“To the angel of the assembly in Laodicea write: “The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of God’s creation, says these things:
Parallel Translations
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“To the angel of the assembly in Laodicea write: “The Amen, the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of God’s creation, says these things:
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And vnto the messenger of the congregacion which is in Laodicia wryte: This sayth (amen) the faythfull and true witnes the begynninge of the creatures of God.
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And vnto the Angell of the Church of the Laodiceans write, These things saieth Amen, the faithfull and true witnesse, that beginning of the creatures of God.
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Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (17)
Passages linked to Revelation 3:14 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Colossians 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
- Revelation 1:5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood—
- 2 Corinthians 1:20 For however many are the promises of God, in him is the “Yes.” Therefore also through him is the “Amen”, to the glory of God through us.
- Colossians 1:18 He is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence.
- Revelation 3:7 “To the angel of the assembly in Philadelphia write: “He who is holy, he who is true, he who has the key of David, he who opens and no one can shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says these things:
- Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
- Revelation 19:11 I saw the heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it is called Faithful and True. In righteousness he judges and makes war.
- Isaiah 65:16 so that he who blesses himself in the earth will bless himself in the God of truth; and he who swears in the earth will swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hidden from my eyes.
- Proverbs 8:22 “Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old.
- Jeremiah 42:5 Then they said to Jeremiah, “May Yahweh be a true and faithful witness among us, if we don’t do according to all the word with which Yahweh your God sends you to tell us.
- Revelation 22:6 He said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to show to his bondservants the things which must happen soon.”
- Revelation 21:6 He said to me, “I have become the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give freely to him who is thirsty from the spring of the water of life.
- Revelation 1:11 saying, “What you see, write in a book and send to the seven assemblies: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
- Revelation 2:1 “To the angel of the assembly in Ephesus write: “He who holds the seven stars in his right hand, he who walks among the seven golden lamp stands says these things:
- Isaiah 55:4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander to the peoples.
- Colossians 2:1 For I desire to have you know how greatly I struggle for you, and for those at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh;
- Colossians 4:16 When this letter has been read among you, cause it to be read also in the assembly of the Laodiceans, and that you also read the letter from Laodicea.
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Explain this verse (21 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Amen soundeth as much in the Hebrew tongue, as…
Amen soundeth as much in the Hebrew tongue, as Truly, or Truth itself.
The seventh place is unto the pastors of the Church of Laodicea. The exordium is taken out of verse 15 of the first chapter.
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Of whom all things that are made, have their beginning.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain We read of this church, Col 4:16.
We read of this church, Col 4:16.
Laodicea was a city in Lydia, by the river Lycus: see Rev 1:11.
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These things saith the Amen: Amen, as we have oft noted, is a particle used in asserting, and in wishing, or praying; here it hath the use of a noun, and is assertive, he that is true, as it followeth. He may be conceived thus to preface his epistle, to ascertain to the ministers of this church the truth of what he blames in them; or of the threatenings or promises contained in it; to which purpose he also calls himself
the faithful and true witness: see the notes on Rev 1:5.
The beginning of the creation of God: those that deny the Divinity of Christ, are deceived in their thoughts that this text will afford them any defence for their error; for αρχη, the word here used, doth not only signify the cause, but principality, or the chief, or prince, Eph 3:10; Col 1:16. Hence Christ is said to be αρχη, which we translate the beginning, because he was the Creator, the efficient cause of the creation, or hath a lordship over the whole creation; all power both in heaven and earth being committed to him, and all knees both in heaven and earth bowing down to him, Phi 2:10. Unless we had rather interpret it of the new creation, either in the world, so he was the beginning of the gospel; or in particular souls, so he is the beginning of regeneration and sanctification. But though this be a truth, and consistent enough with the Greek phrase, Gal 6:15, yet I see no reason why we should fly to it against the Arians, or their spurious offspring; for taking the creation, as ordinarily it signifies, the giving all creatures their first being, Christ was the efficient cause of it, and so the beginning of it, without him was nothing made; and he hath a lordship and dominion over it.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain This epistle to the Laodiceans is the seventh and…
This epistle to the Laodiceans is the seventh and last epistle which Christ commanded St. John at this time to write; most of the churches were found faulty before, but none like this here. Formality and hypocrisy, coldness and indifferency, in religion, had so for prevailed in this church, that we find nothing commended in them, nothing good spoken of them, and none of them exempted from the general charge brought in against them for that lukewarmness and hypocrisy.
In this epistle now before us, Observe, 1. A description of Christ in his deservedly glorious titles: thus saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, that is, he that is verity and truth itself, both in his promises and his threatenings, who is holy, and cannot lie; righteous, and cannot deceive; wise, and can never be deceived; therefore Christ takes upon him this name here of the faithful and true Witness, to awaken these drowsy hypocrites, to see and consider that he knows their state and condition, and will testify and witness against them.
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There is no such effectual remedy against hypocrisy, lukewarmness, and indifference in the matters of religion, as a firm belief of Christ’s omnisciency and veracity. The other title given to Christ, is the beginning of the creation of God; that is, the beginner of the creation of God, the original and first cause, by which all the creatures of God had their beginning. Christ is not only principium principatun, but principium principians; not the passive beginning, or he that first created, but the active beginning, or he by whom the creation was begun, both the old and new creation.
Now Christ takes upon him this title, to encourage the Laodiceans to come unto him, (according to the invitation, given Rev 3:18.) to recover them from their formality, seeing he is omnipotent, and can give a being and beginning to grace in the new creation as he did to nature in the old and first creation.
Observe, 2. The reproof here given to this church of Laodicea, I know thou art neither hot nor cold; thou art not for open heresy or infidelity, but likest well a profession of Christianity; you receive the gospel, and so are not quite cold, but you want zeal to suffer any thing for it, and so are not at all hot; I see nothing in thee but a lukewarm indifferency, for which I disown thee, nay, disdain thee.
Learn hence, 1. That Christ loathes lukewarm persons, who profess Christianity with reserves for worldly safety. These Laodiceans were neither enemies to Christ, nor true friends, but served God and gain, Christ and the world, by turns, as occasion served.
Learn, 2. That though God abominates lukewarmness and want of zeal, yet he will not disown those who have any spark of true zeal, though defective and culpably remiss; he will not quench smoking flax, but blow it up into a holy flame; but all that have not so much zeal as to prefer Christ before the world, shall be accounted his enemies, and disowned by him.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain We now come to the last and worst of…
We now come to the last and worst of all the seven Asian churches, the reverse of the church of Philadelphia; for, as there was nothing reproved in that, here is nothing commended in this, and yet this was one of the seven golden candlesticks, for a corrupt church may still be a church. Here we have, as before,
I. The inscription, to whom, and from whom. 1. To whom: To the angel of the church of Laodicea. This was a once famous city near the river Lycus, had a wall of vast compass, and three marble theatres, and, like Rome, was built on seven hills. It seems, the apostle Paul was very instrumental in planting the gospel in this city, from which he wrote a letter, as he mentions in the epistle to the Colossians, the last chapter, in which he sends salutations to them, Laodicea not being above twenty miles distant from Colosse. In this city was held a council in the fourth century, but it has been long since demolished, and lies in its ruins to this day, an awful monument of the wrath of the Lamb. 2. From whom this message was sent. Here our Lord Jesus styles himself the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. (1.) The Amen, one that is steady and unchangeable in all his purposes and promises, which are all yea, and all amen. (2.) The faithful and true witness, whose testimony of God to men ought to be received and fully believed, and whose testimony of men to God will be fully believed and regarded, and will be a swift but true witness against all indifferent lukewarm professors. (3.) The beginning of the creation of God, either of the first creation, and so he is the beginning, that is, the first cause, the Creator, and the Governor of it; or of the second creation, the church; and so he is the head of that body, the first-born from the dead, as it is in Rev 1:5, whence these titles are taken. Christ, having raised up himself by his own divine power, as the head of a new world, raises up dead souls to be a living temple and church to himself.
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II. The subject-matter, in which observe,
1. The heavy charge drawn up against this church, ministers and people, by one who knew them better than they knew themselves: Thou art neither cold nor hot, but worse than either; I would thou wert cold or hot, Rev 3:15. Lukewarmness or indifference in religion is the worst temper in the world. If religion is a real thing, it is the most excellent thing, and therefore we should be in good earnest in it; if it is not a real thing, it is the vilest imposture, and we should be earnest against it. If religion is worth any thing, it is worth every thing; an indifference here is inexcusable: Why halt you between two opinions? If God be God, follow him; if Baal (be God), follow him. Here is no room for neutrality. An open enemy shall have a fairer quarter than a perfidious neuter; and there is more hope of a heathen than of such. Christ expects that men should declare themselves in earnest either for him or against him.
2. A severe punishment threatened: I will spue thee out of my mouth. As lukewarm water turns the stomach, and provokes to a vomit, lukewarm professors turn the heart of Christ against them. He is sick of them, and cannot long bear them. They may call their lukewarmness charity, meekness, moderation, and a largeness of soul; it is nauseous to Christ, and makes those so that allow themselves in it. They shall be rejected, and finally rejected; for far be it from the holy Jesus to return to that which has been thus rejected.
3. We have one cause of this indifference and inconsistency in religion assigned, and that is self-conceitedness or self-delusion. They thought they were very well already, and therefore they were very indifferent whether they grew better or no: Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, etc., Rev 3:17. Here observe, What a difference there was between the thoughts they had of themselves and the thoughts that Christ had of them. (1.) The high thoughts they had of themselves: Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, rich, and growing richer, and increased to such a degree as to be above all want or possibility of wanting. Perhaps they were well provided for as to their bodies, and this made them overlook the necessities of their souls. Or they thought themselves well furnished in their souls: they had learning, and they took it for religion; they had gifts, and they took them for grace; they had wit, and they took it for true wisdom; they had ordinances, and they took up with them instead of the God of ordinances. How careful should we be not to put the cheat upon our own souls! Doubtless there are many in hell that once thought themselves to be in the way to heaven. Let us daily beg of God that we may not be left to flatter and deceive ourselves in the concerns of our souls. (2.) The mean thoughts that Christ had of them; and he was not mistaken. He knew, though they knew not, that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. Their state was wretched in itself, and such as called for pity and compassion from others: though they were proud of themselves, they were pitied by all who knew their case. For, [1.] They were poor, really poor, when they said and thought they were rich; they had no provision for their souls to live upon; their souls were starving in the midst of their abundance; they were vastly in debt to the justice of God, and had nothing to pay off the least part of the debt. [2.] They were blind; they could not see their state, nor their way, nor their danger; they could not see into themselves; they could not look before them; they were blind, and yet they thought they saw; the very light that was in them was darkness, and then how great must that darkness be! They could not see Christ, though evidently set forth, and crucified, before their eyes. They could not see God by faith, though always present in them. They could not see death, though it was just before them. They could not look into eternity, though they stood upon the very brink of it continually. [3.] They were naked, without clothing and without house and harbour for their souls. They were without clothing, had neither the garment of justification nor that of sanctification. Their nakedness both of guilt and pollution had no covering. They lay always exposed to sin and shame. Their righteousnesses were but filthy rags; they were rags, and would not cover them, filthy rags, and would defile them. And they were naked, without house or harbour, for they were without God, and he has been the dwelling-place of his people in all ages; in him alone the soul of man can find rest, and safety, and all suitable accommodations. The riches of the body will not enrich the soul; the sight of the body will not enlighten the soul; the most convenient house for the body will not afford rest nor safety to the soul. The soul is a different thing from the body, and must have accommodation suitable to its nature, or else in the midst of bodily prosperity it will be wretched and miserable.
4. We have good counsel given by Christ to this sinful people, and that is that they drop their vain and false opinion they had of themselves, and endeavour to be that really which they would seem to be: I counsel thee to buy of me, etc., Rev 3:18. Observe, (1.) Our Lord Jesus Christ continues to give good counsel to those who have cast his counsels behind their backs. (2.) The condition of sinners in never desperate, while they enjoy the gracious calls and counsels of Christ. (3.) Our blessed Lord, the counsellor, always gives the best advice, and that which is most suitable to the sinner's case; as here, [1.] These people were poor; Christ counsels them to buy of him gold tried in the fire, that they might be rich. He lets them know where they might have true riches and how they might have them. First, Where they might have them - from himself; he sends them not to the streams of Pactolus, nor to the mines of Potosi, but invites them to himself, the pearl of price. Secondly, And how must they have this true gold from him? They must buy it. This seems to be unsaying all again. How can those that are poor buy gold? Just as they may buy of Christ wine and milk, that is, without money and without price, Isa 55:1. Something indeed must be parted with, but it is nothing of a valuable consideration, it is only to make room for receiving true riches. "Part with sin and self-sufficiency, and come to Christ with a sense of your poverty and emptiness, that you may be filled with his hidden treasure." [2.] These people were naked; Christ tells them where they might have clothing, and such as would cover the shame of their nakedness. This they must receive from Christ; and they must only put off their filthy rags that they might put on the white raiment which he had purchased and provided for them - his own imputed righteousness for justification and the garments of holiness and sanctification. [3.] They were blind; and he counsels them to buy of him eye-salve, that they might see, to give up their own wisdom and reason, which are but blindness in the things of God, and resign themselves to his word and Spirit, and their eyes shall be opened to see their way and their end, their duty and their true interest; a new and glorious scene would then open itself to their souls; a new world furnished with the most beautiful and excellent objects, and this light would be marvellous to those who were but just now delivered from the powers of darkness. This is the wise and good counsel Christ gives to careless souls; and, if they follow it, he will judge himself bound in honour to make it effectual.
5. Here is added great and gracious encouragement to this sinful people to take the admonition and advice well that Christ had given them, Rev 3:19, Rev 3:20. He tells them, (1.) It was given them in true and tender affection: "Whom I love, I rebuke and chasten. You may think I have given you hard words and severe reproofs; it is all out of love to your souls. I would not have thus openly rebuked and corrected your sinful lukewarmness and vain confidence, if I had not been a lover of your souls; had I hated you, I would have let you alone, to go on in sin till it had been your ruin." Sinners ought to take the rebukes of God's word and rod as tokens of his good-will to their souls, and should accordingly repent in good earnest, and turn to him that smites them; better are the frowns and wounds of a friend than the flattering smiles of an enemy. (2.) If they would comply with his admonitions, he was ready to make them good to their souls: Behold, I stand at the door and knock, etc., Rev 3:20. Here observe, [1.] Christ is graciously pleased by his word and Spirit to come to the door of the heart of sinners; he draws near to them in a way of mercy, ready to make them a kind visit. [2.] He finds this door shut against him; the heart of man is by nature shut up against Christ by ignorance, unbelief, sinful prejudices. [3.] When he finds the heart shut, he does not immediately withdraw, but he waits to be gracious, even till his head be filled with the dew. [4.] He uses all proper means to awaken sinners, and to cause them to open to him: he calls by his word, he knocks by the impulses of his Spirit upon their conscience. [5.] Those who open to him shall enjoy his presence, to their great comfort and advantage. He will sup with them; he will accept of what is good in them; he will eat his pleasant fruit; and he will bring the best part of the entertainment with him. If what he finds would make but a poor feast, what he brings will make up the deficiency: he will give fresh supplies of graces and comforts, and thereby stir up fresh actings of faith, and love, and delight; and in all this Christ and his repenting people will enjoy pleasant communion with each other. Alas! what do careless obstinate sinners lose by refusing to open the door of the heart to Christ!
III. We now come to the conclusion of this epistle; and here we have as before,
1. The promise made to the overcoming believer. It is here implied, (1.) That though this church seemed to be wholly overrun and overcome with lukewarmness and self-confidence, yet it was possible that by the reproofs and counsels of Christ they might be inspired with fresh zeal and vigour, and might come off conquerors in their spiritual warfare. (2.) That, if they did so, all former faults should be forgiven, and they should have a great reward. And what is that reward? They shall sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and have sat down with my Father on his throne, Rev 3:21. Here it is intimated, [1.] That Christ himself had met with his temptations and conflicts. [2.] That he overcame them all, and was more than a conqueror. [3.] That, as the reward of his conflict and victory, he has sat down with God the Father on his throne, possessed of that glory which he had with the Father from eternity, but which he was pleased very much to conceal on earth, leaving it as it were in the hands of the Father, as a pledge that he would fulfil the work of a Saviour before he reassumed that manifestative glory; and, having done so, then pignus reposcere - he demands the pledge, to appear in his divine glory equal to the Father. [4.] That those who are conformed to Christ in his trials and victories shall be conformed to him in his glory; they shall sit down with him on his throne, on his throne of judgment at the end of the world, on his throne of glory to all eternity, shining in his beams by virtue of their union with him and relation to him, as the mystical body of which he is the head.
2. All is closed up with the general demand of attention (Rev 3:22), putting all to whom these epistles shall come in mind that what is contained in them is not of private interpretation, not intended for the instruction, reproof, and correction of those particular churches only, but of all the churches of Christ in all ages and parts of the world: and as there will be a resemblance in all succeeding churches to these, both in their graces and sins, so they may expect that God will deal with them as he dealt with these, which are patterns to all ages what faithful, and fruitful churches may expect to receive from God, and what those who are unfaithful may expect to suffer from his hand; yea, that God's dealings with his churches may afford useful instruction to the rest of the world, to put them upon considering, If judgment begin at the house of God, what shall the end of those be that do not obey the gospel of Christ? Pe1 4:17. Thus end the messages of Christ to the Asian churches, the epistolary part of this book. We now come to the prophetical part.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold…
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,.... A lukewarm professor is one that serves God and mammon; that halts between two opinions, and knows not what religion is best, and cares little for any, yet keeps in a round of duty, though indifferent to it, and contents himself with it; and is un concerned about the life and power of godliness, and takes up with the external form of it; and has no thought about the glory of God, the interest of Christ and truth; and this was too much the case of this church, at least of a great number of its members; wherefore it was very loathsome to Christ, hence he threatens:
I will spew thee out of my mouth; this shows how nauseous lukewarmness is to Christ, insomuch that on account of it he would not own and acknowledge her as his; but even cast her out, unchurch her, and have no more any such imperfect church state upon earth, as he afterwards never will, this is the last; nor is there any church state, or any remains of one in Laodicea; it is indeed quite uninhabited.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain To the angel of the church at Laodicea -…
To the angel of the church at Laodicea - For these St. Paul had had a great concern, Colossians ii, 1. These things saith the Amen - That is, the True One, the God of truth. The beginning - The Author, Prince, and Ruler. Of the creation of God - Of all creatures; the beginning, or Author, by whom God made them all.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Epistle to the Church of the Laodiceans.
Epistle to the Church of the Laodiceans.
Verse 14. These things saith the Amen] That is, He who is true or faithful; from אמן aman, he was tree; immediately interpreted, The faithful and true witness. See Re 1:5.
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The beginning of the creation of God] That is, the head and governor of all creatures: the king of the creation. See on Col 1:15. By his titles, here, he prepares them for the humiliating and awful truths which he was about to declare, and the authority on which the declaration was founded.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Rev 3:14-16. And to the angel of the church…
Rev 3:14-16. And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write — Laodicea lay south of Philadelphia in the way to return to Ephesus: for the seven churches lay in a kind of circular form, so that the natural progress was from Ephesus to Smyrna, and so forward in the order in which the cities are here addressed, which probably was the order in which St. John used to visit them. “That there was a flourishing church at Laodicea, in the primitive times of Christianity, is evident, from St. Paul’s epistle to the Colossians, wherein frequent mention is made of the Laodiceans, as well as from this epistle by St. John. But the doom of Laodicea seemeth to have been more severe and terrible than that of almost any other of the seven churches. For it is now utterly destroyed and forsaken of men, and is become a habitation only for wolves, foxes, and jackals, a den of dragons, snakes, and vipers. And that because the Lord hath executed the judgment that he had pronounced upon her, that all the world might know and tremble at the fierce anger of God against impenitent, negligent, and careless sinners. The ruins show it to have been a very great city, situated on six or seven hills, and encompassing a large space of ground. Some notion may be formed of its former greatness and glory from three theatres and a circus which are remaining; one of which is truly admirable, as it was capable of containing about thirty thousand men, into whose area they descended by fifty steps. This city is now called Eski Hisar, or the Old Castle; and though it was once the mother church of sixteen bishoprics, yet it now lies desolate, not so much as inhabited by shepherds; and, so far from showing any of the ornaments of God’s ancient worship, it cannot now boast of an anchorite’s or hermit’s chapel, where God is praised or invoked.” The testimony of Mr. Lindsay (quoted respecting the other churches) agrees perfectly with this of Bishop Newton. “Eski Hisar,” he says, “close to which are the remains of ancient Laodicea, contains about fifty poor inhabitants, in which number are but two Christians, who live together in a small mill: unhappily, neither could read at all: the copy, therefore, of the New Testament, which I intended for this church, I left with that of Denizli, the offspring and poor remains of Laodicea and Colosse. The prayers of the mosque are the only prayers which are heard near the ruins of Laodicea, on which the threat seems to have been fully executed in its utter rejection as a church.”
