The letters to the seven churches
The book of Revelation includes seven letters to seven specific churches. What is the purpose of those letters? How are they arranged? And what is the overall message?
You may want to read before
The vision
Before writing the letters, John writes down a vision of how God envisions the Church.
The message is this: The Church, reflected as stars and lampstands, should be light (lampstands a light within the Church and stars as light to the world), but they must do it through dependence on Jesus and not without Him.
This is what the seven churches are being judged for.
At the beginning of this chapter we saw what Jesus did. Now we see the situation the churches are in and we will see what God is doing to move the churches towards perfection.
The letters
- Addresses the churches in a specific way
- Praises them for their good works
- Confronts them for their shortcomings
- Gives them a promise to overcome their shortcomings or encourage them to continue their good works.
The letters are arranged symmetrically:
- The first and the last are the churches with absolute failures. The first church, Ephesus, is warned that their lamp stand will be taken away if they don’t change. In terms of the vision above, this church has lost its purpose and has no need to continue to exist. The last church, Laodicea, is the only one that doesn’t get any praise at all.
- The second and penultimate churches (Smyrna and Philadelphia) are those that receive no reproof, only praise.
- The third and the fifth churches (Pergamon and Sardis) have some good points and some bad, and the fourth (Thyatira) is used as an example to other churches to illustrate the dangers of evil leadership.
When we compare the pairs, we find interesting points:
- Ephesus and Laodicea: Ephesus does everything right but has lost its first love. Laodicea doesn’t do anything right but lives in a world of self-deception. Without love, you can do everything right and still be no better than Laodicea. Without love a church has lost its purpose.
- Smyrna and Philadelphia: Both churches facing opposition. Smyrna fears prison and Philadelphia is poor. In both cases this is Jewish opposition. Philadelphia has the promise that the Jews will convert, Smyrna does not. But whatever the situation, both churches are told to keep the faith to continue their work. However, the promise is that Jesus will see them through, he donesn’t promise that all their activities will be successful.
- Pergamon and Sardis: It doesn’t seem fair to compare the fornication of Pergamon with the lack of the Spirit in Sardis. Could it be that the problem is that in both churches the leadership allows wrong influences (perhaps unregulated teaching)? That’s why the church leadership should be especially careful to give the Holy Spirit freedom, but at the same time, they should not allow unrestricted teaching from everyone.
- Thyatira: The central message is the evil leadership. Jesus will judge the leaders and their followers for their sin and others churches will be a witness. Jesus emphasize the heavy impact that wrong leadership has on the witness to the church.