Copyright © 2019 Michael A. Brown
The Ascended Christ, the Excluded Christ
To the
angel of the church in Laodicea write:
“These are
the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s
creation. I know your deeds, that you
are neither cold nor hot. I wish you
were either one or the other! So,
because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of
my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have
acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’
But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and
naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold
refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes, so you can
cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.
Those whom
I love I rebuke and discipline. So be
earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
To him who overcomes, I will give the
right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my
Father on his throne. He who has an ear,
let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”
(Rev. 3:14-22)
BEFORE
they entered the promised land, God told the Israelites that they would prosper
materially under his blessing, but, at the same time, he also warned them not
to forget him as they prospered:
‘When you have eaten and are
satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD
your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am
giving you this day. Otherwise, when you
eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when
your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you
have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the
LORD your God…’
(Deut. 8:10-14)
This warning highlights the danger
inherent in all material blessing. When
we have everything we need, we can begin to grow cold in our heart towards God
and unconsciously cast off our dependence on him, simply because we are no
longer in a position where we need him to meet and fulfil our daily needs. As the history of the Israelites
demonstrates, it may not be long before we have grown so cold and distant from
him that we have effectively excluded him from our lives by neglecting his
living presence. As a consequence,
because our own faith has grown cold and we have forgotten him, our children’s
faith becomes nominal at best, because they have no examples around them of
living faith to look to and learn from.
Within just two generations of possessing the promised land, the hearts
of the Israelites had become so cold towards God that they were completely
backslidden. As a nation, they were no
longer keeping his laws, and they were compromising with the immorality and
idolatry of the surrounding nations, leading inevitably to the cycle of
judgements recorded in the book of Judges.
The deceitfulness of wealth
In the Roman-Greek world, the Greek word mammonas (deriving from the Aramaic word mamona and meaning ‘wealth’ or ‘profit’) referred not simply to
money or wealth as such, but was associated with the self-centred and greedy
pursuit of wealth or gain, and therefore seen as an unrighteousness and evil
influence (Luke 16:9-11, 1 Tim. 6:10).
Jesus made it plain that we cannot serve both God and money, or, to put
it more correctly, both God and mammon (see Matt. 6:24 NIV and AV). Although it was primarily used in reference
to money, wealth and possessions, ‘mammon’ also came to take on the meaning of ‘that
in which one has confidence and trusts,’ referring to the inner attitude of
heart which seeks to serve and follow material riches as a secure foundation
for living. So, as Jesus said, God and
mammon are two mutually exclusive masters each of which will dominate and
control people’s lives to the exclusion of the other. We can serve only one of them. Either we serve God with all our heart, or
else we will forsake him and serve mammon instead.
For believers, to serve mammon, to put the
gaining of money as our first priority in life and seeking to follow a
materialistic lifestyle, is a mistaken focus.
As the well-known proverb says, nothing tests people like their attitude
towards money. The Pharisees in Christ’s
time loved money (Matt. 23:13-14, Luke 20:46-47), but they shut the kingdom of
God in men’s faces. Solomon was blessed
with riches beyond measure, but his heart was then easily turned away from God
into idolatry. The rich young ruler
chose not to follow Jesus, saddened because he could not accept the cost
involved in a life of discipleship, and Jesus remarked afterwards just how hard
it is for rich people to enter into the kingdom of God. The treasures of earth are more real to them
than the treasures of heaven (Luke 18:18-25).
In the first century
AD, the metropolis of Laodicea was one of the most important and prosperous
cities of Asia Minor. It was the chief
city of a surrounding political district which was comprised of no less than
twenty-five towns. The taxes from these
subordinate towns were collected in Laodicea, and this city had become a banking and
commercial centre where large financial transactions were commonplace. So, because the believers in Laodicea were
surrounded every day by such material and financial prosperity, it was inevitable that they would come
under its influence.
It is a natural and God-given instinct for
us as believers to want to build and secure our lives, but there is a fine dividing
line between the material and financial blessing of God, and the subtle
development of a self-centred and materialistic spirit. We always need to guard our hearts against
covetousness, because it leads us away from God. As they prospered materially in Laodicea, and
became rich and increased with goods, these believers would have moved up the
social scale, and no doubt discovered the fact that money opens doors, brings
new relationships, and increases our power and influence over others. Some of them would probably even have begun
to mix with the upper and ruling classes of Roman society. From a material perspective, everything was
hunky-dory for them. They had all they
wanted and needed nothing more, so they were reigning in life. Hence their words, ‘I am rich; I have
acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ (3:17).
It seems that the same kind of heart
attitude had also developed amongst the believers in Corinth, as the apostle
Paul says:
‘You already have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings – and that without
us! How I wish that you really had
become kings so that we might be kings with you!’ (1 Cor. 4:8)
As we prosper and move up
the social scale, we tend to start building our lives around our acquired material
comforts and these then become the anchor of our lives. However, as we become more and more focused
on ourselves, our lives then have less and less effect for the kingdom of
God. The more we feed and satisfy the
carnal desires of our flesh, the more we neglect the state of our soul. We deceive ourselves into thinking that, once
we have enough money and abundant access to material goods, then we will have
finally arrived and will have need of nothing more. We seek God’s face less and less, until we no
longer really do it at all and, by neglecting him in this way, we push him out
to or even beyond the circumference of our life, excluding him from ourselves
in any meaningful way.
