Repent! The Lord's Call from Patmos
In the Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia Minor, we have a series of sunlight pictures of the state of a minister and his people. They have been done by Him Whose eyes are as a flame of fire, searching out and showing forth the actual state of those to whom He speaks. Out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword: what He sees and shows, He clothes in words of such Divine power that they can touch the heart, and after all these centuries can meet the needs of the Churches of our day, and work in us all that He teaches and commands.
What a solemn thought, that after Christ had finished His teaching on earth, and left the further instruction of His disciples to the Apostles, He should, after having kept silence for more than half a century, have again felt desirous of giving some last words to the Church on earth. We have these in Rev. ii. and iii. In them He tells us what the smaller portion of the Church can be, and is, so as to please Him. And He
tells of what the great majority is, and ought not to be, and what the teaching is with which His ministers ought to plead with them to return to Him as their Lord.
One of the central words in these Epistles is the word “REPENT.” There are two of the Epistles, to Smyrna and Philadelphia, in which they do not occur. Of these two Churches the Lord had nothing but good to say. To Smyrna: “I know thy tribulation and thy poverty, but thou art rich, Fear not!” To Philadelphia: “Thou hast a little power, thou didst keep My word, and didst not deny My name. Because thou didst keep the word of My patience, I will also keep thee.” God be praised that there are Churches and circles on earth of which the majority are such as to satisfy the heart of the Son of God!
Then we have the Epistle to Thyatira, in which the word “REPENT” occurs, although not as an address to the angel of the Church. There was much to be praised: “I know thy works, and thy love and faith and ministry and patience, and that thy last works are more than the first.” But there was one evil: the woman Jezebel was allowed to teach. He had given her time to repent, and she repented not.
And then come four Churches in which the word “REPENT” is used in the singular, as addressed to the minister as well as the people. To Ephesus, after mentioning eight things in which they had proved their discipleship, He says: “I have this against thee, that thou didst leave thy first love.” In all the highest relationships of life, love is everything; between a mother and a child, a husband and a wife, a king and his people, love is the chief thing. And so with Christ too. There may be diligence in His service, there may be zeal for the honour of His name, there may be patient endurance of suffering for Him, and yet Christ’s heart can be satisfied with nothing less than the first love, the constraining love which delights in His fellowship, yielding itself wholly to His personal influence, and giving a living testimony to Himself. Amid all her activities the true tender love to Christ was wanting. It is of this that Christ says: “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.”
As we think of the failure of the Church of our day in regard to making Christ known, and her utter unfitness for taking up the work to which she is now being led, do we not here find the secret cause of it all, the lack of personal love to Christ? And does not the word of the Lord come to us too, “REPENT, or else I come to thee, and remove thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent “?
To Pergamos: “I have a few things against thee.” Their sin was: they tolerated false teachers. “REPENT therefore.”
It is often said that the Higher Criticism and its advanced teaching has much to do with the loss of power in the preaching and the lack of an earnest Christian life among the people. In Chapter IV. of this book we quoted a writer who said: “In many of our churches the great underlying doctrines and facts of the Gospel are scarcely ever referred to in preaching; the note of personal appeal to the conscience and direct effort for conversion is seldom heard.”
And one has had more than one public testimony in regard to the lack of the full and fearless preaching of Christ and His Cross. And even those who are sound themselves are only too ready to be silent in regard to a preaching of which they know that it cannot satisfy the need or exercise Divine power to salvation. Christ’s REPENT is a summons to see whether our teaching is truly the proclamation of the message of God’s inspired Word, or seeks to please men by its excellency of speech and persuasive words of human wisdom.
To Sardis: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead, for I have found no works of thine fulfilled before My God. Remember how thou hast received, and REPENT.” In the address of Dr. Denney from which we have already quoted, he spoke of many people who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and who refuse to give up anything for Christ’s sake, and then added: “I say the world is full of people like that, and what is worse, whoever is to blame for it, the Church is full of them too; and as far as these people are concerned, the Christian religion is dead.” What an awful description, — a Church full of such men! And it is of this condition that Christ says: “Thou hast a name to live, and thou art dead.” It is to such a Church that Christ’s first word is — REPENT.
