Christian symbols

Alpha and Omega in Christianity

The beginning and the end

Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and in the Book of Revelation the Lord takes them as his own name: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. To say that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega is to confess that he is before all things and after all things, that history begins and ends in him, and that nothing lies outside his reach. The two letters, often set on either side of the cross, declare that the whole story of the world is held in his hands.

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.Revelation 1:8 (KJV)

A name from the Book of Revelation

Three times in Revelation the Lord names himself Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and Omega the last, so to claim both is to claim everything between, the whole of language, the whole of time, the whole of what can be said or known.

The image would have been immediately clear to the first readers, who knew their letters as we know ours. It is a way of saying I am all in all, the source from which everything comes and the goal toward which everything moves. In the same breath the Lord calls himself the one which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

The eternity of Christ

The letters carry a high confession about Jesus. The one who says in Revelation, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, is the risen Christ. So the church has always read these words as a claim to eternal deity: that Jesus is not merely a teacher who lived and died, but the eternal Word who was in the beginning with God, through whom all things were made.

This echoes the promise of the Old Testament, where the Lord declares himself the first and the last, beside whom there is no other. To place that name upon Christ is to worship him as God. The two small letters make one of the largest claims in all of Scripture.

How the letters have been used

From the early centuries, Christians set the Alpha and the Omega beside the name or the sign of Christ. They appear in the catacombs, on tombs, on baptismal fonts, and very often flanking the cross or the Chi-Rho monogram. Placing them there was a quiet sermon in stone: the one who died on this cross is the first and the last.

The letters still appear on altars, vestments, and stained glass. At the Easter vigil in many churches, the Alpha and the Omega are marked on the great Paschal candle, along with the numerals of the year, while the words are spoken: Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, his are the times and the ages.

The comfort of the first and the last

To call Christ the Alpha and the Omega is not an abstract idea but a deep well of comfort. It means there is no place in time where he is not already present. Before you were born he was there, the Alpha of your story; beyond your death he is there still, the Omega who receives you. The whole span of a life, and of history itself, is enclosed within him.

The ancient world feared time as a devouring thing, and many still do, watching the years carry away everything they love. The letters answer that fear. Time does not have the first word or the last; Christ does. He stands at both ends of every story, and holds all the moments in between. Nothing slips out of the grasp of the one who is the beginning and the end.

There is also a claim about purpose here. If Christ is the Omega, the last letter, then history is not a meaningless drift but a story moving toward a goal, and the goal is him. The New Testament speaks of God gathering together all things in Christ, and of a day when every knee shall bow. The Omega is not an ending like the closing of a book that is then forgotten, but a homecoming, the point toward which everything has been quietly aimed.

So the two small letters, set so often beside the cross, preach a large peace. They tell the anxious heart that its times are in his hands, and the grieving heart that the last word over its losses will be spoken by the Lord of life. Whatever begins and whatever ends, the Alpha and the Omega remains, and he is love.

The whole story held in two letters

It is worth pausing on how much the church packed into these two small letters. In an age when few could read long texts, a symbol had to carry weight, and the Alpha and the Omega carried a great deal. They named Christ as eternal, as divine, as the sovereign over all of history, and they did it in a form a passerby could take in at a glance.

The letters also tied the end of the Bible to its beginning. Genesis opens with, In the beginning God created; Revelation closes with the Lord declaring himself the beginning and the end. The whole Scripture is bracketed by God's sovereignty over all things, and the Alpha and the Omega place Christ at both ends of that great arc.

For the church under persecution, when Revelation was written, this was courage as much as comfort. Emperors came and went, claiming to be lords of the world, but the believers confessed a Lord who was before the first emperor and would remain after the last. No earthly power, however terrible, could be the first or the last, for those titles belonged to Christ alone.

That confidence still steadies the church today. Kingdoms rise and fall, ages turn, and each generation fears that its own troubles may be the end of the story. The Alpha and the Omega answer that the story has one Author, who wrote its first word and will speak its last, and who has already shown, in the death and rising of his Son, how the story ends: in life, and not in death.

To set these two letters beside the cross, as the church has done since the earliest times, is to make the largest of confessions in the smallest of signs. The one who died on that wood is the first and the last, the source of all things and their goal. There is no beginning behind him and no ending beyond him. To trust the Alpha and the Omega is to rest the whole of one's life in hands that hold both ends of time and will not let go.

How Alpha and Omega point to Christ

These letters point to Christ by naming his place over all of time. They tell the believer that whatever the beginning of any story, and whatever its end, Christ is already there, the one who started it and the one who will finish it. He is the Alpha of creation and the Omega toward whom all things move.

For a frightened or grieving heart this is deep comfort. There is no moment, no birth and no death, that falls outside the one who holds the first and the last. To trust the Alpha and the Omega is to believe that the story of your life, and of the whole world, is safe in the hands of the Lord who wrote its first word and will speak its last.

A note across traditions: these symbols are shared by Christians everywhere as ways to point to Christ, never as objects of worship, for worship belongs to God alone. Where a symbol grew out of a later tradition or legend rather than the Bible, this page says so plainly. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every sign the church uses is meant to lead the heart to him.

Related: The Chi-Rho · The crown · Who is Jesus? · All Christian symbols