The Four Living Beings

Next Part A Vision of the Body of Christ

The book of the prophet Ezekiel begins with a dramatic vision. He saw the heavens opened and in the middle of dazzling brightness he saw four living beings (Note) . He describes them as follows: ‘Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle’ (1: 10). John had a similar vision, recorded in Revelation 4: 6, 7: ‘In the centre, around the throne, were four living beings, and they were covered with eyes, in front and behind. The first living being was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.’

What are the meanings of these visions and these four living beings?

Four men - a tax collector, a man of unknown occupation, a doctor, and a fisherman - wrote biographies of Jesus Christ. Their names were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (probably not the John who wrote Revelation). They never imagined that their writings (with those of Peter and Paul and others) would be added to the sacred scriptures of the Jews, to make the book subsequently known to millions as the Bible. They never dreamt that what they wrote would be translated into hundreds of languages. The very idea would probably have shocked them.

Matthew, Mark and John, being Jews, certainly knew of Ezekiel’s vision, but had no idea that what they wrote had any relation to it. Unknowingly they were playing a part in its fulfilment. These four gospels correspond in order to the four living beings.

Matthew

Matthew’s gospel corresponds to the first living being, which is a lion. The lion is the king of the animals, and accordingly Matthew sees Jesus as a king. The Bible itself associates the lion with kingship and the tribe of Judah from which Jesus came. In Genesis 49: 9 and 10, Jacob prophesied: ‘You are a lion’s cub, O Judah; you return from the prey, my son. Like a lion, he crouches and lies down, like a lioness -- who dares to rouse him? The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.’

Matthew was a government official, and the most suited of the four gospel writers to see Jesus as a king.

Matthew begins his gospel with the words ‘A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham’ He then traces the lineage of Jesus from Abraham down to David, and on through all the kings of Israel. What could be more appropriate for the one who was destined to sit on David’s throne?

Only Matthew records the visit of the wise men, and their words: ‘where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.’

At the end of Matthew, when commissioning the disciples, Jesus said: ‘All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth.’ These are the words of a king.

Mark

Mark corresponds to the second living being, the ox, which is a servant animal. Accordingly he sees Jesus as a servant, the exact opposite of a king. Servants are "unknown" people, and this fits the fact Mark was a man of unknown occupation. His opening words are simply: ‘The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ.’ (The following words the Son of God found in most Bibles were almost certainly not in the original text, but were a later addition.) There is no genealogy, nor any kind of birth story. You would not expect either of those for a servant. Neither does Mark record much teaching. His gospel is all about action. Jesus is serving his Father. Appropriately, for a servant, Mark’s gospel is the shortest.

At the end of Mark, when commissioning the disciples, Jesus said: ‘these signs will follow them that believe; In my name they will cast out devils; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.’ He was speaking of the actions his servants would perform.

How can a man be both a king and a servant? No two roles are more opposite. Here in England, as in various other countries, the queen is only the constitutional head of the country. In ancient times, Kings really ruled their countries and had absolute power. They were closer to today’s presidents and prime ministers, but closer still to modern dictators. The early chapters of Samuel describe the coronation of Saul, the first king of Israel. Samuel summed up the relation of the king to his subjects with the words: ‘you yourselves will become his slaves.’ A king in ancient times could order the immediate execution of anyone who displeased him, and this frequently happened. A servant on the other hand was someone with no rights of any kind. He had to obey his master’s every wish.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled the roles of both a king and a servant. He spoke and acted out the words of a king: ‘All authority is given to me in heaven and in earth’ He also spoke and lived the words of a servant: ‘For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me’ (John 6:38). He continually obeyed his Father’s every wish.

Luke

The third gospel writer, Luke, corresponds to the third living being. He sees Jesus as a man. Luke was a doctor, concerned with people, and it is appropriate that he should view Jesus in this way. Only Luke gives us all the human details of Jesus’ birth. He tells the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary and her conception. Only Luke mentions the inn at Bethlehem and the manger where Jesus first slept. Like Matthew, Luke gives the genealogy of Jesus, but not in the same way. Matthew begins with Abraham and goes down through David. Luke begins with Mary, and goes all the way back to Adam. The final words of Luke chapter 3 are ‘the son of Adam, the son of God.’ The word adam in Hebrew means man. So we may re-translate this, ‘the son of man, the son of God.’

We are indebted to Luke for other more personal details of Jesus’ life. Only he tells us how the mob threw Jesus out of his own town of Nazareth. Only Luke recounts how Jesus sweated drops of blood in Gethsemane.

The commission at the end of Luke included the words: ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.’ He focuses on repentance, the human response to the gospel and its reward, forgiveness.

John

John’s gospel corresponds to the fourth living being, the flying eagle. The eagle belongs to the heavens and so represents God. John sees Jesus as God. The other three beings are creatures of the earth. As we would expect, John’s gospel is very different from those of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Matthew and Luke both have an earthly birth story and a genealogy. John cannot do that. God does not have such things. Instead he gives a heavenly birth story. We find the simple, direct and sublime statements: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the word was God’. Soon after we read, ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ In Luke the birth story is human; in John it is divine.

John is the gospel of ‘I am’. Only John records the great claims of Jesus. ‘I am the bread of life.’ ‘I am the light of the world.’ ‘I am the door.’ ‘I am the good shepherd.’ ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ ‘I am the true vine.’ ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ Who but God can say such things? No other teacher or religious leader before or since has ever spoken words like these.

Jesus never directly said he was God, but 21 times in (the Greek text of) John’s gospel he spoke the words, ‘I am’ (egw eimi). Centuries before, Moses asked God what his name was. In reply he received the famous words, ‘I am who I am’ (Ex 3: 14). To the Jews, ‘I am’ was part of the divine name. Amazingly the gematria (numeric value) of ‘I am’ in Hebrew (ehyeh) is 21, the exact number of times that Jesus spoke those words. (21, some readers will note, is the product of 3 and 7, both numbers associated with perfection and with God.) When Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ the Jews took his words as a blasphemous claim to be God. They took up stones to throw at him. Death by stoning was the penalty for blasphemy in the law of Moses. (See also The Name of God and the Name of Jesus.)

Near the end of his gospel, John quotes the words of Thomas: ‘My Lord and my God’ (John 20: 28). Jesus accepted these words without protesting.

At the end of John we find the commission: ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. ... Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.’ Like Luke, John’s commission includes the forgiveness of sins, but this time the disciples themselves actually received the power to forgive. To the Pharisees and teachers of the law this was blasphemy. ‘Who is this that speaks blasphemies?’ they said on another occasion, ‘Who can forgive sins, but God alone?’ (Luke 5: 21). In a sense they were right. Only God can forgive sins. But God had come to live in man.

What contrasts! King and yet servant, man and yet God! How amazing! How wonderful! How far beyond human imagination! Has any other person in history combined such opposites? Yet that is what Jesus was and is: the servant-king, the man-God.