These things saith the Amen — That is, The true One; the faithful and true Witness — He who attests those truths, which are of the utmost importance, on the most perfect knowledge of them, and with the most unerring exactness: the beginning — The Author, Head, and Ruler of the creation of God — Of all creatures, as αρχη της κτισεως evidently here signifies. The person by whom the Father created all things, Heb 1:2; Eph 3:9; Joh 1:3. I know thy works — Thy disposition and behaviour; though thou knowest it not thyself; that thou art neither cold — An utter stranger to divine things, having no care or thought about them; nor hot — Ζεστος, fervent, like boiling water, as the word implies: so ought we to be penetrated and heated by the fire of divine love. I would that thou wert — This wish of our Lord plainly implies that he does not work on us irresistibly, as the fire does on the water which it heats: cold or hot — Even if thou wert cold, without any thought or profession of religion, there would be more hope of thy recovery. The religion of the Lord Jesus is either true or false: there is no medium: if it be false, it is worth nothing; and therefore it is quite reasonable to be cold and indifferent about it: but if it be true, as we are sure, on the most satisfactory evidence, that it is, it is worth every thing: it is of infinite, because of everlasting worth: it is therefore a most unreasonable thing, not to be deeply concerned about it; even unspeakably more than about any earthly thing whatsoever: and we are inexcusable if we are not so concerned. So then, because thou art lukewarm — In a state of indifference, which is as disagreeable to me as lukewarm water is to a man’s stomach; I will spew thee out of my mouth — I will utterly cast thee from me; that is, unless thou repent.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain And unto the angel of the church of the…
And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write - See the notes on Rev 1:20.
These things saith the Amen - Referring, as is the case in every epistle, to some attribute of the speaker adapted to impress their minds, or to give special force to what he was about to say to that particular church. Laodicea was characterized by lukewarmness, and the reference to the fact that he who was about to address them was the “Amen” - that is, was characterized by the simple earnestness and sincerity denoted by that word - was eminently suited to make an impression on the minds of such a people. The word “Amen” means “true,” “certain,” “faithful”; and, as used here, it means that he to whom it is applied is eminently true and faithful. What he affirms is true; what he promises or threatens is certain. Himself characterized by sincerity and truth (notes on 2Co 1:20), he can look with approbation only on the same thing in others: and hence he looks with displeasure on the lukewarmness which, from its very nature, always approximates insincerity. This was an attribute, therefore, every way appropriate to be referred to in addressing a lukewarm church.
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The faithful and true witness - This is presenting the idea implied in the word “Amen” in a more complete form, but substantially the same thing is referred to. He is a witness for God and his truth, and he can approve of nothing which the God of truth would not approve. See the notes on Rev 1:5.
The beginning of the creation of God - This expression is a very important one in regard to the rank and dignity of the Saviour, and, like all similar expressions respecting him, its meaning has been much controverted. Compare the notes on Col 1:15. The phrase used here is susceptible, properly, of only one of the following significations, namely, either:
(a)That he was the beginning of the creation in the sense that he caused the universe to begin to exist - that is, that he was the author of all things; or.
(b)That he was the first created being; or.
(c)That he holds the primacy over all, and is at the head of the universe.
It is not necessary to examine any other proposed interpretations, for the only other senses supposed to be conveyed by the words, that he is the beginning of the creation in the sense I that he rose from the dead as the first-fruits of them that sleep, or that he is the head of the spiritual creation of God, axe so foreign to the natural meaning of the words as to need no special refutation. As to the three significations suggested above, it may be observed, that the first one - that he is the author of the creation, and in that sense the beginning - though expressing a scriptural doctrine Joh 1:3; Eph 3:9; Col 1:16, is not in accordance with the proper meaning of the word used here - ἀρχὴ archē. The word properly refers to the “commencement” of a thing, not its “authorship,” and denotes properly primacy in time, and primacy in rank, but not primacy in the sense of causing anything to exist. The two ideas which run through the word as it is used in the New Testament are those just suggested. For the former - primacy in regard to time - that is properly the commencement of a thing, see the following passages where the word occurs: Mat 19:4, Mat 19:8; Mat 24:8, Mat 24:21; Mar 1:1; Mar 10:6; Mar 13:8, Mar 13:19; Luk 1:2; Joh 1:1-2; Joh 2:11; Joh 6:64; Joh 8:25, Joh 8:44; Joh 15:27; Joh 16:4; Act 11:15; 1Jo 1:1; 1Jo 2:7, 1Jo 2:13-14, 1Jo 2:24; 1Jo 3:8, 1Jo 3:11; 2Jo 1:5-6. For the latter signification, primacy of rank or authority, see the following places: Luk 12:11; Luk 20:20; Rom 8:38; 1Co 15:24; Eph 1:21; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12; Col 1:16, Col 1:18; Col 2:10, Col 2:15; Tit 3:1. The word is not, therefore, found in the sense of authorship, as denoting that one is the beginning of anything in the sense that he caused it to have an existence. As to the second of the significations suggested, that it means that he was the first created being, it may be observed:
(a) that this is not a necessary signification of the phrase, since no one can show that this is the only proper meaning which could be given to the words, and therefore the phrase cannot be adduced to prove that he is himself a created being. If it were demonstrated from other sources that Christ was, in fact, a created being, and the first that God had made, it cannot be denied that this language would appropriately express that fact. But it cannot be made out from the mere use of the language here; and as the language is susceptible of other interpretations, it cannot be employed to prove that Christ is a created being.
(b) Such an interpretation would be at variance with all those passages which speak of him as uncreated and eternal; which ascribe divine attributes to him; which speak of him as himself the Creator of all things. Compare Joh 1:1-3; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2, Heb 1:6,Heb 1:8, Heb 1:10-12. The third signification, therefore, remains, that he is “the beginning of the creation of God,” in the sense that he is the head or prince of the creation; that is, that he presides over it so far as the purposes of redemption are to be accomplished, and so far as is necessary for those purposes. This is:
(1)In accordance with the meaning of the word, Luk 12:11; Luk 20:20, et al. ut supra; and,
(2)In accordance with the uniform statements respecting the Redeemer, that “all power is given unto him in heaven and in earth” Mat 28:18; that God has “given him power over all flesh” Joh 17:2; that all things are “put under his feet” the. Joh 2:8; 1Co 15:27); that he is exalted over all things, Eph 1:20-22. Having this rank, it was proper that he should speak with authority to the church at Laodicea.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain The seventh and last letter is to the Angel…
The seventh and last letter is to the Angel of the Church of Laodicia. Christ here takes the title of the Amen,[3] as if he said, I am the Truth. --- The beginning of the creation, or of the creatures of God, to which is added, in the first chapter, the beginning and the end. --- Thou art neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm. A dreadful reprehension, whatever exposition we follow. According to the common interpretation, by the cold are meant those who are guilty of great sins; by the hot, such as are zealous and fervent in piety and the service of God; by the lukewarm or tepid, they who are slothful, negligent, indolent, as to what regards Christian perfection, the practice of virtue, and an exact observance of what regards the service of God. On this account they are many times guilty in the sight of God of great sins, they forfeit the favour and grace of God, fancying themselves good enough and safe, because they live as others commonly do, and are not guilty of many scandalous and shameful crimes, to which they see others addicted. --- I would thou wert either cold or hot. This is not an absolute wish, because the condition of the cold is certainly worse in itself; but it is to be taken with the regard to the different consequences, which oftentimes attend these two states, and to signify to us that the lukewarm may be farther from a true conversion, inasmuch as they are less sensible of the dangers to which they remain exposed, than such as commit greater sins. Their careless indevotion becomes habitual to them, they live and die with a heart divided betwixt God and the world; whereas greater and more shameful sinners are not without an abhorrence of such vices which they commit; a fear of punishment, of hell and damnation, strikes them by the mercies of God offered even to sinners, and makes them enter into themselves like the prodigal son; they detest their past lives, and by the assistance of God’s graces become both fervent and constant in the duties of a Christian life. (Witham) --- Tepidity in a Christian life, and in the service of God, is oftentimes more dangerous than absolute wickedness. The open sinner is easily made sensible of his danger; he experiences the stings and reproaches of conscience, whilst the tepid Christian lives without remorse, fear, or apprehension, and listens not to those who wish to shew him the danger of his situation. I dare venture to affirm, says St. Augustine, that to fall into some public and manifest sin would be of advantage to the proud, that so those who by their self-complacency had so often fallen before, may now become displeased with themselves and humble. (Calmet) --- To the lukewarm it is said, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth; i.e. if thou continue in that state, I will permit thee to run on and be lost in thy sins. Thou blindly sayest within thyself, I am rich, &c. A false conscience generally attends a lukewarm soul and those who serve God by halves; they flatter themselves that all goes well even with them, when they see they are not so vicious, as many others: but here the spirit of God, who penetrates the secret folds and windings of slothful souls, admonisheth them of their dangerous mistakes, that they are wretched, poor, blind, and naked, when God, by his grace, does not inhabit their souls, though they may have millions of gold and silver in this world. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, the love of God purified by trials and troubles in this life, to recover thy lost innocence, to be clothed with the habit of grace, to anoint thy eyes with eye-salve, by a serious reflection on what regards thy eternal salvation. --- I chastise those whom I love. He concludes all the former admonitions by telling them: first, that to be under trials and troubles, is a mark of God’s favour and his paternal care; secondly, to hearken to the voice of God, when he knocks at the door of their heart; and thirdly, he promises them the reward of eternal happiness --- he that overcomes, shall sit with me on my throne: though this does not imply an equality of happiness, not even to all the saints, much less with God himself, but only that the elect shall be in the throne as it were of heaven, and partakers of heavenly happiness according to their past good works. --- I should not here mention the wild and ridiculous fancies of one Mr. Brightman, when he pretends to expound to all men these letters to the seven bishops of Asia [Asia Minor], were it not to shew how the obscure predictions of St. John’s revelation have been turned and abused by the loose interpretations of some of the late reformers, as may be seen more at large, when we mention their arbitrary fancies about the whore of Babylon and the popish antichrist. I shall here with Dr. Hammond, give the reader a taste of such licentious expositions of the divine oracles. The Calvinists, Mr. Brightman, pretended he had his expositions by divine inspirations, and so gave his commentary the title of Revelation of the Revelation. I shall his words out of Dr. Hammond. "Mr. Brightman assures his readers, that by the churches of Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicia, were meant Germany, France, and Britain. He says a most heavy trial was now suddenly to invade the Christian world....that the three said churches were most favourably admonished of this tempest by the epistles written to them by name, nomination....that he found and understood this to be so by divine inspiration, from the inscriptions of these letters, and so should be guilty of a sin against the Divine Majesty, if he concealed them." Not to tire the reader with his fancies about Ephesus and Pergamus, which may be seen in Dr. Hammond. Rev. ii. 13. "on those words, in those days was Antipas, &c. Mr. Brightman has this wanton fancy on the name Antipas, that it doth denote that the martyrs of his time (which was after Luther) should be antipapæ, or antipopes;" i.e. adversaries to the popes and popery. Dr. Hammond (p. 928) gives us Mr. Brightman’s conceit on the name Thyatria, which must be taken for the same as Thygatheira, signifying a young daughter, and so denotes the growth of piety in the Church from the year 1300, from Wycliffe’s time to 1520, that is, till it came to perfection in Luther’s days. Page 932. note a, "Sardis, according to Mr. Brightman," says Dr. Hammond, "is the first reformed church in the antitype, to wit, that of Germany, which began at Wittenburg, by Luther, in the year 1517. And the proof is, that Sardis is more to the south than Thyatria, and so must have more of the truth in it; or, because there is no mention made of Balaam and Jezabel, which he resolved must signify the doctrines of Christian Rome, the absence of which must signify a breaking off from the Romish communion; or, that she (the German Church) had a name to be living, but was dead, by the doctrine of consubstantiation among the Lutherans, even after the reformation. This," says Dr. Hammond, "were a strange way of interpreting dreams, which no oneirocritic would allow, but a much stranger of explaining prophecies." Page 933, "Philadelphia, says Mr. Brightman, must needs be the Helvetian, Swedish, Genevan, French, Dutch, and Scotch reformed Churches. No reason again for it, but that the city of Philadelphia was yet farther south than Sardis, and so must needs signify more increase of reformation; 2. that the name of Jezabel was not to any but this pattern of all piety (to which Mr. Brightman had so much kindness) the Church of Helvetia and Geneva. And the reformed Church of England must be that of Laodicia,....because episcopacy was here retained, and so a mixture of cold with that of heat, and consequently is the lukewarm Church that is found fault with." O the profound interpretations and bright inventions of Mr. Brightman! (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Hæc dicet Amen; Greek: tade legei o Amen. Ille qui est Amen.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Laodiceans--The city was in the southwest of Phrygia, on…
Laodiceans--The city was in the southwest of Phrygia, on the river Lycus, not far from Colosse, and lying between it and Philadelphia. It was destroyed by an earthquake, A.D. 62, and rebuilt by its wealthy citizens without the help of the state [TACITUS, Annals, 14.27]. This wealth (arising from the excellence of its wools) led to a self-satisfied, lukewarm state in spiritual things, as Rev 3:17 describes. See on Col 4:16, on the Epistle which is thought to have been written to the Laodicean Church by Paul. The Church in latter times was apparently flourishing; for one of the councils at which the canon of Scripture was determined was held in Laodicea in A.D. 361. Hardly a Christian is now to be found on or near its site.
the Amen-- (Isa 65:16, Hebrew, "Bless Himself in the God of Amen . . . swear by the God of Amen," Co2 1:20). He who not only says, but is, the Truth. The saints used Amen at the end of prayer, or in assenting to the word of God; but none, save the Son of God, ever said, "Amen, I say unto you," for it is the language peculiar to God, who avers by Himself. The New Testament formula, "Amen. I say unto you," is equivalent to the Old Testament formula, "as I live, saith Jehovah." In John's Gospel alone He uses (in the Greek) the double "Amen," Joh 1:51; Joh 3:3, &c.; in English Version," Verily, verily." The title happily harmonizes with the address. His unchanging faithfulness as "the Amen" contrasts with Laodicea's wavering of purpose, "neither hot nor cold" (Rev 3:16). The angel of Laodicea has with some probability been conjectured to be Archippus, to whom, thirty years previously, Paul had already given a monition, as needing to be stirred up to diligence in his ministry. So the Apostolic Constitutions, [8.46], name him as the first bishop of Laodicea: supposed to be the son of Philemon (Plm 1:2).
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faithful and true witness--As "the Amen" expresses the unchangeable truth of His promises; so "the faithful the true witness," the truth of His revelations as to the heavenly things which He has seen and testifies. "Faithful," that is, trustworthy (Ti2 2:11, Ti2 2:13). "True" is here (Greek, "alethinos") not truth-speaking (Greek, "alethes"), but "perfectly realizing all that is comprehended in the name Witness" (Ti1 6:13). Three things are necessary for this: (1) to have seen with His own eyes what He attests; (2) to be competent to relate it for others; (3) to be willing truthfully to do so. In Christ all these conditions meet [TRENCH].
beginning of the creation of God--not he whom God created first, but as in Col 1:15-18 (see on Col 1:15-18), the Beginner of all creation, its originating instrument. All creation would not be represented adoring Him, if He were but one of themselves. His being the Creator is a strong guarantee for His faithfulness as "the Witness and Amen."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain VII. LAODICEA—Rich in goods, but poor in faith, Rev_3:14-22.
VII. LAODICEA—Rich in goods, but poor in faith, Rev_3:14-22.
14. Laodicea—From Philadelphia our apostle in his circuit would range to the south-east through a journey of fifty or sixty miles to the capital of Phrygia, the rich and powerful Laodicea. In so doing he would cross from the Hermus over a mountain range into the fertile valley of the river Meander, a river whose varying course has given our language a verb, “to meander.” He would find a great city, which, under the Roman sway, had continually grown in power. He would also find, to all appearance, a rich and proud Church, whose Christianity had assumed a stereotype and inactive form. The Apostolic Constitutions (viii, 46) say, that Archippus was then Bishop of Laodicea. And it seems to some a coincidence that in Col_4:17, St. Paul appears to imply that he was a remiss minister. Hengstenberg finds, not wisely, an allusion to his name in the word αρχη, Rev_3:14. Laodicea was one of a triangle of neighbouring city Churches; including Colosse, to which Paul had addressed an epistle, and Hierapolis, visible from the summit of the Laodicean theatre, and where Papias was, soon after St. John’s day, a bishop. St. Paul in his epistle to Colosse salutes the brethren in Laodicea, and requires his epistle to be read in the Church of the Laodiceans, with an exchange. See note on Col_4:16. Laodicea was founded in the third century before Christ by Antiochus II., king of Syria, and so named after his wife. It submitted to Rome, and in the war of Mithridates, king of Pontus, stood a siege against that monarch. It had been (A.D. 62) overthrown by an earthquake, but was munificently patronized by the Roman emperors, and its theatres, aqueducts, and churches have left magnificent ruins for the eye of the modern traveller and the spade of the excavator. Perhaps Laodicea listened to the voice of the Lord, woke to action, and became a powerful Church. A bishop and martyr, Sagaris, (A.D. 170,) is mentioned by Eusebius. About the middle of the fourth century the Council of Laodicea assumed to settle the New Testament Canon, in which it is remarkable that our Apocalypse was denied a place.
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The Amen—The divine affirmative One. So in Isa_65:16, “The God of Truth,” in the Hebrew “The God of Amen.” In 2Co_1:20, Christ is the medium through whom our obedient amen goes up to God; here he is the intervening, affirming Amen, affirming God’s truth, to us. The “verily” so often repeated by our Lord in the gospels, is in the Greek amen; and it is remarkable that in John’s Gospel it is always doubled, verily, verily, amen, amen.
Faithful and true witness—A title preparing us for a faithful and true testimony to Laodicea respecting her character and spiritual condition.
Beginning of the creation—A sublime declaration of the divine authority from which that testimony comes. A beginning of a series of things, taken passively, is the first one in that series. In that sense Christ would be the first created being in the series of creation. Taken actually, as that which originates the series, then the series does not include, but takes existence from, him. In that case Christ is the originator of the creation, uncreated. How John understands it we may well learn from the very first verse of his Gospel. In the opening words, “In the beginning was the Word,” the same Word, αρχη, is used as here, and its subject precedes creation. And in the third verse we are told that “the world was made by him,” namely, the Word, who was in the beginning.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain The Church in Laodicea. 14–22
The Church in Laodicea. 14–22
14. the Amen] See the last note on Rev_1:7. Here the name is used, (i) because this is the last of the seven Epistles, that it may confirm the whole: (ii) as synonymous with the title “Faithful and True” that follows: for which see the latter group of references on Rev_3:7. Isa_65:16 is specially noticeable, where “the God of truth” is in the Hebrew “the God of Amen”: in the other O. T. passages a different but cognate form is used.