We become blind to the
fact that ultimately material things are not a secure foundation for our life,
and that they cannot meet our deepest needs for love, relationship, family or
good health. Material goods or riches
can easily be lost, stolen or lose their value (Matt. 6:19).
We brought nothing with us into this life, and we will certainly take
nothing with us when we leave it. Indeed, we begin to develop a view of life which is very
short-sighted. Like the rich but foolish
man, we hope and think that our dream will go on forever, so we make plans to
build bigger and better barns for our produce, but we forget that our soul may
be required of us this very night. As
Jesus said, our life, the soul life of our heart, really does not consist in
the abundance of our possessions. And
unfortunately this kind of spiritual blindness characterises everyone who is
not rich towards God, because they are building their lives on completely the
wrong foundation (Luke 12:15-21)!
Materialism sucks us into
a lifestyle of always comparing ourselves with others and of wanting what they
have. We embrace its self-centred values
in order to carve out position, power and influence in life’s rat-race. We become driven by an insatiable appetite of
always wanting more and better, and our priorities are focused very much on the
temporary things of the here and now. We
value earthly treasure above all other things.
Money becomes an end in itself and we want more and more of it, so that
we can spend what we get on our self-centred pleasures (Jas. 4:3). Our standard of measurement becomes the
constantly shifting sand of outward image and outward success – what the movers
and shakers feel, think and say. So when
they change, we change with them. Money
and material things control us and they become our god, but it is a god which
is never satisfied and fails to meet our deepest needs. We think we have arrived and ‘have become
somebody’ and we effectively begin to worship what we have become, but our
hearts remain empty.
The deceitfulness of
wealth lies in the fact that it blinds us to our real inward state. When we have everything we need, we become
self-satisfied and think that we do not need anything more. And yet we are blind to the fact that, like
the ancient Israelites, we may well have slipped away from a close walk with
God and we no longer know the freshness of his presence in our daily
lives. We surrender to the carnal world
of sense and begin to die off spiritually, becoming lukewarm if not altogether
cold (3:15-16). And until the Lord
himself is able to put his finger directly on this and make us consciously
aware of the reality of our woeful inward condition, we remain blissfully
ignorant of it. We go around thinking we
are something that we are not.
In their blindness,
these believers thought they had both God and money, but money and comfort were
very much their first priority, and love for God came in a very poor
second. In their hearts they had become
lukewarm and distanced from the living presence of Jesus. I’m sure they would have been really shocked
when they read how the Lord really saw them: wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and
naked (3:17)! No doubt they were on fire for Jesus when they
first began walking with him, but this spiritual fire in their hearts had been
dowsed by the deceitfulness of wealth, making it difficult for the word of God
to bear fruit in them. In the analogy of
the Parable of the Sower, their hearts had become thorny ground (Matt.
13:22). Although they continued to
attend church regularly, they had backslidden spiritually. They had richness of pocket, but poverty of
spirit; treasure on earth, but none in heaven (cf. Matt. 6:19-21, Mark 10:21).
Lukewarm
believers tend to give financially to the church only as long as this does not
affect their standard of living. They do
not give sacrificially, but generally only small amounts, and they give only
when it is easy and secure for them to do so.
They say they love Jesus and that he is in their life, but in reality
they have given him only a part of their life and their money. They do not allow him to be in complete
control of their lives. They often
disregard biblical principles in daily life when it comes to finance. However, as someone once said, if Jesus is not Lord of our pockets, then he is not Lord at
all! Lukewarm believers do not
love God with all their heart, soul and strength. They may hear stories about the radical lives
of some Christians, but they are careful not to live themselves with the same
level of surrender and self-sacrifice for the kingdom of God. That which Jesus expects from all believers,
they call radical.
The
consumer culture that we live in, surrounded by the incessant advertisements
which constantly bombard us from every side, persuading us of which material
things we have to buy because we really cannot live without them, causes us to
become self-centred. It makes us seek
after material things and it devalues the importance of relationships. So we end up wanting things, rather than
people. Socially, we turn inwards and
focus on ourselves. In our
self-sufficiency we exclude other people from our life because we think we don’t
need them. In fact, the more materialistic we become, the more we exclude both
Jesus and each other from our life. In
our idolatry of personal comfort and ‘living a quiet life’ we may not even know
our own neighbours!
So,
in enjoying their wealth and self-satisfaction, perhaps these Laodicean
believers too had become stingy in their financial giving and forgetful of the
needs of others. When we become
independent of and isolated from other people, thinking that we no longer need
them, our hearts close up towards them. Our affluence separates us from those who have less
than we do, and in particular it can make us indifferent towards the needs of
the poor. We no longer care about them,
and we certainly cannot carry the burden of Christ’s heart to minister to
them.
