The Embroidered Robe – Side notes
* In time past, the enemy must have argued successfully before God that he had legal right to have the garment of brotherly love.
* To be clothed in the Lord Jesus is to be beautiful in the eyes of the Father (Isa. 62:3; Zech. 9:16-17).
The Embroidered Robe – Footnotes
1. The radiance of the Father upon His throne is compared to the colors in a magnificent rainbow (Ezek. 1:28). The range of colors begins with dazzling white and moves through the full light spectrum (Rev. 4:3).
2. “So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col. 3:12).
3. “Bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you” (Col. 3:13).
4. “Beyond all these things put on [divine] love, which is the perfect bond of unity” (which binds everything together in complete harmony) (Col. 3:14).
5. Satan, an expert legalist, primarily accuses believers before God of disobedience to the greatest commandment: to love God (Rev. 12:10; Job 1:9-11; Matt. 22:37). The devil can detect this sin by observing the lack of love between brethren. God’s word says, “The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).
The lack of love in the body of Christ has reached a point where there were few Christians who manifested Christ’s love for all the saints (Col. 1:4).
6. The garment is intended by the words, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Eph. 3:17). His love is to fill our hearts and overflow into the soul capacity of our will. The will is to steadfastly choose to love others in His name – “to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:2-3).
The garment was lost through disobedience to the Lord in His church. It could only be recovered through obedience. Christ Jesus does not act on Earth by the Holy Spirit apart from some obedient member of His body. And the Lord Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32).
7. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). It is not possible for human beings of themselves to love God (Rom. 3:11, 13-15). However, when a Christian embraces Christ Jesus as one’s only life, He becomes the new inner garment of ever-increasing love for God and for others (Col. 3:4; Phil. 1:9; Eph. 1:15).
8. “Shepherd the church of God which He [Christ] purchased with His own blood” (Acts 20:28; Rev. 5:9).
“Then I [God] bathed you with water” (Ezek. 16:9-10; Eph. 5:26).
“You shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty” (Exod. 28:2; Ps. 29:2, NKJV).
“My soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness” (Isa. 61:10).
9. Jesus says here that the whole of our being is to be saved – body, soul, heart, and spirit. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow [the body], and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12; 1 Thess. 5:23).
God alone is righteous. This means that the divine nature is perfectly just (fair and impartial) and right (true and upright).
Human beings were created “that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus” (2 Cor. 5:21). Christians put on the new inner self (heart and spirit) that God created and that is becoming like Christ “in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).
10. Christ Jesus is the head (Eph. 4:15). Christians are members of His body. We are part of Him and of each other (1 Cor. 12:27; Rom 12:5). This means that a person who is in covenant with the Lord Jesus is also in covenant with all other believers. All Christians are “members [of Christ’s body] belonging to one another” (Eph. 4:25, WUEST)
The Crown – Side notes
* The number twenty-four signifies delegated authority in the heavenly realm (Rev. 4:4).
* There is an old saying about brides: “Something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue.”
* The Hebrew word for the spice henna is translated “camphire” in the New King James Version. It is the same Hebrew word for “ransom” (Song of Sol. 4:13; Isa. 43:3). A bride in the Middle East applies the spice as a paste to her hands and feet on the night before her wedding.
The Crown – Footnotes
1. The Father promises the crown of eternal life to those who persevere under trails and hold fast to their love for God and His children to the end (Rev. 2:10; James 1:12). Also, in Revelation 3:10-11, Jesus appears to refer to the crown of life for the same reasons.
2. The blue color of sapphires represents heaven in the Bible.
3. “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (Eph. 4:15). The manifestation of Christ involves “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:10-11).
4. Jesus provided something old in the recovered covenant garment. Later He wrote His new name on my forehead. Now the Father allows me to borrow the crown of life for the coming ceremony. He adds to it twenty-four blue sapphires.
5. The Bible calls angels in the third heaven “stars” (Rev. 1:20; 12:4). The Father designates twenty-four angels to accompany this wearer of the crown of life in heaven.
6. For Christians the hands (work) and the feet (conduct) are to give forth the sweet fragrance of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as our ransom for sin (Eph. 5:2; 1 Tim. 2:6).
7. The union between the Father and the Son is complete and total (John 10:30). They will be satisfied with nothing less than that for those who are “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17). Jesus prayed, “As Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us… that they also may be perfected in unity [with Us]” (John 17:21, 23).
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