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the faithful and true witness] See Rev_1:5.
the beginning of the creation of God] Exactly equivalent to Col_1:15, as explained by the words that follow: in both places the words are such as might grammatically be used of the first of creatures, but the context there, and the whole tone of the Book here, proves that the writer does not regard Him as a creature at all. But St John is not here, as in the first verses of his Gospel, describing our Lord’s Nature theologically: it might be enough to say that here and in Pro_8:22 (where the words “the Lord possessed” or “created Me” lend themselves more easily than these to an Arian sense), the Word coming forth to create is conceived as part of His earthly mission, which culminates in the Incarnation, so that in a sense even creation is done by Him as a Creature.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (14) Laodicea.—Situated half way between Philadelphia and Colossae, and…
(14) Laodicea.—Situated half way between Philadelphia and Colossae, and not far from Hierapolis. It received its name from Laodice, wife of Antiochus the second king of Syria, by whom it was rebuilt and beautified. It had borne in earlier times the names of Diospolis and afterwards Rhoas. It shared with Thyatira and Sardis in the dye trade; the woods grown in the neighbourhood were famous for their quality and the rich blackness of their colour. Prosperity in trade had so enriched the population that when their city suffered in the great earthquake (A.D. 60) they were able to carry on the work of rebuilding without applying, as many of the neighbouring towns were compelled to do, to the Imperial Treasury for aid. The language of St. Paul (Col_1:5-8) suggests that the churches of Colossae and the neighbourhood first received Christianity from the preaching of Epaphras, though it seems strange that so important a city, lying hard upon the great Roman road from Ephesus to the east, should have been passed over by St. Paul in his journeyings throughout Phrygia (see Act_16:6; Act_18:23); yet, on the other hand, Phrygia was a vague term, and the language of Col_2:1 is most generally understood to imply that the Apostle had never personally visited either Colossae or Laodicea. (See Note on Col_2:1.) But it was a Church in which St. Paul took the deepest possible interest; the believers there were constantly in his mind. He knew their special temptations to the worship of inferior mediators, and to spiritual paralysis springing from wordly prosperity and intellectual pride. He had great heart-conflict for those of Laodicea (Col_3:1), and in proof of his earnest solicitude he addressed a letter to them (Col_4:16), in all probability the epistle we call the Epistle to the Ephesians. Prom the Epistle to the Colossians we may gather that when St. Paul wrote the Christians at Laodicea assembled for worship in the house of Nymphas (Col_4:15) probably under the presidency of Archippus (Rev_3:17).
Unto the angel of the church (or, congregation) of the Laodiceans.—Better, in Laodicea. By the angel we understand the presiding pastor. There is some ground for identifying him with Archippus. It is too much to dismiss this as a baseless supposition. (See Note in Trench.) It is a well-supported view which understands the passage (Col_4:17) to mean that Archippus was a minister or office-bearer in the Church at Laodicea.
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These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness.—The “Amen,” used only here as a personal name. It is the Hebrew word for verily, and may have some reference to Isa_65:16; but more certainly it seems chosen to recall the frequent use of it by our Lord Himself. He who so often prefaced His solemn utterance by “Verily, verily,” now reveals Himself as the source of all certainty and truth. In Him is Yea, and in Him Amen (2Co_1:20). In Him there is no conjecture, or guess-work; for He is (and the Greek equivalents of the Hebrew Amen are used following) the faithful and true witness, who speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen (Joh_3:11). “Faithful” is to be taken here as meaning trustworthy. The word sometimes means trustful (Joh_20:27; Act_14:1), at other times, trustworthy (2Ti_2:22; 1Th_5:24). In the Arian controversy, the application of the word to Christ was used as an argument against His divinity; it was enough to show in reply that the same word was applied to God, and expressed His faithfulness to His word and promise (1Th_5:21). “True”—He is not only trustworthy as a witness, but He combines in Himself all those qualifications which a witness ought to possess. The same word is used here as in Rev_3:7, where see Note. Trench suggests the three things necessary to constitute a true witness. He must have been an eyewitness of what He relates, possess competence to relate what He has seen, and be willing to do so.
The beginning (better, the origination) of the creation of God.—This title of our Lord does not occur in the Epistles to the other churches, but very closely resembles the language used by St. Paul in writing to the Colossians (Col_1:15-18). The “beginning,” not meaning that Christ was the first among the created, but that He was the origination, or primary source of all creation. By Him were all things made (Joh_1:1-3 : comp. Col_1:15; Col_1:18), not with Him, but by Him creation began. In short, the word “beginning” (like the word “faithful”) must be understood in an active sense. He has originating power (Act_3:14) as well as priority of existence. The appropriateness of its use will be seen when we remember that the Laodicean Church was exposed to the temptation of worshipping inferior principalities. (See Col_1:16; Col_2:15, where the plural of the word here rendered “beginning,” or origin, is used, and is translated “principalities.”)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 14-22. The epistle to the Church in Laodicea.…
Vers. 14-22. The epistle to the Church in Laodicea. Laodicea, on the Lycus, a tributary of the Maeander, lay some fifty miles to the south-east of Philadelphia. The modern Turkish name, Eskihissar, signifies "the old castle." It is situated on the western side of the valley of the Lycus, on the opposite slopes of which, some six or eight miles distant, were Hierapolis and Colossae, with which it is associated by St. Paul. (Col_4:13, Col_4:16) Named at first Diosopolis, after its tutelary deity, Zeus, it subsequently became Rheas, and finally received its name from Antiochus II, in honour of his wife, Laodice. There were several other cities of the same name, from which it was distinguished by the addition of the words, "on the Lycus." It was a wealthy city, its trade consisting chiefly in the preparation of woollen materials. It was advantageously situated, too, on the high road leading from Ephesus into the interior. Though, in common with the other cities of Asia Minor, visited by earthquakes, it quickly recovered; and it was the proud boast of the Laodiceans that, unlike Ephesus and Sardis, they required no extraneous assistance to enable them to regain their former prosperity. This fact undoubtedly explains the temptations to which the Laodiceans were liable, and the reference in ver. 16 to those who were neither cold nor hot, and that in ver. 17 to those who said they were rich and had need of nothing (see on vers. 16, 17). The Christian Church there may have been founded by Epaphras, through whom St. Paul probably learned of the existence of false doctrine there, (Col_2:4, 8 and Col_1:8) for the Epistle to the Colossians seems to be equally addressed to the Laodiceans. (Col_4:16) The importance of this Church continued for some time, the celebrated Council of Laodicea being held there in A.D. 361, and a century later its bishop held a prominent position (Labbe, 4. p. 82, etc.). But its influence gradually waned, and the Turks pressed hardly upon it; so that at the present time it is little more than a heap of ruins. The warnings of the Apostles SS. Paul and John, if heeded at all for a time, were forgotten, and her candlestick was removed.
And unto the angel. Those expositors who understand "the angel" of a Church to signify its chief officer, may with some plausibility argue that at Laodicea it seems almost certain that this was Archippus. In his Epistle to Philemon, a wealthy convert of Colossae, St. Paul sends greeting to Archippus. (Phm_1:2) If Archippus were the son of philemon, he might very well have been Bishop of Laodicea at the time of St. John"s message. Moreover, the son of a wealthy and influential Christian, though likely to have been selected as bishop in the neighbouring Church, may have lacked the zeal necessary for the thorough performance of his work; and would thus incur the marked rebuke of St. Paul, "Say to Archippus, Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it", (Col_4:17) which appears immediately after the mention of the Laodicean Church. The Apostolical Constitutions also assert that Archippus was first Bishop of Laodicea. Of the Church of the Laodiceans write; or, of the Church in Laodicea (thv en Laodikaia ekklhsiav). These things saith the Amen. The word "Amen" is here used as a proper name of our Lord; and this is the only instance of such an application. It signifies the "True One." It is a word much used in St. John"s Gospel, where it appears repeated at the commencement of many discourses, "Verily, verily." In Isa_65:16 "the God of Amen" (ma) is rendered in the LXX by alhyinov ; in the Authorized Version by "truth" (cf. the use of the English "very" as an adjective very one," i.e. the real or true one). The term is peculiarly well adapted to our Lord, (who is the Truth, Joh_14:6) not only as a general name or title, but especially in connexion with this solemn announcement to the Laodiceans. There was great need of the truth being openly proclaimed by him who is the Truth to those who, though nominally Christians, were ensnared by the deceitfulness of riches, (Mat_13:22) and were deceiving themselves in the attempt to make the best of both worlds by their lukewarm Christianity. It was the purpose of this epistle to draw aside the veil which was hiding the truth from their eyes, and to bring them to a realization of that most difficult of all knowledge a knowledge of self. The faithful and true Witness an amplification of "the Amen." The epithet "faithful" asserts the truthfulness of Christ"s work as a Witness; "true" (alhyinov) signifies "real and complete." He is a faithful Witness because his witness is true; and he is a true Witness because in him is the complete realization of all the qualifications which constitute any one really and truly a witness. "Faithful" (pistov) has the passive meaning of "that which is worthy of faith," not the active meaning of "he who believes something." Trench well points out that God can only be faithful in the former sense; man may be faithful in beth senses. Christ was a Witness worthy of faith, since he possessed all the attributes of such a witness. He
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(1) had seen what he attested;
(2) was competent to relate and reproduce this information;
(3) was willing to do this faithfully and truly.
The Beginning of the creation of God. There are two ways in which these words might be understood:
(1) that in which "beginning" is taken in a passive sense, and which would therefore make Christ the first created thing of all the things which God created;
(2) the active sense, by which Christ is described as the Beginner, the Author, Moving Principle or Source of all the things which God created. That the latter meaning is the true one is plain from the whole tenor of Holy Scripture. The Ariaus, attempting to disprove the Divinity of our Lord, quoted this passage, attributing to it the former sense. But arch is often used actively, and may well be so used here a view which is confirmed by the abundant evidence of our Lord"s Divinity found elsewhere in the Bible, and nowhere more plainly asserted than in the writings of St. John. The self-reliant Laodiceans are thus directed to place their trust in him who is the Source of all things, rather than in those created things of which he is the Creator.
Vers. 14-29. Laodicea: self-conceit and self-deceit.
Here is a Church which has an utterly mistaken view of itself. It thinks itself as well off as need be. Our Lord declares it to be in a desperately bad condition. It is addressed by Christ as by the "faithful and true Witness," as the "Beginning of the creation of God;" not as the beginning in the sense of "the first part of," but in the sense of the Beginner, in whom the creation had its beginning, and still has its continuance, meaning, plan, and end. He, to whom all created being stands open, deigns to give his clear, searching testimony to a self-deceived Church as to its state before him. There are three matters at which we must glance the Witness, the testimony, the counsels.
I THE WITNESS. "Faithful," i.e. trusty and trustworthy. "True," answering to the ideal, being all that a witness can be. Whatever can make a witness valuable belongs to Christ. We speak because we believe; he speaks because he knows. He is the "Amen." He alone can speak with absolute positiveness that there can be no inaccuracy in his words. In bearing testimony to the occurrence of an external fact, a very moderate amount of ability, combined with fidelity, might suffice. But when testimony is borne concerning the inward and spiritual state of a Church, infinitely more is needed than such commonplace requirements. He only can be a competent witness of the spiritual state of any man, and afortiori of the spiritual state of any body of men, who can discern the thoughts and intents of the heart; who knows in the case of each the relation between privilege, capacity, and attainment; who understands perfectly the difference between what is and what ought to be, and the entire bearings of the spiritual state of today on eternal interests. Evidently, therefore, no one is a competent witness in such matters but he who says, "I the Lord Search the heart, and try the reins of the children of men." But he is. And he who is thus perfectly competent is also absolutely true. Nor was it only of this particular Church, at this particular time, that Christ was a faithful and true Witness; he is this to every Church at every time. A Divinely rigid inspection of every Church is ever going on. It is not only true that we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, it is also true that we do all stand before it now. There is a royal judgment of professors and of Churches going on at every moment, and the value of each Church is not what it is in the eyes of man, but what it is in the eye of the heart searching Lord. The most solemn inquiry we can put is, "What does Christ think of us?" We may stand well before other Churches, but, oh, if Christ thinks ill of us, that spoils all! Let us therefore consider
II THE TESTIMONY BORNE BY THIS WITNESS. In the judgment here pronounced as to the state of the Church at Laodicea, there is a principle expressed which may he detached from the special details of Laodicean Church life, because it holds good whatever those details may be; it may be looked at quite independently of time or place, because it bears equally on all Churches at every time and in every place. That principle is indicated by the words, "I would thou wert cold or hot.
Evidently, to be fervent in religion is so blessed that it is perfectly easy to understand why our Lord should say he would rather we were hot than lukewarm; but it is not, at first sight, so clear why he would rather we were cold than lukewarm. Yet our Lord declares that lukewarmness is more offensive to him than entire coldness would be. Let us inquire:
1. What this lukewarmness is. In answering this question, our safest course will be to follow the evidence given in this letter as to what Christ saw, from which, perhaps, we may gather what he means. Four features.
(1) There was profession. Here was a company of avowed disciples gathered together in Laodicea to form a fellowship, to maintain Christian worship, and to advance the honour of the Saviour"s name.
(2) The Church was exceedingly well pleased with itself. "Thou sayest, I am rich," etc. Laodicea was a great commercial city, rolling in wealth; and the Church may have been satisfied either with its worldly status, or (which, perhaps, is the more probable) with its spiritual progress.
(3) Yet it was a Church unique in its emptiness. "Thou knowest not that thou art the wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked one."Laodicea was the poorest of all the seven. In two Churches there was good with no specified ill; in four, good and ill were mixed together; in one there was ill with no good that was the Church at Laodicea. There is in it nothing to be commended. The true gold of spiritual wealth was not there; the white raiment of personal purity, not there; the anointing of the Holy One, not there. A poor Church indeed! But the worst has yet to be told.
(4) Christ himself was outside it! He is outside the door, has been standing there for some time, and was still knocking and asking for admission. The question at once starts itselfWhen is Christ outside a nominal Church? We reply:
(a) When in its fellowship respectability is thought more of than fervour;
(b) when in the pulpit eloquence is extolled more than the truth is appreciated;
(c) when talent is more craved than spiritual power;
(d) when wealth and status are recognized, and growth in grace is not.
We know a Church which makes its boast, of the number of mayors of the borough who have been members with it; and another that boasted that it had not a single tradesman on its Church roll! Oh this worldliness! it is killing Churches. Christ is not in them, and will not be, till they repent. It is no uncommon thing to name the name of Christ with the tongue, even when the Spirit of Christ is not in the heart. It is clear enough, then, what Christ means by lukewarmness. There was care enough and interest enough to hold together an external fellowship, and to maintain all outward Church proprieties; but the soul was lacking the living Christ was not there. Let us now inquire:
1. What entire coldness would have been. A few words will suffice here. If the Laodiceans had either never heard the gospel at all, or if, having heard it, it had never convinced their understanding, or if, although mentally persuaded of its work and of its Divine origin, they had never had sufficient glow of soul to unite in a Christian fellowship, and had never made any avowal whatever of any attachment to the Lord Jesus, in such an ease there surely would have been coldness. Let us now ask:
2. Why lukewarmness is more offensive to Christ than coldness. Why is a man who has just warmth enough to lead him to take some interest in religious services, and to keep his place in a Christian congregation, and no more, more displeasing to Christ than one without any warmth at all? For many reasons.
(1) There is a wider discrepancy between profession and practice. For the Church member may fairly be supposed to have convictions clear enough to make a fervid man of him, if he would but let them have scope and play. But, as it is, there is an inward schism in the man.
(2) The lukewarm professor is more difficult to reach. Of all men whose consciences are hard to touch, those are the most so who have "made a profession," and then settle down in it in a state of self complacency.
(3) Hence their position is peculiarly perilous; for, owing to their satisfaction with themselves, there is far less chance of the arrow of conviction piercing their souls. Hence the peril of their self deceit being undisturbed until too late.
(4) Such a one is more guilty than others, for he has made a vow which he does not pay. He confesses his responsibilities, and yet takes no pains to discharge them.
(5) He effects more mischief than others. Many an ardent convert gets his first chill from lukewarm members of the Church. In fact, this lukewarmness threatens to pull down a Church; yea, it will do it if a check be not put upon it.
(6) Our Saviour will reject it, consequently, with special displeasure. Nothing is so offensive to him as a corpse in religion"s cloak. When great pretensions are nothing more than pretension, then the greater the pretence the greater the offence. The more true any one"s nature is, the more odious is untruth to him. What, then, must it be to the Lord Jesus Christ?
III THE COUNSELS OF THIS FAITHFUL AND TRUE WITNESS. Although the heavenly Witness is severely faithful, there is in his words a ground-tone of the deepest tenderness. In them, and indeed in each one of them, there is enough for a separate homily; but space can only be found for a few words. Note:
(1) There is an assurance that his love is not withdrawn. He is grieved, he is dishonoured, still he loves.
(2) His love finds a twofold expression:
(a) he convicts;
(b) he chastens.
Hence his gracious counsels.
1. They are called on to be zealous. There are ways and means of reviving a flagging zeal. "He that would be warm must keep near the fire;" and he that would become spiritually warmer must get near the cross, and keep there.
2. Repent. A lukewarm Christian has need to repent as much as though he had never repented at all; for he has "lost his roll," and cannot then indeed tell whether he ever had one.
3. They are urged to get all their need supplied. Laodicea was a thriving commercial town. Christ speaks to the people there in their own familiar dialect. "Buy where? what? Of Christ; without money and without price. Gold. Raiment. Eyesalve.
4. They are reminded that the door must be opened to Christ. It is terrible beyond all power of expression when Church-doors are closed against Christ, and when he is kept outside the very community whose only raison d"etre is that it may entertain and honour its Lord.
5. They are entreated to open the door and to admit the living Lord. Whatcan this mean? Surely nothing less than to let his Spirit rather than the world-spirit have the supreme control. In a word, the Church is exhorted to become true to its profession, and to let him, whose sacred Name it avows, be once again its sovereign Lord. But we must not forget the next point.
6. The Church is to open its doors to Christ, by individual members opening their own hearts to him. "If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." Finally, if, listening to the counsels of Infinite Wisdom and Love, they, receiving a living Christ again, become once more a living Church,and overcome this downward tendency, then Christ will cause them to share with him his own honour at last. The Master conquered, and he expects the disciple to do the same. The Lord overcame for us; we may overcome in him and by him. Note: Victory is possible only when Christ is within us. If we keep him outside, not all the sanctuary teaching, nor the services, nor songs, nor ordinances, nor forms of godliness, nor parental virtue, can ever prevent us from falling miserably back to perdition. If we keep Christ out of our hearts, he will spue us out of his mouth.
Vers. 14-21. The epistle to the Church at Laodicea.
