The Seven Churches of Revelation
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Laodicea: Self-Reliance Leaves Us Worthless
Stability.
That’s the dream, isn’t it? To reach a point in our lives where we feel secure—firmly rooted, financially stable, equipped to face the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Imagine reaching that point. Imagine feeling good about the routines and habits you’ve established. Imagine feeling like you’re in a good place both spiritually and physically—and then discovering a letter from Jesus Christ in your mailbox.
There are no compliments in this letter. No words of praise or commendation. In fact, Jesus has nothing positive to say about you at all. As you read through His words, this seems to be the gist of His overall message:
You are failing in every imaginable way.
You don’t see that, of course. You’re so blinded with self-deception that you can’t see the wretched, pitiful state you’re existing in.
The way you live makes Me feel sick. I love you, so I urge you to make some drastic changes now.
The hardest thing about that letter would probably be believing it. Everything about it flies in the face of your own experience. Wretched? Pitiful? Things are going so well! How could Jesus possibly be right?
But then—how could the Son of God possibly be wrong?
That was the situation facing the congregation in Laodicea.
They lived in a city of incredible wealth. Archaeological finds have revealed that Laodicea was a large town marked by sophisticated, expensive buildings. Located at an important junction on an important trading route, the city became both an economic powerhouse and a center for banking. When an earthquake caused extreme damage to multiple towns in A.D. 60, Laodicea refused the imperial aid offered by Rome, instead choosing to rebuild using its own finances.
That wealth seems to have extended to God’s people as well.
As early as 62 B.C., we have a record of Rome seizing the Laodicean Jews’ annual contribution to the temple in Jerusalem: 20 pounds of gold. It was “a substantial sum, potentially the equivalent of the offering of 7,500 Jewish freemen” (Lexham Geographic Commentary on Acts Through Revelation, p. 689).
By the end of the first century, this extensive wealth was deeply connected with the warning message the Laodicean Christians received from Jesus Christ: “You say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’” (Revelation 3:17).
That’s a great position to be in—if it’s true.
But it’s not true.
It can’t be.
As imperfect humans, anytime we start to believe that we “have need of nothing,” we’re falling into a dangerous trap. We’re forgetting how fickle material possessions can be. We’re forgetting how much we need God’s continued mercy and blessings.
As Paul warned the Corinthians, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
Standing is important. Paul also warned the Ephesians to “stand therefore” (Ephesians 6:14) in their battle against Satan. The danger comes when we forget about the God who gives us the strength to stand in the first place.
When we convince ourselves that we’re standing on our own—standing because of our strength, our cleverness, our resourcefulness—that’s when we begin to fall.
And the Laodiceans were plummeting.
The God of Amen
But before Jesus confronts the Laodiceans with their own self-delusion, He lays out His credentials. In this final message to the seven churches, Jesus highlights His ability to see all things from a perfect, unclouded perspective. What He has to say to His people will be hard to hear (and harder to accept as true), but no one else in the universe is better equipped to see the Laodiceans as they truly are.
Not even the Laodiceans themselves.
Jesus is, first of all, “the Amen” (Revelation 3:14). This is a title reaching all the way back to the prophet Isaiah, who makes a reference to “the God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16)—or more literally, “the God of Amen.”
The Hebrew word ʾāmēn (Strong’s
#H543) is nearly identical to the Greek word amēn (Strong’s
#G281), which is nearly identical to our modern-day amen. But what does it mean?
In the Old Testament, “amen” was a traditional response to blessings, cursings, commands and songs of praise. The Hebrew word itself comes from a root word that describes reliability, faithfulness, permanence and trustworthiness. To say “amen” was to confirm something as true and binding—or else petition God to make it true and binding.
The Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament describes amen as “an acknowledgment that the divine word is an active force: May it happen in just this way” (Vol. 1, p. 321).
When the Hebrew word passed into Greek, this sense of truth and affirmation came along with it. In the Gospel accounts, when Jesus told His audience, “Assuredly, I say to you,” He was actually saying, “Amen, I say to you” (see Matthew 5:18, 26; 6:2, 5, 16; 8:10, etc.). The word was a promise to anyone listening: what’s coming is true, faithful and dependable.
And this is the identity He uses to address the church in Laodicea.
The Amen.
The affirmation of all things true. The knower of reality. The promise of all that is coming.
This emphasis is only reinforced by His next title: “the Faithful and True Witness” (Revelation 3:14).
What Jesus claims to have seen, He has seen. His reports are accurate and reliable. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, He can be trusted.
And what has the Faithful and True Witness seen?
Everything.
Jesus is not just the Amen, but “the Beginning of the creation of God” (verse 14). This title uses a nuanced Greek word that might be better translated as “the originator of God’s creation” (Christian Standard Bible) or “the ruler of God’s creation” (NIV).
God the Father created all things through the Word, who became Jesus Christ: “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:3). God is the originator of physical life as we know it. And now, as the resurrected Son of God, Jesus is seated beside the Father “in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:20-21, ESV).
God created and rules the universe in which we exist. As Paul affirmed, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). No one else could be better situated to accurately see and convey the truth in any given circumstance.
