, because his seed remains in him (3:9), in the present tense. Read together, the second is the direction of a life and the first is the falls along it, confessed and cleansed. That is Jon’s reading of how the two sit side by side.
Red flag That the eight kinds in 21:8 name what a person is, as against what he has done. The Greek forms do not say it; an agent noun can describe a deed. What the text gives is the contrast with the son in 21:7, the conqueror who trusts (1 John 5:4–5), the refusal to change their minds at 9:20–21, 16:9 and 2:21, Paul’s were at 1 Corinthians 6:11, and Paul’s noun sin in Romans 6:2, 6 and 14, the power the washed died to.
You live in a noun, not a verb — Jon’s reading. You cannot live in an act. Romans 6:2 asks how shall we who died to sin still live in it?, and what one lives in has to be a noun: sin as a power, a master. The question is also an impossibility. If you have died to something, you cannot live in it, which is why Paul answers it with may it never be and then, because it is true, tells them to act on it: so you also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:11). He goes on: do you not know that you are slaves of the one you present yourselves to obey, either of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? (6:16). Then you were slaves of sin (6:17), having been set free from sin you were enslaved to righteousness (6:18), and now, set free from sin and enslaved to God (6:22). Paul speaks of sin like a person: it reigned in death (5:21), it took an opportunity and deceived me and killed (7:8, 11), it lives in me (7:17), and it pays wages, which are death (6:23). Jon reads this as the washed having been set free from a spirit, sin, and now belonging to Jesus, who became to us … righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30; the LORD our righteousness, Jeremiah 23:6). On that reading, the people Revelation 21:8 lists are those who are still in that slavery, and the washed are not.
Red flag That sin in Romans 6 is a spirit, and that being enslaved to righteousness is being Jesus’ slave. Paul personifies sin (5:21; 6:12, 14; 7:8–17) but does not call it a spirit, and 6:22 names the new master as God. The nearest texts are Ephesians 2:2, the spirit now working in the sons of disobedience; 1 John 3:8, the one who practises sin is from the slanderer; and 1 Corinthians 1:30 and Jeremiah 23:6 for righteousness.
Come out of her, my people. The call at 18:4 does not tell the people inside Babylon that they are lost. It calls them my people while they are still in her, and it says why: Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her wrongs and do not receive any of her plagues (18:4). Both reasons are about keeping them out of what is coming to her, and the next verse gives hers: her wrongs have piled up as high as the sky, and God has remembered her crimes (18:5). Jeremiah’s call to Babylon had the same two reasons: flee from the midst of Babylon, and let each save his life; do not be cut off in her iniquity (51:6), and go out of her midst, my people, and let each save his life from the burning anger of the LORD (51:45). Paul takes the call up with the Corinthians: therefore come out from among them, and be set apart, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me (2 Corinthians 6:17–18). The call ends in sonship, the same promise as 21:7. Two things the text leaves open: the voice at 18:4 is not named, only another voice from the sky, and my people is God’s or the Lamb’s without saying which; and it does not say how anyone came to be inside her, or that being there cost them their place. The reasons it gives are about what she is and what is coming to her.
What protects God’s people from sorcery. Some who read the list at 21:8 are afraid of sorcery itself. What scripture gives against it is not a counter-charm. It is that God keeps His people and gives them His word.
It has no hold on them, and God keeps them.For there is no enchantment against Jacob, and no divination against Israel (Numbers 23:23): Balaam says it after being hired to curse them. No weapon formed against you will succeed, and every tongue that rises against you in judgment you will condemn. This is the inheritance of the servants of the LORD (Isaiah 54:17). In this book the locusts that torment are told to damage only the people who do not have God’s seal on their foreheads (9:4), and the servants of God are sealed first (7:3). John writes the one born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him (1 John 5:18); Jesus prays that you keep them from the evil one (John 17:15); Paul, the Lord is trustworthy, who will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one (2 Thessalonians 3:3); and Jesus, no one will snatch them out of my hand (John 10:28) and I will also keep you through the hour of testing (Revelation 3:10).
Belonging, not power over spirits. Jesus gives the seventy authority … over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you, and then says do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:19–20). You are from God, little children, and have conquered them, because the one in you is greater than the one in the world (1 John 4:4). If God is for us, who is against us? (Romans 8:31).
Living on His word — Jon’s reading. Moses gives the answer in Deuteronomy 18. After the list of sorcerers and diviners (18:10–12) he says: be wholehearted with the LORD your God. For these nations, whom you are driving out, listen to cloud-readers and diviners; but as for you, not so has the LORD your God given to you. A prophet from among you, from your brothers, like me, the LORD your God will raise up for you; to him you shall listen (18:13–15). The verb in 18:14 is given, in the Hebrew and in the Greek translation, so it is not only a prohibition: it says what God gave instead. The nations ask sorcerers; God’s people are given a prophet and His word, and Peter says the prophet like Moses is Jesus (Acts 3:22–26). That is the protection: a person will not live on bread alone, but on every word coming out through the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4, from Deuteronomy 8:3), which is what Jesus answers the slanderer with. Isaiah says it the same way: should not a people seek its God — on behalf of the living, to the dead? To the teaching and to the testimony! (8:19–20). Saul is the opposite case: he died, in part, because he asked a medium to seek, and did not seek the LORD (1 Chronicles 10:13–14). Paul’s list for standing against the slanderer’s methods is the shield of trust, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11, 16–17); and John’s is do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits (1 John 4:1).