It was a wealthy city in which this Church had her home, and it was large and beautiful also. It stood on one of the great Roman roads which led away to Damascus and Arabia. Hence there was a large stream of traffic continually flowing through it, and its inhabitants became very rich. At the time when this letter was sent them they were building for themselves one of those huge amphitheatres which the Greeks and Romans of the day were wont to build in all their chief cities, and where those too often barbarous and degrading sports, in which they so much delighted, might be carried on. As a further evidence of their wealth, it is recorded how, when their city was almost destroyed by one of those earthquakes by which the whole region was so often disturbed, they rebuilt it entirely at their own cost. A Church was early formed there, and was one of considerable importance. It was probably founded by one or other of those earnest-minded brethren, who, like Epaphras, whom Paul names in his letter to the neighbouring Church at Colossae, and who were commissioned by St. Paul for such work, probably during his sojourn at Ephesus. We know that Epaphras was a near neighbour, Colossae being only some six or eight miles distant from Laodicea; and hence it is likely that he minister of Christ, and beloved fellow servant," as St. Paul calls him (Col_1:7 Col_4:12) had something to do with the planting of the Church there. And we can have no doubt but that the Church was once in a very flourishing condition. The Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians was intended, it is all but certain, as much for the Laodiceans as the Ephesians, if not more so. The high praise which we find in that letter is therefore to be regarded as given to Laodicea, which now, when St. John writes to it, is so sadly fallen. And in Col_2:1, Col_2:5, St. Paul speaks of them and of the "steadfastness" of their "faith in Christ". (cf. also Col_4:13-16) But a sad change had come over them, and the result is this letter before us now. Note
I THEIR CHARACTER AND CONDITION. They are charged with being "neither cold nor hot," but lukewarm. That is to say, that whilst there was not absolute denial of the faith and disregard of all Christ"s claims, there yet was neither the fervent zeal, the devout spirit, nor the all-sacrificing love, springing from a vigorous faith, which would make a Church glow with holy fervour and sacred heat. And this half and half, neither one thing nor the other, condition is all too common amongst not a few who profess and call themselves Christians. How many Churches, and how many churchgoing people, may, and probably have, seen their portraitures in this sad letter to the Church at Laodicea! They cannot be said to be cold and so utterly disregardful of religion, or of Christian faith and custom; but as certainly they are not "hot," not filled with love and zeal and desire towards Christ, willing to do all, bear all, be all or anything or nothing, so only as the honour of his Name may be increased, and the boundaries of his kingdom enlarged. Christians are to be known by their ardour, and so tongues of fire came and rested upon their heads on the great Pentecostal day. But Laodicea and the like of her show nothing of this kind, nor will nor can they whilst they remain as they are. And the common run of men like to have it thus. Cold makes them shiver; heat scorches them, they like neither; but to be moderately warm, tepid, or but little more; that is pleasant, is safe, is best every way, so men think. The cynic statesman"s parting charge to one of his agents, "Surtout, point de zele," is, in fact, what the ordinary Christian vastly prefers for himself and for others. They confound zeal with eccentricity, fervour with wild and ill-considered schemes, earnestness with rant, enthusiasm with mere delirium and extravagance; and, under pretence of discountenancing these undesirable things, they desire neither for themselves nor for others that glow of Divine love in their souls which is desirable above all things else. They congratulate themselves upon being moderate, sober-minded people, and they pity the poor deluded enthusiasts, to whom it is a dreadful thing that sin and sorrow should prevail as they do, and who, therefore, are in the very forefront of the battle against them, Laodiceans think well and speak well of themselves, and other people credit them with what they say, and hence they are self-complacent and well satisfied, and wonder why anybody should doubt or differ from them. They do not hear the world"s sneer or see its mocking look when their names are mentioned; still less do they hear the sighing of the sorrowful heart which yearns to see the Church of Christ rise up to her Lord"s ideal and intent. But they go on saying and thinking that they are well to do, and have need of nothing. But their condition is abhorrent to the Lord; he cannot abide it, nauseates it, would rather far that they were either cold or hot; either extreme would be better than the sickening lukewarmness which now characterizes them. To such it was that the Lord said, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." Whilst of the irreligious multitudes he only said, as he looked on them with compassion, "They are as sheep having no shepherd." Elijah said, "If Baal be God, serve him;" "better be hearty in his service than serving neither God nor Baal, as you now are." And experience confirms this seemingly strange preference which the Lord declares. We could understand that he would men were "hot" rather than "lukewarm;" but that he would rather that they were "cold" without religion altogether than as they are, that seems a strange preference. But, as St. Paul Says,"if a man think himself to be wise, let him become a fool that he may be wise;" by which he meant that a man who thinks himself wise when he is not, there is more hope of a fool becoming wise than he, for his self-conceit stands in his way. And so in the matter of a man"s real conversion to God, he who knows he has no religion is more likely to be won than he who thinks he is religious and has need of "more" nothing. There is hope, therefore, for the cold than for the "lukewarm," and hence our Lord"s preference. And this condition is one which drives the Lord away, chases him forth from his Church. Christ is represented, not as in the Church, but as outside, standing at the door, and knocking for admission. He has been driven out. He cannot stay either in that Church or in that heart which loves him with but half or less than half a love. We do not care to stay where we are not really welcome: we get away as soon as we can. And our Lord will not stay where the love which should welcome and cherish his presence is no longer there.
II HOW CHRIST DEALS WITH THEM.
1. He reveals to them their true condition. And to make them more readily receive his revelation, he declares himself by a name which ensured that his testimony was and must be infallibly true. He tells of himself as "the Amen, the faithful and true Witness." Therefore they may be sure that he could not err and would not misstate what he, as the Son of God, "the Beginning of the creation of God," saw and knew, and now declared to them to be true. And so he tells them how it is with them, though they knew it not and kept saying the very reverse. Hence he tells the Church, "Thou art the wretched one and the pitiable one, and beggarly and blind and naked." Ah! what a revelation this! how it would startle and shock them! no doubt the Lord intended that it should. Their condition justified these words. They thought that they were certain of their Lord"s approval. He tells them that no shivering criminal waiting in terror the judge"s sentence was ever more really wretched than they. And that they thought as they did proved them "blind." And as those whom it was designed to degrade were stripped "naked" so as "shameful" were they in the sight of the Lord and of his angels. And by thus revealing their true state, he rebukes and chastens them. What humiliation and distress and alarm must this revelation have caused! But next:
2. He counsels them what to do. He will not leave them thus, but points out the way of amendment. He bids them "buy of me." But if they were so poor, how could they buy? "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." This is the money wherewith they must buy. And when they have laid out this money, and have become possessors of what it will surely purchase, they will tell you, if you ask them, that even this money he gave them from whom they went to buy. And what is it they will get in exchange?
(1) "Gold tried in," etc. This is faith. (cf. 1Pe_1:7) "The trial of your faith, being much more precious than gold and silver." Oh, to be "rich in faith"! They are rich who have it.
(2) "White raiment that," etc. True righteousness of character, the holiness which becometh saints.
(3) "Eyesalve that," etc. The illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit. Such is the way of amendment: coming thus poor to the Lord, gaining faith, holiness, wisdom so shall we rise up from the condition which the Lord cannot abide to that which he loves and will ever bless. Shall we not follow this counsel? He does not compel, but counsels. Let us also thus buy of him.
3. He waits for their repentance. "Behold, I stand at the door," etc. How true it is he desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he turn from his wickedness and live! What a picture this well-known and ever-to-be-loved verse presents! Our Lord, who died for us, standing there outside, seeking to enter in.
4. He encourages them to repent. See his promises.
(1) "I will sup with him, and he with me." Communion with himself. A piece of clay gave forth a sweet fragrance. It was asked whence it had such fragrance. It replied that it had long lain by the side of a sweet-smelling rose, and so it had become filled with its sweetness. So our claylike souls, if we be in communion with Christ, shall come to be as he. Ah, then, "open the door," and let your Lord in.
(2) He holds out to those who "overcome" the same reward as he had when he overcame sit with me in my throne, even as I," etc. (ver. 21). It tells of the highest, holiest joys, of the everlasting kingdom of God. So would he lure them to himself. Shall he not succeed? "Behold, he stands at the door and knocks. S.C.
Vers. 14-22. (7) The Epistle to the Church in Laodicea.
The "Amen, the faithful and true Witness," speaks to the untrue and unfaithful Church, whose outward appearance contrasts so with her internal state. Deceptive pretentiousness receives its rebuke. The lukewarm neither hot and fervent in devotion nor lowlily acknowledging itself to be cold; neither fervid in holy affection nor consciously lacking holy fervour and confessing it lacking the true warm fervour of love, and either not knowing the lack, or, knowing it, yet acknowledging it not, but pretending to have it,-this deceitful state receives the severest rebuke from the Lord, the ever" true" One, who despises all untruth and all deceptiveness.
I THE CHURCH"S STATE DESCRIBED. "Thou sayest, I am rich; ... thou knowest not thou art poor and blind and naked, thou miserable one.
1. Actually spiritually poor; beggared.
2. Ignorant.
3. Presumptuous self-deception.
II THE LORD"S COUNSEL TO HIS DECEIVED CHURCH.
1. Seek ye the true riches; buy of me gold; buy without money and without price the true spiritual things.
2. Buy of me "white garments the true spiritual virtues; the things thou lackest. Thy debased and faulty form, thy shame, is uncovered. Only of me canst thou buy the robes of righteousness.
3. Buy also "eyesalve," the true spiritual illumination, "that thou mayest see the Holy Spirit, Teacher, Illuminator, Light, who is eyes to the blind, life to the dead.
III THE APPENDED THREAT, WITH ITS EXHORTATION AND GRACIOUS ENTREATY.
1. The Lord"s threatenings are gracious promises in disguise. "I reprove and chasten as many as I love." The Lord"s love lingers long after human goodness has waned. The blind, the naked, the poor, the miserable, are still loved, and therefore reproved by word of mouth and by judgment and chastening correction and discipline.
2. Because I love, because I reprove, therefore "repent acknowledge, deplore, depart from thy sins. "Be zealous;" seek to rekindle the dying fire of holy love.
3. The Lord"s entreaty thrown into a pictorial representation of
(1) patient, long-suffering love: "I stand at the door;
(2) of repeated appeal: "and knock;
(3) of ready response to the first yieldings of the hearkening and opening heart: "If any man," etc.;
(4) even happy and unbroken fellowship is promised: "I will come in and sup," etc.
IV The whole is supplemented by A FINAL ENCOURAGING PROMISE. "He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne." So the Lord who condescendingly sits at the board of the house, the door of which is opened to him, calls the humble dweller therein to sit with him in high glory on his throne. Happy they who, having ears, hear; and who hearing, obey. R.G.
Vers. 14-22. The words of Christ to the Church at Laodicea.
"And unto the angel of the Church of the Laodiceans," etc. "Laodicea is in the south-west of Phrygia, on the river Lycus, not far from Colossae, lying between it and Philadelphia, destroyed by an earthquake A.D. 62, rebuilt by its wealthy citizens without the help of the state. This wealth (arising from the excellence of its wools) led to a self-satisfied, lukewarm state in spiritual things. In Col_4:16 it is mentioned. The Church in later times was flourishing, for one of the councils at which the canon of Scripture was determined was held in Laodicea in A.D. 361. Hardly a Christian is now to be found near its site" (Fausset). We have here certain solemn and significant facts concerning a corrupt Church, such a Church as that which was existing at this time in Laodicea.
I ITS REAL CHARACTER WAS THOROUGHLY KNOWN. There was an eye that peered into its deepest depths, knew well its moral elements and temperature. He who thus looked into and through it is thus described.
1. He is "the Amen." This is the Hebrew word for "verily," or "truly a word of energetic assertion and familiar use. In Christ, we are told, "is Yea and Amen." He is positive and declarative Truth. What he predicates is true to reality; what he predicts will be realized, whether lamentable or otherwise.
2. He is "the faithful and true Witness." What is a true witness?
(1) One who has an absolute knowledge of the subject of which he affirms. And
(2) one who is absolutely above all temptation to misrepresent. Christ has no motive to deceive, no evil to dread, no good to gain.
3. He is "the Beginning of the creation of God." He seems not only to have been the First of the creation, but in some sense the Originator. He is the Beginning, the Continuance, and Purpose of all. This is a mystery unfathomed, perhaps fathomless. This is the transcendent Being who knew thoroughly this Laodicean Church, and who knows all Churches. "I know thy works know them in their hidden germs and ever-multiplying branches. "Oh may these thoughts possess my breast, Where"er I roam, where"er I rest; Nor let my weaker passions dare Consent to sin, for God is near.
II ITS SPIRITUAL INDIFFERENTISM IS DIVINELY ABHORRENT. "I would thou wert cold or hot." Cold water is refreshing, hot water is sometimes pleasant, the tepid is always more or less sickening. Well does an old writer say, "Lukewarmness or indifference in religion is the worst temper in the world. If religion is a real thing, it is the most excellent thing, and therefore we should be in good earnest in it; if it is not a real thing, it is the vilest imposture, and we should be earnest against it. If religion is worth anything, it is worth everything; an indifference here is inexcusable.
1. Spiritual indifferentism is a most incongruous condition. All nature seems in earnest: seas and stars are on the gallop; plants and animals rush onward on the lines of decay or growth; the minds of all moral beings are flowing with more or less speed in one direction or another.
2. Spiritual indifferentism is a most incorrigible condition. Theoretical infidelity we may break down by argument, but moral indifferentism cannot be touched by logic. The spiritually indifferent man shouts out his Creed every Sunday, damns the atheist, and yet himself is "without God in the world." Truly such a state of mind must be abhorrent to him who demands that all should love him with their whole heart, soul, and strength. What an awful supposition that man can sicken and disgust the Infinite! "I will spue thee out of my mouth." Moral depravity nauseates the holy universe.
III ITS SELF-DECEPTION IS TERRIBLY ALARMING. "Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not, that thou art wretched the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
1. Look at the condition in which they fancied themselves. "I am rich, and increased with goods." They fancied themselves rich and independent. "Have need of nothing." They wished to be all this, and the wish is evermore the father to the thought. Ah me! it is by no means uncommon for men to fancy themselves to be what they are not. If you go into lunatic spheres there you may see dwarfs fancying themselves giants and illustrious heroes, paupers thinking they are millionaires, and poor beggars kings of the first order. But elsewhere I find in all the departments of human life that are considered to be sane, scenes scarcely less absurd.
2. Look at the condition in which they really are. "And knowest not that thou art wretched the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." "Wretched," though they may dance and sing; pitiable, though lauded by princes, premiers, and peers; "blind," though the physical optics are sound; and "naked," though robed in splendour. Wretched, pitiable, blind, naked in soul: what a condition is this! what terrible self-deception! "The first and worst of all frauds," says Festus, "is to cheat one"s sell All sin is easy after that.
IV ITS MISERABLE CONDITION NEED NOT BE HOPELESS.
1. Recovery is freely offered. "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried refined in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment garments," etc. Is there irony here? How can the poor buy gold, become rich, procure white garments, and salve for the diseased eyes? No; there is no irony here. The blessings here offered require no outlay of material wealth. All is to be won by true faith, and all can believe. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come," etc.
2. Recovery is divinely urged. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock." Here observe:
(1) Christ"s attitude towards the soul. He does not come occasionally and depart. He "stands," implying his deep concern, his infinite condescension, and his wonderful patience. He waits to be gracious.
(2) Christ"s action upon the soul. He stands not as a statue, but knocks knocks at the door of intellect with truths, at the door of conscience with principles, at the door of love with transcendent charms.
(3) Christ"s purpose with the soul. His mission is not to destroy, but to save it. "I will come in to him." The language implies:
(a) Inhabitation. "I will come in to him.
(b) Identification. "Sup with him, and he with me." Thus sinners are urged to deliver themselves from their miserable condition.
3. Recovery is divinely rewarded. "To him he that overcometh will I grant I will give to him to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set sat down with my Father in his throne." What are the thrones here? Are they some material seats in some radiant and remote part of the universe the one provided for the Father and the other for the Son? The question is childish, sensuous, and unspiritual. What is the true throne of a human soul?
(1) It is the throne of an approving conscience. That mind alone can rest whose conscience applauds him, and that soul alone can feel exalted and dignified whose conscience chimes to him, "Well done.
(2) It is the throne of moral rule. He who subordinates the material to the spiritual, the animal to the intellectual, the intellectual to the moral, and the moral to God, occupies the true throne. He is king, and none other. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain The Laodiceans.
Rev_3:14-22
The Laodiceans.
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Laodicea--the self-complacent Church
Laodicea is the type of a self-complacent Church. Underneath the condemnation of luke-warmness there is a yet more heart-searching lesson. Lukewarmness itself is the sure result of self-complacency; it is absolutely impossible for self-complacent men |o be other than lukewarm. If we grasp this truth we get below symptoms of a grave and conspicuous evil in Churches to its very source; we reach the heart and display its hidden weakness and woe. Perhaps, also, we shall find the way of deliverance; many a man is lukewarm, and he knows not why. It is his constant morrow and his wonder; he ought to be earnest, and he feels he is not. To show any who may be conscious of this strange indifference the real reason of their unimpassioned, powerless piety, to disclose the secret of the lukewarmness which is their never-forgotten perplexity and their self-reproach, may suggest to them how they are to be cured. There are two points in the description of the self-complacency of Laodicea, the simple statement of which bites like satire; it is the self-complacency, first, of the moneyed man, and, secondly, of the so-called self-made man. By a strange moral irony the self-complacent man fixes his attention on what he has of least value, and lets his higher possibilities go unthought of. The R.V., I am rich and have gotten riches, strikes harshly on the ear accustomed to the older reading, I am rich and increased with goods; but it has this merit--it shows us the self-complacent congratulating himself that he is the author of his own success. Laodicea was a town of some consequence in the Roman province of Asia. Its trade was considerable; it lay on the line of a great road. It is now a ruin, absolute and utter; the site of its stadium, its gymnasium, and its theatres alone discernible. North of the town are many sarcophagi, with their covers lying near them, partly embedded in the ground, and all having been long since rifled. The remains of an aqueduct are there, with stone barrel-pipes, incrusted with calcareous matter, and some completely closed up. It is an awful historic parable--broken buildings, rifled tombs, water-pipes choked with the earthy matter they conveyed. So may the soul be charged with the dregs of what we allow to filter through it; so will the soul be rifled which has allowed itself to become a tomb, the receptacle of dead forms of activity that might have been ennobled with the highest life. The curse of societies which measure the things of God by a worldly standard--and where this is not done, self-complacency is impossible--is the inevitable degradation and ruin which set in. There is no common measure between the surpassing purpose of the Saviour and the satisfaction men have in what they have attained, and in themselves for having attained it. All things are possible to me, says the believer in Christ; for his faith goes out to a life, an energy beyond him; it becomes surety for what his eye has not seen. All things are possible to me, says the worldly Christian; for he takes care never to admit into his purpose anything more than he has already achieved. Where the purpose is thus debased the thought is narrow, and mind, and heart, and soul are contracted to the limit of what they hold. So, when the appeal of the gospel is made, there is no response; there is nothing which seems worth a transcendent effort. The man is lukewarm, there is nothing to fire him in his purpose, no heart in him to be fired. He is poor for all his wealth. Thus the central thought of the message to Laodicea, when once we have caught it, dominates all our perception; it recurs to us again and again; its inevitableness strikes us; we never can forget that the self-complacent man or Church is and must be lukewarm. In Hogarths picture of Bedlam, the most distressing figures are those of the self-complacent--the Pope with his paper tiara and lathen cross; the astronomer with paper tube, devoid of lenses, sweeping not the heavens, but the walls of the madhouse; the naked king, with sceptre and crown of straw. Their misery is seen upon their faces; even their self-complacency cannot hide it. The heart is hopeless where the man is self-centred; gladness is as foreign as enthusiasm to him who is full of the sense of what he has acquired. But out of this same dominating thought comes the hope of recovery. When we are conscious of lukewarmness, the first thing which occurs to us is that we ought to be earnest; and we set ourselves to try to be so. We try to arouse the lukewarm to intensity; we lash them with scorn; we overwhelm them with demonstrations of their misery, and present them with images of the resolved; Be earnest, we cry to them again and again; without earnestness there is no possibility of Christian life. How vain it all is! The young may be awakened by appeals; but not those who have come to their lassitude through prosperity, the rich, and increased with goods. One way remains--give them to see the glory of Christ; there is in Him a sublimity, an augustness, a moral dignity and worth which may thrill the soul with a new passion, and set the tides of life flowing toward a central splendour. And this is what we find in the message to Laodicea. First there is presented a stately image of Him who walks about among the seven golden candlesticks. These things saith the Amen, etc. We feel at once the mystic sublimity of the phrases: an unrevealed grandeur is behind the form of the man Christ Jesus, arousing our expectation, moving the heart with a faintly imagining awe. Next, we have a picture of the tender Saviour, one which has entered into our common Christian speech as few presentations even of Christ have, luring on the painter to body forth, and the poet to describe what they can never express, but what we all can feel. Behold, I stand at the door. etc. Here, too, is a cure for self-complacency. The heart can be won by tenderness. And then there is the sublime promise, so reserved, yet sounding into such depths of suggestion--He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down, etc. The throne on which Christ is seated is a Divine throne; but it is also a throne on which are exalted disappointed human hopes. When Jesus died upon the cross He died in faith of what He had not realised. And then the triumph came. God raised him up from the dead and gave Him glory. Christs mission is accomplished when human souls awaken to a faith and a hope for ever in advance of all men can attain to on earth, a faith and a hope which are in God. There is a cure for self-complacency here; and with self-complacency the deathly lukewarmness is gone. There are some pathetic touches which we should notice before closing this solemn, heart-searching appeal to the self-complacent. The abrupt change of tone in Rev_3:17; Rev_18:1-24 is significant. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked--with such an introduction, what words may we not expect to follow, of warning, censure, doom? They are not spoken. The Lord begins in another strain--I counsel thee to buy of Me, etc. The pathos of all self-complacency, at once its condemnation and the more than hope of deliverance from it, is this--the delivering Lord is so nigh. The true riches, the robe of righteousness, the Divine vision, all are for us; to be bought, as Gods best gifts can only be bought, without money and without price. Some words follow with which we are very familiar, the thought they express entering so largely into Biblical teaching and human experience. As many as I love, etc. One of the suggestions of this utterance is, that with all its self-complacency Laodicea was profoundly unhappy. The denizens of Bedlam are more than half conscious of their derangement; the self-satisfied Christian knows how deep is his discontent. Another suggestion is that of coming tribulation; the knocking at the door of which the next verse speaks is an intimation that trouble is at hand. Let it come; it will be welcome; anything will be welcome which can stir this mortal lethargy. The treasures of the Divine chastisement are not exhausted; and they are treasures of the Divine love. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)
Laodicea
I. Three aspects of the character of Christ.
1. The Amen. This sets forth His immutability.
2. The faithful and true Witness.
(1) Christ is a Witness--
(a) In His personal life and death.
