3. “ And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness” --1:5. It was Jesus Christ who had borne witness to the truth of his Sonship before Pontius Pilate, as mentioned in 1 Timothy 6:13. And he was associated with God in the salutatations to his servants who were on the brink of that hour of trial, which would bring death to them, for the same confession before men that Jesus had made before Pilate. 4. “ The first begotten of the dead"--1:5. The language here does not affirm that Jesus was the first person to be raised from the dead, for several names can be mentioned who were miraculously raised up out of their graves, by the prophets of the Old Testament, and by Jesus and Peter in the New Testament, all of which were for the purposes of divine demonstration. They were not resurrected to die no more, but returned to corruption -therefore they were not begotten of the dead. To him alone, who conquered death by a resurrection to die no more, belongs the title, the first begotten of the dead. 5. “ The prince of the kings of the earth"--1:5. The four appellations together accentuate first, who he was, and second, what he was, from whom this message came. 6. “ Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood"--1:5. The release from sins as the result of the shedding of his own blood, represented here as the element in which the sins of man are washed away, is the heart of the remedial plan.