Revelation 3:16

"I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot" (verse 15). This is broad indifference. Ignorance is not what does this deadly damage. The damage comes from a heart that stays indifferent to the truth after hearing all of it. Such a person does not want the truth. He feels the sacrifice, and the separation from the world, that must follow if he really obeys it. We ought to be patient wherever ignorance is unwilling. But indifference to truth is quite another thing. It is hateful in the Lord's sight.

Being neutral in principle and practice, they were half-hearted toward Christ. Nothing produces neutrality more easily than a position that is outwardly true, when self-judgment is not kept up with godly sincerity. Think of someone standing at the front of the battle, holding the responsible testimony of God. The more His grace and truth come out in his words to others, the more it matters whether he also walks according to the light. If he does not, sooner or later he slides back into neutrality, if not into active hostility.

Christ looks at the lukewarmness with utter disgust. Because "you are neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of My mouth." Moderation is the cry of men. They want everything in respectable measure — the form of religion without any power. Christ hates this. He would rather have them dead, cold — He would then know what to do with them — if not burning hot. The so-called happy medium gives Him no pleasure. Nothing keeps me from tasting grace like having a fine outside. If I only gain a place and a good reputation for myself, and God is not glorified, I have no taste of mercy in my own soul.

The Lord cannot put up with lukewarmness. What Laodicea did not have was heart for Christ. The great thing for you and me to have is affection for Christ. That is what He values above everything — affection for Himself. That was lacking, so came the blunt threat of being spat out of His mouth.

There is neither burning zeal for His word, nor outright rejection of Christ and the Bible. Instead there is a sickening, lukewarm condition that is repulsive to the Spirit of God. Lukewarm water is itself something that makes you vomit, and this is the picture the Lord uses here.

This is the last phase of the professing Christian body. It is just about to be spat out as something Christ finds unbearably sickening. To man's eye it may look very respectable; but to the heart of Christ its condition is deeply repulsive.

He does not say when He will do it; but the decree has gone out from His lips, and will never be recalled. It means that He will reject the assembly totally and for ever as His public witness, His responsible light-bearer in the world. That is its primary application. But every believer can learn from it, for instruction and warning: nothing, no state or condition, displeases Christ like lukewarmness or indifference.

He warns the church of what is coming on it — of positive judgment. But until that judgment falls, He goes on working in His own grace. Now He reaches people one by one, for the church is given up. "If anyone opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me"; he will have his portion at my table.