Apocalipse 3

Apocalipse 3

William MacDonald - it was lukewarm enough to deceive people into thinking that it was a church of God, and so disgustingly lukewarm about divine things as to nauseate the Most High. Furthermore, the church was characterized by pride, ignorance, self-sufficiency, and complacency. (BORROW Believer's Bible Commentary) Pulpit Commentary - The lukewarmness of which the Epistle complains was produced by a fallacious sense of security, begotten of ease and prosperity. In truth those "secure," without care, had become the careless ones. R L Thomas - Lukewarm is a description of church people who have professed Christ hypocritically but do not have in their hearts the reality of what they pretend to be in their actions. Such hypocrisy offers the only possible reason Christ would prefer coldness to lukewarmness. In fact, the spirit of Rev 3:15–16+ resembles His denunciation of the religious authorities of His day because of their hypocrisy, in contrast with His hopeful expectations with regard to harlots and tax-gatherers. A person who professes to be a Christian, but secretly has not believed in Christ, thinks that such a profession is enough to get him by. Nothing can be done with a nominal Christian who cannot recognize that he needs repentance and that Jesus is really outside His life (Moffatt). The five adjectives that describe this church in Rev 3:17+ make it quite evident that, corporately speaking, they did not have a relationship with Christ as Savior. (ED: I AGREE AND YET IT IS AMAZING THAT CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATORS STILL CALL THEM GENUINE BELIEVERS!) This probably cannot be pressed to mean that there were no genuine Christians there. It simply means they were so few in number and insignificant in influence that the Lord did not find it necessary to acknowledge their presence as He did in a similar situation with the church of Sardis (cf. 3:4). By and large, the church had come under the dominance of pretending Christians. (See Revelation Exegetical Commentary ) John MacArthur favors the hot/cold comparison as referring primarily to their spiritual state pointing out that "Deeds always reveal people’s true spiritual state, as indicated by the Lord’s words “you will know them by their fruits” (Mt. 7:16+; cf. Ro 2:6–8+). Though salvation is wholly by God’s grace through faith alone, deeds confirm or deny the presence of genuine salvation (James 2:14+ff+). The omniscient Lord Jesus Christ knew the Laodiceans’ deeds and that they indicated an unregenerate church. Christ rebuked them for being neither cold nor hot but lukewarm. His metaphorical language is drawn from Laodicea’s water supply. Because it traveled several miles through an underground aqueduct before reaching the city, the water arrived foul, dirty, and tepid. It was not hot enough to relax and restore, like the hot springs at Hierapolis. Nor was it cold and refreshing, like the stream water at Colossae. Laodicea’s lukewarm water was in a useless condition....Hot people are those who are spiritually alive and possess the fervency of a transformed life. The spiritually cold, on the other hand, are best understood as those who reject Jesus Christ. The gospel leaves them unmoved; it evokes in them no spiritual response. They have no interest in Christ, His Word, or His church. And they make no pretense about it; they are not hypocrites. The lukewarm fit into neither category. They are not genuinely saved, yet they do not openly reject the gospel. They attend church and claim to know the Lord. Like the Pharisees, they are content to practice a self-righteous religion; they are hypocrites playing games. (See Revelation Commentary No one is harder to reach for Christ than a false Christian. - John MacArthur TDNT on lukewarm as a description of the church at Laodicea - The point is that the gospel calls for unconditional self-offering to the Lord who even now knocks at the door. A commitment that is rendered lukewarm by secular concerns is worse, and harder to overcome, than complete alienation. (BORROW Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament) John R. W. Stott "Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the twentieth-century church than this. It describes vividly the respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity which is so widespread among us today. Our Christianity is flabby and anaemic. We appear to have taken a lukewarm bath of religion." Michael Andrus - You’re lukewarm. This church is full of respectable, nominal, self-satisfied churchgoers who are inoculated with skin-deep religiosity. They are flabby and anemic. They have compromised with the culture and are comfortable with it....Friends, if nothing else comes through to us from this Scripture passage, this must: Christ hates apathy and He threatens to spit it out. C.S. Lewis speaks to LUKEWARM in The Screwtape Letters when he described Wormwood's job -- "I, the devil, will always see to it that there are bad people. Your job, my dear Wormwood, is to provide me with the people who do not care." “Alas, this state of lukewarmness is so congenial with human nature that it is hard to fetch men from it." -- C H Spurgeon THOUGHT - The danger for lukewarm professors. As a retired medical doctor who specialized in infectious diseases, I knew that if we could