THE SEVENTH MARK OF THE CHURCH -WHOLEHEARTEDNESS

LAODICEA, TURKEY.

In Revelation 3:14-22 Jesus Christ identifies the seventh mark of the church as wholeheartedness. He combines a fierce denunciation of complacency and a tender appeal for wholeheartedness. The Laodicean church was a halfhearted church. Perhaps none of the seven letters is more appropriate to the contemporary church than this. It describes vividly the respectable, sentimental, nominal, skin-deep religiosity which is so widespread among us today. Our Christianity is flabby and anaemic. We appear to have taken a lukewarm bath of religion. Jesus Christ would prefer us to boil or to freeze, rather than that we should simmer down into a tasteless tepidity. Our inner spiritual fire is in constant danger of dying down. It needs to be poked and fed and fanned into flame (Rom.12:11; Acts 18:25; 2 Tim. 1:6).

The idea of being on fire for Christ will strike some people as dangerous emotionalism. “Surely,” they will say, “we are not meant to go to extremes? You are not asking us to become hot-gospel fanatics? Fanaticism is not wholeheartedness…Fanaticism is an unreasoning and unintelligent wholeheartedness. It is the running away of the heart with the head. One longs today to see robust and virile men and women bringing to Jesus Christ their thoughtful and their total commitment. Jesus Christ asks for this….Better to be icy in my indifference or go into active opposition to him than insult him with an insipid compromise which nauseates him! Enthusiasm is an essential part of Christianity.

The tepid person is one in whom there is a glaring contrast between what he says and thinks he is in the one hand and what he really is on the other. The root cause of half- heartedness is complacency. To be lukewarm is to be blind to one’s true condition. The nominal Christian is morally and spiritually a naked, blind beggar.

What is his remedy for being lukewarm? Christ knocks at our heart and wants to be admitted. It is a visit from the Lover of our soul (Song 5:2-5). If we do open the door of our heart to Jesus Christ and let him in, he will bring an end to our beggary. He will transform us from paupers into princes. He will cleanse us and clothe us. He will sup with us, and we shall be permitted to sup with him. The picture illustrates the shared joys of the Christian life, the reciprocal fellowship which the Christian has with his Savior….Of this inward festive meal the Lord’s Supper is the outward and visible sacrament…And both the inward feast and the sacramental supper are a foretaste of that heavenly banquet which in the Book of Revelation is called “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev.19:9; cf. Luke 22:30).

Here then is the great alternative which confronts every thoughtful person. To be halfhearted, complacent and only casually interested in the things of God is to prove oneself not a Christian at all and to be so distasteful to Christ as to be in danger of a vehement rejection. But to be wholehearted in one’s devotion to Christ, having opened the door and submitted without reserve to him, is to be given the privilege both of supping with him on earth and of reigning with him in heaven. Here is a choice we cannot avoid. We must either throw the door open to him or keep it closed in his face.

WHAT CHRIST THINKS OF THE CHURCH, John Stott, p.114f.