If hot, cold, and lukewarm are de-historicized and un-necessarily overly spiritualized as they are dutifully ripped from their comprehensive contexts by well-meaning commentators and interpreters, what follows from the temperature descriptions and the inclination towards vomiting receive nothing less than the same treatment. By now of course, we should know that taking steps to travel the path of over-spiritualization will ultimately lead us away from the discovery of what it is that Jesus is attempting to communicate through the Revelator of Patmos. Ironically, this will serve to retard our spiritual growth, as we move further away from being able to understand the truth of what Jesus is communicating.
As we continue through this letter in the hopes of deriving solid and useful conclusions that seem to be primarily related to Jesus’ words of standing at the door and knocking, hoping for His voice to be heard so that He might come into the home of the hearer to share a meal (3:20), we must be do so with a careful guard against the immediate and personal application of these words that have us making a spiritual decision to accept Jesus into our hearts. Though the words of God are to be understood as eminently personal, we fool ourselves if we take them personally before we understand them in context, especially in this book of Revelation, and even more especially these letters to the churches, which are simply not to be understood as some type of chronicle of “church ages” (whatever that means), or a prophetic catalogue of future events which John himself was probably not envisioning. There is great value to be found in these letters to the churches if we are willing to do the mental work, in full acknowledgment of God’s providential dealings with mankind that are colored by the Resurrection, which will enable us to discern what is being said.
Why is their great value to be found in that process? It is because these were real churches. That is worth repeating. These were real churches, full of real people, and they were dealing with real, everyday issues. The issue in this church at Laodicea appears to be a particularly thorny one, and according to the author, it is particularly upsetting to the Lord to which this church presumably claims to look and to serve. Yes, there is some repetition in our words here, but it is incumbent upon us to do our very best to ascertain the nature of the issue so as to avoid the same expression of disgust, especially if we really do believe that Jesus is the crucified, resurrected, ascended, and presently ruling Lord of all. Indeed, it is that very belief which should keep us from the error of skipping past a concerted attempt to understand His words within their own rightful context. It is that belief which should keep us from making abstract application of the words of Jesus, and from there, making the largely (one might say wholly) unjustified leap of seeing Revelation (in conjunction with other Hebrew writings) as some type of perfect outline of the events that detail the course of future. Indeed, such thinking will get us focused on issues pertaining to a looming, individual anti-christ figure, overly focused on the mark of the beast, the identity of a false prophet, and other related concerns. Thus, our mind and limited time is absorbed in considerations of what is really nothing more than wild speculation about events with which we may or may not need to concern ourselves, depending on our position on rapture, and whether or not such an event might take place pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, or our position in relation to the kingdom of God---pre-millennial, post-millennial, a-millennial.
When such are the positions taken as we gaze upon the Revelation, concerning ourselves with the equivalent of sooth-saying and fortune-telling in the attempt to gain control over people, it is quite likely that what will be missed is what Jesus is actually communicating to His church. Let us not forget that Jesus’ communication is provided context by and taking place in connection with what this church would have known about Him based on the teachings about Him that would have been carried on by His apostles and disciples. Jesus’ words would not be framed by speculation, but by knowledge of Him and His ministry. We see this teaching embodied in the records of His life and mission that make up the Gospels, along with the writings about the Messiah that are to be found in the Hebrew Scriptures.
The church in this age was not concerned with “end times” in the way we have been trained to think about them, as happening in a distant future. They believed that the Resurrection had ended the previous age and that a new age, that of the kingdom of God, had been inaugurated. At the same time, they were not under any delusions that the kingdom of God had come in its completion and its full glory, for they could look around and see that what was spoken of by the prophets in conjunction with the reign of their God through the Messiah had not yet been brought into effect. Therefore, they knew that there was to be, and they looked forward to a consummation of that kingdom. Their function then, which we see as a recurring theme throughout the New Testament, was to function as ambassadors for that coming kingdom, in proclamation of the Gospel in both word and deed. It is in that light that Jesus’ words to these churches demand to be understood---the proclamation of the Gospel in both word and deed, as they went about showing forth Jesus as Lord through both telling and demonstration. As ambassadors, there were certain protocols that needed to be followed, especially so in representation of their King. Failure to properly carry out an important protocol in Laodicea, unlike what was happening in Hierapolis and Colossae, has Jesus expressing anger.
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