In verse 19 the Lord said, “As many as I love I rebuke and discipline.” If she is willing to take it, the Lord’s rebuke in love will be an eyeopener to the degraded church. But her pride may frustrate her from receiving it. When we become lukewarm and feel rebuked by the Lord, we need to look to Him for His mercy that we may be willing to be humble to receive His rebuke in love. This may bring the proper remedy to the degraded church.
Discipline is a further step taken by the Lord to deal with His degraded church after He has rebuked her. If she is willing to receive the Lord’s rebuke, He may not need to exercise His discipline over her. The Lord’s discipline is exercised over her in love.
In verse 19 the Lord charged the church in Laodicea, saying, “Be zealous therefore, and repent.” Dead knowledge has made the degraded church lukewarm. She needs to become crazily burning by dropping the deadening and cooling knowledge, and she even needs to break the bondage of her doctrinal forms. She needs to be boiling rather than to be dead right according to dead doctrine. She needs to love the Lord and pay any price to gain Him, even at the cost of sacrificing the “doctrines.” A lukewarm church needs to be hot, to be burning at any cost. She needs to repent of her lukewarmness, not to be proud of her knowledge any longer. She has been appreciating her dead knowledge too much. She needs to depreciate all her knowledge and repent of being satisfied with the vanity of knowledge and not with the reality of Christ.
In verses 20 and 21 we see the Lord’s promise to the overcomer: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with Me. He who overcomes, to him I will give to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.” To overcome in these seven epistles does not mean to overcome our weaknesses and besetting sins; it means to overcome the fallen condition of the deviant churches. To overcome in the epistle to Laodicea means to overcome the lukewarmness and pride of the degraded recovered church, to buy the needed items, and to open the door for the Lord to come in.
In verse 20 the Lord said that if anyone hears His voice and opens the door, He will come in to him. As we have pointed out, the Lord is standing outside the degraded church, knocking at her door. The door is the door of the church, not of individuals, but the door is opened by individual believers. The Lord is dealing with the whole church, but the acceptance of the Lord’s dealing must be a personal matter. The Lord’s dealing is objective, but the believers’ acceptance must be subjective. If we hear the Lord’s voice to the church and personally open the door, the Lord will come in to us, and His presence will be our portion.