The Color of Judgment: The Second Seal Text: Revelation 6:3-4
Introduction: The Grammar of Judgment
When the modern Christian reads the book of Revelation, he is often tempted to do one of two things. The first is to treat it like a cryptic puzzle box full of newspaper clippings from our own time, looking for the Antichrist behind every political stump and seeing bar codes as the mark of the beast. The second is to treat it as a beautiful but ultimately incomprehensible mess of symbols, a sort of inspired lava lamp, full of glorious but vague spiritual feelings. Both approaches are a way of taming the book. Both are a way of keeping it at a safe distance.
But the book of Revelation is not a puzzle box, and it is not a lava lamp. It is a covenant lawsuit. It is the detailed record of God's righteous judgment against the apostate generation of Israel that rejected and crucified His Son. As I have maintained throughout our study, the primary fulfillment of this prophecy is not thousands of years in our future, but rather in the immediate past of the first-century church. It concerns the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, an event which Jesus Himself prophesied in great detail. The loosing of these seals is the formal, heavenly declaration of war against that corrupt and blood-guilty city.
We saw with the first seal that the rider on the white horse was none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, going forth conquering and to conquer. He is not just the Lamb who opens the seals; He is the agent of the judgment that follows. He is the one who brings war upon the city that rejected Him. And as we see with this second seal, the judgments that follow are the necessary companions to His conquest. War is not a random tragedy that befalls nations; it is a tool in the hand of a sovereign God. And sometimes, the most terrible wars are not those fought against a foreign foe, but those that a people wage against themselves.
This rider on the red horse is not some abstract principle of conflict. He is a divine messenger of wrath, sent to execute a particular sentence on a particular people at a particular time. What we are about to see is the color of God's judgment, and it is blood red.
The Text
And when He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, “Come.” And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sits on it, it was given to him to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.
(Revelation 6:3-4 LSB)
The Second Summons (v. 3)
We begin with the opening of the seal and the summons from the heavenly court.
"And when He opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, 'Come.'" (Revelation 6:3)
The action continues, following the same solemn, liturgical pattern as the first seal. The Lamb, Jesus Christ, is the one who opens the seal. He is in complete control of the timing and the nature of these judgments. Nothing happens by accident. History is not a runaway train; it is a story being told by its Author, and every plot point serves His ultimate purpose. The Lamb that was slain is now the Lion who judges.
The summons comes from the second of the four living creatures. These creatures, as we have seen, represent the whole of creation, standing before the throne of God and participating in His rule. They are the guardians of His holiness, and their voices thunder with the authority of the court of heaven. When they say "Come," it is not a polite invitation. It is a command for the agent of judgment to appear and receive his commission. The whole created order is aligned with God's righteous purposes. Heaven is not a passive observer of earthly events; it is the command center from which those events are governed.
This orderly, repeated pattern is meant to instill in us a profound sense of God's meticulous sovereignty. The chaos that is about to be unleashed on the earth is not chaos from God's perspective. It is perfectly ordered, perfectly timed, and perfectly just. It is the methodical de-creation of a covenant-breaking world, a dismantling of the old order to make way for the new.
The Red Horse of Civil War (v. 4)
With the summons given, the agent of judgment rides forth.
"And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sits on it, it was given to him to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him." (Revelation 6:4)
The color of this horse is impossible to miss: it is red. Fiery red. This is the color of bloodshed, of violence, of war. If the white horse was the conquering king, this red horse is the carnage that follows in the wake of his judgment. This is not a foreign invasion, not primarily. The text is precise. Power was given to this rider "to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another."
The word for "earth" here can, and in this context should, be understood as "the land." This judgment is localized. It is directed at the land of Israel. And the nature of the judgment is civil war. He takes peace away, so that they turn on each other. This is one of God's classic forms of covenant judgment. When a people rebels against Him, He removes the grace of common peace and allows their own internal wickedness to consume them. He hands them over to their own lusts, and they devour one another.
And this is precisely what happened in the years leading up to the final siege of Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus, an eyewitness to these events, chronicles in gruesome detail the absolute collapse of Jewish society into factions. Zealots, Sicarii, and various other rival groups fought pitched battles in the streets of Jerusalem and throughout Judea, slaughtering one another with a ferocity that shocked even the Romans. By the time the Roman armies arrived, the Jews had already decimated their own fighting strength through this insane internal conflict. They did not know what made for peace, as Jesus had lamented over them (Luke 19:42), and so God took that peace entirely away. He gave them over to their own murderous hatred.
Notice the passive voice: "it was given to him." Who gave it? God did. The rider on the red horse does not act on his own authority. He is a bailiff of the heavenly court, carrying out a sentence. The great sword he carries was not seized; it was "given to him." This is crucial. God is sovereign over war. He is sovereign over civil war. He is sovereign over the bloody mess that men make when they reject His rule. This is not to say that God is the author of sin, but it is to say that He is the author of the play in which men sin, and He masterfully uses their wicked actions to accomplish His own righteous ends. He turns the sword of the wicked against the wicked themselves.
The Given Sword
The final detail is the "great sword." This is not the short Roman gladius, but the machaira, a large, slaughtering sword. It is a symbol of judicial authority and execution. The state wields the sword to execute wrath on evildoers (Romans 13:4). Here, that authority is turned inward. The very instrument of justice becomes the instrument of self-destruction.
When Israel rejected their King, they begged for a different kind of rule. "We have no king but Caesar!" they cried. They chose the sword of man over the scepter of Christ. And God, in His terrible justice, gave them exactly what they asked for. He gave them the sword, and they used it to destroy themselves before Caesar even had to finish the job. This is a terrifying picture of divine judgment. God does not always need to send a foreign army to judge a rebellious nation. Often, He simply needs to withdraw His hand of restraint and let them have their way.
The rider on the red horse is a permanent feature of history. Whenever a people, a nation, or a civilization decides that they will not have Christ to reign over them, they are inviting this rider. When men refuse to be governed by God's law, they will eventually be governed by their own lawless passions. When they reject the Prince of Peace, they get the god of war. The peace we enjoy in a civil society is a gift of God's common grace. It is not the default state of fallen humanity. The default state is what this rider brings: men slaying one another.
Conclusion: The Peace of Christ
This passage is a grim warning, but it is also a source of profound comfort for the people of God. These terrifying horsemen are not running wild. They are on a leash, held firmly in the hand of the Lamb. They are sent by Him, commissioned by Him, and limited by Him. They are instruments of His purpose to dismantle the old world and establish His kingdom.
For the Christians in the first century, this was a promise. It was the assurance that the persecution they were suffering at the hands of apostate Israel would be avenged. It was the fulfillment of Jesus's promise that He would return in judgment upon that generation. And for us, it is a reminder that the only true and lasting peace is found in submission to the rider on the white horse, Jesus Christ.
Any peace that is not grounded in His authority is a temporary ceasefire, waiting for the red horse to ride. We cannot build a peaceful society on the foundations of humanism, secularism, or any other Christless ideology. To reject the King is to summon the sword. Our task is not to fear the red horse, but to proclaim the King who commands him. For it is only when the nations bow to the Prince of Peace that they will finally beat their swords into plowshares and learn war no more.