“Thus because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Again, this is not a warning from the Lord Jesus to a single believer, but to the angel of the assembly in Laodicea, who stands before Him on behalf of the whole assembly. The seven assemblies also prophetically represent, as “seven candlesticks”, various states of the testimony of Christianity on earth, at the end of which is Laodicea. As “candlesticks” for the Lord Jesus, they are judged by Him accordingly.
Without going into too much detail, it can be said that the assembly at Laodicea is in a state of being aware of that which was emphasized as praiseworthy in the previous letter to Philadelphia, but despises and spurns it. There they kept the word of the Lord, did not deny His name and waited for His coming. Where all this is lacking and one is only concerned with oneself and one’s supposed wealth instead of the Lord, one is in danger of falling into the terrible state that the Scriptures show us here. Here there is no real testimony for the Lord Jesus any more, and so He will spew it out of His mouth as something for which one feels only disgust and revulsion.
So we are not concerned here with temporal (and still less with an eternal) judgment on individual believers, but with the condemnation of a state of corporate Christian testimony to the Lord. The Lord does not spew people out, but in this way separates Himself from the testimony as such. The true believers (the “overcomers”) who are in it, on the other hand, receive a blessed promise: “He that overcomes, to him will I give to sit with me in my throne; as I also have overcome and have sat down with my Father in his throne” (v. 21).
I am about to spew you out of my mouth (Rev. 3:16)
“Thus because you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
Again, this is not a warning from the Lord Jesus to a single believer, but to the angel of the assembly in Laodicea, who stands before Him on behalf of the whole assembly. The seven assemblies also prophetically represent, as “seven candlesticks”, various states of the testimony of Christianity on earth, at the end of which is Laodicea. As “candlesticks” for the Lord Jesus, they are judged by Him accordingly.
Without going into too much detail, it can be said that the assembly at Laodicea is in a state of being aware of that which was emphasized as praiseworthy in the previous letter to Philadelphia, but despises and spurns it. There they kept the word of the Lord, did not deny His name and waited for His coming. Where all this is lacking and one is only concerned with oneself and one’s supposed wealth instead of the Lord, one is in danger of falling into the terrible state that the Scriptures show us here. Here there is no real testimony for the Lord Jesus any more, and so He will spew it out of His mouth as something for which one feels only disgust and revulsion.
So we are not concerned here with temporal (and still less with an eternal) judgment on individual believers, but with the condemnation of a state of corporate Christian testimony to the Lord. The Lord does not spew people out, but in this way separates Himself from the testimony as such. The true believers (the “overcomers”) who are in it, on the other hand, receive a blessed promise: “He that overcomes, to him will I give to sit with me in my throne; as I also have overcome and have sat down with my Father in his throne” (v. 21).
C L Bancroft
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