The Lion Is the Lamb: A Theology of the Cross in Revelation 5

Why does Revelation call Jesus both Lion and Lamb? John hears that the Lion of Judah has conquered, then turns and sees a Lamb standing, as slain — because in Revelation 5 the conquering is the dying.

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One of the cool things of John’s visionary world are the times he hears something, then looks to see what he’s just heard. In Revelation 5, John is told one thing but then shown another.

He’s weeping because the scroll in the right hand of the One on the throne is sealed with seven seals and no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth is worthy to open it. And an unopened scroll means no protection for God's children in bitter trial, no judgment on a persecuting world, no triumph, no new heaven and earth.[1] John is weeping loudly.

Then an elder tells him to stop because the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered and thus can open the scroll and its seven seals (5:5). He’s the long hoped-for king Jacob said would come from his son Judah’s line (Gen. 49:9–10) and the root that gave Israel’s greatest king, David, life. He’s worthy.

So, John turns to look at this conquering Lion; he sees a Lamb standing…as slain (5:6).[2]

Richard Bauckham argues that this contrast between what John hears and what he sees is the key to the whole vision.[3] Two messianic titles summon a Messiah who conquers the nations by destroying them. Then John looks, and the image is reinterpreted by a slaughtered Lamb. What John hears isn’t cancelled. Jesus really is the expected Messiah greater than David. But what he sees tells you how that Messiah won.

G. K. Beale finds the same device working elsewhere in the book: visions are placed directly after heavenly sayings in order to interpret them.[4] John hears the announcement, then sees the explanation.

Revelation 5 isn’t merely a scene of worship. It’s a theology of the cross (theologia crucis) interpreted for us in picture form. It claims that Christ’s death wasn’t the interruption before the victory but the form the victory took. He conquered as he was slaughtered, not merely afterward. He is worthy because he was slain, not in spite of it. He still bears the marks because what he did there hasn’t stopped being true.

The Conquering Is the Dying

John is told a Lion conquered yet shown a Lamb slain.

John doesn’t correct the elder; Revelation doesn’t resolve the tension. There’s nothing to resolve.

• The Lion is the Lamb.

• The Victor is the Victim.

• The Strong One is the Sacrificed One.

The One who gives life to all things is the One by whose death new life is given. In Bauckham’s words, by juxtaposing two images, “John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death.”[5]

Ironically, the Lamb’s wounds are worthy precisely because he’s alive to bear them. 5:6 depicts a Lamb standing, not lying dead. As he said in chapter 1: “Fear not, I am…the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore” (1:17, 18). Of course, his resurrection is essential to his conquest, but in the context of Roman power, Christ’s victory comes through death.

And the Lamb who was slain isn’t weak. He stands with seven horns and with seven eyes (5:6). He has fullness of right, might, and sight. The perfect number seven is used twice over. The slain Lamb is ironically Almighty.

Note that chapter 5 doesn’t proclaim what the Lamb conquered. Bauckham reads the silence as deliberate: the object is left undefined so that the victory is boundless in its scope.[6] Everything opposed to the Lion’s rule has been defeated. Paul says the rulers of this age crucified the Lord of glory, but had they understood they wouldn’t have done it (1 Cor. 2:8). They thought a cross was regicide. The cross ironically was his coronation.

 

 

The Theology of the Cross

 

“The cross ironically was his coronation.”

 

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The coronated Lamb is viewed in the midst of (ἐν μέσῳ) the throne. Christ’s sacrificial death is the means of God’s rule of the world. The risen Christ stands in the midst of the lampstands (ch. 1) and in the midst of the throne (ch. 5).

Physically Defeated, Spiritually Victorious

How exactly does conquering-through-suffering work? In the seven letters (chs. 2–3), believers overcome by persevering in faith in the midst of suffering and persecution. Christ’s overcoming must be essentially like theirs, since 3:21 compares the two so closely.[7] Christ overcame by maintaining loyalty to the Father through suffering and finally death. He was physically defeated but spiritually victorious.

His victory is more than abstract. While he was suffering the defeat of death, he was simultaneously overcoming by creating a kingdom of redeemed subjects over whom he would reign and over whom the devil would no longer have power (5:9–10). While defeated by the forces of evil at the cross, he was establishing his kingdom.

It isn’t that he was defeated on Friday and vindicated on Sunday. The defeat itself was the conquering. His kingdom didn’t begin after the resurrection. It began at the cross.

A Ransom With Nothing Narrow About It

Listen to how the new song expresses what his blood accomplished: you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God (5:9–10).

Tribe, language, people, nation means every ethnic, linguistic, social, and political corner of the world. Every way human beings divide from one another is broken down. There is nothing narrow or national about this redemption.

The Lamb was given a kingdom and priesthood, not a collection of random individuals, but one corporate people, drawn from the many. This is what the LORD said to Israel at Sinai: you shall be to me a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). What was said to one nation gathered at one mountain is now said to a people gathered from all of them.

The concentric circles of praise widen across chapters 4–5. Four living creatures praise (4:8). Then twenty-four elders join in (4:9–11). Then the four and the twenty-four are together (5:8). Then myriads of myriads of angels are heard (5:11–12). Finally, every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea (5:13).

The cosmic choir’s song of the Lamb echoes what the blood of the Lamb does to the nations.

John will use the same device again two chapters later. He hears the number of the sealed, 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel (7:4). Then he looks, and sees an innumerable multitude from every nation (7:9). Hearing and seeing, one reality under two images — the same technique as 5:5–6, now applied to the church. The people of the Lion of Judah turn out to be the people of the slaughtered Lamb.

He Is Still Standing as Slain

There’s one grammatical detail here with weight.

John sees a Lamb standing, as slain (ἐσφαγμένον). A perfect passive participle. The Lamb’s victory has present, ongoing effect. Beale said the perfect participle, “expresses an abiding condition as a result of the past act of being slain.”[8] His wounds aren’t scars of something finished and filed away. Heaven’s throne room is permanently occupied by a Lamb who bears the marks of slaughter and is standing to plead them before the throne of grace.

We preach a crucified Christ; that’s his abiding state, not merely a past event.

This is why Hebrews says he’s able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, because he always lives to make intercession for them (Heb. 7:25). The offering doesn’t need repeating, because it never stops being offered.

Are you a sinner? There’s a sacrifice for your sins in Jesus.

Weep No More

John wept because a sealed scroll meant history with no one at the wheel. He stopped weeping because someone was worthy to open it.

When you look at the world and conclude that if Christ is on the throne, he’s not doing a very good job, Revelation doesn’t tell you things are better than they look. It says God conquers another way.

The last of the seven promises to the seven churches anticipates this vision: to the one who conquers I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne (3:21). Read the letters. By the time you reach chapter 5 you’ve been told seven times that there’s such a thing as conquering, and once that Christ has already done it. Then you’re shown what his conquering looked like: a Lamb, standing, as slain.

The plan of the ages is in worthy hands. And you can see the wounds.

Revelation: Jesus Wins

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2025. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 

Notes

[1] William Hendriksen, More Than Conquerors: An Interpretation of the Book of Revelation (1940, 1967; Baker Book House, seventh printing, 1990), 89.↩

[2] I have rendered ἱς ἐσφαγμένον as “as slain” rather than the ESV’s “as though it had been slain.” “As though” is misleading, as if the Lamb only looked slain. See G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 1999), 352.↩

[3] Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge University Press, 1993), 74.↩

[4] Beale, 353.↩

[5] Bauckham, 74.↩

[6] Bauckham, 74.↩

[7] Beale, 352–53.↩

[8] Beale, 352.↩