The language of true Christian
discipleship becomes strange and far too challenging for us, almost foreign in
fact. In becoming self-satisfied, we
discard our dependency on God (although perhaps we do
this unconsciously at first).
Practically speaking, we think we don’t really need him anymore, because
we have all we need. However, we want
our comforts, but not the Christ of the cross, of surrender and sacrifice. We have plenty of pillows, cushions and
blankets, but forget that the Son of Man often did not have anywhere to lay his
head (Matt. 8:19-20). We have plenty of
money, but forget that on one occasion it seems that he did not even have a
coin to pay a tax (Matt. 17:24-27). Like
the rich young ruler, we shrink from selling all that we have and then
following Christ, trusting him to provide, because the anchor of our security
is in our robust financial portfolio and in our social standing before others,
rather than in him (Luke 18:18-25). And
like the Israelites in Amos’ time, we lie complacently on our beds of ivory,
but we do not grieve over the spiritual ruins of the church, because we no
longer have eyes to see its true state (Amos 6:1-6,
cf. Hag. 1:2-11).
There is wisdom
in what Agur prayed:
‘Two things I ask of you,
Lord; do not refuse me before I die: Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give
me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, “Who is the Lord?” Or I may
become poor and steal, and so dishonour the name of my God.’ (Prov. 30:7-9)
To resist the
temptation of living a life which is comfortable but essentially self-centred,
and instead to live a
life which moves in God’s purposes and depends upon him to guide and provide,
is too much of a challenge for some. We
can make the mistake even as believers of choosing in the first place to build
and live a comfortable and relatively secure life, and then, having established
ourselves in that, saying that we are willing to serve Christ in whatever way
we can. However, if our security is
touched or endangered, then the anxiety and worry that this generates within us
is sufficient to demonstrate to anyone with eyes to see just how shallow our
roots in Christ really are. It exposes just how deeply rooted and
dependent on material security we have become, and that we really haven’t a
clue how to trust God and walk with him outside these confines. Even though we might say that our anchor is
in Christ, yet actually we have put our anchor down very much in the wrong
place! As C.T. Studd so aptly put it,
instead of being courageous warriors for Christ, we have become more like
chocolate soldiers, melting at the first sign of real heat!
Excluding Jesus: can we really do church
without him?
Jesus is no stranger to
being excluded. He was excluded in many
ways even in his own day. Born in a
stable because there was no room in the inn.
Thrown out of Nazareth on the very day he began his public
ministry. Foxes had their holes and
birds had their nests, but, during his ministry, he often slept outdoors at
night with no home to sleep in. He was
despised and rejected by many people (Isa. 53:3). The Pharisees and Sadducees were well-off and
increased with goods, but they did not want his life-transforming kingdom
ministry, with its healing, deliverance and personal discipleship. Although Jesus had a group of loyal followers
and disciples, yet in many ways he was the rejected and excluded Christ. And those who have truly followed his way
also know what it is to be rejected and excluded by others…
So too here in the
church in Laodicea. These believers were
so taken up by the pursuit of earthly wealth that they had stopped walking
closely with Jesus and had lost their inward fire. They had effectively excluded him from their
personal lives and hence also from the life of their church. As Jesus said, our heart is where our
treasure is, or what we consider to be our treasure. The love of earthly riches always dethrones
and replaces love for Jesus, and excludes him from our heart (Matt.
6:19-21). So Jesus sees himself as
actually being outside their church, rather than being amongst them and
walking with them. And this is
perhaps the greatest tragedy that can happen in the life of a local church,
that Jesus, the very One who has bought and redeemed us to be his own special
people on earth, and who is the ascended Lord and ruler over the kings of the
earth, should be excluded from our midst. Not only excluded and rejected by the world,
now here he was standing outside his own church, excluded from the very place
in which we would expect him to feel most welcome!
A combination of being caught up in the
busyness and materialism of daily life and focusing on the things of the world
(in both work and family matters), and perhaps having to prepare regularly for
the endless routine of programs in church life, together with a general lack of
prayerfulness and an absence of personal spiritual disciplines, is fatal to spiritual
life. It always results in our doing
church without any meaningful growth or breakthrough. Is it any wonder, then, when we sometimes do
not feel God’s dynamic presence with us when we meet?
Hmm, I wonder… If the Holy Spirit were to be removed altogether
from our local church, how much would we miss his presence? Or would things simply carry on much as they
always have done? How many of our
meetings, programs and activities could actually carry on unaffected and
unchanged, because they are not dependent in any real, practical way upon his
dynamic presence being with us? And for
how long could we carry on like that before the realization hits us that he is
no longer with us?
