Revelation 3:22

Revelation 3:22. The Epistle closes with the usual call of the Spirit to the churches. We have considered the Epistles to the seven churches separately; but, before leaving the subject, it may be well to make a few remarks upon them as a whole. That they are intended to be thus looked at is allowed by every interpreter. We have not merely before us seven letters to seven individual churches, which no inner bond connects with one another, and where there is no thought of any general result; we have a representation or picture of the Church at large. Yet the traits given us of the condition of each church are historical, the seven churches selected being preferred to others, because they appeared to the apostle to afford the best typical representation of the Church universal.

The seven Epistles, however, are not merely seven. They are clearly divided into two groups, the first of which consists of the first three, the second of the four following, Epistles. Various circumstances combine to prove this, one of which the difference of position assigned in the different groups to the call, ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches' is at once perceptible to the English reader. Another the omission (by later reading) of the words ‘I know thy works' from the Epistles to Smyrna and Pergamos, while they occur in all the remaining Epistles is not so obvious, nor is its force so easily determined. Yet we know of no more satisfactory explanation than that the words are omitted from the second and third Epistles, because these two are so intimately connected with the first that the expression, when used in it, was supposed to extend its influence into them. It is true that the same thing does not occur in the last four, the expression ‘I know thy works' meeting us in each; but this may only show that the unity of the second group is not so profound and intimate as that of the first. If, then, it be now asked what the difference between these two groups is, we answer that in the first we have the Church of Christ in herself, in the second the Church of Christ as she mingles with the world and learns its ways. No doubt in the first group sin and suffering are spoken of; but it must be borne in mind that it is the actual not the ideal Church with which we have to deal; and the Church had not then, nor has she even now, attained to the ‘stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus.' Sin marks her, and she stands in need of suffering; but it is the characteristic of the first of the two groups, that in it sin has more the aspect of weakness, while in the second it is intensified and yielded to through contact with the world. When, accordingly, we look more closely at the first three Epistles, the leading idea of each appears to be as follows. In Ephesus the church is faithful to her commission. She has indeed lost the warmth of her first love, but she holds fast the revelation of the will of God, the ‘form of sound words,' with which she had been entrusted; she has tried them which ‘call themselves apostles, and they are not, and has found them false,' and she has ‘not grown weary in her toil.' In Smyrna this faithfulness continues, but the idea of suffering is now brought in, and the Church is told that the time is at hand when she must meet it. Lastly, in Pergamos we have a similar faithfulness even under persecution which has begun, although at the same time there are now ‘some' within her own borders who have given way to evil, so that actual affliction is required to purify her. In the three Epistles taken together we have thus set before us the main New Testament conception of the Church, the Body of believers true to Christ's cause upon the whole, but taught to expect affliction, and actually afflicted, that they may be cleansed and be made to bring forth more fruit (John 15:1-2).

When we turn to the churches of the second group we enter upon a different field. The Church is now in actual contact with the world, and, forgetting her high calling to be Christ's witness in and against the world, she yields to its corrupting influences. Thus in Thyatira, the first of the four, it is no longer ‘some' (chap. Revelation 2:15) in her midst who tolerate evil. The Church as a whole does so. She ‘suffereth,' beareth with, Jezebel, a heathen princess the fitting type of the world and the world's sins. She knew the world to be what it was, and yet she was content to be at peace with it. It may be worthy of notice, too, that as the first picture of the church in herself that in the Epistle to Ephesus showed her to be peculiarly faithful on the point of doctrine, so the first picture of the church, as she begins to yield to the world, shows us that it was in doctrinal steadfastness that she failed. In the Epistle to Sardis, the second city of the second group, there is more yielding to the world than even in Thyatira. A few indeed there have not defiled their garments, but the church as a whole reproduces the Pharisees in the days of Christ, loud in their profession and renowned for it, but with no works of a true and genuine righteousness fulfilled before God. Declension in doctrine had soon been followed by declension in practice. Amidst all such declensions, however, it must never be forgotten that the Church has her times of noble faithfulness, and such a time seems to be set before us in the Epistle to Philadelphia. That the church there has been struggling with the world we see by the description of her vanquished enemies who come in and worship before her feet (chap. Revelation 3:9); but she had not yielded to the world. No word of reproach is uttered against her. The Epistle to Philadelphia represents either a time when the Church as a whole maintains her allegiance to the Captain of her salvation, or that remnant within the Church (as there was a remnant even in the Jewish Church of our Lord's time) which keeps ‘the word of the Lord's patience' in those seasons of conflict with the main body of the Church herself that are far more hard to bear than any conflict with the world. Lastly, in Laodicea all that is most melancholy in the history of the Church's relation to the world culminates, and the last picture that is given us of her state is at the same time the saddest (comp. Luke 18:8). The Church is here conformed to the world, and takes her ease amidst the wealth and the luxury which the world affords to all her votaries, and to none with so much satisfaction as to those who will purchase them at the cost of Christian consistency.

Such appears to us to be a general outline of the course of thought embodied in these seven Epistles. But it is not easy to speak with confidence regarding it. The general conception of the two groups of three and four may perhaps be accepted as correct; [1] and starting from that point, other inquirers may be more successful in determining the special characteristic of the Church which each Epistle of both groups is undoubtedly intended to express.

[1] The present writer has treated the subject more folly in a paper in the Expositor for July 1882.