As much as I love C. S. Lewis, and as effective as his Narnia Chronicles are, I suspect he could have done better in his selection of the supreme symbol of our Lord. Aslan is a lion. It is not difficult to understand why. Not only do lions continue to evoke images of power, majesty, and victory, but there is some biblical warrant for the Christ as lion.

The association of lions with royalty goes very far back. In fact, it would be fair to say that ancient kings were obsessed with lions. Nowhere is this more clearly on display than in Neo-Assyria. If you look at the palace reliefs of the time of Ashurbanipal, the depictions of lions are stunning (just google “Ashurbanipal lions”). There is an intense identification of the king with the lion in several ways. Most interesting are the reliefs of royal lion hunts: The king would hunt lions, sometimes in hand-to-paw combat in which the king killed the lion or captured them for display. The significance is far reaching, but the basic meaning is plain: If you would not mess with a lion, best not mess with the king. If the lion is an image of pure power and victory, how much more the one who conquers the lion?

The Power of a Lion

To be fair, Scripture knows this layer of significance for the lion and does not entirely shy away from using it as a somewhat positive image for kings. David’s elegy for Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel 1:23 is quite moving:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
     In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles;
     they were stronger than lions.

Their prowess and their nobility, embodied in part by the image of the lion, fuel the sadness over their death. There are times when Scripture moves us to be impressed by the conventional power of the warrior rightly employed. With a certain awe and pleasure, 2 Samuel 23 rehearses David’s own heroic feats of strength alongside his three and thirty. You get the sense that these heroes of God could stand toe-to-toe with the greatest warriors the world has ever seen. Had they been at Troy, doubtless Helen would have lingered long over them, rehearsing the splendor of their might for King Priam atop the wall, surveying the field.

However, for all the conventional glory of the warriors of God, there remains in Scripture a certain ill-at-easedness with the lion and the power and victory it brings. When the princes of Israel are lamented in Ezekiel 19, they are lamented as lions. It is easy to feel that this is a different lament altogether than David’s song for the fallen warriors, Saul and Jonathan. Ezekiel laments the lion-kings of Judah as lions, with all their devouring of men and seizing of widows as no small part of their rejection by God (Ezek. 19:6–7).

This ambivalence toward the lion appears even earlier, if you would be patient with me, in Genesis 49:9:

Judah is a lion’s cub;
     from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
     and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?

Certainly, there are overtones of power and majesty and victory in the image of Judah as a lion—but there is also a violence that is problematic in this context. It is striking that in the immediately preceding verses, Jacob has just rebuked Simeon and Levi for their violence (49:5–7). So when we hear of Judah as a lion, rising from the prey, there is a lingering discomfort. Furthermore, Judah’s oracle is full of allusions to the violence against Joseph, recorded in Genesis 37, where the brothers became lion-like and Joseph became their prey (see especially Gen. 37:31–33). Overruled by God, yes; shameful nonetheless. Thus, it is not surprising when we learn that David, the best of Judah for a long time, is emphatically disqualified from building the temple because he is a man of violence. “But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth’” (1 Chron. 22:8).

It seems then, that while there is something of the warrior/lion that is worth celebrating, there is something more basic that is problematic when it comes to ushering in the fullness of God’s blessing to this sad earth, stained with violence. Another way to state it is this: While David the warrior possessed the strength God to save in a certain sense, the conventional warrior could not bring the fullness of salvation, the salvation which men really needed. A different power, a more excellent power, would be necessary.

The Posture of a Lamb

This brings us to Revelation. When John weeps greatly because no one worthy is found, at any time in any place, one of the elders comforts him: “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev. 5:5).

John hears of true power, true worth, true victory, all conventionally associated with the Lion. Then he sees what this looks like in actual fact, and it is rather surprising, indeed, arguably a wholesale inversion of the strength of the lion: “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6).

Passing strange indeed. What John sees enlarges the power and majesty and victory of the lion. His preeminence is plain: he is the center, encircled by the four living creatures, encircled by the elders. His power is plain, yet strange: innocence and righteousness and self-giving love. This is no conventional warrior. For his glory radiates from his passion. The glory of the warrior is in no small part bound to the number he has slain; David his tens of thousands (1 Sam. 18:7); he and his three and thirty felling many and mighty (2 Sam. 23:8–39). The glory of this heavenly warrior is that he was slain and yet stands in the power of his purity and his self-giving love.

This is by no means a new development in the New Testament’s delight in Christ as effectual, albeit unusual, King. When he arrives on the scene in Matthew 2, the juxtaposition between the two kings, Herod and Christ, couldn’t be plainer: a man and a child; the man who kills the least to retain power, the God who became the least to give his life as a ransom for weak and helpless sinners. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:10–11).

The history of man is plain: sadly, it’s not all that difficult to take life, it’s a different task entirely to give life. The power of the lion suffices for the one; for the other, only the power of the Lamb will do.

This is the vision of conquering power set before the churches. John beholds the King in his resurrection might. This power, according to Rev. 5:6, is not something other than his innocence and his self-giving love, rather, the innocence and self-giving love is the very heartbeat of his utterly unique power. What do the churches desperately need as they sojourn in a world gone mad with fear, as wave after wave of God’s judgment washes over the earth? They need more than the power of the lion. They need the power of the Lamb. For this is the only power that overcomes. “And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:11).

Strange conquering this: not slaying, but slain; not taking life, but laying it down in the service of the King. Where would they get such a vision of triumph? Where would they come by such power? Only in taking hold of the Lamb by faith.

The King as Lamb, standing as one slain, likely would not have sold as well as the Chronicles of Narnia did. This vision of true power does not appear on any ancient palace reliefs that I am aware of. It is, however, the unique glory of our God and King. And what’s more, it is the only power and glory that truly saves.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:24–25)

Behold the Lamb. Behold the King. May we be conformed to the glory of his cross, that we may share in the glory of his resurrection power, now and forevermore.

The author is pastor of Mission OPC in St. Paul, Minnesota. New Horizons, April 2025.