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Jesus’ Message to the Church in Laodicea

Introduction

Lora and I have a good relationship of mutual trust. But sometimes she just does not seem to trust me as well as she trusts others. For example, if she is wondering about some decision—either a dress or a product to try out, or whether something will work well in the garden—she will often ask me my opinion. A lot of times I have good opinions. And so, I will give her my opinion. But then I can see the doubt in her face. She is not quite sure I know what I’m talking about. I do not blame her if that happens to refer to clothes because many times, I do not know what I’m talking about.

The funniest thing is when I hear that later she had a conversation with a friend, a doctor, or her mother. And she comes to me and gives me their opinion on her dilemma which convinces her of that course to take. And you know what? Many times, that opinion is the exact opinion I had given her days before. It could be an important issue to me. I could think, “Am I not sufficient enough?” “Doesn’t she trust me? Are my opinions not good enough? Do they not rank with those people?” In matters where my opinion really is not that important, I realize that she is going to a better source anyway, so I’ll give my opinion and see if my opinion matches the other person’s opinion. And if so, I can quietly do a high five to myself.

Imagine how offensive we are to Jesus, however, when we live our lives with no concern with his opinion. This does not concern temporal matters of what to wear and how to plant our flowers. This concerns matters of the soul, matters of holiness and lifestyle. Imagine how offended Jesus is when we do not act like we need him in our lives? In living for Jesus, and in working for Jesus, there is no other one we need but Jesus. Unfortunately, we are so prone to forget him or get used to doing things without him, that we eventually almost completely leave him out of our decision processes. This was the problem in the congregation in Laodicea.

Exposition

Laodicea was forty miles southeast from Philadelphia. It was named after the wife of Antiochus, Laodice. It was the wealthiest city in the Phrygian region, known for its black wool industry, banking industry, and medical school. One of the most famous ointments made was an eye salve made from Phrygian powder mixed with oil.143 The city was so wealthy that after it experienced a significant earthquake that destroyed the city in 60 A.D., it rebuilt itself without outside help from the Roman government.144 The main weakness of the city was its lack of water. Because of that, an aqua-duct system was built to bring water into the city. Water was retrieved from the hot springs that came from the city of Hierapolis and from the cold springs of Colossae.

In verse 14 Jesus is identified as the Amen, the Faithful Witness, the Truth, and the Ruler of God’s creation—there is authority and truth and judgment. His word is final. There is no other witness higher than Jesus. There is no opinion that is more worthy of query. Isaiah 65:16 says, “So that he who blesses himself in the land shall bless himself by the God of truth, and he who takes an oath in the land shall swear by the God of truth.”145 This verse could be understood as the God of the Amen. Jesus is the Amen. What he says will happen. In the Old Testament, “amen” is primarily an acknowledgement of that which is valid and binding. In referring to Jesus, it would mean the One in whom perfect conformity to reality is exemplified. Jesus made this claim in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” All truth and true reality are found in Jesus. What the world needs today is someone to trust. We have tried programs and policies, but they have failed. But Christ never fails. He is as good as an “Amen.” His “yes” means yes. The name, Amen,” applied to Christ, guarantees the truthfulness and reliability of his words.146

Jesus is also the faithful and true witness, that which puts him in stark contrast to the character of the Laodicean church. But he is also the ruler of God’s creation. Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” Surely this is enough to convince us that our sufficiency can only be found in Jesus, the “Amen,” the end of all things, the perfect and faithful Witness, the very Creator. The word ἡ ἀρχὴ (he arche) can be translated “beginning” or “ruler.” Implicit in the idea is inauguration, supremacy over, and temporal priority.147 All creation was begun by him, for him, and in him. Because of his resurrection, Jesus is the inauguration of and Sovereign over the new creation.148

Jesus considered the Laodicean church lukewarm, neither hot, nor cold. That is his primary criticism of the church body. Hierapolis was famous for its hot springs, used medically. These springs rose within the city, flowed across a wide plateau and spilled over the cliff directly opposite Laodicea. The cliff was about 300 feet high and encrusted with white calcium carbonate. As the hot, mineral-rich water traveled across the plateau, it gradually became lukewarm before spilling over the edge. You get a picture of sickly, insipid water seeping over slimy rock, which the unsuspecting visitor drank only to spit up on the ground. In contrast to the hot springs of Hierapolis were the cold, refreshing and pure waters of Colossae. By the time these flowed down toward Laodicea, these waters were also tepid or lukewarm and good for nothing.149

Again, Jesus called the Laodicean church lukewarm. The word for lukewarm is χλιαρὸς (chliaros). That meant that they were filled with disease and bacteria. They were neither hot nor cold. He wanted them to be useful for his kingdom, but instead they were good for nothing except to be spit out. Jesus’ desire was that they would be either useful for healing or useful for refreshing, one or the other. But they were neither. Their purpose and ministry and usefulness in the kingdom were gone. This made the church distasteful to the Lord.

