What do the seven spirits of God mean in Revelation 1:4?

Well in order for us to really answer it, you have to look at the Bible verse not only at Revelation 1 verse 4, but you have to read the verse right after it to kind of give you a little bit of an idea of what it’s talking about here. So I’m gonna go ahead and start out by reading the verse for all our listeners as well. In Revelation 1 verse 4 it says:

“John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne“

And then verse five says

“And from Jesus Christ…”

So right here you have three things mentioned you have someone

1. which was, which is, and which is to come.
2. you have the seven spirits
3. and you have Jesus Christ

So right off the back if you were to try to break down this verse a little bit you we could conclude that the seven spirits can be Jesus and the one who was, who is, and who is to come can’t be Jesus either. And so if the one who was who is and who is to come isn’t Jesus the only other person that it could be is God the Father. So in this verse you have God the Father being mentioned at the beginning you have Jesus being mentioned at the end and who else would  fit into the picture with God the Father and God the Son? Well it must be the Holy Spirit. You remember that at the time when Jesus was baptized in the book of John it says that the father spoke His voice and He said:

“this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”

Then you had Jesus Himself who was there in the flesh. And you had the Holy Spirit which descended upon him in the form of a dove. So at the baptism you see once again the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit there and I think that John is making an allusion here to the Father to the Spirit and to the Son.

Now the next question you may be wondering is “Okay, well, if that’s the Holy Spirit why are there seven? Why is it the seven spirits of God?” Well you know something important to note is that when John was writing the book of Revelation he would oftentimes quote directly from the Old Testament. In fact I believe it’s about two-thirds of the book of Revelation is is a quotation or an allusion to something that was in the Old Testament or in the Bible in general.  And so what’s very interesting is in Isaiah chapter 11 there’s actually another mention of seven of these seven spirits and I’ll show you what I mean by that. If you go with me to Isaiah chapter 11 and we begin there in verse 1, you’ll actually find Isaiah mentioning this very same thing. It says in verse 1:

“And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:”

And then it says

“And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;”

So right here you see a mention of the Spirit of the Lord the spirit of wisdom understanding and all of these are exactly seven characteristics of the spirit. When it mentions the Spirit of God the seven spirits what it’s really referring to is not seven you know different people or anything like that, but it’s mentioning the different characteristics of the Holy Spirit. And that is that the Holy Spirit it is of course a spirit of the Lord. We know that the Holy Spirit is one with God. We know the when the spirit comes into your life he gives you wisdom and understanding and counsel. So really what John is trying to hone in on here is that when you experience the Holy Spirit in your life it’s multifaceted. There are so many things that come with that and. So I’m really thankful for that. We have the privilege of having the Holy Spirit that Jesus says he would send to His followers. And if we if we simply go to Him and we ask for that Holy Spirit He will give that to us and we will be able to experience all of these things that John was saying that we could experience as we receive grace from God.