Revelation 3:15

The moral nausea roused by tepid religion. It is best to be warm, and energetic; but even a frank repudiation of religion is at least more promising from an ethical standpoint (Arist. Nik. Eth. vii. 2 10) than a half-and-half attachment, complacently oblivious of any shortcoming. The outsider may be convinced and won over; there is hope of him, for he is under no illusion as to his real relation to the faith. But what can be done with people who are nominal Christians, unable to recognise that they need repentance and that Jesus is really outside their lives (Revelation 3:20)? Cf. Dante's Inferno, iii. 30 f. For such homely metaphors and their effectiveness, compare the criticism of Longinus in περὶ ὕψους (xxxi.): “Sometimes a plain expression like this tells more forcibly than elegant language; being drawn from common life, it is at once recognised, whilst its very familiarity renders it all the more convincing”. The spirit of the verse resembles that which pervaded Christ's denunciation of the religious authorities in his day for their ὑπόκρισις, and his more hopeful expectations with regard to the harlots and taxgatherers (Ecce Homo, ch. xiii.); the former condition of religious life was to Jesus a sickening feature in the situation. Just as spiritual death, in the case of the Sardis Christians, meant a lost vitality, so in the case of Laodicea lukewarmness implies that a condition of religious warmth once existed. “He who was never fervent can never be lukewarm.” In his analysis of this state (Growth in Holiness, ch. xxv.), Faber points out not only that its correlative is a serene unconsciousness and unconcern (cf. Revelation 3:17 b), but that one symptom is a complacent attention to what has been achieved (cf. 17 a) rather than sensitiveness to what is left undone, with “a quiet intentional appreciation of other things over God” (cf. Revelation 3:20), which is all the more mischievous that it is not open wickedness.