The answers to these questions indicate
just how Laodicean our church may have become, as it is precisely to this
extent that we have excluded the Lord from our church and become dependent
(consciously or unconsciously) on our own human abilities and skills to do his
work for him. What?! Doing church without the presence of
Jesus?! Think of it! It almost seems
like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? And yet this is very possible, of course, and
also to do it without even realizing that we have lost touch with him somewhere
along the way. Any
church can too easily become a self-satisfied, busy, formal, and
ultimately nominal social club meeting together in God’s name. We call it churchianity… And there is often undealt-with sin in the
midst too, of course… The singing and
programs continue every week, but without the living, dynamic presence of Jesus
amongst us.
Conversely, if our meetings would not be
able to function, and if what we are doing simply could not be done without his
presence, then we also know just how intertwined and dependent we have become
with/on his presence. It shows us that
we are truly learning his ways and walking closely with him, and therefore that
we are doing things more in the way that he would have us do them. And this is how it should be, of course…
Walking in
intimacy with Jesus is the heart of it all
As we saw in chapter 3, the daily-life context in which we
live determines some of the specific parameters of our discipleship, i.e. it
highlights some of the things which need to be specifically addressed in our
lives, if we are to truly know Christ and have his life growing and expressing
itself in and through us. We should
always remain alert lest we consciously or unconsciously allow our daily-life
context to negatively affect our personal discipleship, by not addressing such
issues, because by default that would mean to be discipled into the ways of the
world and therefore to become conformed to it.
Real, hard-core Christian discipleship will always transform our lives
from within, so that we ourselves can then begin to affect our context, because
we are living differently. It is only by
being transformed within and becoming conformed to the principles of the word
of God that we are then able to affect what surrounds us and bring the influence
of the word of God to bear upon it. We
have to overcome our context and its effects upon us, so that we can then begin
to influence it in a God-ward direction.
It is precisely this issue that the
Laodicean believers needed to face up to.
They had been overcome by their context and blinded to the poverty of
their low spiritual state by the deceitfulness of material wealth. They had allowed themselves to be influenced
by this to the degree that they had become discipled into its ways, into a life
of materialism and the love of money.
Therefore they had remained untouched and undiscipled on this point by
the real, deep, life-transforming power of God’s grace within them, with the
consequence that they had lost touch with his living presence in their
lives. Money was multiplying in their
wallets, but Christ’s life was not growing within them.
It is the long-haul aspect of walking in
covenant relationship with Jesus which can sometimes defeat believers. We can start well, but then develop problems
later on in our Christian lives.
Learning to practise the self-disciplines of the spiritual life is
crucial if we are to walk consistently with the Lord throughout our whole
life. The three churches in Ephesus,
Sardis and here in Laodicea each essentially had the same problem. Although the cause was different in each
case, yet the end result was pretty much the same. Whether it was focusing too much on working
hard and losing their first love, as in Ephesus; or whether it was falling into
lifeless complacency due to past success, as in Sardis; or whether it was
embracing a materialistic lifestyle, as in Laodicea, many of the believers in
these three churches had ended up in the same place: they had lost their vital, close
union with Jesus and were no longer living out of life-giving intimacy with God’s
presence. They had lost what is the very heart of
the Christian life, the central, key focus without which our lives can never
become what God intends them to be.
The fact that this had happened in no less than three out of these seven
churches means that we can rightly conclude that this is a common problem
amongst believers and in churches in every age...
However, as we saw in chapter 1, it is
just such an intimate, spiritual union with us that God desires and seeks to
develop above all other things. It is
what we were redeemed for. And
ultimately it is this and this alone which is the secret of the life and future
of both our own personal spiritual life and that of the corporate church. To survive over the long-term and down
through generations, and to consistently be what God wants us to be as church,
then, above everything else, we must learn this one, basic, fundamental
and all-important truth: that we can only truly live through keeping
alive our intimate, spiritual union with Jesus. Without him there is no life in us, and
neither is there any future for us.
It is this simple but profound lesson that
many people in Scripture had to learn for themselves. The first couple walked regularly with God in
the garden in the cool of the day. Enoch
walked closely with God for 365 years.
Moses would draw aside and spend long hours with God in the tent of
meeting, looking radiant when he came out.
David worshipped God daily, playing his harp as he composed many of the
inspired songs that we know today as the psalms. The Lord Jesus himself would get up before
dawn and go off to a quiet place where he could be alone with his Father. The elders of the church in Antioch sought
the face of God, waiting upon him, praying, worshipping and fasting together. And so on…
The experience of these three churches shows us just how easy
it is for us to lose our vital, living union with Jesus. That is why it is so important to guard
ourselves spiritually and to put in place whatever measures are necessary to
keep this union alive and fresh (or to revitalise it if we seem to be losing
it). We so often think that it is about
what we are or what we do, or about what we have become or achieved, or about
what we have, but it isn’t. This is all
essentially self-centred thinking, and these things will all one day pass
away. It’s actually all supposed to be
about Jesus and our relationship with him.
