This is part four of Feed Yourself, a series on learning to study the Bible with your own two hands. We have learned to read whole books and to ask who they were written to. Today we go after the things the first readers knew without being told.
Here is a verse that has produced a thousand sermons on spiritual temperature.
“I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
Revelation 3:15-16 NKJV
The standard sermon runs like this. Hot Christians are on fire for God. Cold ones are far from Him. Lukewarm ones are the worst of all, half-committed, and Jesus would rather you be an outright unbeliever than a mediocre Christian.
Stop and let the logic of that catch up with you. Would Jesus really rather a person be cold, fully lost, than partway to Him? Would the Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine prefer the sheep wander farther? Something is off, and what is off is us. We are reading temperature as a metaphor for zeal because that is what lukewarm means in our culture. The Laodiceans heard something else entirely, because of where they lived.
Three Cities, Three Kinds of Water
Laodicea sat in the Lycus River valley with two neighbors. Six miles north was Hierapolis, famous across the Roman world for its hot mineral springs. People traveled there to soak in them, because hot water heals. Ten miles east was Colossae, the city that got Paul’s letter, fed by cold mountain water, pure and refreshing. Cold water revives.
Laodicea had money, banking, a medical school, a textile industry, everything but good water. So they piped it in through stone aqueducts, and by the time it arrived it was tepid and heavy with minerals. Travelers wrote about it. It was the kind of water that, when you drank it expecting something else, made you want to spit it out.
Now read the verse again. Hot water heals. Cold water refreshes. Both are useful. Lukewarm mineral water is good for exactly one thing, spitting out. Jesus is not ranking levels of devotion and putting lukewarm below cold. He is telling a wealthy, self-satisfied church, you have become like your own water supply. Useless. You heal nobody, you refresh nobody. And the next verse proves the reading, because He goes straight at their self-sufficiency. “Because you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing,’ and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (Revelation 3:17 NKJV). Every phrase lands on a local industry, the banks, the eye salve from the medical school, the famous black wool. The whole oracle is written in Laodicean.
The first readers did not need any of this explained. They lived it. That is the principle this whole post hangs on. The biblical authors never explain what their first readers already knew, which means some of the meaning lives outside the text, in the world the text assumes.
Jesus is not measuring enthusiasm. He is telling a rich church it has become like its own water supply. Good for nothing but spitting out.
The Words Under the Verse
| Word | Original | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| chliaros | χλιαρός | G5513 | Lukewarm, tepid. Used only here in the entire New Testament, of Laodicea, the city with tepid water |
| emeo | ἐμέω | G1692 | To vomit, spit out. The natural reaction to Laodicea’s water, applied to the church |
| plousios | πλούσιος | G4145 | Rich, wealthy. Laodicea’s own boast in 3:17. The city was rich enough to refuse imperial disaster aid and rebuild itself after an earthquake |
Where an Ordinary Reader Finds This
Now the objection I can already hear. Hank, that is a wonderful piece of background, and I have no idea where I would ever learn it. This is exactly the point in the study where people give up and go back to letting the video teachers do it for them. So let us get intensely practical. Here is where cultural and historical context actually lives, within arm’s reach of your kitchen table.
Start with the text itself. The Bible names its own cities, kings, feasts, and customs constantly, and every one of those names is a thread to pull. Revelation 3 told you Laodicea was rich and told you it thought it needed nothing. The text was already pointing at the city.
Then the book introductions in a decent study Bible. One page on who, when, where, and why, sitting in front of every book you have ever studied, mostly unread. Then a Bible dictionary, which is simply an encyclopedia of biblical names and things. Look up Laodicea in any of them and the water situation is right there. One good Bible dictionary answers ninety percent of the background questions an ordinary reader will ever ask.
Then the free tools, and I mean genuinely free. The NET Bible’s translator notes, sixty thousand of them, explain background and translation decisions verse by verse. Blue Letter Bible puts Strong’s concordance, dictionaries, and cross references on your phone. STEP Bible, built at Tyndale House in Cambridge, does the same with original language tools. A century of scholarship sits on your desk at no charge. You do not need a seminary library. You need to know these four or five places exist, and now you do.
A Rule to Keep You Honest
One caution before we land. Background illuminates the text. It never overturns it. If somebody’s historical backstory makes a passage mean the opposite of what it plainly says, the backstory is doing too much work. The lukewarm reading we walked through does not overturn Revelation 3, it sharpens it, and you can check it against verse 17 without leaving the chapter. Hold every piece of background to that standard, including mine. The Bereans get the last word in this series every time.
For the Church That Needs Nothing
And do not walk away from Laodicea with only a geography lesson, because the letter was preserved for churches like ours. No congregation in Asia Minor looked more successful. Money in the bank, need of nothing. And the Lord of the church stands outside that church’s own door, knocking. That is where the famous verse about standing at the door and knocking actually lives, Revelation 3:20, spoken not to unbelievers at evangelistic rallies but to a self-sufficient church that had locked its Savior out and never noticed He was gone.
The remedy He offers is tender. Buy from Me gold refined in the fire. Come to Me for the wealth, the clothing, the eye salve you have been supplying yourself. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. The lukewarm church is not the church He has given up on. It is the church He is still knocking for. If the description stings, the door handle is on your side.
Discussion Questions
- How does the three-cities background change what Revelation 3:15-16 is actually rebuking? What was the old reading missing?
- Read Revelation 3:17-18. How does each item Jesus offers answer something Laodicea was famous for supplying itself?
- What detail in your favorite book of the Bible might be something everybody in the room already knew? Where would you go to find out?
- Why is the rule that background illuminates but never overturns the text important? What happens when it gets broken?
- Revelation 3:20 was written to a church, not to unbelievers. How does the original audience change the way you hear that verse?
Going Deeper
Read all seven letters in Revelation 2-3 in one sitting, then look up each city in a Bible dictionary, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Every letter carries local color the way Laodicea’s does, Smyrna’s crown, Pergamos where Satan’s throne is, Sardis the unwatchful citadel. It is the single best workout for this tool in the whole Bible. Bookmark the NET Bible notes at netbible.org, make an account at Blue Letter Bible or STEP Bible, and put a one-volume Bible dictionary on your shelf. Colin Hemer’s The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting is the scholarly deep end if this post lit a fire.
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