So when Jesus tells us we’ve lost touch with reality, it’s time to put aside our perceptions and listen.
The lukewarm Christian
The first problem Jesus highlights in Laodicea is a matter of temperature. The Christians there, He says, are lukewarm.
It’s clearly a problem. He threatens, “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 3:16). As in Ephesus, Jesus is threatening to sever His connection with the Laodicean Christians unless something significant changes.
But what does it mean to be lukewarm?
For that matter, what does it mean to be hot or cold?
To our modern ears, this might sound like a spectrum of spiritual intensity: To be hot is to be on fire for God’s truth; to be cold is to be either openly hostile (or at least entirely indifferent) toward that truth.
That would put a lukewarm Christian somewhere in the middle—not a passionate supporter, but not a frigid opponent either. It would describe a kind of half-hearted Christianity, tepid and entirely unremarkable.
Except . . . Jesus threatens to vomit@1 the Laodiceans out of His mouth specifically because they are neither cold nor hot. More than that, Jesus specifically expresses a desire that the Laodiceans would align themselves with either extreme: “I wish you were either cold or hot!” (verse 15, NET).
If all Christians should be striving toward one end of that spectrum, why didn’t Jesus simply say, “I wish you were hot”? If being cold means being cut off from God—living in sinful opposition to His way of life—why would He wish for the Laodiceans to be cold? How could He possibly choose to keep that kind of “coldness” in His mouth while threatening to vomit out lukewarm Christians?
It seems this is a different metaphor, not measuring spiritual intensity but usefulness. According to Jesus, cold and hot are both good. These are temperatures He will not vomit out. Lukewarm—specifically and exclusively—is the problematic temperature.
Why? It’s hard to be certain, but there are a few possibilities. The Romans, like most of us, had a preference for cold drinks when it was hot and for hot drinks when it was cold.@2 Also, nearby, the towns of Colossae and Hierapolis were well-known for their access to cold and hot springs, respectively.@3
Whatever the exact nature of the metaphor, it appears that hot and cold are both desirable and useful—while lukewarm is repulsive to the point of inducing vomiting.
Now, does God want half-hearted, tepid Christianity? Of course not. James talks about a faith that produces works (James 2:17-18). Jesus set the example of being consumed by zeal for the house of God (John 2:17). Paul praised the Corinthians for the positive impact their zeal had on fellow Christians (2 Corinthians 9:2).
But Jesus isn’t calling the Laodiceans to task for a lack of passion—He’s calling them to task for going entirely off the rails without even noticing.
Remember, the whole metaphor is tied to the works of the Laodicean congregation—their deeds and their actions. When we fit all the puzzle pieces together, it becomes clear that a lukewarm Christian is a Christian whose lifestyle is both useless and repulsive in the eyes of God. Far more serious than simply lacking passion, a lukewarm Christian is the source of such offensive deeds that he is at risk of being forcibly vomited out of the Body of Christ.
But how does a disciple of God end up in that condition? And more importantly, what can we do about it?
Wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked
The city that was wealthy enough to rebuild itself after a devastating earthquake was a city that didn’t see itself as needing any outside help. That attitude bled over into the church as well.
But Jesus could see what the Laodiceans could not. His people were in the thralls of self-deception. And so He confronts them with five adjectives intended to jar them out of their fantasy world:
“You are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (verse 17, ESV).
They aren’t just a little out of touch with reality—they’re entirely disconnected from it.
The Greek word translated “wretched” refers to a state of active suffering. The Laodiceans are so disconnected from the reality of their spiritual condition, they don’t even realize they’re hurting. They think they’re the poster children for success, but in reality, they’re pathetic to the point of evoking pity.
The wealth they think they have—that they do have, physically—doesn’t translate at all in a spiritual sense. They are spiritually poor the way Smyrna is physically poor—totally, completely destitute.
And they can’t see it. They’re blind to the fact that, spiritually, they’re walking around in naked shame.
The Laodiceans had a choice to make.
It’s a choice we all have to make:
Do we trust what God sees—or what we see?
There’s something unnerving about being presented with evidence of our own spiritual blindness. It’s only natural to assume we’re seeing ourselves clearly—but what happens when we aren’t?
Jesus probably won’t personally send you a letter in moments like that—but He might direct your attention to a corrective passage of Scripture that may as well have your name on it. He might guide a friend (or even an enemy) to point out the disconnect between the way we see ourselves and the way we’re actually living.@4 He might even place us in a difficult situation where our own snap decisions reveal a misalignment between our ideals and our actions.
In these moments, God tells us what He told the Laodiceans: “You think you’re this, but you’re actually that.” And in those moments, our spiritual survival depends on whether or not we can tell God, “I trust Your words more than my own eyes.”
It requires humility. It requires perspective.
It requires placing our relationship with God above anything we have in this life—or, more accurately, anything we think we have.
The way forward
Jesus spends more time rebuking the Laodiceans than any of the other churches in Revelation, and their rebuke is arguably the most severe.@5
But He hasn’t written the Laodiceans off. He hasn’t written any of us off. His correction comes from a place of love—from a desire to see us succeed. The Laodiceans are still His people, and He still offers them a way forward:
“I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see” (Revelation 3:18).