To get where we should be, we have to be Jesus-centred, not
self-centred. And not being
Jesus-centred merely in word or doctrine alone, but being Jesus-centred
inwardly, personally and subjectively in daily life. Being centred on our relationship with him,
as the bride was with her beloved in the Song of Songs, and as a fiancée is with
her fiancé. They seek, they want, and they desire to be
together (Song 3:4). It’s not about
merely going to church. It’s about
enjoying our inner fellowship with Jesus and delighting our souls together on
the richest of fare which is found only in him (Isa. 55:1-2). When we truly love him, we truly live! It is in learning to live with Jesus, walking
together consistently and intimately with him, that God’s best and most
fruitful purposes for our life can be fulfilled.
Inviting in
the ascended but excluded Christ
Jesus presents himself to
these believers as the crucified, resurrected and ascended Christ who reigns
and rules at the right hand of the Father.
He is the faithful and true martus
(1:5, 3:14) who bought our redemption with his own blood on the cross. He is the resurrected Living One, the
firstborn from the dead (1:5,18), and he is also the source and therefore ruler
of God’s creation, the ruler of the kings of the earth (1:5, 3:14; cf. Col.
1:15). He is the Amen (3:14), the One
whose words will never pass away, and whose complete and finished redemption is
a firm and trustworthy foundation for our lives. And
it is into intimacy and fellowship with this ascended, reigning Christ that we
are called.
The Lord Jesus loves his Church
deeply and yearns over us, so in his grace he knocks at the door of our life, hoping and desiring that we will heed him, open
the door and invite him in (3:20). This
invitation to open the door to Jesus is very often applied to non-believers, to
exhort them to receive him into their lives and to come into God’s kingdom, but
actually it is an exhortation to lukewarm Christians who have lost their way,
to get their priorities sorted out and to come back into a close, warm
relationship with Jesus.
In all of the sophistication and
distraction of life, it is the closeness and simplicity of this relationship
that we need to guard and cherish, because it is so easy to lose: ‘Here I
am!’ he says (3:20). If we
miss this, we miss everything.
Without Jesus, we have nothing.
To have him is to have life, whereas not to have him is not to have life
(1 John 5:12). When the bride in the
Song of Songs realised that her beloved was missing, she got up and went in
search of him until she found him (Song 3:1-4). But on another occasion,
when he was knocking at her door seeking to come in, she was too lazy to get up
and open the door for him, leaving him outside lonely and alone, so he turned
and went away (Song 5:2-6). Even as
believers we can sometimes exclude the Lord we truly love, simply because we
are too lazy to seek him out and spend time with him!
To hear Jesus knocking and then to open
the door and invite him in is to recognize our need of him and to affirm our
desire to walk with him in life. We know
that we are no longer as close to him as we used to be. We have realised that material comforts
cannot satisfy our empty hearts, and that living in a close, daily walk with
him is far more important than how much money we have in our pockets or what
comforts we have in our home. We have
learned to value him more, so we want to live with his presence consistently
with us, because we know we need his power and strength in our life..
To be invited to sit with someone over a
meal is an invitation to spend quality time with them, to build relationship by
fellowshipping closely and talking through issues that pertain to each other in
an open, relaxed setting (3:20). It is
to know and to be known. So to invite
the crucified but exalted Lamb in, in order to sit, eat and fellowship with
him, is to then experience him one-on-one as he really is in his purity and
penetrating truth, and for the power of this realization to permeate and sink
deeply into our hearts. We are reduced
to an awed and convicted silence in his presence as he strips away our
carnality and any superficial pretensions we may have about ourselves, and we
see our own emptiness and redundancy for what it really is. Yet at the same time, he floods our inner
being with the fire of his grace, life and love, and our hearts are cleansed
and kindled afresh by the Holy Spirit.
Exposing
deception and giving needed counsel
The Lord speaks to these believers
straight from his heart. Because he
loves them deeply, he rebukes them and disciplines them (3:19, cf. Heb.
12:7-11, Prov. 3:11-12). From time to
time, giving rebuke and discipline are an essential part of any truly loving
relationship, if we are to remain on the right paths in life. There is no such thing as real love without
the willingness to do this when it is necessary. There are times for all of us when we need to
repent and to put our house in order, and it is no different in our walk with
God. So the Lord tells it to them just
as it is and points out to them where they are going wrong. He speaks the truth in love and grace,
inviting them to sit down with him, to talk things through and to put things
right.
The dynamic
presence of Jesus in our midst will invariably disturb our status quo. It shakes us up
as we are confronted with his truth spoken in love. Those who want a quiet, settled and formal,
but meaningless and irrelevant churchianity always resist him, and this
separates them from those whose hearts yearn for life. God wants people who are warm with passion
and love for him and his work. He is a
consuming fire… My wife and I have noticed
many times over the years that believers are often magnetically attracted to
the dynamic presence of God. They love
it and they seek it, but they are always put off by nominal, formal and
powerless churchianity which is ‘Christian’ only in name.
So in
his mercy and truth, the Lord exposes the deception these believers are living
in and shows them just how he himself sees them, that spiritually they are
wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked (3:17, cf. Isa. 64:6). Although outwardly they were materially
prosperous and thought they were rich, yet inwardly they were spiritually
poor. They clothed themselves with the
finest garments that money could buy, but inwardly they were spiritually naked. In their pride, they thought they could see
and understand, but they were in fact blind.