We don’t need to investigate too many churches in the world to see that there are many churches very much like Laodicea. Many churches have ceased being useful vessels in the hand of the Lord, and he is about to spit them out of his mouth. He wants us to be cold waters of refreshment to the spiritually weary. Those who are burdened with life need the cup of cold water of encouragement from the church—the cold waters of the grace of God and mercies of Jesus. Instead, they often receive more burdens, more guilt, and more religion. Those who are thirsty for God must be able to find God among God’s people. There is no other place to look. The reason Western Europe is spiritually dead now is because the Christian churches in Western Europe stopped relying on Jesus for their sufficiency, began to call into question the Word of God, began to doubt the supremacy of Jesus, and when the starving and the thirsty unbeliever looked to the church for a cold drink of water, they found the well empty.

Jesus wants his church to be hot healing waters to the spiritually sick or dead. The Gospel is for the sick. Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but the sinner to repentance.”150 The church must be a clinic, a healing station for the spiritually sick around us. Unfortunately, many churches have turned into funeral homes themselves, and the sick do not go into funeral parlors seeking life. They need hospitals. Jesus wants us to be hot, healing waters, but again, the source of healing is found in Jesus, and in a proper understanding of who he is.

I gave an assignment one semester at the University of Toledo where the students had to go to churches in the area before and after Thanksgiving Day to evaluate how those churches celebrated or recognized Thanksgiving. The responses in their papers and as they shared their experiences in class was sad to hear. Many of these students had not been in church for many years, some of them never. And the stories they told revealed how sick some of the churches themselves were. One young man, who had a long ponytail, and wore an army jacket, said that no one talked to him. He really felt like an outsider. Another mentioned how catty and gossipy the choir ladies were before they went up to sing.

How can the sick find spiritual healing among the sick? Does this mean that the church today must be perfect, and everyone in the church spiritual giants? No. But the church is a hospital, and hopefully hospitals are places people go to find healing. There should be many sick people there, and we should all be in process of getting healthier, not sicker or more stagnant.

From the perspective of the Laodicean church, there was no problem. They were very wealthy. Material wealth had clouded their spirituality. The wealth source in Laodicea would have been clothes, healing balm for the eyes, and precious metals. They had these, but they did not have the spiritual wealth from Jesus. And from his perspective they were wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked, like a homeless infant in the middle of a dirty sewer-filled city street. Mounce accurately paints the problem by writing, “Their pretentious claim was not only that they were rich but that they had achieved it on their own.”151

Woe to the church if it ever thinks that it has attained completeness in its life and ministry so that they do not any longer need the sufficiency and help of Jesus. There is never a level of righteousness that we can attain where we can say that we have done it on our own. As soon as we begin to strive after internal righteousness without Christ, we will find ourselves on a path toward spiritual ruin and hypocrisy.

By his grace, Jesus exhorted the church to seek true riches, riches that have their source in him. Those true riches are gold refined in the fire so they can be truly wealthy—faith and perseverance. This is what makes us truly rich, not the worldly riches of a big house, fancy clothes, and gold rings; but the fiery furnace where we are melted into an eternal blaze of holiness in service to the Lord. In Job 23:10, Job said, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”152

Jesus also exhorted the church to seek after white garments to cover their shamefulness. In a land rich from textiles, Jesus knew what they needed—the righteousness of Christ. The shameful nakedness of Israel was pointed out in Isaiah 43:3, Ezekiel 16:36 and 23:29, and Nahum 3:5 in the context of idolatry. This possibly means that the Laodicean church was caught up in idolatrous practices as well. In fact, any time we prioritize something or someone other as more important than Jesus we are committing idolatry. In God’s sight, we are properly clothed only when we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

Lastly, Jesus exhorted them to buy salve for their spiritual blindness. Regardless of their medical schools, they were blind where it counted—spiritually. Second Corinthians 5:7 says, “For we walk by faith, not be sight.” Unfortunately, for many churches around the world, it has become so easy to walk by sight, because we have the money, the doctors, and the clothes. We can claim sufficiency in our material resources more than others. But are we wealthy where it counts—in our hearts, in our love for Jesus, in our reliance on him?

