Evangelism is important, but the church’s efforts today seem not to be working. This is not a problem with the world, but with the church. If there is an element of ineffectiveness in the church today, perhaps we can gain insight by looking at the letter to the Laodiceans.
The letter to the Laodiceans is the only one of the seven letters that has no commendation. They are described as being lukewarm, a contrast to two nearby cities that provided water. At their sources, one was cold and refreshing while the other was hot mineral water that was useful for healing. By the time the waters made it to Laodicea, however, they were lukewarm and ineffective for their original purposes.
Thus, the Laodiceans could be said to have been ineffective in their service to the Lord.
The reason for this seems to be their own self-sufficient attitude. Historically, it is known that they actually refused assistance from Rome to rebuild after a major earthquake, relying instead on their own wealth and resources. This attitude is evident in Jesus’ description of their own self-appraisal as rich, prosperous, and needing nothing from anyone. However, Jesus described them as “poor, blind, and naked”.
They thought they had everything they needed to be successful, but were in fact completely helpless, and this lack of ability must have led to their lack of effectiveness. Although obvious to Jesus, they were oblivious to their situation.
As a solution, Jesus offered them three things: refined gold, white garments, and eye salve. These are obviously metaphors for whatever they were missing, probably spiritual things.
It seems like the refined riches refers to relying on God’s provision rather than worldly resources, and could be started with a focus on prayer. The third metaphor is common throughout Scripture as representing spiritual awareness. However, the middle metaphor is less clear; what might be meant by “white garments”?
Here is Jesus’ statement:
I counsel you to buy from me … white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen. Revelation 3:18 (partial).
The second recommended “purchase” for the Laodiceans are white garments. This seems to be the least clear of the metaphors, especially since both clothing and nakedness have multiple meanings through Scripture. However, there’s one possibility that matches the overall sense of the letter as well as being a strong Biblical theme. While there may be other possible meanings, I think this one is useful.
To begin with, clothing is often used to represent one’s behavior in Scripture. In fact, this is explicitly stated later in Revelation 19:81, but Paul also uses the metaphor to describe the change that results from being saved. In these cases, the meaning is generally that white clothes represent righteous actions, and they are to replace filthy clothes that represent sinful actions.
In those cases, the comparison is between two different cleanliness of clothes, not between clothed and nakedness. In other words, there is something wrong in Laodicea, represented by nakedness, that the white clothes supplied by Jesus will cover or fix.
Nakedness is used for several different purposes in Scripture. Later in Revelation it seems to represent not being ready or prepared for what is about to happen, while in the Old Testament, Isaiah walked around naked to represent impending defeat.2
Thus, the general tenor of nakedness seems to be inability or ineffectiveness, for various reasons. Certainly, some sort of impotence seems to fit the tenor of the letter.
In our case, considering the general ineffectiveness of church evangelism, what might be represented by being clothed in something provided by Christ that we are not, or cannot, do ourselves? The most obvious possibility seems to be salvation, since that is something that we cannot accomplish through our own actions. Contrasting Christ’s saving work through our own ineffective works suggests that this error of the Laodiceans was in trying to achieve salvation through their own human efforts. Or possibly, they were teaching others that human works were needed for salvation.
In other words, perhaps their error was a reliance on legalism rather than the blood of Christ.
This certainly wasn’t the first time this had come up, as evidenced by Jesus’ warnings to the religious leaders, Peter’s issues at Antioch, Paul’s teachings to both them and the Ephesians, and so on.3
So whether the Laodiceans thought that legalism was the key to their own salvation, or they were preaching legalism to others as a condition for being saved, or both, it may be that they were relying on their own human righteousness rather than Christ’s. Thus, Jesus admonished them to depend on His righteousness (white garments) instead of the shame of their own flawed natures (nakedness).
As with many such metaphors, there may be other possible meanings that the Spirit uses to guide people, but from my seeking to understand the challenges facing evangelism for today, this seems like a useful one. It certainly matches the behavior of many churches, as evidenced by the way unbelievers have come to see the faith as primarily judgmental, graceless, merciless, devoid of hope, and even unloving. If this is not the message that we’re to be leaving with them, then it makes sense that our efforts would ultimately be ineffective, even lukewarm.
Since we certainly need to understand our sinful nature in order to repent and in order to understand why Christ’s work on our behalf is such good news, we can’t avoid the topic completely. But there’s a difference between describing sin and requiring a change of life before being saved. And it’s important to remember that we need to be speaking to unbelievers in their languages, not necessarily in the ways most familiar to us.
From the way people are reacting to our message today, it seems that this is not happening. Maybe this is one reason our efforts are so ineffective.
- “it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure” — for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. Revelation 19:8. A similar meaning is likely in the letter to Sardis, in which Jesus says “Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.” Revelation 3:4
- See Revelation 16:15 and Isaiah 20,
- For example, see Matthew. 23:1-4, Galatians 2:11-14, Galatians 2:15 – 5:15, and Ephesians 2:8-9.
Exploring Antioch 