They had been building their lives with
the wood, hay and straw of human success and materialism, none of which lasts
or is eternal (1 Cor. 3:12-15). By
contrast, the believers at Smyrna were suffering hardship, but Jesus saw them
as spiritually rich: ‘I know your afflictions and your poverty – yet you are
rich!’ (2:9). This illustrates not
only that the values of God’s kingdom are ‘upside-down’ compared to those of
the world, but also that the only things which have eternal worth are those
which God himself values: he chooses the poor of this world who are rich in
faith (Jas. 2:5). What we use to measure or define
success, is not the criteria God uses.
In his sight, what is most important to him is the living, vital faith
of our hearts in our relationship with him.
So he exhorts them to repentance
(3:18), and he counsels them to buy from him ‘gold refined in the fire, so
you can become rich’ (3:19). He
wanted them to get back to a place where their heart faith would become warm
once again: living, dynamic and applied to walking through life with him. Living heart faith is gold in God’s sight,
because it walks and endures with him through life, whether we are outwardly
rich or poor. It proves the reality of
God’s presence and the truth of his word as we persevere with him in our
circumstances, and, as a consequence, it builds a truly secure foundation for
our life (Job 23:10, 1 Peter 1:6-7). It
is God who is our Provider, not the world’s banking and financial system. True spiritual riches are found only in Jesus
(Eph. 3:8). Although buying from him is
without money and price, i.e. it costs us nothing (Isa. 55:1-2), yet, of
course, following him costs us in terms of continually surrendering our lives
in obedience to him, but this is a small price to pay in order to grow rich in
the things of his kingdom!
Similarly, he counsels them to buy from him white garments to
cover up their shameful nakedness (3:18).
In contrast to the designer fashions of this world, Jesus underlines to
them that what matters more to him is the inward spiritual beauty of the heart,
the inward righteousness of a life which is being changed and transformed from
glory to glory by his grace and power (1 Peter 3:3-4). He also counsels them to buy salve for their
eyes so that they could see (3:18), evidently referring here to a special ointment known as ‘Phrygian
powder’ which was well-known for curing eye defects and which was manufactured
in Laodicea. We are blind to spiritual truth until
the Lord himself opens our eyes and gives us spiritual revelation and
understanding:
‘I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in
my prayers. I keep asking that the God
of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom
and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be
enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the
riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably
great power for us who believe.’ (Eph. 1:16-19)
It is in recognizing the empty and
fruitless deception of mammon and materialism, and allowing Jesus to bring us
into that place of heart surrender in which our spiritual eyes are truly opened
to eternal realities as he sees them, that we overcome: discovering the true,
lasting riches of his kingdom, and determining that we will walk with him in
this new understanding.
Jesus did not say at all
to these believers that being materially rich is wrong, and neither did he tell
them that they should not have money.
After all, we all need it to live daily life and to run the life of our
local church. Many of the Old Testament’s
greatest figures were wealthy and powerful people in positions of influence,
but they were also prayerful people who walked closely with God. The Lord was making the point that they
should correct the focus of their lives and prioritize the development of a
true and lasting heart relationship with God, because this is our deepest need
and his greatest desire. It is the most
important and meaningful thing that we can ever do in life. True
and lasting riches are spiritual and relational, not material.
The problem here in
Laodicea was not the poverty that the believers in Smyrna were enduring. It was not lack of finance or the hardship of
being constantly in need. On the
contrary, the challenge they faced was how to live with money, and how
to live with plenty of it, and yet still overcome its deceitfulness and
maintain a spiritual life that was alive, effective and fruitful (Matt.
13:22). As disciples of Christ, we
are not called to look upon ourselves as the owners of what we possess, but
rather to be stewards of it as we walk with God. Our money is not there to possess and control
us, rather we are blessed with it so that we can learn to steward and use it
responsibly. If we can learn to serve
God through the right stewardship of our wealth and possessions, rather than
simply being self-centred and consuming it on ourselves and our carnal pleasures, then we will have learned one of the
lessons that these believers in Laodicea needed to learn:
‘Command those who are rich in this
present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so
uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything
for our enjoyment. Command them to do
good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for
themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold
of the life that is truly life.’ (1 Tim. 6:17-19)
Hard talk
Spiritually, these believers were in a
lukewarm state, so they were neither here nor there (3:15-16). We normally prefer our coffee/tea to be
either hot (in winter) or cold/iced (in summer). Most of us find tepid, lukewarm drinks
unpalatable, so we often spit them out and throw the rest away. Some commentators suggest that the image which Jesus is
using here refers to the lukewarm water which could be found coming from a spring
just outside the city of
Laodicea. This water was mineralized and contained sulphur
(which would give it an unpleasant taste and smell) and it was sometimes used in a medicinal way to make sick
people vomit up what they had eaten.
