Free will(not to derail another post)

...and you don't find it odd that the head of the Church is standing on the outside? He called them churches, and like today not all churches are the same nor made up or founded on true believers. It very well could have been a real church at one point and became an apostate "church".

 

But you are talking about people calling themselves a church. People can call themselves anything, that doesn't make it so. This isn't the case in scripture. In scripture a church is a called out group of believers in Jesus Christ. I can't think of a single time when scripture calls a group of unbelievers or false Christians a church. Corinth had problems, major problems, but they were still God's saved people and were called a church.

This is the Head calling this a church. This isn't Laodicea calling themselves a church, or you or I calling them one. This is the Lord in His bible calling them a church. That makes them a church. A troubled church needing repentence, but a church nonetheless. There is no basis for taking them to be false Christians except a desire to cast this scripture in a certain light. If we allow scripture to speak for itself and compare scripture with scripture we must come to this conclusion: Jesus is admonishing a church to repent.

 

Back to the question, how does a true church have Christ on the outside of it? Why does He use the terminology of "buy from me" used elsewhere as an offer of salvation?

 

In 3:19, Jesus says that the ones he loves, he rebukes and chastens.

Now, who are those whom he chastens?

One answer from Deuteronomy 8:5: You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the LORD your God chastens you.

Then Proverbs 3:11-12: My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor detest his corrections; for whom the LORD loves he corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights.

Hebrews 12:6-8 For whom the LORD loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as a son; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth NOT? But ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

Sounds as if Jesus was chewing out his children.

 

"For God so loved the world..."

The difference is in the chastening of a son as compared to he who is not His son.

 

Jesus did not call the church at Laodicea apostate. He called them lukewarm. That's a long way from apostate.

 

Actually it's not. What we know as lukewarm was considered putrid. You don't puke out lukewarm water, and it makes no sense that God would rather have someone be an unbeliever than a "lukewarm" believer. John MacArthur did a good job in his commentary on that particular passage, particularly taking into account the context of the location of Laodicea and it's hot springs.

 

Grievous error? If so, I am in good company. Here is what Matthew Henry wrote of this verse.

Here is what Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown wrote on this verse.

Barnes Notes

So, these godly scholars all agree with my interpretation. But you know what?, even if they didn't I would still believe what Jesus said, he said that if "any man" hears his voice and opens the door he will come in. So I know Jesus is speaking to all men when he said this.

 

I agree Winman.

What is it about the word 'any' that folk can't understand?

 

Matthew Henry wrote no commentary for the book of Revelation.He didn't write anything beyond the book of Acts. Dr.John Evans and others contributed to the volume which is called "Matthew Henry's Comentary On The Bible."

 

Ok, let me present you with a situation.

A man stands before a crowd of citizens gathered before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.. He says, "if any man hears my voice, comes forward, and shakes my hand, I will give him a five dollar bill." Now, to whom was this offer, this invitation if you will, presented? Was it presented to people who were presently in Hong Kong, or Moscow, or London, or in the outskirts of Washington D.C.? Who did the man mean by the phrase any man?

Now, if I come along and argue that this offer applies to everyone living in the world presently, you would likely state that I am error. Obviously the man did not intend "any man" to be universally applied. He was speaking to a particular audience and applied the phrase to them. If any of them performed the necessary conditions, they would receive the promised benefits.

The same thing is the case in Revelation 3:20. Jesus is knocking on the door of a church, whom He calls a church, and tell them that is any man does this he will receive that. Obviously, He is speaking to people in the church, part of the church, and is telling them that if any among them will open the door, He will come in and sup with that man. He is not offering salvation to every single member of the human race, He is dealing with people in this church. To rip it from that context destroys the passage, deals unjustly with the text, and perverts the meaning to be gained from the scripture. To assert that a phrase such as any man must refer to every single member of the human race is absurd.

 

Well the problem with your analogy is that you have a voice that only reaches so far. Christ on the other hand, has a voice that reaches everywhere: "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to me".

