Laodicea - UPDV Updated Bible Version

Laodicea is a Phrygian city that surfaces twice in the New Testament: as a sister congregation in Paul's Lycus-valley correspondence, and as the seventh of the seven churches addressed in the Revelation. The two windows show a single church across roughly a generation — first as a young congregation Paul has never met in person, then as a settled assembly the risen Christ rebukes for self-satisfied wealth.

Paul's Concern from a Distance

Paul never visited Laodicea, but he labored for it. Writing to the neighboring Colossians, he says, "For I would have you⁺ know how greatly I strive for you⁺, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh" (Col 2:1). The Laodicean believers are bracketed with the Colossians as objects of the same anxious intercession; the apostle's strain on their behalf is not mitigated by the fact that they are strangers to his face.

The on-the-ground worker for the city is Epaphras. Paul commends him with a deliberate threefold geography: "For I bear him witness, that he has much labor for you⁺, and for them in Laodicea, and for them in Hierapolis" (Col 4:13). Epaphras' pastoral exertion binds Colossae, Laodicea, and Hierapolis into a single Lycus-valley field of mission.

A Sister Church in the Lycus Valley

The end of Colossians treats Laodicea not as a mission outpost but as a peer congregation with its own life and its own correspondence. Paul sends greetings into the city: "Greet the brothers who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in her house" (Col 4:15). A house church, named with its host, is the local face of the assembly.

Then comes the cross-circulation instruction: "And when this letter has been read among you⁺, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that you⁺ also read the letter from Laodicea" (Col 4:16). The Colossian letter is to travel up the road to Laodicea, and a separate "letter from Laodicea" is to come back to Colossae. The two churches are close enough that apostolic correspondence is exchanged between them as a matter of course.

The Seventh of the Seven Churches

In the Revelation, Laodicea reappears as the last city named in the opening commission. The voice instructs John: "What you see, write in a book and send [it] to the seven churches: to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea" (Re 1:11). The city has, by this point, its own "angel" and is settled enough to be addressed in its own right.

The message itself opens with a heavy christological signature: "And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God" (Re 3:14). The titles — Amen, faithful and true witness, beginning of the creation of God — frame everything that follows as the verdict of the one who cannot misjudge.

Neither Cold Nor Hot

The verdict opens with the church's defining indictment: "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot: I would you were cold or hot" (Re 3:15). Cold and hot are both preferred to what the Laodiceans actually are; the middle position is what the risen Christ refuses. "So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth" (Re 3:16). Lukewarmness draws the strongest possible threat in the cycle of seven messages.

Wealth and Poverty

The diagnosis behind the lukewarmness is a self-assessment that has no contact with the Laodiceans' actual condition. "Because you say, I am wealthy, and have become rich, and have need of nothing; and don't know that you are the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and naked" (Re 3:17). Five adjectives — wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked — overturn the church's own self-report of secure prosperity.

The remedy is offered in the same commercial idiom the church has been trading in: "I counsel you to buy of me gold refined by fire, that you may become rich; and white garments, that you may clothe yourself, and [that] the shame of your nakedness not be made manifest; and eyesalve to apply to your eyes, that you may see" (Re 3:18). Gold for poverty, garments for nakedness, salve for blindness — each item answers a clause in the previous verse's indictment.

Reproof, Door, Throne

The harshness of the verdict is then placed inside a framework of love. "As many as I love, I reprove and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent" (Re 3:19). The lukewarm are not abandoned; they are summoned to zeal and to repentance precisely because they are loved.

The summons is then dramatized at the threshold: "Look, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hears my voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Re 3:20). Even at the close of the cycle of seven, the address is opened to "any man" who hears.