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Welcome our commentary on the Book of Revelation.

Updated Feb. 26, 2005
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The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Chapter 3

his commentary on the Apocalypse is designed as a quick reference on select passages. It does not address every verse nor provide a complete exposition of the passages dealt with. It does endeavor to provide the student of the Apocalypse with insights that will make the prophecy as a whole more meaningful.
    This commentary is arranged in single-paragraph blocks and uses digital-style references to facilitate computer searches. For computer sorting purposes, biblical references use a three-letter designation for book titles and zeroes as placeholders in the chapter and verse numbers. Consequently, the passage traditionally designated Revelation 1:1 will appear as REV 01.01, while Revelation 19:10 does not require the placeholders and will appear as REV 19.10. Paragraphs given a double-zero designation, such as REV 00.01, contain introductory information and are not related to a specific verse of the Apocalypse. Biblical references embedded in the commentary text omit the unnecessary zero place holders but use the dot rather than the more traditional colon. References that do not designate a book refer to verses in the Apocalypse.

Abbreviations used in the commentary:

    Ant               Josephus Antiquities of the Jews
    BEB             Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible
    DSS             Dead Sea Scrolls   
    IVPBBC      The IVP Bible Background Commentary
    LXX            Septuagint
    NT               New Testament
    OT               Old Testament
    OTP            Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
    War             Josephus Jewish Wars
REV 03.03 [HOURS IN THE APOCALYPSE]: The term hour in this verse echoes the warnings recorded in the Gospels that Jesus gave about His coming. The hour conveys the idea of a precise time, namely the precise time that would be unexpected by the disobedient. The connotation of precision also attaches clearly to the hour of Rev. 9.15. The half hour of Rev. 8.1 also indicates that hour is used in the Apocalypse to indicate a precise time or amount of time. Other passages, however, like 3.10 and 17.12 seem to use hour to indicate a relatively short period of time, rather than a literal hour. Is then the hour of Babylon’s complete destruction (18.10,17.19) a literal hour, implying a destructive force of nuclear proportions, or is that hour a short period of time, allowing for a “conventional” burning of the city?

REV 03.09 [FALSE JEWS OF PHILADELPHIA]: Ignatius wrote to the Philadelphian Christians, “If any one preaches the one God of the Law and the prophets, but denies Christ to be the Son of God, he is a liar, even as also is his father the devil, and is a Jew falsely so called, being possessed of mere carnal circumcision.” We see that for Ignatius, as for John and Paul, a true Jew was one who was not only circumcised outwardly, but had the circumcised heart and faith of Abraham.

REV 03.14a [THE APOCRYPHAL LETTER TO LAODICEA]: The NT Apocrypha conains a brief Epistle to The Laodiceans purporting to be from Paul, and warning against those seeking material gain.

REV 03.14b [THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD]: Archae (beginning) is not to be take here as meaning that Jesus is the first created, but rather that he is the first or foremost citizen with respect to all entitites of the created universe. Besides beginning, archae is used to mean origin, first cause, ruling power, authority or ruler, and these are the connotations the Glorified Christ has in mind as He rebukes the Laodicean church. These connotations of archae by which Christ identifies Himself as the origin of creation, also point to His pre-existence, an attribute of Messiah anticipated by the Jewish apocalyptic work, 1 Enoch, ch. 48, where the Son of Man (Messiah) is given the name Before-Time.

