14 “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.
15 “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! 16 So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. 17 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. 18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. 19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. 21 The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
This is the saddest letter of all. There is no commendation given, only sharp censure. We have already seen the peril of the 'active' Church in Sardis, and here is another that did not know the truth about itself. Full of complacency, it did not realise its poverty and wretched ness in the sight of God. They were rich in the wrong things, and it was this that had caused their spiritual poverty. It is always so. The gold of the gospel does not mix with anything else; where one is the other must go. They had opted for the other, with disastrous consequences, the worst of them being the spirit of luke-warmness that had devastated their life. None of the tensions and pressures that marks the life of the other churches can be seen here - no one was sufficiently enthusiastic in Laodicea to be bothered with such issues. It was a situation of complete compromise, in which they were neither cold nor hot. A religious life of sorts still persisted, but it was neither the one thing nor the other, and - let us face it -Christ expressed his disgust at it in unmistakable terms (16). How are we to define luke-warmness? Luke warmness exists when you have believers who are utterly orthodox in belief but have no con cern for the lost; who believe in hell but do not pray for souls; who insist on belonging to an evangelical fellowship which has Bible-study and Prayer meetings but never come to them. It is this living lie that draws our Lord's severest strictures. Indifference and complacency are things that even Christ can do nothing with save reject and repudiate. Opposition and antag onism he can overcome, or if not, use in His service in spite of men, but indifference is like a creeping paralysis that destroys the possibility of further use. There is such a thing as a con science being seared as with a hot iron and rendered finally inoperative.