Ennathinks

Have you ever tasted tea or coffee or a soda at a lukewarm room temperature? Nauseating! The same feeling God had about a church. Let’s find out more about that church.

Laodicea was the luxury vacation resort of the Roman Empire. The city offered gambling venues, sporting events, hot springs, gift shops, and theaters. It was also the hub of three vital industries in the empire: banking, woollen fabric, and medicine. All of this made Laodicea a wealthy, fashionable, physically fit, established city, bustling with amusement and recreation—a self-sufficient city.

God’s X-Ray: Diagnosing the Church

But behind this glittering exterior, the Lord of the Church is doing an X-ray of all the churches. And for the Laodicean church, He has nothing good to say. All He had to share were negatives. Three complaints—but probably these same complaints were being celebrated by the church! What is success in our sight can be a colossal failure in God’s eye. A successful, hardworking, saving farmer who would be “Harvester of the Year” from us was called FOOL by God. Wake up, churches! What we think are big victories in our sight could be a big loss in God’s eye.

“I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.” (Rev. 3:17)

But God’s diagnosis:

“You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

Lukewarm and Passionless

Before that, He also mentions that the church was lukewarm—indifferent. Indifference is not accepted by God. Passionless churches are purposeless churches.

Like the Old Testament prophet Jonah, when God asked him to go and work among Nineveh, what was he interested in? His comfort! You see him in the horizontal position within the ship, in the fish, and even when he preached, when people repented, he was angry—because he was indifferent and passionless. Look at today’s churches: anything happening in the world, or local problems like unemployment, the increase of gig workers, or how to meet people’s needs—the response of many churches is indifference. Passionless. Our hearts should be on fire like the disciples on the Emmaus road, or stone cold—but if they are indifferent, the Lord says He will spew it out. Purposeless churches are useless churches.

Blind and Vision-less

Jesus calls this church blind—visionless. Churches are called to be central in fulfilling God’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20), discipling people in all ethnic groups. Is that happening in our churches? Is that vision passionately followed by our leaders and passed on to all believers?

As one of my mentors comments: “Today most churches worship their worship services.” The church, originally a family of families, a vibrant loving community, has been reduced to a two-hour worship service. A crowd comes, watches a few people perform, and goes away—heavily influenced by consumerism. Limiting church life to a one- or two-hour event makes us blind and visionless.

Self-Satisfied and Isolated

Third, the Laodicean church said: “I don’t need anything. I am self-satisfied.” In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as the body of Christ, where different members work together to fulfill God’s mission. One major threat inside the body is a member saying to another, “I don’t need you.” Airlines and car companies understand collaboration. One route, many carriers working together. But many churches, even local ones, have the mentality of “I don’t need you”—proud, arrogant self-satisfaction. Like Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes—walking confidently, admired, yet completely exposed. Jesus says, “You are naked.”

The Lord’s Counsel

But Jesus doesn’t just call out the problem. He offers solutions too.

“This is my advice to you: buy from me gold refined in the fire—that will make you rich!—and white clothes to wear, so that you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.” (Rev. 3:18)

Passionless churches need to be on fire. God says the way to true riches is refinement. Gold refined in fire. Persecution and suffering often become the furnace in which churches are purified and made as gold—but it is God’s work, not the suffering itself, that produces true refinement.

Visionless churches need healing ointment. (By the way, Laodicea was famous for producing eye salve!) They were exporting medicine to heal others, but they themselves were blind. We need spiritual eye salve to see the condition of people around us and develop a vision to fulfill God’s mission, not just maintain our worship events.

To the naked church He offers white clothes—the cloth of righteousness which covers the rags of our own righteousness. The very things the city was famous for physically—banking, garments, medicine—were the very things the church lacked spiritually.

Jesus Knocks Outside

The shocking part: in a visionless, passionless, self-satisfied church, Jesus is not inside but outside. This is true for our church community and for us as individuals. From the outside, He is knocking at the door. If anyone hears His voice and opens the door, He will come and eat with them, and they with Him. Relationship is restored.

The most famous picture of a door with no handle on the outside is The Light of the World by the English artist William Holman Hunt. Jesus stands with a lantern, knocking at an overgrown, long-shut door. It can be opened only from the inside—by you.

The Question for Today
Will our church—and will my heart—stay lukewarm, self-sufficient, and blind? Or will we open the door and let Him in?

Watson Selvasingh