immunize with the proper vaccine those people who were vulnerable to contracting a disease (e.g., old people with compromised pulmonary function, the immunocompromised, etc), we would likely be able to protect them from that specific disease. Unfortunately, by analogy, in the spiritual world, those who are the most resistant to the real Gospel, are those who have been "vaccinated" and are thus "immunized" with a false Gospel that is really no Gospel at all! They belong to a church and may claim to KNOW Jesus, but they are deceived, not realizing that Jesus does not KNOW them! They are those who will hear from Him "Depart from Me (cf "spit them out"). I never KNEW you!" (Mt 7:23+) I share the Gospel as often as the Spirit opens a door, but sadly have repeatedly found that the people who are most resistant (sometimes even antagonized) by the true Gospel are those who think they are okay because they have been raised in a particular denomination, been baptized, prayed a prayer to ask Jesus into their heart, walked an aisle, etc, etc. I cannot count the times those people have turned and walked away not wanting to hear anymore about the way of salvation, by grace through faith in Christ alone. They are like the church at Laodicea, lukewarm, indifferent, apathetic, deceived! And in grave danger of perishing forever. Danny Akin - This text has been misinterpreted in my opinion more often than not. Many believe what Jesus means is I would rather you be cold and in opposition to me or hot and on fire for me. However, it is hardly conceivable that Jesus would say to His church be cold and oppose me. It is better to interpret the statement against the historical and geographical background of Laodicea. Hot, medicinal waters bubbled up at nearby Hierapolis, while cold, pure waters flowed at Colossae. Our Lord’s point to them is something like this: You are providing neither refreshment for the spiritually thirsty nor healing for the spiritually sick. You may not care about your spiritually lukewarm status but I do and I will not tolerate you. If you do not repent (v. 19) I will spew you, vomit you out of my mouth. You are sickly and insipid, and I will put up with you in this condition no longer. You are flat and unsavory. You have sat, soaked and soured and are content to be as you are. Zodhiates on lukewarm - In Rev. 3:16+ the church at Laodicea is likened to lukewarm water, an emetic, something good for little more than inducing vomiting, and is censured for this blighted condition. God expresses His desire that they be cold or hot. This has been frequently misunderstood to mean that God would rather they hate Him or love Him than remain indifferent. However, it would be contradictory for God to rebuke the Laodiceans for not hating Him and to prefer that they recede from indifference to hatred. Rather, hot and cold represent beneficial qualities just as hot water soothes the body and cold water slakes one's thirst. God cannot find any redeeming feature in this church; it is spiritually bankrupt. (BORROW The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament) D A Carson in a sermon on the "Flow of Thought in 1 Timothy" sees hot/cold as - I’m sure we’re all familiar with the text in Revelation 3 that depicts the church in Laodicea. “I wish you were hot or cold; because you are not hot or cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” Now for many, many, many centuries people argued that what the exalted resurrected Jesus is saying through the visions of John, is that Jesus himself, the exalted Christ himself, would prefer for Christians to be spiritually hot or spiritually cold rather than spiritually lukewarm. Various devices are used to justify that pastorally, and you can make a sort of case. Nevertheless, in more recent times, people have done some first-class archaeological work that has shown that nearby Colossae had wonderful fresh, cold water. Nearby Hierapolis had hot springs. You can still go and swim in them today. But Laodicea had neither. It had water piped in in these Roman stone pipes. It wasn’t piped in from Hierapolis, but from another place with hot water, and calcium carbonate actually built up in the pipes so that Laodicea was known throughout the ancient Roman world for having the most disgusting water in the universe. Cicero, when he was traveling east, comments on how revolting it was. So in the context of living in Laodicea, the text is saying something like, “I wish you were hot and enjoyable and useful or cold and enjoyable and drinkable (ED: REFERRING TO THEIR DEEDS) but, in fact, you’re just revolting and disgusting. In other words, it’s not recommending cold spirituality above lukewarm spirituality at all. It just misses the point. As soon as you understand where this lukewarm language comes from (you can see the pipes still laid out on the ground), then the exact meaning of that text becomes just a little bit clearer. Brian Bell - A lukewarm person is tepid, lacking enthusiasm, halfhearted about what he or she believes. They may possess some sense of duty to the church, but lack true conviction & commitment! Imagine a Salesman lukewarm about sales! An Electrician lukewarm about electricity! A Fighter lukewarm against his foe! Imagine a Doctor lukewarm about disease! - Imagine a Church lukewarm about Christ? It makes as much sense!