The Lord's Dealing with Laodiceans
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In spite of the solemn condition of the Laodiceans they still bear the Name of Christ and once stood as witness for Christ in the world. Hence the Lord can say to them, "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten."
He lingers in love over the self-sufficient Laodiceans as in other days He wept in love over self-righteous Jerusalem. Yet it is not the love of complacency that can rest with delight in its object, but rather the love of pity that is compelled to rebuke and chasten.
If the time is not far distant when He will have to reject them with loathing, He will first seek to win with love and arouse with rebuke. If they steel their hearts against the love of His heart, and harden their conscience against the rebuke of His lips, then He will seek to reach them by the chastening of His hand.
It may be that when brought low under His chastening hand, some self-sufficient Laodicean will discover that speculation of the mind, intellectual culture and modern thought will minister no comfort in the presence of sorrow, will bring no ease to a burdened conscience, no balm to a broken heart and no support in a dying hour; and that without Christ and the true riches, they are indeed "wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked."
Then mark the grace that follows. If through the Lord's dealing in love, a Laodicean is brought to repentance, at once he will realize: