The Lord's Exposure of the Laodiceans
It is not until the Lord has presented Himself that He exposes the Laodiceans. Only as Christ is before us, can we justly estimate how serious has been the departure.
The first and most terrible characteristic of the Laodiceans is indifference to Christ. As regards Christ they are neither "cold nor hot." They have neither the worldly infidel's hatred of Christ, nor the true Christian's jealous love for Christ. They see no beauty in His Person; they put no value upon His work. As regards the Person and work of Christ, in the "church" of the Laodiceans you may think what you like, hold what you like and say what you like. It is all a matter of indifference.
In the sight of the Lord this indifference is fatal. To express His abhorrence of this deadly indifference to Himself, the Lord uses terms of loathing and contempt such as He never used of Thyatira with all its corruption, nor Sardis with all its dead formality. The fact that the Lord can say He will spew them out of His mouth, proves that He views them as professing Christians. He never speaks thus of the heathen. It is the profession of the Name of Christ to enrich and improve a man who is totally indifferent to Christ, that is so loathsome in the sight of Christ.
Second, the Laodicean is marked by self-occupation. "Thou sayest I am" this and I am that. If they are indifferent to Christ they are full of themselves. Instead of being a witness to Christ, the Church becomes a witness to herself.
Third, the Laodicean is marked by self-complacency. "Thou sayest I am rich," but, alas, the riches in which the Laodiceans boast are in themselves, not in Christ.
Fourth, the Laodicean is self-made. He says not only I am rich, but I am "increased with goods." The riches of the Laodiceans are the result of their own labours. They not only boast in their riches, but in the labours by which they have acquired them.
Fifth, the Laodicean is self-sufficient, for he says that he has need of nothing. They do not need Christ personally, for He is outside their church. They do not need His work, for they are satisfied with their own works. They need neither the Scriptures nor the Holy Spirit to unfold them. In Christ's estimation they need everything: in their own they need nothing. Sixth, the Laodicean is ignorant of his true condition, for the Lord has to say, "Thou knowest not." Those who talk most of themselves know least about themselves. The man who is indifferent to Christ must be ignorant of himself, for it is only in the light of Christ that we learn our true condition. In the presence of the grace of God revealed in Christ, Peter says, "I am a sinful man." The most religious man who ever trod the earth discovered by one ray of light from Christ in the glory, that he was the chief of sinners.
In His light we get light, and apart from that light all is darkness and ignorance. Seventh, the Laodicean is unregenerate, for the Lord has to say, "thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked." With all their boasted wealth, how wretched their condition, how miserable their plight if, while professing the Name of Christ, they are strangers to Christ. Such, alas, is their condition, for they are poor — they do not possess Christ or anything from Christ; they are blind — they see no beauty in Christ; they are naked — Christless and exposed to judgment.
Such is the terrible conditions of the Laodiceans. They may indeed have a prominent place in the eyes of the world, for they possess in large measure the riches that the world can appreciate, but in the eyes of the Lord they possess nothing of Christ except His Name. They are filled with themselves, self-occupied, self-complacent, self-made, self-sufficient, ignorant and unregenerate professors of Christianity.
It is notable that, until recently, commentators on the book of Revelation have had difficulty in finding any who exactly correspond to the Laodicean condition. They had to content themselves with pointing out that such would appear in the last stage of the Church's history. Today this difficulty no longer exists. A class of people has arisen under the term Modernism, etc., in whom is found, not only a particular feature of the Laodiceans but the exact correspondence to their terrible condition.
Modernism is characterized by total indifference to the glory and honour of Christ. His deity may be denied, His incarnation derided, His atoning work belittled, His resurrection rejected, but the Modernist is indifferent. Your belief or unbelief is of no consequence. If the virgin birth of Christ, the miracles of Christ, the sayings of Christ, do not appeal to your reason you are welcome to reject them — the Modernist is indifferent. But if the Modernist is indifferent to Christ he has much to say of himself, for he is not lacking in religious pretension and intellectual arrogance. According to his own estimate, he is rich in human ability and enjoys the monopoly of intellectual culture and ripe scholarship.
He has grown rich through the accumulated stores of generations of laborious research. Thus equipped with the wisdom of the ages, the Modernist undertakes to criticise Scripture with unbounded confidence. He assumes to know more about the Word of God than Christ and the Apostles. He pretends to have discovered the original sources of Scripture and presumes to tell us how much may be discarded as myth and how little we may safely retain as genuine.
The self-sufficiency of the Modernist is such that he has need of nothing outside the scope of his own mental powers or beyond the reach of his own efforts. He has no need of the love of God that gave His only begotten Son; he has no need of Christ the great Mediator who gave Himself; he has no need of the sovereign work of the Spirit in new birth. While needing everything, in his own sight he has need of nothing. Such may possess all the wealth of Scholarship, but without Christ they are "poor." They may possess fine critical discernment, but failing to see beauty in Christ they are "blind." They may wrap themselves in a covering of intellectual pride, but without Christ they are naked and exposed to judgement.
Yet, Modernism exactly suits the last stage of corrupt Christendom. Its pernicious principles have worked their way into the "National Churches" and have been greedily accepted by many of the great nonconformist sects; they reign in many theological colleges and have invaded the missionary field; they are preached from innumerable pulpits, hold a prominent place in religious conferences and are applauded by the secular press.
We may well ask, How is this terrible evil to be met? The answer is found in:
The Lord's Counsel to the Laodiceans
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