So, the Lord’s warning to them is that if
they refuse to heed his prophetic word, if they will not repent of the materialism and
worldliness which is excluding him from their lives, if they will not get back
to a life of intimacy with him, but instead just wilfully continue on in the blindness
of their own ways, he will eventually spit them out, much as he said he would
remove the lampstand from the church in Ephesus (2:5, 3:16). He will turn away
from the door and walk off, leaving them to the consequence of their own
choice: life without him, and his intention for them will be lost. He will move on from them to find others who
will indeed heed his voice, because they themselves have insisted on keeping
him locked out of his own church. They
were transforming it into nothing more than a superficial, self-seeking social
club covered over with the false glitter of a well-dressed, but nominal
Christianity. So he will withdraw,
leaving them with nothing but a cold, empty, religious shell devoid of his
life-giving presence. And from then on, things will be left to take their
natural course towards nominalism and closure.
The Lord’s call to them to repent of their ways was necessary
because the faith of the generation after a lukewarm one is invariably nominal,
leaving the church without any future. Spiritual deadness, dwindling numbers and
closure inevitably follow...
Strong language? Yes, but it makes the point. Hard talk?
Yes, but hasn’t he earned the right to speak to us with such
heart-piercing honesty and directness?
And because we are often so dull of hearing, doesn’t he need to speak
like this from time to time, if we are to wake up and really get the
point? The simple truth is that, without
the life-giving presence of Jesus, church really doesn’t have any meaning at all.
It has always ever been God’s desire for church to be a body of people who are learning to walk in his purposes, filled
and permeated with the fire and passion of his eternal life, a community which
is a living witness to those around who do not yet know him. This is what he wants and what he would have
it be, so that he can dwell among and work powerfully through us. We are his church and he is our Lord,
so it is nothing less than folly and
blindness on our part to exclude him, or to impose our own agenda of
personal comfort on his purposes for us, while continuing to profess and play at
being Christians. If all we really want
is earthly riches and a comfortable and secure, but spiritually sleepy life,
then why on earth would Jesus want to keep on knocking at the door? He won’t…
Reigning in life with Christ
The underlying theme in this letter is
that of reigning. Jesus overcame and sat
down with his Father on his throne, inheriting the mantle to rule over God’s
creation (3:14,21; cf. Matt. 28:18). He
promises us that, if we overcome as he overcame, then we too will be given the
right to be seated with him on his throne.
And as we have seen, in a similar way to the believers at Corinth, these
Laodicean believers were seeking to ‘reign in life’ through their carnal
perception of the priority of wealth and material prosperity (cf. 1 Cor. 4:8).
However, materialism as an end in itself has always been an empty, carnal,
self-centred deception that never truly satisfies the human soul, and it always
kills off spiritual life and blinds us to eternal realities. If we want to save our life in this world,
then we lose it as far as God’s kingdom is concerned. We can gain the whole world, but lose our own
soul. However, if we are willing to lose
our life in this world for Christ’s sake, then we find what it truly means to
have life in him (Matt. 16:24-26).
God’s pathway to overcoming and reigning
with Christ is not the way of this world.
In fact, it bears no resemblance at all to it! In God’s economy, the way to his throne passes
through the cross. Jesus, being
in the form of God, made himself nothing, humbling himself and becoming
obedient to the death of the cross. Only
then was he exalted to the highest place and given the name that is
above every name (Phil. 2:6-11). It is
the Lamb who was slain who is at the heart of God’s throne (Rev. 5:6). Before he was given his crown in heaven,
Jesus first had to wear a crown of thorns (Rev. 19:12)! In fact, when the crowds on one occasion were
intending to make him king by force, he withdrew from them (John 6:15). Before he could sit on his Father’s throne,
he first had to walk the pathway of being the faithful and true witness,
surrendered in complete obedience to the will of God for him, even unto death
(1:5, 3:14).
The fact that Jesus desires for us to
reign with him as overcomers is clear from his words in verse 21, but the way
to this for us too is the pathway and yoke of the cross, the way the Master
himself trod. No servant is above his
Master. We are invited to follow him and
to take up our own cross in obedience, and to enter into a life of deep, inner
fellowship with the One who, through God’s grace, embodied complete obedience
to God’s will. This is for him to know
us fully and completely, but it is also for us to begin to know the unveiling
of his heart to us, and to cooperate with him in the working out of his
purposes in this age as he brings a lost world back to himself. It is the Jesus of the wounded and
scarred hands and feet who invites us to walk with him in the fellowship,
sufferings and purposes of his kingdom.
However, if to walk with Jesus in
obedience is to know the cross working in our life, then, as Paul said, it is
also to know the power and victory of his resurrection working in and through
us (Phil. 3:10). It is as this same
Christ-life is made real in our own experience as we walk with him, through a
life of surrender, submission and obedience on our part, and lived out by the
active grace of God working deeply within us (Rom. 5:17), that we begin to die
to sin, to self and to any carnal perceptions and dreams of worldly positioning
and success which we may have, and begin to know what it truly means to reign
in life with Christ. As we die to self,
then his presence and resurrection life begin to shine in us and to work
through us, enabling God to bring about a widening spiritual influence over
others for his kingdom, and causing our lives to bear much fruit. It is knowing Christ and walking in his ways that
leads us to the throne, to be seated with him in heavenly places and to reign
with him in life (Eph. 2:6, Rom. 5:17).