(b) By the Holy Spirit in the inspired Word, in the plan of redemption, and in the organisation of the Church.
(c) In the hearts of individual believers, where He dwells by faith.
(2) Christ, as Witness, in this threefold sense, is faithful and true.
(3) His promised rewards will be faithfully fulfilled, and His threatened penalties will be strictly carried out.
3. The beginning of the creation of God. The Head, Prince, or Potentate.
II. The twofold character of the Laodicean Church.
1. Latitudinarian.
2. Self-deceived.
III. Christs appropriate counsel.
1. This counsel is characteristic of our Lord.
(1) Tender and considerate.
(2) Appropriate and definite.
(3) Timely and solemn.
2. This counsel is very suggestive.
(1) Buy of Me. In one sense grace cannot be bought. It has been bought--not with silver and gold, etc. In another sense, if we are not willing to give up the world and its sinful pleasures for Divine grace, we shall not obtain it.
(2) Gold tried in the fire. That which enriches the soul for ever, and will endure the test of His judgment.
(3) White raiment (Rev_19:8).
(4) Eye-salve. The illumination of the Holy Spirit.
IV. Three proofs of Christs loving interest.
1. Discipline.
2. Patient, personal appeals to those who have practically rejected Him.
3. His gracious proffer of the highest honour to him who becomes conqueror in His name. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
The word of Christ to the congregation at Laodicea
I. Its real character was thoroughly known.
II. Its spiritual indifferentism is divinely abhorrent.
1. Spiritual indifferentism is a most incongruous condition.
2. Spiritual indifferentism is a most incorrigible condition.
III. Its self-deception is terribly alarming.
IV. Its miserable condition need not be hopeless.
1. Recovery is freely offered.
2. Recovery is Divinely urged.
3. Recovery is Divinely rewarded.
(1) The throne of all approving conscience.
(2) The throne of moral rule. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The Church abhorrent to Christ because of the lukewarm temperature of its spiritual life
I. This church was lukewarm in the temperature of its spiritual life.
1. The language of this verse aptly describes the religious state of many Churches now.
(1) A lukewarm Church is unique in the world. In every sphere of life, save the moral, men are red hot.
(2) A lukewarm Church is useless in the world. It cannot make any progress against a vigilant devil and a wicked world.
(3) A lukewarm Church is an anomaly in the world. The Church is destined to represent on earth the most energetic and spiritual ministries which exist in the unseen universe.
(4) A lukewarm Church has much tending to awaken it. It should be awakened by a study of the lives of the Old and New Testament saints, by the earnest life of Christ, by the great need of the world, by the transitoriness of life, and by the quickening influences of the Divine Spirit.
2. That this lukewarm Church was abhorrent to the Divine Being. It is better to be a sinner than a merely nominal Christian; because the latter brings a greater reproach upon the name of Christ; because the latter is in the greater peril; and because hypocrisy is a greater sin than profanity.
II. This lukewarm church, sadly deceived, was wisely counselled as to the real condition of its spiritual life.
1. Sad deception.
(1) The members of this Church imagined that they were rich and had need of nothing.
(2) The members of this Church imagined that they were prosperous.
(3) The members of this Church imagined that they had attained all possible excellence.
2. Wise counsel.
(1) This Church was advised to get true wealth.
(2) This Church was advised to get renewed purity.
(3) This Church was advised to get clear vision.
(4) This Church was advised to get Christly merchandise.
3. Disguised love. All the Divine rebukes are for the moral good of souls, and should lead to repentance and zeal.
III. This church was urgently encouraged to amend its moral condition and to enter upon a zealous life. The advice of Christ is always encouraging. He will help the most degraded Church into a new life. Lessons:
1. That a lukewarm Church is abhorrent to the Divine mind.
2. That Christ gives wise counsel to proud souls.
3. That the most valuable things of life are to be had from Christ without money and without price.
4. Are we possessed of this gold, raiment, eyesalve? (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
These things saith the Amen.--
Christs names
The name which the Lord assumes in addressing this Church is threefold, yet one--the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God. The name Amen as here employed has its root in the Old Testament, where God is called the God of truth, the God of the Verily, the God of Amen--not merely distinguishing Him from the lying vanities of the heathen and the phantom-gods of philosophy, but bringing into view the absolute truth of His nature and of all His attributes. We cannot but mark how supremely and absolutely, in assuming this name, Jesus claims to be what the Jehovah of the Old Testament was. Two successive steps may give us a glimpse of the meaning of this name as now assumed and worn by the Lord. In the first place, He Himself is true, and deserves our absolute trust. His compassions are true, His love is true, His word is true, His smile is true, yea, His very silence is true, even as He said to His disciples, If it were not so, I would have told you. He does not say and unsay; He does not come and go; He is without variableness or shadow of turning. In the second place, He is the Amen, the Verily, to all that God has spoken. The ancient promises that had come down through thousands of years unfulfilled are fulfilled in Him, and that not in the letter merely, but in the inner spirit. The promises that still look to the future are in Him certain and sure, as hopes. And so with every word that God has spoken, whether promise or threatening. There is no may be or may not be about them; in Him they are all Amen. He is their full and sure accomplishment, even as He is the accomplishment of the past, Besides being the Amen, Jesus is to the Laodiceans the faithful and true Witness. He is the Messenger and Revealer of the Father, who answers all the deep questions of the conscience and heart, as well as of the intellect, according to the ancient prophecy--Behold, I have given Him for a Witness to the people. I have manifested Thy name, He says to the Father, unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world. It is essential to a witness that he have personal knowledge of that which he reports; and this Witness was in the bosom of the Father, and knows what is in His heart. As Witness He is faithful and true. These two words are like the right hand and the left. As I conceive, they are not interchangeable; but each conveys its own distinct and special meaning. Taken together, they mark that He kept back nothing which the Father delivered unto Him, and that all He said might be relied upon to the last jot and tittle. Once more the Lord names Himself the Beginning of the creation of God. We trace the things that are back and up to Jesus Christ; He is the uncaused cause of their being, their vital origin, willing them into existence; and the increasing purpose is but the gradual unfolding of the thought of His heart. It is the same truth that fills such words as these: All things were made by Him, etc. In Him (comprehended within the sphere of His being, power, and will) were all things created, etc. The grand thought is, that this glorious universe, whose origin lies back of human imagination, was brought into being (according to the will of the eternal Father) by our blessed Redeemers creative power, and exists for His sake. (J. Culross, D. D.)
The Amen
The word Amen is much more full of meaning than may be supposed, and as a title of our Lord Jesus Christ it is eminently suggestive. I might have divided my discourse very fairly under these three heads--asserting, consenting, petitioning. For in each of these our adorable Lord Jesus Christ is certainly the Amen. He asserts the will of God--He asserts God Himself. God the Son is constantly called the Word; He who asserts, declares, and testifies God. In the second place, we know that Jesus Christ consents to the will, design, and purpose of Jehovah. He gives an Amen to the will of God--is, in fact, the echo, in His life and in His death, of the eternal purposes of the Most High. And, thirdly, He is the Amen in the petitionary sense, for to all our prayers He gives whatever force and power they have. But we have preferred to divide the discourse another way.
I. Our Lord is superlatively Gods Amen.
1. Long ere you and I had a being, before this great world started out of nothingness, God had made every purpose of His eternal counsel to stand fast and firm by the gift of His dear Son to us. He was then Gods Amen to His eternal purpose.
2. When our Lord actually came upon the earth, He was then Gods Amen to the long line of prophecies. That babe among the horned oxen, that carpenters son, was Gods declaration that prophesy was the voice of heaven.
3. Christ was Gods Amen to all the Levitical types. Especially when up to the Cross as to the altar He went as a victim and was laid thereon, then it was that God solemnly put an Amen into what otherwise was but typical and shadowy.
4. Christ is Gods Amen to the majesty of His law. He has not sinned Himself, but He has the sins of all His people imputed to Him. He has never broken the law, but all our breaches thereof were laid on Him. The law says He is accursed, for He has sin upon Him: will the Father consent that His own Beloved shall be made a curse for us? Hearken and hear the Lords Amen. Awake, O sword, against the man that is My fellow, saith the Lord. What, does God the Father say Amen? Can it be? It is even so. He says, Amen. And what an awful Amen too, when the sweat of blood started from every pore of His immaculate body.
5. Jesus Christ is very blessedly Gods Amen to all His covenant promises, for is it not written that all the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him Amen.
6. Jesus Christ will be Gods Amen at the conclusion of this dispensation in the fulness of time.
II. He is our Amen in Himself.
1. He proved Himself to be Amen; the God of truth, sincerity, and faithfulness in His fulfilment of covenant engagements. Lo I come! In the volume of the book it is written of Me: I delight to do Thy will, O God. From all eternity He declared Himself to be ready to go through the work, and when the time came He was straightened till the work was done.
2. He was also the Amen in all His teachings. We have already remarked that He constantly commenced with Verily, verily I say unto you. Christ as teacher does not appeal to tradition, or even to reasoning, but gives Himself as His authority.
3. He is also the Amen in all His promises. Sinner, I would comfort thee with this reflection.
4. Jesus Christ is yea and Amen in all His offices. He was a priest to pardon and cleanse once; He is Amen as priest still. He was a King to rule and reign for His people, and to defend them with His mighty arm; He is an Amen King, the same still. He was a prophet of old to foretell good things to come; His lips are most sweet, and drop with honey still--He is an Amen Prophet.
5. He is Amen with regard to His person. He is still faithful and true, immutably the same. Not less than God! Omnipotent, immutable, eternal, omnipresent still! God over all, blessed for ever. O Jesus, we adore Thee, Thou great Amen. He is the same, too, as to His manhood. Bone of our bone still; in all our afflictions still afflicted.
III. He is experimentally Gods Amen to every believing soul.
1. He is Gods Amen in us. If you want to know God you must know Christ; if you want to be sure of the truth of the Bible you must believe Jesus.
2. Jesus Christ is the Amen not only in us, but the Amen for us. When you pray, you say Amen. Did you think of Christ? Did you offer your prayer through Him? Did you ask Him to present it before God? If not, there is no Amen to your prayer.
3. I want that Jesus Christ should be Gods Amen in all our hearts, as to all the good things of the covenant of grace; I am sure He will be if you receive Him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Amen
What, then, is the meaning of this sacred word? It means truth; it means reality. I want to bring before you the awfulness of truth--that is, of reality, of sincerity, of guileless simplicity, both as regards our conduct in the life that now is and as regards the eternal life of mans spirit. First, as regards our earthly life. We may each of us spend our lives either in the world or in God. If we live in God--if that life which we now live in the flesh is lived by faith in the Son of God--then we are living in the world of reality. If we are living for the world--if we are setting our affections on the things of the earth--we are living in the midst of fatal delusions and fading shadows. Let a man but once catch a glimpse of the true light, and he learns utterly to despise the dim rushlights of this earths tinselled stage; let but one ray out of eternity shine down into his heart, and for him the world and the things of the world shrivel into insignificance. God is the Amen, and all His laws are eternal: they abide for ever; they are laws not only of reality, not only of righteousness, but of pleasantness and peace. Earnestly, then, would I invite you all to base yourselves on the Amen, on the solid and ultimate reality of life, by denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, and living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. And no less earnestly would I invite you to base your unshaken lives on the Amen of true religion, without which the house of your life will only be built upon sand. The Church depends solely on the presence of Christ. Religious partisans show their greatest zeal always not for Gods eternal verities, but for what is doubtful and questionable and valueless, and often they pass over the whole essential message and meaning of the gospel of Christ in order to insist on the grossest misinterpretation of some single text. But God is the God of Amen, that is, of truth. Let us then look to the basis of our faith and the basis of our conduct. Will ye, by hypocrisy in conduct, will ye, by petty unreality in faith, offer to the God of Truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie? Reality, sincerity, holiness--the elementary Christian graces, faith, hope, love--the primary Christian duties, soberness, temperance, chastity--these are the things and these are the tests of a true religion; apart from these all else is fringes and phylacteries. (Dean Farrar.)
The Beginning of the creation of God.
The creation of God
The third appellation cannot be limited to the thought of the mere material creation, as if equivalent to the statement that by the Word were all things made. It would thus fail to correspond with the two appellations preceding it, which undoubtedly apply to the work of redemption, while, at the same time, the addition of the words of God would be meaningless or perplexing. Let us add to this that in chap 1:5, immediately after Jesus has been called the faithful Witness, He is described as the First begotten of the dead, and we shay not be able to resist the conviction that the words before us refer primarily to the new creation, the Christian Church, that redeemed humanity which has its true life in Christ. (W. Milligan, D. D.)
I know thy works, that thou art neither hot nor cold.--
The condition of the Laodiceans
I know thy works. There is to be no dealing with them in the dark, as man is compelled to do; no drawing of a bow at a venture; the arrow is aimed straight at the mark. He is about to judge the Laodiceans, and His judgment proceeds on a perfect knowledge of their condition. Thy works, in all that they are and all that they mean and involve, lie open under Mine eye, in the broad, bright sunshine, as they do not lie open even to thyself. An awful thought! you exclaim. Yes, but also unspeakably precious. It is the word, not of the detective who has found us out, and who delivers us to the judge, but of the physician who comprehends our case. His knowledge, His diagnosis, if I may so say, is the stepping-stone of His grace and help. What the works were is not set forth in detail in the epistle. It is not mere quantity, so to speak, but quality that is taken into account. The special region into which the Lord looks is that of the affections. The stress of His charge is that they were indifferent: I know thy works, that thou art neither hot nor cold. From what follows it is evident that the Laodiceans themselves were quite satisfied with things as they were, and had no wish for a change. Christian discipleship (rooted in faith) implies love to Jesus Christ personally. Not merely a true creed, not merely a virtuous and beautiful life, but the hearts love. There may be very few on earth who think our love worth the having; but not so with Jesus, the glorified Redeemer. Man all over, He desires and seeks our love. Year by year our fellowship with Him ought to become more close and delightful; year by year our hearts should become more fully His; and last love should be a greater thing than even first love. In the light of such considerations let us now look at Christs words to Laodicea. Thou art not cold. A Church of Christ should certainly not be that. Yet such Churches exist. They are quite orthodox; their creed is a model of clearness and Scripturalness; they are examples of moral propriety; there is not merely good order, but even fine taste and exquisite grace in their arrangements; yet the temperature is down at freezing-point. Now, the Laodiceans were not cold. The Lord testifies that concerning them. Neither were they hot. The condition indicated by this word is one of entire devotedness and joyful response to the love of Him who died for us, and rose again. It is not merely the supreme affection of a holy soul, rising above all others and commanding them; in some sense it carries in it and contains all other Divine affections, and is also the sum of all duty--the fulfilling of all law how the Laodicean Church was not in a condition like this. There was nothing among them that could be called fervour, or zeal, or self-consecration, or enthusiasm, or holy passion in the cause of Christ. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. Their condition (for it is a condition, and not a stage in the process of warming) is described by the word lukewarm. Love, zeal, joy, delight in worship, desire for the salvation of men, and every other Christian affection and emotion, have been cooling down till they have reached the temperature of indifference. The lukewarmness is shown in all directions. It is shown in the angel of the Church dealing in pleasant nothings, instead of the mighty truths of God, or in intellectual and philosophic refinements, in place of the gospel of grace--accommodating his words to the taste of his hearers, lest he should lose his popularity and preach them away from the church--it is shown in the general community, who love to have it so. It is shown in the tone of conversation common among them, which, instead of being alway with grace, seasoned with salt, degenerates so readily into gossip, debate, frivolity, uncharitable censure of the absent, or merest religious gabble, in which the tongue does everything and the heart does nothing. It is shown in the weekly assembly, in the conscious distance from God that is maintained; in the dislike of spiritual thought, and indeed incapacity for it, and unfitness to deal with any great and deep questions of Divine truth. It is shown in the lightness with which they regard abounding iniquity, smiling where once their eyes would have filled with sudden tears, and they would have withdrawn to pray. It is shown in the neglect of personal effort for the extension of the gospel, and the transference of the work to a substitute--a missionary or Bible-woman--paid at the cheapest possible rate, with the boast of having found the missing link. It is shown in conformity to the world, in the love of worldly society and amusements, in doing what is religiously fashionable, in giving the cold shoulder to unapplauded truth, and in avoiding whatever leads to reproach and the cross. It is shown in the practical powerlessness of the creed which they profess to hold; the most awful and mysterious truths, as one has expressed it, losing all the power of truths, and lying bedridden in the dormitory of the soul. It is unnecessary to proceed further with an account of this evil estate. It is made up of negations, and chiefly the negation of all earnestness. Some things indeed there are that evoke feeling in a lukewarm Church, even to passionateness. Let one, for example, tell plain truth about wine-bibbing or ballrooms or theatres; or let one whose soul is thrilled with a sense of Divine mercy, and who longs to be Christ-like, stand up in the church-meeting and propose united prayer for the revival of religion; or let some Jeremiah with the fire in his bones stand up, not fearing the face of clay, and speak of eternal things with cries and anguish and weeping; and instantly you find the very passion of resentment aroused--though it dare not, for shames sake, express itself plainly--against this troubling of Israel, this breaking of the peace, this molesting of souls, this accusing of the brethren; while it moves them not to know that the honour of Christs name and the salvation of the perishing are at stake. What is the secret of all this? For beforehand we should pronounce lukewarmness on the part of saved men an impossibility; and it can never be regarded otherwise than as most unnatural and even dreadful in a Christian Church. How does it come to pass? One cause, operating more extensively and with greater force than is commonly thought, is the endeavour to retain the first joy of conversion without making progress. The whole and only joy sought after is the joy of forgiveness, to the neglect of the joy of holiness and new obedience. The consequence is that gradually they lose the very joy they have, and sink down into a state of heartless apathy. Again, there is failure in personal, living, realising communion with the Lord Jesus Himself as our Redeemer. It is the grand lack of to-day. Is it strange that spiritual fervour should decline? Would it not be a miracle if it continued? It is as if a betrothed should cease to correspond with her affianced husband; the natural result is the decay of affection. Another cause, operating very widely and very subtly, is unbelief in the fulness and power of grace to enable us to live a victorious Christian life. It is quietly taken for granted that a life of self-consecration and likeness to the Son of God is an impossibility, and that the very utmost we can expect is a never-ceasing debate (conflict it cannot be called) between the flesh and the Spirit, with heaven somehow at the end. The question of main interest--apparently never quite settled--is, How to get clear off in the day of judgment? As for reproducing the life of Christ among men, manifesting it afresh in this mortal body, and being in some real sense His gospels to our age, this is smiled at as a very simple imagination indeed. Then, next, those who forget how high the Christian calling is, and who neglect fellowship with God, become blind to the evil of intermingling the Church and the world in one visible community. For the sake of numbers, or out of friendship with the world, or to make ourselves seem great, or out of a cruel charitableness, the flesh is received into church-fellowship, is treated as a Christian, is taught to use Christian forms of speech, to sing Christian hymns, to pray Christian prayers, to do Christian acts, to aim at the production of Christian virtues, to sit down with saints at the Lords table and commemorate a love that is not believed in or felt. The necessary issue in the long run--indeed, the run is not very long--is the repression of spiritual fervour in the Church and the spread of apathy. Another thing working most disastrously is the poor, poor conception prevalent in Churches of the tremendous necessity of salvation. It is first emptied of its significance, and then it is put into the second rank instead of the first, and then the ardour of the Church inevitably cools, and they are content and take it as quite a matter of course that there should be no conversion of sinners to God. Again, there is the spirit of self-pleasing, the love of comfort and pleasurable sensations, the substitution of taste and culture for godliness, the cry of the preacher, Move us, move us I which by and by becomes, Tickle us, tickle us! Once more, there is the formation of worldly friendships and the entering into associations in which it is impossible to preserve the spirit of Christ. The injury done to piety by such associations and friendships is beyond calculation, both in extent and depth. Now, in whatever light men may regard this condition (and the world praises it, for the world loves its own), Christ is displeased and grieved with it. I would, He says, that thou wert cold or hot. Wilt thou not be so? That would is no unimpassioned word, as one might say, I should prefer it thus or thus: it is a sigh from the heart of distressed love; it carries Divine emotion in it, reminding us of that lamentation over Jerusalem, I would--and ye would not. Thus the Lord makes it evident that He has no pleasure in this half-and-half condition. This is the Lords judgment in the case: I will spue thee out of My mouth. No doubt every believing soul in Laodicea would be saved in the day of the Lord, even though involved in the prevalent lukewarmness. But the Church would be rejected from being a Church. Lukewarmness unrepented of issues in rejection. It is in the history of the Church of Laodicea as a spiritual community that the fulfilment of the Lords threatening is to be found; and the outward desolation is to be regarded only as the visible symbolism of a tremendous spiritual fact. (J. Culross, D. D.)