Turning away, and not making the name a charm. In Ephesus the believers who had practised magic came confessing and declaring their practices and burned their books in front of everyone (Acts 19:18–19). Just before that, seven brothers tried the Jesus whom Paul proclaims as a formula, and the evil spirit answered Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you? and overpowered them (19:13–16). Using the name as a spell is the same thing as sorcery, and what grew was the word of the Lord (19:20). The book’s own answer is the same: they beat him by the blood of the Lamb and by the message they testified to (12:11).
Kept, because they kept. The letter to Philadelphia says it in one verse: because you kept the word of my endurance, I also will keep you ek the hour of the testing that is about to come on the whole inhabited world, to test those living on the earth (3:10). The verb is the same on both sides, tēreō: etērēsas, you kept, and tērēsō, I will keep. It occurs eleven times in ten verses in this book, and this is the only one where the assembly keeps and Jesus keeps. A verse earlier the same thing is said of the assembly, with its strength named as small: you have little power, and you kept my word and did not deny my name (3:8). What was kept is not a record; the next paragraph calls it holding fast.
Where Jesus has said it before.Ho de hypomeinas eis telos, houtos sōthēsetai. Kai kērychthēsetai touto to euangelion tēs basileias en holē tē oikoumenē eis martyrion pasin tois ethnesin, kai tote hēxei to telos — the one who endures to the end, this one will be saved; and this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed in the whole inhabited world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:13–14). Endurance and the good news stand in consecutive verses, and the phrase is the one in 3:10. In His prayer for His own He says of them: they have kept your word (ton logon sou tetērēkan, John 17:6), and I was keeping them (egō etēroun autous, 17:12), and keep them (tērēson autous, 17:11). 1 John 5:18, quoted above, has the same verb: the one born of God keeps him.
The word of my endurance. The Greek is ton logon tēs hypomonēs mou, and the genitive can be read two ways: the word that calls for endurance, which is how this translation has it (“my instruction to hold out”), or the word of His own endurance, as 2 Thessalonians 3:5 has tēn hypomonēn tou Christou, the endurance of the Anointed. Either way it is a word that was kept, and the book itself ties endurance to keeping and to faith: here is the endurance of the saints, those keeping the commands of God and the faith of Jesus (14:12), and here is the endurance and the faith of the saints (13:10). Just before 14:12, at 14:6, is the one place this book has the noun good news.
The preposition.Ek is literally out of, and this translation renders it through. The Greek alone does not say whether the keeping is out of the hour or within it. John 17:15 has the same construction: I am not asking that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them ek the evil one, said while they are in the world (17:11). This note takes its emphasis from who is kept and why, and does not say what the hour is or when.
The word, and the gospel — Jon’s reading. Jon links the word kept at 3:10 to the word of the gospel and of faith: a person who holds the good news and does not deny the name is the person Jesus says He will keep. The texts that bring the pieces together: tini logō euēngelisamēn hymin, ei katechete — the gospel, announced in a word, if you hold it fast (1 Corinthians 15:1–2); to rhēma tēs pisteōs ho kēryssomen, the word of faith that we proclaim (Romans 10:8); ton logon tēs alētheias, to euangelion tēs sōtērias hymōn, the word of the truth, the good news of your salvation (Ephesians 1:13); the seed, the word of God (Luke 8:11), whose hearers katechousin kai karpophorousin en hypomonē, hold it and bear fruit in endurance (8:15); and Paul at the end, tēn pistin tetērēka, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).
Red flag That the word of my endurance at 3:10 is the gospel, or the word of faith. No verse says so. The nearest texts are the ones above, where holding the word and endurance stand in one verse (Luke 8:15; 1 Corinthians 15:2) and where endurance, keeping and faith stand together in this book (13:10; 14:12). The verse itself gives the keeping as following from the keeping (hoti … kagō, because … I also), and that is what this note takes from it.
Fear not, and hold fast. Jesus’ first words to John, who fell like a dead man, are stop being afraid (1:17), and to Smyrna, do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer (2:10). The same words are for anyone who has been afraid that they are on that list. Then: just hold on to what you have until I come (2:25); hold on to what you have, so that nobody takes your crown (3:11); and in the letter that bears the word, let us hold fast the confession (Hebrews 4:14), let us hold the confession of our hope unbending, for the one who promised is trustworthy (10:23). What you hold is the good confession, not your record: Jesus is Lord, and God raised Him from the dead. If you made it, you are the one the verse before the list is for: he will be my son (21:7).
Where this stops. This note does not say sin does not matter. Do not be led astray (1 Corinthians 6:9) is Paul’s own warning on the list, and Jesus’ if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief (3:3) is to people He loves. The washed are not told to go back and live in it: how shall we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:2). Sin is a noun there, hamartia, the power Paul says they died to (6:2), are no longer slaves of (6:6), and that will not rule over you (6:14). The single act is the verb, and Paul asks about that separately: shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be (6:15). It does not say who is, or is not, on the list; that is God’s to judge. It does not claim the Greek grammar proves the reading; the reading is Jon’s, and it rests on the texts above. And it brings no charge against any person, only against what the list describes.