These descriptions of this church’s impoverished condition and the corresponding divine cures are followed by two brief sentences that essentially have Laodicean repentance as their goal. First, the One described as “the faithful and true witness” (v. 14) affirms that those I love I rebuke and discipline. Indeed, all that has been said to this point is a plea of love. The affirmation itself seems simultaneously to point backward and forward. That is, the “rebuke” is what has in effect already taken place in the preceding sentences; the verb “I discipline” serves as a warning that leads into the second sentence: So be earnest, and repent. The root of the verb rendered “be earnest” is the Greek word for “zeal”; thus the call is not simply to repent, but to give oneself to it with great zeal. Repentance, it should be pointed out, is not what those who are “lukewarm” think they need to do. But as in all such cases this imperative is not optional; it is the necessary requisite for their being restored to health.
The final word to the Laodicean believers, which is one of open invitation, begins with an attention-getting imperative, “look!,” which traditionally had been rendered “behold!” The NIV translators have tried helpfully to capture its sense here with Here I am! This is a call for a church that thinks of itself far better than it should to wake up; not just to recognize their actual present condition, but to come to terms with the fact that Christ is pictured as on the outside, not inside! Perhaps even more remarkable in this case is the individualization of this invitation. Up to this point, and in keeping with the previous letters, the letter has been addressed to the community as a whole, even though the verbs are singular; that is, Christ is addressing the entire community in the second-person singular. But with this invitation the focus now shifts toward individuals within the community. Thus what begins with an invitation that sounds very much like the community-directed words in the previous letters, now takes on a rather striking individualization: If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and that person with me. This invitation, it must be noted, is still to the whole church, but the realization of it is now pictured at the individual level. Whether the Lord’s Table is in view here is moot, since the overall picture is one of hospitality; and whatever else, one must be careful not to push such imagery beyond its immediate reason for being: to call a lackluster community of faith to repentance.
The concluding promise to those who are victorious is in some ways the most lavish found in the seven letters. Such people who endure to the end are promised the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. For people who tend to visualize such pictorial language, this promise could create any number of ocular problems, which in turn suggests that such evocative visual language should be understood for the imagery that it is and not be thought of in more literal terms. The promise to the victors in this case most likely intends to affirm that at the eschatological consummation of things they will share not the right to reign as such, but will experience as the ultimate privilege of their redemption: being enthroned as royalty. At the same time one must not miss the exceptionally high Christology that such language entails—that the Son and the Father sit on the same throne and thus share equally in the divine majesty that belongs to God alone.
Finally, one should note that as a conclusion to this letter, and thus to the letters as a whole, the last word is now the seven-times-repeated admonition, Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. As noted in the discussion of 2:7 above, this reflects John’s Trinitarian understanding of God as Father, Son (see v. 21 above), and Holy Spirit. Whereas it is Christ who is speaking in each case to the seven churches, each letter also includes the admonition to “hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” The very repetition of this admonition, by which it can begin to fall on deaf ears, is John’s emphatic way of telling all the churches—then and now—that what God the Father has to say to the church through Christ the Son is ultimately communicated through the Spirit, who in Johannine understanding is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.
Fusing the Horizons: Christ and His Church(es)
Because the letters to the seven churches are the least apocalyptic in the book, and therefore the most straightforward and understandable, they are also the most frequently read and applied to the contemporary church(es). And as with these seven (probably intentionally representative) churches, the churches in most of Western Christendom also present a similar “mixed bag.” But it is also important at the outset to note that this section does not begin at 2:1, since grammatically it is a continuation of the words of the Risen Christ that began in 1:17. Thus, the real beginning point of the passage is at 1:9, where John introduces himself and his own situation, and then moves on to focus altogether on Christ. Therefore, one must avoid the constant temptation to put the emphasis on the churches themselves, since John’s emphasis is on Christ’s knowledge of these churches, which is being revealed here to one and all. Much of this, therefore, is especially difficult to apply to the present situation in western Christendom. It is not that we do not have a variety of churches with a variety of degrees of faithfulness and otherwise; rather it is the fact that most of our churches are individualized in such a way that we are conveniently isolated from each other, and therefore find it easy to hide our “dirty linen.”
Nonetheless, following the lead of Craig Koester,31 one can summarize the analogies between us and them as follows:
1. The problem of Assimilation. Very much the same way one can boil a frog by placing it in cold water and then turning on the heat, so the church, which of necessity must be in the world, at the same time is constantly, and often quite unwittingly, in danger of becoming like the world in which it is situated. This has been especially true of Western Christendom, and especially so in times of plenty, when the church tends to enjoy the same “upward mobility” experienced by the majority of the middle class, as they try to emulate the wealthy. The upshot of such assimilation is that the church has rather totally lost its prophetic voice, calling out God’s coming judgments on the world to which it has so easily accommodated itself. At this point we must once again prophesy to the world, not simply to change the world, but to keep it from changing us.
2. The problem of Complacency, which is closely related to the foregoing problem. Perhaps there is no bigger crisis in the churches of the Western world than this one, where the church seems to be more often full of “fans” rather than of followers of Jesus. Indeed, if being a Christian were a crime, it is doubtful whether there would be enough evidence to indict the many of us, who have settled into a Christianity of mediocrity rather than of burning passion to be Christ’s own people in this fallen, broken world. We tend to have just enough “religion” to make us basically inconspicuous in a world of self-centeredness, greed, and broken relationships. Hopefully, a careful reading of John’s Revelation might be able to change some of that.
3. The Problem of Persecution. Here is what faces millions of followers of the Crucified One in much of the world, but is unfortunately lacking in the West—“unfortunate” because persecution always has a way of purifying in ways that abundance does not. Also unfortunately, the lack of external pressure very often leads to mediocrity and complacency. This is not a call to a form of self-imposed self-flagellation, but rather a call to a kind of stewardship and discipleship that will make the complacent uncomfortable enough to try to counteract it with fury and scorn, rather than with benign neglect. Rather than wearing gold or silver crosses around our necks, we would better portray our devotion to Christ by being more like the Crucified One amidst a world of self-centeredness and greed.
May the ever merciful, ever compassionate God and his Christ come to his church in the West and re-create us back into the divine image that is so faithfully portrayed in this final book of the Christian canon.
1. Or messenger.