An earnest warning against lukewarmness
I. The state into which churches are very apt to fall.
1. A Church may fail into a condition far other than that for which it has a repute. It may be famous for zeal, and yet be lethargic. The address of our Lord begins, I know thy works, as much as to say, Nobody else knows you. Men think better of you than you deserve. You do not know yourselves, you think your works to be excellent, but I know them to be very different. The public can only read reports, but Jesus sees for Himself. He knows what is done, and how it is done, and why it is done.
2. The condition described in our text is one of mournful indifference and carelessness. They were not infidels, yet they were not earnest believers; they did not oppose the gospel, neither did they defend it; they were not working mischief, neither were they doing any great good.
3. This condition of indifference is attended with perfect self-complacency. The people who ought to be mourning are rejoicing, and where they should hang out signals of distress they are flaunting the banners of triumph. What can a Church require that we have not in abundance? Yet their spiritual needs are terrible. Spiritually poor and proud.
4. This Church of Laodicea had fallen into a condition which had chased away its Lord. I stand at the door and knock. That is not the position which our Lord occupies in reference to a truly flourishing Church. If we are walking aright with Him, He is in the midst of the Church, dwelling there, and revealing Himself to His people.
II. The danger of such a state.
1. The great danger is, to be rejected of Christ. I will spue thee out of My mouth. Churches are in Christs mouth in several ways, they are used by Him as His testimony to the world, He speaks to the world through their lives and ministries. When God is with a people they speak with Divine power to the world, but if we grow lukewarm Christ says, Their teachers shall not profit, for I have not sent them, neither am I with them. Their word shall be as water spilt on the ground, or as the whistling of the wind. Better far for me to die than to be spued out of Christs mouth. Then He also ceases to plead for such a Church. Mighty are His pleadings for those He really loves, and countless are the blessings which come in consequence. It will be an evil day when He casts a Church out of that interceding mouth. Do you not tremble at such a prospect?
2. Such a Church will be left to its fallen condition, to become wretched--that is to say, miserable, unhappy, divided, without the presence of God, and so without delight in the ways of God.
III. The remedies which the Lord employs.
1. Jesus gives a clear discovery as to the Churchs true state. He says to it, Thou art lukewarm, thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I rejoice to see people willing to know the truth, but most men do not wish to know it, and this is an ill sign. We shall never get right as long as we are confident that we are so already. Self-complacency is the death of repentance.
2. Our Lords next remedy is gracious counsel. He says, I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire.
3. Now comes a third remedy, sharp and cutting, but sent in love, namely rebukes and chastenings. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.
4. The best remedy for backsliding Churches is more communion with Christ. Behold, saith He, I stand at the door and knock. This text belongs to the Church of God, not to the unconverted. It is addressed to the Laodicean Church. There is Christ outside the Church, driven there by her unkindness, but He has not gone far away: He loves His Church too much to leave her altogether, He longs to come back, and therefore He waits at the doorpost. He knows that the Church will never be restored till He comes back, and He desires to bless her, and so He stands waiting and knocking. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The destiny of a lukewarm Church
I. The complaint.
1. This complaint is made against the Church. We learn from this fact that Churches do become corrupt; they do decay. Keep, therefore, the Christ of God, who never will fail, or decay, exalted above the Church in your minds and hearts.
2. This complaint is made by One who can say, I know.
3. This complaint is made by One who does know, and cannot misrepresent.
4. This complaint is made by One who does know, and cannot misrepresent, and who has a right to complain. Just let us see now what is meant by the lukewarmness complained of. The people had love for Christ, but it was not ardent. The people had charity among themselves, but it was not fervent. The people received spiritual blessings, but they did not thirst for them. The people wrought good works, but not zealously. The people prayed, but not fervently. They gave, but not liberally or cheerfully. The whole heart was not given to anything in connection with church life. Perhaps through the neglect of the means of preserving spiritual heat, or by using unwise means or false means, these people had become lukewarm, or perhaps by some besetting sin.
5. Now this complaint is based on works. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. One would have thought that the Amen, the true and faithful Witness, would have said, I know thy heart; I know thy spirit. The complaint is based on works, and not so much on general conduct as on labours of love. These were less than since their first profession. Oh, what a striking fact this is in church life! How thoroughly it reappears before the eye of every pastor.
6. See, the complaint is based on works, and it is made with evident feeling. Christ could not speak without feeling, far less could He complain without feeling. It is the want of feeling in the complaints that people make about Churches that so often distresses one.
II. The threatening. Any food or drink which ought to be either hot or cold is most unpleasant if lukewarm; and the strong language used here means, I will reject thee.
1. This threatening is addressed, not to the individual, but to the Church. Christ presently turns to the individual, counselling him to buy of Me gold. You cannot be in communion with Christ without being rebuked. Why? Because your faults and defects are continually coming out, and His love for you is such that He will not let them pass--He cannot let them pass. If, however, you be merely a nominal disciple, they will often pass unnoticed, and you will not hear a sound of rebuke from the skies until the day of final reckoning.
2. The Amen rejects the lukewarm Church. He rejects it--how? First, by withdrawing His Spirit from it because such a Church is not His temple. And secondly, by not using it for the purposes of His kingdom.
3. Now, observe, in conclusion, that works are expected from a Christian Church, and the works of the Church show whether it be cold or hot. (S. Martin.)
Laodicea
I. The loving rebuke of the faithful witness. The persons thus described are Christian people (for their Christianity is presupposed), with very little, though a little, warmth of affection and glow of Christian love and consecration. Further this defectiveness of Christian feeling is accompanied with a large amount of self-complacency. Then again, this deficiency of warmth is worse than absolute zero. I would thou weft cold or hot. Because there is no man more hopeless than a man on whom the power of Christianity has been brought to bear, and has failed in warming and quickening him. Is that our condition? Look at the standard of Christian life round about us. Mark how wavering the line is between the Church and the world; how little upon our side of the line there is of conspicuous consecration and unworldliness: how entirely in regard of an enormous mass of professing Christians, the maxims that are common in the world are their maxims; and the sort of life that the world lives is the sort of life that they live. Look at your Churches and mark their feebleness, the slow progress of the gospel among them, the low lives that the bulk of professing Christians are living, and answer the question, is that the operation of a Divine Spirit that comes to transform and to quicken everything into His own vivid and flaming life? or is it the operation of our own selfishness and worldliness, crushing down and hemming in the power that ought to sway us?
II. The causes of this lukewarmness of spiritual life. Of course the tendency to it is in us all. Take a bar of iron out of the furnace on a winter day, and lay it down in the air, and there is nothing more wanted. Leave it there, and very soon the white heat will change into livid dulness, and then there will come a scale over it, and in a short time it will be as cold as the frosty atmosphere around it. And so there is always a refrigerating process acting upon us, which needs to be counteracted by continual contact with the fiery furnace of spiritual warmth, or else we are cooled down to the degree of cold around us. But besides this universally operating cause there are many others which affect us. I find fault with no man for the earnestness which he flings into his business, but I ask you to say whether the relative importance of the things seen and unseen is fairly represented by the relative amount of earnestness with which you and I pursue these respectively. Then, again, the existence among us, or around us, of a certain widely diffused doubt as to the truths of Christianity is, illogically enough, a cause for diminished fervour on the part of the men that do not doubt them. That is foolish, and it is strange, but it is true. And there is another case, which I name with some hesitation, but which yet seems to me to be worthy of notice; and that is, the increasing degree to which Christian men are occupied with what we call, for want of a better name, secular things. I grudge the political world nothing that it gets of your strength, but I do grudge, for your sakes, as well as for the Churchs sake, that so often the two forms of activity are supposed by professing Christians to be incompatible, and that therefore the more important is neglected, and the less important done.
III. The loving call to deepened earnestness. Be zealous, therefore. Lay hold of the truth that Christ possesses a full store of all that you can want. Meditate on that great truth and it will kindle a flame of desire and of fruition in your hearts. Be zealous, therefore. And again, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous, therefore. That is to say, grasp the great thought of the loving Christ, all whose dealings, even when His voice assumes severity, and His hand comes armed with a rod, are the outcome and manifestation of His love; and sink into that love, and that will make your hearts glow. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Be zealous, therefore. Think of the earnest, patient, long-suffering appeal which the Master makes, bearing with all our weaknesses, and not suffering His gentle hand to be turned away, though the door has been so long barred and bolted in His face.
IV. The merciful call to a new beginning. Repent. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The danger of lukewarmness in religion
The soul of man is endowed with active powers that it cannot be idle: and, if we look round the world, we see it all alive. What vigorous action, what labour and toil about the necessaries of life, about riches and honours! But it is quite otherwise in religion. Only a few act as if they regarded religion as the most important concern of life. For look round you, the generality are very indifferent about it. They will not Indeed renounce all religion entirely; they will make some little profession of religion; but it is a matter of indifferency with them, and they are but little concerned about it; they are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot. Now such a luke-warmness is an eternal solecism in religion; it is the most inconsistent thing imaginable: more so than avowed impiety; therefore, says Christ, I would thou wert cold or hot--i.e. You might be anything more consistently than what you are. If you looked upon religion as a cheat, and openly rejected the profession of it, it would not be strange that you should be careless about it and disregard it in practice. But to own it true, and make a profession of it, and yet be lukewarm and indifferent about it, this is the most absurd conduct that can be conceived; for, if it be true, it is certainly the most important and interesting truth in all the world, and requires the utmost exertion of all your powers. There are some aggravations peculiar to the lukewarm professor that render him peculiarly odious; as--
1. He adds the sin of a hypocritical profession to his other sins.
2. He adds the guilt of presumption, pride, and self-flattery, imagining he is in a safe state and in favour with God; whereas he that makes no pretensions to religion has no such umbrage for this conceit and delusion.
3. He is in the most dangerous condition, as he is not liable to conviction, nor so likely to be brought to repentance.
4. The honour of God and religion is more injured by the negligent, unconscientious behaviour of these Laodiceans, than by the vices of those who make no pretensions to religion; with whom therefore its honour has no connection.
But to be more particular: let us take a view of a lukewarm temper in various attitudes, or with respect to several objects.
1. Consider who and what God is. He is the original uncreated beauty, the sum total of all natural and moral perfections, the origin of all the excellences that are scattered through this glorious universe; He is the supreme good, and the only proper portion for our immortal spirits. He also sustains the most majestic and endearing relations to us: our Father, our Preserver and Benefactor, our Lawgiver, and our Judge. Is such a Being to be put off with heartless, lukewarm services?
2. Is lukewarmness a proper temper towards Jesus Christ? Is this a suitable return for that love which brought Him down from His native paradise into our wretched world? Oh, was Christ indifferent about your salvation? Was His love lukewarm towards you?
3. Is lukewarmness and indifferency a suitable temper with respect to a future state of happiness or misery?
4. Let us see how this lukewarm temper agrees with the duties of religion. And as I cannot particularise them all, I shall only mention an instance or two. View a lukewarm professor in prayer. The words proceed no further than from your tongue: you do not pour them out from the bottom of your hearts; they have no life or spirit in them, and you hardly ever reflect upon their meaning. And when you have talked away to God in this manner, you will have it to pass for a prayer. But surely such prayers must bring down a curse upon you instead of a blessing: such sacrifices must be an abomination to the Lord (Pro_15:8). The next instance I shall mention is with regard to the Word of God. You own it Divine, you profess it the standard of your religion, and the most excellent book in the world. Now, if this be the case, it is God that sends you an epistle when you are reading or hearing His Word. How impious and provoking then must it be to neglect it, to let it lie by you as an antiquated, useless book, or to read it in a careless, superficial manner, and hear it with an inattentive, wandering mind! Ye modern Laodiceans, are you not yet struck with horror at the thought of that insipid, formal, spiritless religion you have hitherto been contented with?
1. Consider the difficulties and dangers in your way. You must be made new men, quite other creatures than you now are. And oh! can this work be successfully performed while you make such faint and feeble efforts?
2. Consider how earnest and active men are in other pursuits. Is religion the only thing which demands the utmost exertion of all your powers, and alas! is that the only thing in which you will be dull and inactive? (S. Davies, M. A.)
Lukewarmness
I. What is lukewarmness in religion? It is not Christian moderation. There is the popular and not unfounded prejudice against extremes, a suspicion of too great zeal, too much enthusiasm. And so in the service and the worship of God people choose a middle course between those who are very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, and those who turn their backs upon Him. They would not like to think anything extravagant; and they prefer to follow public opinion as safest; and then they think they are letting their moderation be known unto all men. Yet, after all, when we come to scrutinise this spirit, it is not quite like moderation and sober-mindedness, and the Lords carefulness not to offend the weak. It is much more like worldly-mindedness.
II. What are the causes of lukewarmness?
1. May we not put first, worldly prosperity, the intrusion of something else into the place which God once occupied, and which God alone ought to occupy in the affections?
2. Another cause is the frequency of little sins. Evil speaking, untruthfulness and exaggeration, outbreaks of temper, vanity, self-indulgence, these, freely indulged, show not only that religion has no real power in the heart, but relax the hold of conscience, lessen our confidence towards God, and so chill our love.
3. Then, again, we may mention dissipation of mind, occupation in so many pursuits that little or no time is allowed for undisturbed communion with God in prayer and meditation. We all find it difficult to keep our attention fixed upon God without distraction. But how much harder if we allow our hearts to be choked with the pleasures and cares of this world! And if we cannot find time to think about Him we certainly shall not have power to love Him first, perhaps not to love Him at all with anything that deserves the name of love. In other ways this dissipation of mind serves to produce lukewarmness. If we are too busy to fix our minds upon God we shall scarcely have time to pay much attention to ourselves. How should we manage that which requires so much resolution, so much abstraction from worldly things, strict self-examination? How should we accurately measure our gain and loss since the last solemn inquiry into our spiritual state? How ascertain where we stand before God?
III. These are some of the causes, and some of the symptoms too--for it is impossible to keep them distinct--of lukewarmness. Some other symptoms may be mentioned. If you suffer yourself on every little pretext to shorten, or to omit, your devotions; if you care more about the fact of going through them than about the manner or the spirit in which you go through them; if, when you feel not altogether happy in your conscience towards God and man, you either neglect self-examination, or set about it in a slovenly way; if, when you have detected a fault in yourself, you are slow at reformation; if you act, day after day, without once sanctifying your motives and your actions to God; if you never aim at forming habits of obedience to His commandments; if you never attack any one particular sin; if you despise little things and daily opportunities; if you delight rather in thinking of the good you have done than of the good you have left undone, resting on the past rather than looking forward into the future; if you never care to have God in all your thoughts, and, by meditation at least, to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, then I fear it must be said of you that you are lukewarm.
IV. Would to God that we could as easily tell the remedy as the disease. Try, then, if ever you feel your love growing cold, your faith less vivid, to quicken them by meditation on eternal truths, so as to saturate your minds with the conviction of their infinite importance. Fight against the cause of lukewarmness; against worldliness, self-indulgence, carelessness, habitual sins, however little they may seem, self-complacency in the past, the oppression of too many cares. That can be no duty which perils the soul. (W. Mitchell, M. A.)
Lukewarmness
I. An exposure of some of the disgustful things which are found in lukewarm religion.
1. A lukewarm religion is a direct insult to the Lord Jesus Christ. If I boldly say I do not believe what He teaches, I have given Him the lie. But if I say to Him, I believe what Thou teachest, but I do not think it of sufficient importance for me to disturb myself about it, I do in fact more wilfully resist His word; I as much as say to Him, If it be true, yet is it a thing which I so despise that I will not give my heart to it.
2. Bethink you, again, does the Lord Jesus deserve such treatment at your hands? and may He not well say of such hearts as ours, He would that we were either cold or hot?
3. The lukewarm Christian compromises God before the eyes of the world in all he does and says. The world sees a man who professes to be going to heaven, but he is travelling there at a snails pace. He professes to believe there is a hell, and yet he has tearless eyes and never seeks to snatch souls from going into the fire. Let the minister be as earnest as ever he will about the things of God, the lukewarm Christian neutralises any effect the minister can produce, because the world will judge the Church not by the standard of the pulpit so much as by the level of the pew. And thus they say, There is no need for us to make so much stir about it; these peculiar people, these saints, take it remarkably easy; they think it will all be well; no doubt we do as much as they do, for they do very little.
4. The Lord hateth lukewarmness, because wherever it is found it is out of place. There is no spot near to the throne of God where lukewarmness could stand in a seemly position.
II. Dissuasives against lukewarmness. As Christians, you have to do with solemn realities; you have to do with eternity, with death, with heaven, with hell, with Christ, with Satan, with souls, and can you deal with these things with a cold spirit? Suppose you can, there certainly never was a greater marvel in the world, if you should be able to deal with them successfully. These things demand the whole man. And the day is coming when you will think these things worthy of your whole heart. When you and I shall lie stretched upon our dying beds, I think we shall have to regret, above all other things, our coldness of heart. Ay, and there will be a time when the things of God will seem yet more real even than on the dying bed. I refer to the day when we shall stand at the bar of God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The first stages of spiritual decline
If the Christians progress may be likened to a steep and difficult ascent, we may compare his first beginnings of decline to the slow and doubtful motion of some heavy substance from which the force is removed which caused it to ascend, while the impetus is not yet gained which will shortly urge it down its headlong, unresisted course. Betwixt ceasing to mount upwards and beginning to fall back, there is an awful moment of suspense. Or, to use another illustration, when the tide has risen to its height there is still-water for a time, before the ebbing waves begin to retire. Just so with the business of the soul.