To Laodicea: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. Thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches and have need of nothing, and knowest not that thou art the wretched one, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Have we not here a true picture of a great many of our Churches and our Christians — neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm, with a form of godliness, without the power, seeking and succeeding to their own minds, to unite the friendship of God with the friendship of the world? And as the result of this, the spirit of self-satisfaction and mutual self-gratulation is everywhere heard, with its deep undertone, “We are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing.” And Christ comes solemnly: “And thou knowest not that thou art the wretched one.”
How does Christ meet these lukewarm self-satisfied Christians? He has again just that same solemn word, REPENT. Whatever the evil is, there is but one gate out of it — that hard, stern, but blessed word, REPENT. Just think for a moment of the four Churches that have been mentioned.
In Ephesus it was a lack of LOVE, — the constraining love of Christ was no longer found.
In Pergamos it was a lack of TRUTH, — they had forsaken the inspired Word, they tolerated the teaching of error.
In Sardis it was a lack of LIFE, — they had a name to live, but were dead.
In Laodicea it was a lack of FIRE, — the baptism of the Spirit and of fire was no longer known.
Whatever the state of a Church may be, however closely minister and people may be bound together, Christ in heaven has one message: REPENT.
Think of what that means from Him Who gave His life to win the hearts for Himself. He is now seated on the throne to give repentance. He pleads by His cross and blood, and seeks to touch the heart and break it with that love of His. With a voice of infinite holiness and tenderest compassion, He pleads with those whom His heart-searching words have warned and roused — just that one word: “REPENT.”
That is the word which He commissions the angels of the Churches to sound in the ears of His people, to bring nigh and to open up to them, and to plead with them till they bow before it: “REPENT.”
He had spoken the word first of all to the Angel of the Church himself, and whether he had been found wanting in Love to Christ, or in the
Truth of Christ, or in the Life of Christ, or in the Fire of Christ, He had called him to come and as a penitent to receive His pardon and the new experience of His blessing and power. He then sends him forth with his whole heart to sound out the note of warning and of welcome: “REPENT, O my people, repent.”
We are accustomed to use the word “Repent” in our evangelistic missions or in our ordinary conversion preaching. The 1700 ministers to whom Christ has committed the charge of a whole Church, in which the decline of membership proves what a lack of power there was in the preaching and in the spiritual life, are here called to take up this word, “REPENT,” in its deeper meaning.
The Church has been on the down-grade. In Ephesus the defection began amid great zeal for the truth, with the loss of the first love. In Pergamos comes a step lower: God’s Holy Word is no longer taken as the only standard of teaching. In Sardis the evil becomes still more manifest: with a name to live, they are dead. In Laodicea it reaches its full growth: men are so utterly unconscious of anything wrong, so satisfied with themselves and with each other, so blind to what Christ calls their wretchedness and nakedness, that they proudly boast in their meetings and reports: “Rich and increased in goods, and having need of nothing.”
What a work for the angels of the Churches to take that word “REPENT” on their knees from Christ’s own lips, to bow to it with their whole heart, and then in the power of His Spirit to carry it throughout the Church as the one great means of revival and restoration!
Let no one think that this message is too hard who can bear it. Listen to what Christ says of it: “As many as I love, I reprove and chasten; be zealous therefore and REPENT. Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in.” Be not afraid, O man of God, to sound the word “REPENT” loud and clear; it is Christ’s infinite love that speaks the word, that will give the blessing with it, that will reveal Himself to His penitent people. Out of the fulness of a living faith in the love of Christ, call men to repent in the assurance of His welcome and His blessing.
Christ closes each of these seven Epistles with the word, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches.” Let the minister of Christ take that word into the depth of his heart; let him pray and believe till he is sure the blessed Spirit is speaking through him; let him tell the Church that the power of the Spirit is working to reveal Christ and His love; and let him henceforth carry on His work as never before, in the assurance that, in answer to much prayer, the mighty power of the Spirit will secretly work, will restore God’s children in the
REPENT! in
path of repentance to a new and more abundant life. There will then be no longer reason to complain of the decline in membership, or of lack of loyalty to Christ and the service of His Kingdom.