If we obey Jesus, if we walk with him and endure with him, then we will
also reign with him (2 Tim. 2:12), and it is such a life in the here and now
which is our preparation for reigning with him in eternity (Rev. 5:10).
So to be seated with
Jesus on his throne and to reign with him is a privilege and reward given only
to those who overcome (3:21). Not every
believer is an overcomer, so not every believer will receive a crown and be
seated with Jesus on his throne.
Believers who choose to live a carnal and self-centred life, unyielded
and unsurrendered, and therefore who live essentially according to the ways of
this world, do not reign with Christ. It
is only those of proven spiritual character, walk and faith who are ready to
reign with him. Believers can sometimes
be well-off in material terms, but perhaps have little or no developed, inward
spiritual character. They may not even
have mastered their own physical lusts and appetites! Material riches (and the temporal security
they bring) can be lost, but developed and discipled spiritual character lasts
and will always see us through life. It
is the growth and maturing of spiritual character which influences others and
can co-work fruitfully with God in the building of his kingdom. True personal, spiritual authority is not
measured by material possessions and social position, but by what we are
becoming in Christ.
There are several
different crowns mentioned in the New Testament: the crown of rejoicing (1
Thess. 2:19), the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8), the crown of life (Jas.
1:12, Rev. 2:10) and the crown of glory (1 Peter 5:4). These crowns represent the labour, sorrow,
pain, sacrifice, endurance, and also the victories which an overcoming believer
went through and experienced for the sake of Christ and his kingdom. The crown which will be placed upon their
head when they reign was once a cross upon their shoulders, the calvary of pain
and sorrow that they went through as they persevered in serving God and broke
through to spiritual victories. It is a
symbol of who that person became on the inside; it is their story and
testimony. It will not be given to them
merely as an adornment, but as a well-deserved honour and as a statement of
their position in heaven.
The gist of John Wesley’s advice to
his early Methodist believers regarding their personal finances is summed up in
his sermon “On the Use of Money.” In it
he made three very simple points: earn as much as you can, save as much as you
can, and give as much as you can. This
powerful apostolic evangelist, who travelled and preached throughout England
for over fifty years and planted Methodism into the heart of English church
life, practised these principles himself.
He did not spend a lot on himself and instead gave much to others. Towards the end of his life, he thought that
many Methodist believers had not really adopted his own position on giving, and
felt that the growing personal prosperity within the movement was having a
knock-on effect in terms of the spiritual powerlessness into which many of them
were falling. He himself went on record
to say that when he died they wouldn’t find him with any more than ten pounds
to his name.[1]
The well-known English cricketer and
apostolic missionary C.T. Studd gave up his sizeable inheritance and his
well-heeled aristocratic lifestyle to follow the call of Christ to China. His personal motto ‘If Christ be God and died
for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him,’ has for
generations inspired thousands of young people the world over to follow Christ
with wholehearted devotion into a life of missionary service. After spending many years in China and then
India, he then spent much of the last eighteen years of
his life living in Congo in Africa as he and his band of co-workers evangelized
the surrounding areas. Through his
personal sacrifice and fire-filled faith God raised up a mission agency that
even today still reaches unevangelized people to the ends of the earth.
At the end of his life, after over fifty
years of leading a deeply respected and very fruitful ministry of worldwide
intercession as Director of the Bible College of Wales, Swansea, the Rev.
Samuel R. Howells had almost nothing to his name. In his room/office, his personal possessions
included simply a collection of old books and a few suits. Even the bed he slept in, the chair he sat
on, the desk he worked at, and the roof over his head did not belong to
him. Living by faith and never well-off
in the eyes of the world, this quiet, cultured and selfless man walked closely
with God and was responsible over several decades for the training and sending
out of many gospel-preaching missionaries to the ends of the earth, and for
helping to finance the provision of the word of God to many thousands of
believers and Christian workers worldwide.[2]
Were these men poor? Perhaps, in the eyes of the world, but in the
eyes of God they were rich. They are now
honoured in heaven and they each have an eternity ahead in which to enjoy their
reward. And through their obedience did
they fulfil God’s purposes for them? Did
they bring forth much fruit for his kingdom and reign in life with Christ? Absolutely!
In each case, their spiritual influence and fruitfulness for the kingdom
of God grew to become deep and worldwide in scope, and is still felt even today
by many individuals, churches, organizations and missionaries through the
example of their lives, their teachings, and the biographies and books that
have been written about them.
Copyright
Notice
THE HOLY
BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by
Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
[1]
www.eaforchristians.org, accessed
24.05.2019.
[2]
See Maton, R. “A Living Legacy”, Chapter 59, Samuel Rees Howells: A Life of Intercession, Kindle Version,
ByFaith Media: UK, 2018, accessed 24.05.2019.
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