I. The signs of lukewarmness in religion.
1. We may first describe the state to which the Lord refers in the message to Laodicea as a state of great spiritual insensibility.
2. Another symptom of lukewarmness in religion may be discovered in the influence which the opinions and the example of the world exert upon us. Why not preserve just so much of religion as will satisfy the meagre demands of a sleepy conscience, and yet enjoy the pleasures, and pursue with breathless haste the riches, of the world? The attempt is vain!
3. But, further, that Laodicean spirit which the text describes, betrays itself at length in a decay of zeal for God. Does it cause you but little sorrow that the Saviour of the world should still be an outcast from so large and fair a portion of His inheritance? Have you no bowels of mercies for a perishing world?
II. Some of those circumstances which render this lukewarm state so dangerous to the soul.
1. The first that strikes us arises from the very nature of spiritual religion. For it is a contest against a corrupt nature. All the natural aids are on the side of sin: the world and the flesh are banded in one common cause. So that to lose ground in religion is not merely to risk our souls by wasting those advantages we have gained, but, further, it is to arm our enemies; it is to give to them the advantages which we have lost: for the attractive power of sin increases as we approach it.
2. The danger of this state is increased by the circumstance that there is in it nothing which at first excites alarm. For it is not a lapse into open sin. It does not amount to a rejection of the gospel. After all, the lukewarm Christian, compared with the multitude, is a religious man. And all this serves to soothe and to quiet his conscience. (J. B. Marsden, M. A.)
The danger of lukewarmness
1. There seems to be more likelihood of repentance, where men are manifestly wrong, than where there is ever so small ground on which they flatter themselves that they are right. Conscience in the one case may be awakened more readily by Gods ordinary dispensations of providence and grace, than in the other, where it is lulled by the fatal satisfaction of being no worse than the world in general, of being almost if not quite a Christian.
2. The absolutely cold are in one respect less hardened than the lukewarm. They have at least usually less familiarity with those means of grace, whose abuse is as sure to harden the heart as their right use is to melt and refine it.
3. A third reason why the faithful Witness might wish even that we were cold rather than lukewarm is, that in the latter case we do more signal disparagement to the grace He dispenses, to the gospel He has revealed. (Canon Girdlestone.)
The three stages of religious emotion
I. The hot condition. Some degree of warmth is necessary for the commencement of a religious experience. In the earliest days, wherever the Word was preached, wherever it penetrated mens hearts, there was s rush of spiritual emotion, a glow of inspiration, an effervescence of feeling, a new, strange joy. This was the token of the Spirits presence. And what was true at first is true still, because religious history is a history of commencements and recommencements. Science has taught us that heat and motion are interchangeable, that heat is but a mode or form of motion, and motion but a mode or form of heat. The heat of the furnace and boiler is turned into the motion of the engine; the heat produced by the food we eat is turned into the motion of our bodies. The suns heat stored up in the coal measures becomes the motion of a thousand factories. So it is in the moral world. To start and to keep up motion, right action, zealous effort, painstaking and fruitful activity, you must have heat within the soul. You know the type of Christian men whose enthusiasm is always at a glow. It brightens, and sparkles, and runs over. They thaw you, they warm you, when you come near them. These are the men who seem to respond to every genuine influence of Gods Spirit. They have built the house of their faith not merely on the good foundation, but they have been wise, and built it with a warm, bright exposure as well. The forces of evil and temptation are strong. You must, therefore, have ardent religious feeling; you must have the action, the sympathy, the way of looking at and speaking of things that come with such strong feeling; otherwise the young and trustful, the men full of keen, vigorous life, will be swept into some of those vortices of evil and be lost.
II. The cold condition. There is, of course, in human nature a continual tendency to cool down. Like the earths surface during the night, our hearts are incessantly raying off heat. People dont intend probably to be cold and insensible to the things of God, but their mental force is run off, and so they grow cold. But then, once coldness comes it propagates itself, it even justifies itself. Men permanently, steadily cold, men with the spiritual thermometer standing constantly at zero, take various lines. There is among those who still profess to be Christians what may be called an orthodox and a heterodox coldness. Orthodox coldness still preserves the form of its faith, though that faith, instead of being a living figure, is a mere marble effigy--a corpse. Heterodox coldness has readjusted its beliefs and considerably modified them. Cold tends to contract most things, and faith among the rest. When men become cold after this fashion they become incapable of high belief, the belief that transforms a man and brings him near to God. They narrow their horizon, and all the stars go out of their sky. Cold men are dangerous neighbours. They very soon draw off all the heat from us. Let a centre of ice once form in a pond, and if the water be undisturbed, in a few hours it is frozen over. If we wish to preserve our heat, we must take care what company we keep. Alas! for that icy chill that has settled over many a heart that once throbbed kindly and truly in the service of Christ and of humanity I Some of the cold men look like icebergs. The fact is, they are not icebergs; they are extinct volcanoes. They once glowed with deep subterranean fires, and a red-hot stream of energy poured down the mountain-side. Now, there is only a collection of sulphur and ashes and crusted lava cakes.
III. The lukewarm condition. Lukewarmness is a stage of cooling down. No soul stops short at this stage. The heart leaps at once into fire and life. But it chills gradually. A lukewarm man you cannot describe. He is a mere collection of negations. His soul is like a reservoir or bath, into which streams of hot water and cold are being run at the same time, and you cannot tell which current is stronger, for they are often about equally strong. A lukewarm man has force, but it never moves him to any definite action. He has sympathies, but they tend to evaporate. He thinks, on the whole, he is a good, a religious man, on the side of Christ and of right. Other people are, on the whole, not quite sure what side he is on. The lukewarm man does not make it a principle to confine his religion to the four walls of the church, and the two boards of the Bible. He holds that it should not be so confined. And so he carries a few scraps of it into his daily life. He knows that prayer should not be an empty form, so he occasionally tries to pray inwardly and sincerely--that is, when he is neither very tired nor very busy. He has never given way on a question of principle, except when he was very hard pushed, or it appeared that very few people were looking on: and he has really often regretted giving way at all. He does not intend to do it again. A lukewarm man generally does a little Christian work, not, of course, enough to involve any sacrifice or exhaustion, nor would he take any pains to provide a substitute for occasional or even frequent absence. It is only genuine workers who do that. The lukewarm person has made a great many vows in the matter of religion in the course of his or her life--too many, in fact. It would have been better to have made fewer and kept some.
IV. Christs verdict on these stages of religious emotion. He regards it best to be hot, next best to be cold, worst of all to be lukewarm. Two or three reasons may be suggested.
1. There is, first, its unreality. Lukewarmness is a sort of imposture or sham. It is neither one thing nor another; and in a world that is sternly real, things and persons ought to have a definite character. Lukewarmness is the absence of character. It perplexes an outsider, and often imposes on a man himself.
2. Then it is useless. It has really no place in the order of things.
3. Further, it is a very impracticable state. You dont know how to deal with it.
4. Lastly, it is a dangerous state. It is more difficult to treat a man in a low fever than to treat a man who is sharply unwell. Lukewarmness tends not to get hotter, but to get colder. There is really more hope for s man who is cold outright. He is not blinding himself. He is not playing with truths. He knows he is cold. As a rule it is only when lukewarmness has died down into coldness that a change for the better comes. A man loses all, or almost all, religious life and interest, and then he starts to find himself thus dead, and turns in penitence and fear to Christ. (John F. Ewing, M. A.)
Lukewarmness in religion
I. The temper which our lord reproves in the Church of Laodicea.
1. They are lukewarm who are at no pains to guard against error, and to acquire just sentiments of religion.
2. They are lukewarm who, from worldly hopes or fears, detain in unrighteousness the truth they know, and who will not profess it openly.
3. They are lukewarm who give God the body, but withhold from Him the soul.
4. The inactivity of professed Christians is a strong proof that they are lukewarm.
5. Many discover their lukewarmness by the limitations within which they confine their obedience, or by the weakness of their religious affections, when compared with their affections to worldly objects.
6. They are lukewarm who are little affected with the advancement or the decay of religion, or with that which concerns the common welfare of mankind.
II. Why a lukewarm spirit so woefully prevails among many who profess to believe the religion of Jesus. Lukewarmness prevails through an evil heart of unbelief. Men imagine that they believe the threatenings of the law and the promises of the gospel, who have never considered either their interesting nature or their undoubted certainty. Strangers they must be to holy fervour of spirit who see not the beauty and glory, and who relish not the pleasures of religion; who talk of treasures in heaven, but view the treasures of this earth as more desirable; and who fondly cherish a secret hope that God will be less severe on transgressors than the language of His threatenings supposes. The want of religious principles, ill-founded and presumptuous hopes, and that lukewarmness which flows from both, are greatly promoted by bad education and by bad example. The ordinary commerce of the world completes the ruin which education had begun. The conversation and manners of those whom the young are taught to love, or whose superior age and wisdom they respect, completely pervert their ideas, their resolutions, and their conduct.
III. The folly, guilt, and danger of this lukewarm temper.
1. The lukewarm practically deny the excellence and the importance of religion.
2. A lukewarm religion answers no valuable purpose.
3. The temper and conduct of the lukewarm is peculiarly base and criminal.
(1) It argues the vilest ingratitude.
(2) It indicates hypocrisy.
(3) The man who is lukewarm disgraces the worthy name by which he is called.
4. The lukewarm are not reclaimed without great difficulty, and they are always waxing worse and worse, whether it is pride, or self-deceit, or gross hypocrisy which chiefly prevails in their characters.
5. Lukewarmness exposes men to the dreadful effects of Gods vengeance in temporal judgments, in spiritual plagues, and in eternal destruction. (John Erskine, D. D.)
Lukewarmness
No one can help admiring a straightforward, honourable course, and when the world says of a man that he is sitting on the fence, it is hardly considered as a compliment.
I. The first alarming symptom of the existence of lukewarmness is a growing inattention to the private duties of religion.
II. Another evidence of the encroachments of lukewarmness is carelessness in attending public worship.
III. A third symptom of lukewarmness, about which there can be no possible mistake is an indifference concerning the benevolent enterprises of the day, and scant offerings for their furtherance. The world has an eagle eye for anything inconsistent, and nothing disgusts it more than lukewarmness in those who claim to be followers of Christ. (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
Indifference
The besetting sin of that ancient Church of Asia was lukewarmness, half-hearted indifference. It is the besetting sin among us to-day. I dont care, are words more commonly spoken among us than, I dont believe. A careless, or idle, or even vicious boy at school may be reclaimed, but one who takes no interest in his work is a hopeless case. Look at some of the results of being indifferent about religion.
1. It makes our religion unreal. It is not the love of God which constrains us, but fashion, or custom. Our religion is like a spurious coin, good enough to look on, but when tried it does not ring true.
2. Next, indifference makes people ignorant of the teachings of the Church, they are often unacquainted with the very A B C of Christianity.
3. Again, this lukewarm indifference makes people selfish and idle. The idea of making any sacrifice for Christs sake is not in their thoughts.
4. But above all, this lukewarm indifference leads to a shallow view of sin. (H. J. Wilmot Buxton, M. A.)
Lukewarmness injurious to others
One lukewarm Christian may do untold harm to a whole Church. Pour a quantity of tepid water into a vessel that contains boiling water, and immediately the temperature of the whole will sink. Just so the contact of men who are indifferent with those who are fervid, deadens their fervour, and tends to reduce them to the same lukewarmness. (G. Bowes.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 14–22. The church in Laodicea. Laodicea was situated in…
14–22. The church in Laodicea. Laodicea was situated in the valley of the Lycus, near Colosse and Hierapolis. All three of these churches are named by Paul in the Colossian letter, and an epistle, now probably lost, was sent to Laodicea. The city of Laodicea was very proud of its wealth in the latter part of the first century, a fact we learn from profane history. The church was probably founded by Epaphras, a companion of Paul. The condemnation of the Lord in this epistle is severe, and its extinction is threatened. The site of the ancient city is uninhabited now, and of course the church has long since cease to exist. Saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness. See notes on 1:5; also on 2 Cor. 1:20. The beginning of the creation. The Being from which the creation begins, the Word that made all things.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Rev_3:14. Laodiceans.—The city of Laodicea was situated on the…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Rev_3:14. Laodiceans.—The city of Laodicea was situated on the banks of the Lycus, near Hierapolis and Colossæ. Archippus was possibly the angel of this Church, in the sense of being its chief pastor. Laodicea received its name from Laodice, wife of Antiochus, the second King of Syria, by whom it was re-built and beautified. Amen.—Here only used as a personal name. Faithful.—In the sense of trustworthy (see Rev_1:5). “Trench suggests the three things necessary to constitute a true witness. He must have been an eye-witness of what he relates, possess competence to relate what he has seen, and be willing to do so.” But the assertion is here made in view of the severity of the message sent to this Church. However searching and severe, it is assuredly faithful and true. Beginning of the creation.—See Col_1:15. This may mean, the first of a new spiritual creation, or the Author of creation—the material world being conceived of as due to the agency of the Divine Son; or the first created being; or the beginning (in the active sense) of the creation; i.e., the Creator of all things—primary source of all creation. The appropriateness of this declaration concerning Christ comes to view as we realise the special temptations of this Church to the worship of inferior divinities. “Like Colossæ, this Church was exposed to the risks of angelolatry, of the substitution of lower principalities and created mediators for Him who was head over all things to His Church.”
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Rev_3:15. Cold nor hot.—Plumptre suggests that it was specially exposed to the chilling and enervating influence of wealth. To passionate and intense natures there is nothing so irritating as the “superior” man who can always keep the happy medium, and never gets excited about anything. Wealthy people are especially tempted to take things easy, to take even their religion easy. “The term ‘hot’ denotes the temper of fervent love, a love that warms and animates the whole life, the temper, we must remember, of the apostle who records the message.” The term “cold” simply implies the absence of enthusiasm. “The tepid temperature has, as its physical effect, the sickening sense of nausea, and in its moral aspect causes, in most earnest minds, a loathing that is not roused by the state described as ‘cold.’ ”
Rev_3:17. Sayest.—In a spirit of blind self-confidence. Rich.—Lit. “I am rich, and have gotten riches.” The repetition implies satisfaction in the riches (Hos_12:8). Wretched.—The worst kind of hypocrites—hypocrites without knowing it. There is no more subtle peril than self-deception concerning our spiritual condition—the self-deception that comes of self-confidence.
Rev_3:18. Buy of me.—There is perhaps a touch of irony here. Gold tried.—Lit. “fresh burnt from the fire.” Eye-salve.—Collyrium was the common dressing for weak eyes.
Rev_3:19. Rebuke and chasten.—See Pro_3:11; Heb_12:5. Zealous.—Implying rousing themselves out of their careless, lukewarm temper.
Rev_3:20. Stand at the door.—Compare Son_5:2.
Rev_3:21. My throne.… His throne.—Both to be treated as figures. “The promise of sharing the throne is the climax of an ascending series of glorious promises, which carry the thought from the Garden of Eden (chap Rev_2:7) through the wilderness (Rev_3:17), the temple, (Rev_3:12) to the throne.” The conquerors in the strife are, “in some sense which we cannot as yet fathom, made partakers of the Divine Nature” (2Pe_1:4)—sharers in the holiness, the wisdom, the love, and therefore in the glory and the majesty, which have been from everlasting.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rev_3:14-22
A Self-Satisfied Church.—The city of Laodicea was situated between Philadelphia and Colossæ. It was either actually founded, or re-built, by Antiochus II., the King of Syria, and named after his wife, Laodĭcé. In St. John’s day it was celebrated for its wealth, which was derived chiefly from commerce. In the interest of the apostle Paul, the Church in Laodicea was associated with the Church in Colosse. Neither of those Churches, however, seem to have enjoyed his personal ministry, for writing to the Colossians he says, “For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” (Col_2:1). He refers to an earnest Christian work which one of His disciples, Epaphras, had done in Laodicea and the neighbouring towns, and the form in which he sends his message to Archippus suggests that this person was the angel, or minister, of the Church at Laodicea (Col_4:12-17). The tone of St. Paul’s references indicate considerable anxiety concerning the spiritual condition of the Church, and we can well understand that, under the enervating influence of increasing wealth, the evils that he noticed and feared grew into perilous strength in the latter days of St. John, and gave occasion to the most cutting and reproachful of the seven epistles. The key-note to the moral condition of this Church is found in its wealth. It was not disturbed by heresies, or broken up by persecutions. Its members were in comfortable circumstances. The services could be maintained without strain, there was nobody in the Church of a contentious disposition to disturb the peace, so they had drifted into an easy going way, and satisfied themselves with simply keeping things up to a fair average level. Their full strength went into their weekly money-getting, and they got through their Sabbath obligations and duties as respectably and as easily as they could. It would be very possible to find an instance of just such a Church in these days of ours; for Laodicea is a type, and a type as distinct as either of the others to which attention has been drawn. It is full of suggestion to us that the Living Christ, moving to and fro among the Churches, is arrested by the actual condition of this apparently prosperous Church. It reminds us that He who has the seven Spirits of God is never deceived by the appearance of prosperity in a Church, but searchingly estimates its tone, and mood, and temper, and may thus discover and reveal a condition of things which will altogether surprise the members of the Church, who may expect commendation, and have to receive severe reproaches and warnings. We have seen that some particular feature of the vision of the Risen and Living One is taken, in order to point the application to each Church. Here He who walketh among the candlesticks is figured as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.” Amen is not elsewhere used as a personal name. It means, “verily,” and is the firm assertion that a thing is true, and so it can be made a proper name, and stand for Him who is the truth. The word the Living One had to speak to this Church would surprise and humiliate it. And the very first response that the Church would make, when it received the message, would be this: “It is not true; it cannot be true.” The very possibility of such a response must be anticipated, and guarded against, so the epistle begins with the solemn declaration that it comes from Him who is the absolute and indisputable truth, the “Amen, the faithful and true witness.” Dean Plumptre thinks that the words “faithful and true witness” should be regarded simply as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word “amen.” It affirms the competency of the Living One to make this testimony, seeing that He combines in Himself all those qualifications which a witness ought to possess. The other form in which the Living One is presented is more difficult to explain. “The beginning of the creation of God.” It is probably the solemn assertion of His absolute and perfect knowledge of all things, from the very beginning. From Him nothing is hid. Effort has been made to explain this term by comparing it with the figures found in the epistle to the Colossians—“First-born of every creature,” “first-born from the dead”—and by assuming that the Laodicean Church was exposed to the temptation of worshipping inferior principalities. But this is to bring in a set of new ideas, unrelated to the point of the Divine message. He who is truth, sees truly, and witnesses truly, has something to say to which this Church is bound to give good heed, however it may surprise and distress them.
I. And what is the message?—
1. It is a searching revelation of the Church’s unrecognised weaknesses. And the first thing noticed is its listless indifference. It was lukewarm about everything. It was dying, as Churches can die, of moderation and respectability. It might, in its apparently sound and safe prosperity, be the envy of other Churches. Its very evenness, its persistently keeping at a dead level, was a supreme offence to Christ. Nobody in the Church brought any disgrace upon the Christian name, but nobody brought any particular honour upon the Christian name. The Church did not make the holy and inspiring witness of consistency in keeping at a high level of Christian attainment and service. It was simply easyful, indifferent, content to go on, aiming at nothing and doing nothing. The “lukewarm are neither earnest for God, nor utterly indifferent to religion. They are perhaps best described as those who take an interest in religion, but whose worship of their idol of good taste, or good form, leads them to regard enthusiasm as ill-bred and disturbing; and who have never put themselves to any inconvenience, braved any reproach, or abandoned any comfort, for Christ’s sake, but hoped to keep well with the world, while they flattered themselves that they stood well with God.” Such a state of lukewarmness is unreal and sickly, and yet thinks that it is a true and healthy state. Carlyle calls it “the hypocrisy which does not know itself to be hypocritical.”