Jesus called the church to repentance and to earnestness—to come to Jesus in repentance and then zealously continue in him as a daily practice. God disciplines those he loves. When we go through the refining fires of trial, it is because God loves us and knows that on the other end of the trial, we will be truly wealthy. Has the church been lukewarm, good for nothing in Christ’s kingdom, rather than hot or cold? We know that real spiritual fulfillment cannot be found there. It must be found in Jesus. That is why he invites the church to fellowship with him on a deeper and more intimate level.

It is interesting that the One who has a key to the door, as in Philadelphia, willingly stands at the door and waits to be let in. This is not a call to salvation, but to a greater level of fellowship.153 Jesus stands at the door and knocks. He wants us to open the door of our stubborn hearts and allow him to give us his wealth and his riches—the wealth of sweet fellowship with him. He will dine with us and we with him. Osborne views this as a foretaste of the final messianic banquet (see Revelation 19:6–9; Luke 13:29; 22:29–30), saying, “The depth of sharing with Christ attained through spiritual growth of this kind anticipates the total unity to be achieved with God and Christ in eternity.”154

Conclusion

In most Asian cultures, the sharing of a common meal indicated a strong bond of affection and companionship. Jesus offers us that increased bond, that intimacy with him. What an act of unbelievable condescension by Christ! He actually requests permission to enter and re-establish fellowship, a fellowship that is broken off by our self-sufficiency and pride. He does not break the door down. He does not force his way in or go through the window. He waits for us to answer the door. He waits for us to open it. And not only is this just an invitation to fellowship with a dear Friend, it is an invitation to rule with the King.

What will Jesus find of us? Will he find us hot or cold, useful for his kingdom? Will he find us seeking after the wealth of righteousness rather than the wealth of the world, which corrupts and will fade away? Will he find us finding our fulfillment solely in him?

Bryan Chapell tells a story in his book, Holiness by Grace, about his wife and kids. He writes,

Several years ago my wife, Kathy, and a friend gathered up the kids and made a trip to the St. Louis Zoo. A new attraction had just opened called “Big Cat Country,” which took the lions and tigers out of their cages and allowed them to roam in large enclosures. Visitors observed the cats by walking on elevated skyways above the habitats. As my wife and her friend took the children up one of the skyway ramps, a blanket became entangled in the wheel of the friend’s stroller. Kathy knelt to help untangle the wheel while our boys—ages three and five—went ahead. When next she looked up, Kathy discovered that the boys had innocently walked right through a child-sized gap in the fencing and had climbed up on the rocks some twenty feet above the lion pen. They had been told that they would be able to look down on the lions, and they were doing just that from their hazardous vantage point. Pointing to the lions below, they called back to their mother, ‘Hey, Mom, we can see them.’ They had no concept of how much danger they were in. Kathy saw immediately. But now what could she do? If she screamed, she might startle the boys perched precariously above the lions. The gap in the fence was too small for her to get through. So she knelt down, spread out her arms, and said, ‘Boys, come get a hug.’ They came running for the love that saved them from danger greater than they perceived. 155

When the church loses its focus of Christ being its sufficiency, of Christ being the only protection, the church is living life very dangerously. Jesus is knocking at the door. Like the mother who spread out her arms to her boys, Jesus is knocking and hoping we will answer, and get out of the danger into his safe arms. The church must answer the door!

143. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, 122.

144. Aune, Revelation 1–5, 249.

145. See also Isaiah 43:10–12. Isaiah 65:16 and Revelation 3:14 are the only two passages where “Amen” is a name. See Beale, The Book of Revelation, 299.

146. Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John, 65.

147. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 301. Osborne (Osborne, Revelation, 205) also believes that arche should be understood here as “source” or “origin.”

148. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 298.

149. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, 123.

150. Luke 5:31.

151. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, 126.

152. See also Proverbs 27:21, Malachi 3:2–3, and Zechariah13:9.

153. Cf. Johnson, Hebrews through Revelation, 459, who believes that the invitation of Jesus is more evangelistic than admonitory because the Laodiceans were not really Christians. After all, Jesus was going to spit them from his mouth. I think, however, that Jesus is speaking to the church in general, as a church body, rather than to individuals in the church. Certainly, there were some who truly believed in him.

154. Osborne, Revelation, 213.

155. Chapell, Holiness by Grace: Delighting in the Joy that is our Strength, 107.