James Nisbet Commentary - Revelation 3:14 - 3:14

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James Nisbet Commentary - Revelation 3:14 - 3:14


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THE CHURCH IN LAODICEA

‘And unto the angel of the Church of the Laodiceans write.’

Rev_3:14

The tone of the Apocalyptic letter is one of severe, and even ironical, censure. The Laodiceans were not as those who had never been touched by the heat of the Divine Spirit. It would have been better had such a communication never come to them, for then there would have been the chance of their regeneration. But their special guilt lay in this—that they had known and felt that wondrous kindling and yet had only partially responded to its power. ‘Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.’ This spiritual lukewarmness should, if it continued, issue in their contemptuous rejection. They thought themselves rich. They prided themselves on their acquired wealth. They fancied that they were beyond all need. Ah, fatal delusion! ‘Thou art the wretched one, and miserable and poor and blind and naked.’ The Lord counsels them, who were so ready to traffic in this world’s goods, to buy of Him—even of Him Who alone could bestow upon them what they really lacked. He has ‘gold refined by fire’—such that the possessor of it is rich indeed. He has ‘white garments’ in which the guilty may hide their shame. He will give ointment by which the eye of the conscience—the spiritual eye—may recover its power of sight. But the blame—stern as it is—is not intended to excite despair. ‘As many as I love, I reprove and chasten.’ The Divine love was still their privilege. The voice of condemnation was a summons to amendment. The Saviour is knocking—the touching metaphor has suggested one of the most familiar of our modern hymns, and inspired one of the most famous pictures of our generation—at the doors of their hearts, petitioning for entrance. He will sup with any who will open to Him. To the victor He will grant a place on His own ample and broad seat of authority; even as it had been given to Him—the Victor of victors—to share in His Father’s everlasting seat.

I. Religious indifference is an evil with which we are all only too well acquainted.—Some of us will recollect the saying placed by Charles Kingsley in the mouth of one of his characters, that were the Catholic Church what she ought to be but for a single day the world would be converted ere nightfall. Who can deny that in the hyperbole there is a large element of truth? The victories of Christianity are retarded or thrown away because the soldiers of the Cross are so often slack and negligent.

II. Religious indifference has its root in worldly prosperity.—The Laodicean Christians were endangered by the abundance of the things which they possessed. Wealth! Our Redeemer spoke to His disciples so strongly and uncompromisingly about the moral and spiritual perils connected with it. ‘The mammon of unrighteousness’! It was, it would seem, responsible for the lukewarmness of this Asiatic community. Surely it is only too often responsible for ours. We are well-to-do; our lives are full of comfort, perhaps of luxury; we can give ourselves what pleasures we care for; the stress and strain of the world—so severe, so intolerable for many—are for us reduced to a minimum—and spiritual idleness, sloth, negligence, indifference are the result. Do let us be on our guard—our continuous and anxious guard—against the dangers which come with material welfare.

III. ‘He that overcometh’!—The rewards of spiritual victory! Participation in His everlasting triumph! ‘It is promised,’ says a modern preacher, ‘that the twelve thrones shall be one throne, and that one throne the throne of Christ. The glory that shall be revealed shall be a glory of union with Christ, the glory not of assessors with Christ, not of companions of Christ, but of persons incorporated and as it were merged in Christ; the glory of those who have been “found in Him,” so that what He is they are, what He does they do, “because He lives they live also,” and “where He is, there shall also His servant be.” ’ That glory to which none other can possibly compare may be ours. Such a thought ought to move and stir us and impel us forward. The battle is unspeakably worth the winning. Do not let us lose it. Do not let us be found—not amongst the conquerors—but amongst the outcast. If only we will be loyal and true, if only we will be His ‘faithful soldiers and servants,’ we may be received through Him and for His sake into that unthinkable heavenly company, into which we trust that there have been already received some whom we knew and loved and will never forget, and into which we also may be gathered before long—who can say when?