2. But the Living Christ, in searching this Church, does not stop even with thus showing the fact of its condition. He reveals the root of the evil, in the spirit of self-satisfaction which has gained power in the Church, and has eaten out its heart of love and zeal for Christ. “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing.” Dean Plumptre says: “The underlying grounds of the condemnation, the secret working of this tepidity of the soul, are brought before us in these words. It is clear that the imagined wealth here is that of spiritual, not temporal, riches. In regard to the latter, the boast would probably have been true, and would have called for no such stern contrast. And yet it is not the less true that it was the possession of the riches of this world that made the Laodicean angel and his Church so satisfied that they had the riches of the other. They took the ‘unrighteous mammon,’ not only as a substitute for the ‘true riches,’ but almost as a proof that they possessed them. Outward ease and comfort took the place of inward peace; prosperity was thought a sure sign of Divine approval. We cannot read the history of the Church of Christ, or look around us, or retrace our own experience, without feeling that it has often been so, both with Churches and individual men. Lethargy creeps over them; love is no longer active; material success, multiplied endowments, the power of giving money as the one embodiment of love to God or man—these have been the precursors of decline and of decay.” The man who is in a comfortable and well-satisfied frame of mind, because all his material wants are thoroughly provided for, can seldom be brought to believe that his spiritual state can possibly be wrong. And it is precisely the same with a Church that experiences years of steady and unbroken prosperity; it becomes so hopelessly satisfied with its spiritual state, that it resents even the searching appeals of the ever-living Head of the Church. And there is no condition for the individual and for the Church so dangerous as that self-satisfied frame of mind. In spiritual things it has need of nothing. Its spiritual state is quite satisfactory to itself, and unless that self-satisfaction can be broken up, and the truth of its spiritual condition revealed to it, that self-satisfaction will surely bring its doom.
3. With an almost withering severity, the Living Christ declares that the self-satisfaction the Church was nourishing as to its spiritual state was but a sign of its moral blindness. If they could see facts, they would see that, as a Church, they were “poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. They were not even, as they assumed, keeping to a fair spiritual level. They had sunk low: they had lost tone. They thought themselves rich, but where were their spiritual riches? Could they show them when called upon to do so? Where were their spiritual garments? Could they appear clothed in them when called upon to do so? The Living Christ suddenly calls upon them to bring forth the signs of their spiritual life. They can find none, and now their blindness is forcibly removed, and they are compelled to appear before Him as they are, and to see themselves as they are, poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. What a humiliation!” The sin of this Church came out of its being too comfortable. It was not serious enough about anything. And this is often the secret of self-centredness. It satisfies a man with his narrow circle of interests—which, like the famous chamber-prison of fable, is ever narrowing and narrowing, until at last it crushes all life worth living out of the man.
II. And what is the advice given by the Risen and Living Lord?—“I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.” Precisely the work for the sake of which the Living Christ is ever moving among the Churches is the rehabilitation of the spiritual life of the Churches. The condition of this Church was bad, but it was not hopeless. Something could be done. Provision for the recovery of position, and health, and spiritual tone, were at command. That provision can be supplied only by the Church’s awaking from her lethargy, beginning really to care for its spiritual condition, mourning over the condition into which it had allowed itself to drift, and making fresh, direct, personal applications to her Lord for reviving and restoring grace. In his “Holy War” Bunyan pictures Mansoul awakened to recognise the Laodicean state into which it had fallen, filled with zealous anxiety, and sending messengers, with pleading entreaties, to her absent Emmanuel. “Buy of Me,” as only we can buy of Christ; with penitence, and zeal, and prayer, and holy yearnings, but without money and without price. “The gold” which Christ will thus “sell” to him who seeks it—the treasure of holiness, and peace, and joy—is that which has been “tried in the fire”; and this, as in all like cases, implies chastisement and suffering. The “white garments” that hide the shame of nakedness, the true holiness of life which alone prevents the exposure of that “inner vileness” of which even the saints of God are ever painfully conscious, are those which have been made white in the blood of Christ, which symbolises suffering. The “eye-salve” which gives clearness of vision, does so, not without the pricking smart that clears away the blinding or beclouding humours. And the counsel is urged by this gracious persuasion; the Living One who rebukes them, loves them, and rebukes them because He loves them. For love can never let sin alone when it finds sin in the objects of its love. And the love that rebukes will not stop with rebuke; it will go on to chastening, it will be followed by discipline that may secure full deliverance from the sin. The very familiar Rev_3:20 receives its proper explanation only by observing its insertion at this precise point of the epistle. It is usual to sever it entirely from its connection, and to regard it a figure of Christ’s seeking admission to the human heart. And that may be justifiable, but it was not in the mind of this writer, nor does it bear direct relation to the subject of this epistle. In Holman Hunt’s suggestive picture, “The Light of the World” is represented as an august person, artistically and symbolically arrayed, standing with a lamp in his hands under a midnight sky, on the outside of a walled enclosure, the entrance-gate of which is barred. He stands as one who has knocked over and over again, and received no answer; and you observe that the wild vine and bramble have grown over the gate, showing how long and resolutely it has been closed. But in this epistle the Christ is the Living White One standing at the door of a Church. He has come to deliver His searching and arousing rebukes. He stands, as it were, outside to deliver His rebuke; and now He waits—“stands at the door and knocks”—waits to see if the Church will respond aright, and give Him welcome to do His cleansing and reviving work. He will not at once begin His chastenings. They must come if the Church does not fittingly respond to reproof and rebuke. But He will wait—hopefully wait. “Judgment is His strange work, mercy is His delight.” He would so much rather work the recovery of the Church with its will than against it. But there is a very remarkable change in the appeal of Christ as He stands waiting. His rebuke and counsel had been sent to the Church. His appeal is directly addressed to each and every individual member of the Church. “If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and He with Me.” The responsibility of rightly answering the reproof of Christ is made to rest on each single person. It could easily be shifted off, and made to appear the general duty of the Church. Christ demands that it shall be the direct answer of each man. The recovery of a lethargic and lukewarm Church is the recovery of its individuals, one by one. The promise to the overcoming soul and overcoming Church is the full enjoyment of the highest spiritual privilege, the privilege that can only be enjoyed by the most spiritually-minded. “I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne; as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Rev_3:14. Laodicea.—A Church of which the state is described in the darkest colours, and whose future seems to be compromised. She is threatened with immediate rejection—“Spue thee out of My mouth.” There is here mote than an expression of indignation; it is one of disgust. Laodicea has fallen as low as a Church can fall, while still bearing the name of a Church.—F. Godet, D.D.
Rev_3:15. Hot.—The heat commended by implication is not the “self-conscious, galvanised earnestness which, in days of senile pietism, passes for zeal. It is an earnestness which does not know itself earnest, being all too absorbed in its work. It is self-forgetful, and so self-sacrificing, rather than ambitious of self-sacrifice. It is, in short, kindled of God, and sustained by converse with the Divine One.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
Rev_3:17. Self-deception.—Why should a man repent of his goodness? He may well repent, indeed, of his falsehood, but unhappily the falsehood of it is just the thing he does not see, and cannot see by the very law of his character. The Pharisee did not know he was a Pharisee. If he had known it he would not have been a Pharisee. The victim of passion, then, may be converted—the gay, the thoughtless, or the ambitious; he whom human glory has intoxicated; he whom the show of life has ensnared; he whom the pleasures of sense have captivated;—they may be converted, every one of them; but who is to convert the hypocrite? He does not know he is a hypocrite; he cannot, upon the very basis of his character; he must think himself sincere; and the more he is in the shackles of his own character, i.e., the greater hypocrite he is, the more sincere must he think himself.—Mozley.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Rev_3:14. Laodicea.—This city was originally called Diospolis, and afterwards Rhoas. It was re-built and beautified by Antiochus II., King of Syria, and named after his wife Laodicé, by whom he was subsequently poisoned. In Roman times it was a very principal city among those of the second rank in Asia Minor. It suffered in the Mithridatic war, but ere long recovered; it was also well-nigh destroyed by a great earthquake, A.D. 62, but was repaired by the efforts of its own citizens, who asked no help from the Roman Senate. Laodicea was in Southern Phrygia, called Phrygia Pacatiana, not far from Colossæ, and about six miles south of Hierapolis. It was distinguished from other cities of the same name by being termed Laodicea on the Lycus. Its commerce was considerable, being principally in the wools grown in the neighbouring district, which were celebrated for their fine texture and rich hue. A village, called Eski-hissar, stands amidst its ruins.
Rev_3:19. God’s Love in Affliction.—It is rerelated that a poor but worthy inhabitant of Paris once went to the bishop of the place, with a countenance beclouded and a heart almost overwhelmed. “Father,” said he, with the most profound humility, “I am a sinner—I feel that I am a sinner—but it is against my will. Every hour I ask for light, and humbly pray for faith, but still I am overwhelmed with doubts. Surely if I were not despised of God He would not leave me to struggle thus with the adversary of souls!” The bishop thus consoled, with the language of kindness, his sorrowing son: “The king of France has two castles in different situations, and sends a commander to each of them. The castle of Montelberry stands in a place remote from danger, far inland; but the castle of La Rochelle is on the coast, where it is liable to continual sieges. Now, which of the two commanders, think you, stands the highest in the estimation of the king: the commander of La Rochelle, or he of Montelberry?” “Doubtless,” said the poor man, “the king values him the most who has the hardest task, and braves the greatest dangers.” “Thou art right,” replied the bishop. “And now apply this matter to thy case and mine, for my heart is like the castle of Monielberry, and thine like that of La Rochelle.”
Rev_3:20. Christ at the Door.—The love of Christ has to come to sinful men with patient pleading and remonstrance, that it may enter their hearts and give its blessings. Some of you may remember a modern work of art in which that long-suffering appeal is wonderfully portrayed. He who is the Light of the world stands, girded with the royal mantle clasped with the priestly breast-plate, bearing in his hand the lamp of truth, and there, amidst the dew of night and the rank hemlock, He pleads for entrance at the closed door which has no handle on its outer side, and is hinged to open only from within. “I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.
Knocking at Doors.—The gates of the rich and the doors of the caravanserais and other large buildings have a knocker made of a bent bar of iron hung by a hinge, so as to strike upon a broad-headed nail. Otherwise there is always a ring set in the door, by which it is pulled to, and this is used as a knocker by striking it against the door with the open palm. Officers of justice rap on the doors with the ends of their staves of office, and some people, impatient of delay, try to make more noise by striking the door with a stone. The sleep of Orientals is proverbially heavy, and loud and repeated knockings at doors are sometimes heard at the dead of night, accompanied by the reiterated shouts of some belated traveller.—Van Lennep.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The letter to the congregation at Laodicea:
The letter to the congregation at Laodicea:
v. 14. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God:
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v. 15. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot.
v. 16. So, then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of My mouth;
v. 17. because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
v. 18. I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see.
v. 19. As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent.
v. 20. Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
v. 21. To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with My Father in His throne.
v. 22. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
The congregation had been in existence at the time when Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians, for he stated that he had a great conflict also for the Christians at Laodicea, Col 2:1; Col 4:15-17. Apparently there was even greater reason for apprehension at this time, to judge from the general tone of this letter. The very introduction places the faithful and true Christ in strong opposition to the unstable and vacillating Christians of this Phrygian town: And to the angel of the congregation at Laodicea write: These things says Amen, the Witness faithful and true, the Beginning of God’s creation. It was a sad, almost disagreeable task which devolved upon the pastor of the Laodicean congregation, especially since the blame for the conditions in that city fell upon him. It was Amen that was speaking, a word which He Himself explains by stating that He is the true and faithful Witness, that every word which He utters is the eternal truth, that He does not recede from His position or change His mind like a vacillating weakling. He Himself is the Beginning of God’s creation, the active Source of God’s universe, the Creator of all things, almighty as well as omniscient, Joh 1:3.
It is a sentence of divine disgust over lukewarm religion which the Lord utters: I know thy works, that neither cold thou art nor hot; would that cold thou wert or hot; so, because thou art tepid, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit thee out of My mouth. The omniscient Lord, familiar with all their hearts and minds, knew also all their doings, their attitude toward the Christian faith and all their customs and habits. They were not cold, they were not outspoken unbelievers, they did not range themselves on the side of the enemies of the Cross and of the Gospel, they were not of the party of the blasphemers. But, unfortunately, neither were they warm or hot; they did not possess that energetic warmth of religious life, of fervent faith and love, they had none of the warm zeal which breaks forth in holy wrath over the ungodly attitude of their day and age. Even a frank enmity against the Christian religion is more promising in a person than the luke-warmness and spiritual indifference which these people showed. It would have been better for them never to have come to the knowledge of the divine doctrine than to have come to this knowledge and not to be filled with spiritual zeal, 2Pe 2:21. Their attitude fills the Lord with supreme disgust, with unspeakable loathing; it acts upon Him literally as an emetic, He is constrained to vomit them out of His mouth. That is the judgment of the Lord upon all such as are not seriously concerned about their Christianity, that still profess to be Christians, usually from some ulterior motive, and yet will not oppose the godless ways of the world. They want to mediate between Jehovah and Baal, between God and the world, between Christ and Belial, between light and darkness, between faith and unbelief, between righteousness and unrighteousness. Such people the Lord cannot bear, and unless they change their tactics very decidedly, His disgusted attitude will result in their punishment, in their being excluded from the blessings of the Kingdom.
The Lord adds a further characterization of lukewarm behavior in the Christian Church: Thou sayest, Rich I am, and abundance I possess, and of nothing I stand in need, and thou knowest not that thou art miserable and pitiful and poor and blind and naked. Self-sufficiency, self-satisfaction, is an attribute of lukewarm Christians. They are convinced of the perfection of their own Christianity and are careful to let everyone else know of the good opinion which they hold of themselves. They imagine that they are rich in all spiritual truth and knowledge; they claim that they are filled to satiety with the old Gospel doctrine, and that no one can teach them anything. See Hos 12:9. The talk which is heard from Christians of this type in our day often agrees word for word with what is here recorded. People are turning up their noses in disgust at the old Gospel-truth; the doctrines of the Catechism are beneath their dignity. But they deceive themselves. They are afflicted with blindness, and do not know it; they are in need of sympathy, and do not feel it; rich they claim to be, but in reality are poor beyond conception; they think their eyes have been opened, whereas in reality they have returned to the spiritual blindness of their state before conversion; they are proud of their dress of self-righteousness, and do not know that in the sight of God they are bare and naked.
Warningly, therefore, the Lord calls out to them: I advise thee earnestly to buy from Me gold tried by fire that thou mayest be rich, and white garments to clothe thee, lest the shame of thy nakedness appear, and salve to anoint thine eyes that thou mayest see. Here the earnest love of the Savior even for those that do not realize their own defects appears, He, in whom is the Spirit of counsel and of understanding, is so concerned about their soul’s salvation that He earnestly and urgently advises them to buy from Him wares tried and true. The gold which has been tried by fire is true, sound faith, 1Pe 1:7, such faith as stands the test of persecutions and tribulations as well as that of peace and quietness. The white garments that will cover the nakedness of men is that of Christ’s righteousness, which is imputed to everyone that believes. And the salve is the illumination of the Holy Ghost, which is needed above all to bring men to the knowledge of their real spiritual condition. These wonderful gifts are not obtained by any man by his own reason or strength; the price which man pays for them is not one of his own merit. The buying of which the Lord speaks is that which He brings out in that wonderful passage: "Ho, every one that thirsts, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. " It is all free, wonderful love and mercy on the part of God.
The Lord follows up His warning with a powerful appeal: As for Me, as many as I love I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous, then, and repent. Here Christ places His own person and work into the foreground and emphasizes His disinterested love for even such as have proved themselves unworthy of His love. It is this love which causes the Lord to be instant in reprimanding, and even in inflicting painful punishments, His object being to restore the lukewarm to the former loyalty. They should return to the habit of a true zeal for Him and for His work; they should repent at once and once for all of their indifference and inconsistency. In this way the Lord at all times lets the congregation feel the warmth and the eagerness of His love, in order that at least some Christians be kindled to new spiritual life.
The Lord now adds a very general invitation: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will hear My voice and open the door, I shall enter in to him and hold the feast with him and he with Me. The time of mercy is still at hand, the Gospel is still being preached. The coming of the Lord is near, however. Many events, many happenings in Church and State are intended to remind us of the fact and of the nearness of His return. Upon US devolves the supreme necessity of hearing His voice, of heeding the Word of His Gospel and of His will that all men come to the knowledge of the truth. If we thus heed His knocking and obey His voice, then He will enter into our hearts and make His abode with us, hold the feast of His everlasting grace with us, feed us with the heavenly manna of His body, and let us drink of the river of heavenly pleasures forevermore.
He repeats this thought for the sake of emphasis: He that conquers, I shall give him to sit with Me on My throne, just as I conquered and sat with My Father on His throne. He that has conquered and overcome, everyone who here in time renounced all those things which are opposed to Christ, will in yonder world take part in the glory and triumph of Christ, will rule and govern with Him with divine honor, glory, and bliss, world without end. That is what happened to Christ in His exaltation, and that is the reward which awaits those that are faithful to the end, to share the throne of God, the heavenly Father, and of the Lamb which was slain for them. They will enjoy the most intimate, the most blessed fellowship with God and with Christ to all eternity. And again the call of the Lord, inviting, appealing, sounds forth: He that has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the congregations!
Summary
The Lord addresses letters to the congregations at Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea, commending them wherein they were faithful, but reprimanding all defilement and all luke-warmness in the strongest terms.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
General Information:
This is the beginning of the Son of Man's message to the angel of the church in Laodicea.
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Laodicea
This is the name of a city in the western part of Asia that today is modern Turkey. See how you translated this in Revelation 1:11. (See: How to Translate Names)
The words of the Amen
Here "the Amen" is a name for Jesus Christ. He guarantees God's promises by saying amen to them.
the ruler over God's creation
Possible meanings are 1) "the one who rules over everything that God created" or 2) "the one through whom God created everything."
you are neither cold nor hot
The writer speaks of the Laodiceans as if they were water. Possible meanings are 1) "cold" and hot" represent two extremes of spiritual interest or love for God, where "cold" is to be completely against God, and to be "hot" is to be zealous to serve him, or 2) "cold" and "hot" both refer to water that is useful for drinking or for cooking or healing, respectively. AT: "you are like water that is neither cold nor hot" (See: Metaphor)
you are lukewarm
"you are slightly warm." The writer speaks of the Laodiceans as if they were water that is not cool enough to refresh those who drink it, but not warm enough to cook with or to heal those who bathe in it. Possible meanings are 1) this describes people who have only a small amount of spiritual interest or conviction or 2) this describes people for whom God has no use. (See: Metaphor)
I am about to vomit you out of my mouth
Rejecting them is spoken of as vomiting them out of the mouth. AT: "I will reject you as I would spit out lukewarm water" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
angel
church
true
testimony
rule
God
create
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:14-22 The letter to the church in Laodicea castigates…
3:14-22 The letter to the church in Laodicea castigates lukewarm Christians whose inconsistent lives stand for nothing but themselves. They sicken Christ to the point of his spitting them from his mouth.
3:14 Laodicea, situated 40 miles (65 kilometers) southeast of Philadelphia, was the economic and judicial center of a metropolitan region that included Colosse and Hierapolis. The citizens of Laodicea were very proud of their self-sufficiency. After a severe earthquake (AD 60), Laodicea refused aid from Rome and rebuilt their city themselves (Tacitus, Annals 14.27), making it very beautiful. • the Amen: Used as an oath, “Amen” is a promise of truth (Isa 65:16). Jesus is the truth (John 8:32; 14:6), and his message is authenticated by the truthfulness and reliability of his word. • The description of Christ as the faithful and true witness declares that he knew them as they really were: Though wealthy and proud of their status and accomplishments, they were not measuring up to God’s expectations.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.