In light of His previous remarks on the subject of bringing men to salvation, it isn't a stretch to presume that "any" in this passage is relevant to the "all" of previous passages where He was speaking to believers and unbelievers alike.

Let point out another problem with your analogy. If you were standing on a street corner saying "any man", I'd walk around the crowd cause you evidently don't mean me. I'm a woman. So, all these places where Christ says man or men, am I supposed to believe they also don't apply to me? Or am I to rightly determine that the original language didn't properly distinguish between "male" and humanity as a genderless whole?

 

I'll ask again...what true church or believer has Christ on the outside knocking to get in?

 

The one which Jesus refers to as a church.

Your problem is you are placing your opinion onto scripture. You are concluding based on your opinions that this must be an apostate church. Scripture gives you no license for that. Scripture calls this a church. The Son of God didn't say this was an apostate church. He said it is a church. A church with issues, a church that has grown lukewarm, a church in need of repentence, but a church nonetheless. Corinth was a church with many things needing correction, but was still referred to as a church. If the bible calls something a church, it is a church, period. It isn't up for debate. We can't conclude otherwise. My opinion and your opinion do not matter. Scripture says it is a church that has become lukewarm.

 

This isn't about whether or not the bible says Christ offers salvation to every man. This is about whether Revelation 3:20 says that.

This isn't about the power of the voice of Christ, or gender issues, or any of that which you inserted into your post intending to distract fromt he issue at hand.

This is about what Revelation 3:20 says. It says Christ told someone He was knocking on a door. To whom was He talking? The church of Laodicea. That cannot be gotten around. He wasn't talking to unsaved sinners around the world, He was talking to a church. What door was He knocking on? The door of the church at Laodicea. He told them if any man, that being any person of that church, would open the door He would come in. He is talking to a church that was once warm and sound, but had now become lukewarm and needed to repent. Their peril is shown by the fact that He is outside knocking on the door. He tells them He will spew them out of His mouth. He tells them He is rebuking and chastening them because He loves them. He tells them to repent and He will come in and dine.

This is a great warning given in scripture of how Christ deals with His church. You don't think churches become lukewarm. It can happen, and very easily. God is longsuffering, but there comes a time when He renders judgement. Judgement would fall on this church unless they repent. The same thing can happen to a church today that becomes lukewarm and fails to repent. We've seen churches that dried up and died. They once thrived, but now they are long gone.

 

Oh, so what you are saying is, we shouldn't interpret scripture with scripture.

 

It's not my opinion that Christ is the head of the church, that is what the Bible says. Kinda hard to be the head of a church that you are on the outside of, a church that makes you want to puke (not the "lukewarm" the modern Christendom understands the term to mean, but what John meant). A church that has become putrid that needs to be vomited out and has Christ on the outside is as MacArthur puts it, a church in name only. That is the understanding the context allows.

 

What I'm saying is you cannot make a text say something it does not say, even if that something is a truth according to scripture. You cannot ignore the audience to whom a statement was directed and apply it to a totally different audience.

For instance, consider the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5 clearly declares that the audience to whom Jesus spoke were His disciples. Therefore, when Jesus tells them to turn the other cheek, love their enemies, and such like, He is speaking to His disciples. Some have tried to apply this to governmental bodies, but that was not the audience Christ addressed. Such an application does harm to the text by ignoring the audience to whom it was directed and applying it to a totally different audience.

Even if a universal offer of salvation was a scriptural truth (I don't believe it is), that still isn't what the text is saying. The audience to whom this text was directed was a church. The door Jesus said He was knocking on was the door of the church. The people He addressed and encouraged to repent were members of the church, who had professed belief in Jesus Christ. The thing He offered them was fellowship, not salvation to heaven. To make this an offer of eternal salvation to every single human being in the world is to rip the text from its context and mar the entire message of the text to suit your theological fancy. We must not do this under any circumstances.