Loving Life

The saints who overcome the dragon do so because of the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and because “they did not love their life even to death” (Revelation 12:11). Martyrs don’t care enough about their own lives to preserve them in the face of threats. This is the way of victory.

That phrase about “not loving life” occurs earlier in the Bible. It’s a surprising context, given the way the phrase is used in Revelation. In Deborah’s song, the sons of Zebulun are commended because they “despised their lives to death” (Judges 5:18). Deborah’s song is an exuberant psalm, celebrating the armies of Israel, Jael (“most blessed among women”) with her tent peg, taunting Sisera’s mother because her son will never come home with those embroidered garments as plunder. It’s a wonderfully bloodthirsty song of victory.

Revelation is also about victory, and the shedding of blood. But the battle is turned upside down. In Revelation, the victorious warriors are those who die, not those who kill. The saints who do not love life are Jaels, who pound a peg to defeat the dragon, following the example of Jesus who crushed the serpent’s head at the cross, defeating death by death.