REV 03.15,16 [HOT, COLD OR LUKEWARM?]: Laodicea lacked its own water supply in the summer, and so, the grumbling residents received tepid and impure water by way of a long viaduct. The reproof of lukewarmness would have pierced the local Christians — lukewarm to them meant disgusting. In these verses, lukewarm is clearly a bad thing to be.
        What is less clear is the meaning of the phrase “you are neither cold nor hot.” This is the only place in the Bible where the words cold and hot are paired, and so we cannot interpret the phrase from other NT usage. Nor does the phrase seem to appear in the DSS or OTP. The Mishnah (Zebahim 11.7) says that “scouring must be done with hot water, and the rinsing with cold water” but that is not much help to us.
        Traditionally, cold has been taken as a negative spiritual state while hot has been understood as a positive. Gregory the Great, in his Book of Pastoral Rule (Part 3, ch. 34), writes of this passage, “he is hot who both takes up and completes good purposes; but he is cold who does not even begin any to be completed.” More recent preachers like Edwards, Spurgeon and Finney have followed suit in interpreting cold as a state honest unbelief and hot as a state of spiritual zeal.
      In the message to Laodicea, however, it is not immediately obvious whether cold is bad and hot is good, but consensus today is turning toward recognizing both cold and hot as positive states. The Greek construction of our phrase in view (adj./noun + to be + or + adj./noun) is used in the NT and LXX both for contrasting and complementary conjunctions, for examples, “strong or weak” (Num 13.18) and “a prophet or spiritual” (1Co 14.37). While contrasts predominate, the construction can be used to pair two positive things.
        Alan F. Johnson in his Revelation commentary for the EBC, writes:
There is good reason why we should not try to take both of these words as if Christ meant I wish you were either spiritually cold (i.e., unsaved or hostile) or spiritually hot (i.e., alive and fervent). In the first place, it is inconceivable that Christ would wish that people were spiritually cold, or unsaved and hostile. Furthermore, the application of “hot” and “cold” to spiritual temperature, though familiar to us, would have been completely foreign to first-century Christians.

Johnson is not entirely correct. It is better for an individual to be openly hostile than to profess Christ while at the same time alienating people by behavior that belies the gospel (Cf. 2Pe 2.20,21; Luk 17.1,2). This is why Paul encourages interaction with non-Christians, and forbids fellowship with those who call themselves Christians but who live immoral lives (1Co 5.9-11). Those who join with the church for a time and then renounce Christianity do not extinguish the church’s light; it is those who remain in the church but live compromised lives who jeopardize the church’s witness!
        Also, Mat 24.12 shows that the first century audience did associate coldness with a spiritual state in which a person’s love for God and man had dissipated. Similarly, with regard to hotness, the first century audience knew that hearts can burn with ardor at the sound of the Lord’s voice (Luk 24.32), and a life can burn like a torch for Him, giving light and warmth to all who are near (Joh 5.35). And a church can burn as a lampstand giving light to its community (REV 02.01,05).
        Nevertheless, what is inconceivable is that Christ would wish a church as a corporate whole to be unbelieving or hostile. He would not wish the lampstand to go out and grow cold leaving only darkness. When we step out of our Western individualistic mindset and remember that these messages to the seven churches are exhortations not so much to individuals as to corporate bodies, we are forced to see the wish of Christ for either hotness or coldness to be a wish for two healthy states as contrasted to the one unhealthy state of lukewarmness.
      In first-century Asia Minor, cold water benefited those who drank it as did hot water, but lukewarm water, particularly the tepid and polluted water of Laodicea, nauseated those who drank it. In like manner, the Laodicean church was sickening both their community and the Lord. The Lord’s reproof in this passage reveals what history confirms (see below): the Laodicean mindset was one of self-sufficiency. They were like the Deists who would come much later but in the same spirit, teaching that “God helps them who help themselves.” By its attitude and lifestyle, the Laodicean church was communicating the very opposite of the gospel, namely that a person did not really need Christ but only needed to apply himself with drive and ambition. The Lord’s desire for the Laodicean church was that it would demonstrate a life of dependency and faith that benefited rather than spiritually poisoned its community.
        Which brings us to an interesting question about the Lord’s threat to vomit the Laodicean congregation “out of my mouth”: why is the church (metaphorically) in the Lord’s mouth? Because it is the vehicle of His word in the community. Just like the Corinthians, the Laodiceans were “a letter from Christ” … “known and read by everybody” (2Co 3.2,3). The letter must be faithful to its author, or it must be disavowed.

REV 03.17 [I NEED NOTHING]:  Tacitus recorded that in AD 60 an earthquake “prostrated the city” of Laodicea. Though the Roman senate offered generous earthquake relief, prosperous Laodicea refused their aid and Tacitus notes with surprise that the city rose again “with no help from us.” (Source: BEB.) Sadly, financial independence often causes us to forget our spiritual dependency that cannot be financed away.

REV 03.18 [GOLD REFINED BY FIRE]: The gold offered by Messiah is perhaps that of refined character, as in Zechariah 13.19, or perhaps it is the relational riches discovered by the unjust steward of Luke 16.8,9.





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