The Laodiceans were wretched and pitiable because, spiritually, they were poor, blind and naked. The solution was to acquire true spiritual wealth, spiritual sight and spiritual clothing.
These instructions would have really struck a nerve in Laodicea—a wealthy financial center full of gold, renowned for exporting expensive garments made from the long black wool of its local sheep, and with ready access to eye salves from premiere medical schools.
Jesus was driving home the point:
What you have isn’t enough.
But I can help.
Let’s start with the gold, because gold seemed to be at the root of the Laodicean rebuke: “You say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.’”
But the biggest mistake we can make when studying this letter to Laodicea is assuming that this is a problem exclusively affecting rich people.
It’s not.
The problem wasn’t how much wealth the Laodiceans had—it was how they saw that wealth.
Paul famously warned Timothy about money, but that warning has become warped over the years. It’s often repeated as, “Money is the root of all evil,” but that’s not what Paul said.
Here’s the quote in context:
“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:9-10).
The love of money. The desire to be rich. Not the money itself, but the desire to have it.
It really doesn’t matter if we’re rich or if we’re poor—when we see money as the answer to our problems and the ultimate source of stability, we fall into the same trap as the Laodiceans.
There is no earthly price tag we could attach to the true riches that come from God. They are “hidden treasures” (Proverbs 2:4) and “more precious than rubies” (Proverbs 3:15).
When Jesus asked the disciples if they wanted to give up and walk away from following Him, Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). There is nothing more precious in this life than the promises and truths that come from God’s inspired Word.
But how are we supposed to purchase gold we can’t afford?
Through God’s incredible kindness and mercy: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). And again: “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1).
No amount of this world’s gold can compare with the spiritual treasure God is eager to give to those who overcome.
The Laodiceans must also cover their nakedness by putting on white garments—a type of clothing connected with “the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:8) and “the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).
To be without these garments is to live in naked shame—opposed to God and in a defiled state. We can’t put on white garments if we aren’t living the way God commands us to live (the righteous acts of the saints)—and we can’t be clean without the sacrifice that makes us clean (the blood of the Lamb).
And what about their blindness?
Seeing what God sees doesn’t come naturally. “‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
To see what God sees, we must be connected with His Spirit—paying close attention to the moments when God shows us things that conflict with our own perception.
And now everything has come full circle. The Laodiceans’ greatest impairment is their inability to see their true spiritual state. Their own eyes are failing them. To make any progress in overcoming, they must first trust Christ’s scathing indictment—one that flies in the face of everything they believe to be true.
Without these changes, Laodicea would remain in a wretched, pitiable state. They would remain lukewarm.
Remember, He was calling them lukewarm because their Christianity was useless to the point of being both distasteful and offensive. Unless they changed their ways, there was nothing left for Jesus to do but vomit them out in disgust.
Even more important to remember: their warning is our warning too.
Standing at the door
Jesus levels harsh and extensive criticisms at Laodicea—but He follows that up with a tender reminder: “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent” (Revelation 3:19).
To paraphrase: “The very fact that I’m calling you out on this is proof that I still love you. I want to see you succeed.”
Jesus is not standing aloof, issuing ultimatums from a distance. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me” (verse 20).
God wants a close, personal relationship with us, and He frames it in the context of two friends sharing a meal together. But the responsibility of getting up and opening the door—responding to the knock—rests with each of us.
Distasteful as the Laodicean congregation was to Jesus Christ in this moment—and as much as they were in legitimate spiritual danger—He still saw them as His people.
As part of His Church.
He wasn’t content to let them slip into a spiritual death. He wanted to rescue them.
These were Christians with the capacity to emerge victorious. Their survival depended on passionate, eager repentance and a return to God—but they were hardly a lost cause. “To the one who conquers I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (verse 21, CSB).
No matter our own current spiritual state—even if we are lukewarm to the point of being useless—our older Brother and Savior calls on us to overcome, to conquer, and to sit beside Him as fellow rulers of the creation of God.
Footnotes
@1 The Greek word translated “vomit” is intended to be coarse and shocking—a different word exists for the less intense act of spitting.
@2 We have at least one reference to a homeowner complaining about a water supply that was too warm for drinking and too cold for washing—although his servants were happy to use it for either purpose (Xenophon, Memorabilia, 3.13.3).
@3 This is an interesting possibility, but it’s an awkward fit with Christ’s words. The hot springs in Hierapolis were used for bathing and medicinal purposes, not drinking.
@4 Friend or foe, it’s important to remember that not everyone who makes such an accusation is acting on behalf of God. They might not even be seeing clearly themselves! Still, when someone brings a perceived disconnect to our attention, it’s worth taking the time to consider it seriously and carefully.
@5 Sure, Sardis might be spiritually dead, but Laodicea is entirely oblivious to its condition. Coming back from the brink of death can be less of a feat than admitting one has been self-deceived.
Further Reading
Scriptures
Revelation 3:14-22
1 Timothy 6:3-18
Proverbs 3:1-26
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