In episode 4 of Read It Again, I look at Revelation 3:20, the verse behind that famous painting of Jesus knocking at a garden door. For over a century that image has shaped how we read this verse, Jesus patiently waiting outside a heart that has never let him in. But the actual text was written to a church, the wealthiest and most self sufficient of the seven churches in Revelation, and the only one Jesus had nothing good to say about. This is the fourth episode of the Read It Again series, and it marks a turn from God's promises in hard seasons to what Jesus sees when he looks at a comfortable, well managed church. The invitation in this verse is not to start a relationship with Christ. It is to come back to one that has quietly drifted. If you have ever wondered whether the busyness of church life can crowd out the actual presence of Jesus, this episode is for you.

Interesting Links:

• GotQuestions.org. (n.d.). What was Jesus' message to the church in Laodicea?
• Affinity. (n.d.). Knocking on sinners' doors? Revelation 3:20, ecclesiology and the gospel offer.
• St Paul's Cathedral. (n.d.). The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt.
• Christian Turkiye. (n.d.). Laodicea Turkey: History and archaeology explored.
• Biblical Archaeology Society. (n.d.). The church of Laodicea in the Bible and archaeology.
• Osborne, G. R. (2002). Revelation. Baker Academic.
• Wright, N. T. (2011). Revelation for everyone. Westminster John Knox Press.
• Mounce, R. H. (1998). The book of Revelation (Rev. ed.). Eerdmans.
• Beale, G. K. (1999). The book of Revelation: A commentary on the Greek text. Eerdmans.

References to Bible Verses:

Revelation 3:15–17; Revelation 3:18; Revelation 3:19; Revelation 3:20

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Thank you for listening and welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jason McConnell. There is a painting that many of you have probably seen, even if you don't know its name. It hangs in St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and reproductions of it have been in church buildings, nurseries, school rooms, and the likes for over a hundred and fifty years.

A robed figure stands at an overgrown door, lantern in hand, knocking. The painting is called The Light of the World. It was painted by William Holman Hunt in eighteen fifty-one, and it was painted to illustrate one verse, Revelation three verse twenty. Here's what you may not know about the door in the painting.

It has no handle on the outside. Hunt designed it deliberately. The door can only be opened from within. The one knocking cannot force his way in.

Now, here is a question that almost nobody asks about the painting or even that verse. Whose door is it? Not in the theological sense, literally. In the passage that verse comes from, who owns the door?

Who is on the other side? Because the answer to that question changes what Jesus is saying, what he is feeling when he says it, and what it means for anyone who considers themselves a follower of Christ. And that is what we're gonna talk about today.

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This is episode four of Read It Again, a series where we take 10 of the most familiar verses in the modern church culture and read them as a whole.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And all things turned out to mean the full range of circumstances Paul had lived through. It was a testimony of learned contentment, not a promise that Christ would make the outcome go his way. Episode three stepped back to look at Romans 8 verse 28.

The good that God is working towards in all things is def- is defined by verse 29, conformity to the image of His Son. Not comfort, but transformation. Now, every episode in the series has done the same thing. We pull back one frame and found the passage doing something larger, something more demanding than the standalone verse suggested.

In this episode, we're gonna do that again. But it also marks a turn. The first three episodes were about God's promises in hard circumstances, what God declared to exiles, uh, and prisoners, and suffering people who needed to know He had not lost His, His thread. And starting here, the series shifts to something different.

Not what God promises individuals in suffering, but what Jesus sees when He looks at the community gathered in His name, what He asks of the people who meet in His church, and whether the version of faith we have sometimes settled into looks anything like He is knocking on the door to recover. Now, the verse is Revelation 3 verse 20.

And let's see if we can find out whose door He's standing at and what it means that it is closed.

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Now Revelation three verse 20 might be one of the more visually embedded verses in the New Testament. Before most people can read the words, they have already formed a picture in their mind. The picture is maybe Hunt's painting, Jesus in a garden at night, overgrown door, soft lantern, and light knocking.

And what the painting shows, what it was designed to show, is Jesus standing at the door of an individual heart, waiting to be let in. The evangelistic use that followed is well-documented. Mass crusades and revival meetings have used Revelation three verse 20 as an altar call verse. Jesus is standing at the door of your heart right now, knocking.

The, the handle is on your side. Will you open the door and let him in? Now that framing is so widespread that some biblical scholars have described Revelation three 20 as possibly the most misused verse in the entire New Testament. Not because the Gospel invitation is false. It, it's not. There is a real and valid sense in which every person is called to open their life to Christ, to open that door.

But the verse was not written to extend that particular invitation. It was written to a church, and not just any church, the one church in Revelation chapters two and three that Jesus has nothing good to say about, the one community he describes as making him want to spit. I mean, that's, that's pretty gnarly.

But before we can hear what that, the invitation of verse 20 means, we have to meet the people it was written to. So here's the verse "Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with them, and they with me." Revelation three, verse twenty. Now, the altar call version of this verse is familiar to almost anyone who grew up in a church.

The picture is gentle. Jesus is patient, unhurried, non-threatening. He's standing outside a heart that has not yet invited him in, and he is waiting. All it takes is a decision. Open the door and let him enter. Now, that picture, it's not necessarily false. The Gospel does involve an invitation. Faith does involve a response, and there is something genuinely moving about this image of a Christ who waits rather than forces.

But here's where the misuse causes some damage. The evangelicalistic reading turns this verse into something soft and peripheral. Jesus is outside because he has never been inside. He is knocking politely on the door of someone who has not yet heard the good news. The relationship is new. The stakes are about a first decision In the actual text, the relationship is old.

Jesus is not knocking on a stranger's door. He is outside a community that has been meeting in his name, presumably for years. He is not waiting for a first invitation. He is standing outside a house where he used to live and where his name is still on the sign, wondering why no one has opened the door lately.

Now, those, those are different situations. The first calls for a evangelism type of a verse. The second calls for something much more searching, and the church has often preferred the evangelical side of this because it's far more comfortable. It aims the verse at people who have y- not yet decided rather than people who decided a long time ago and have since grown too settled to notice what they've lost.

The Holman Hunt painting, for all of its beauty, fixed the evangelicalistic reading into the imagination of the Western church so deeply that reading the actual passage and context now requires a conscious effort to see past it. That painting is a theological interpretation, and the interpretation, however beautiful it may be, is not really what Revelation three, verse 20 is doing.

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Now, Revelation chapters two and three contain seven letters from the risen Chr-- Jesus to seven actual churches in the first-century Roman province of Asia, the western coast of what is now Turkey. Each letter follows a recognizable pattern. Jesus identifies the church, names what they are doing right, names what they are doing wrong, issues a warning or call to repentance, and closes with a promise to those who hold on.

Now, Laodicea is the seventh. It's the last, and it's the only one that receives no praise or recognition at all. Jesus opens the letter with a description of himself, moves immediately to what h- he knows about them, and there is nothing positive before confrontation begins.

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Now, to understand the confrontation, you have to know the city.

Laodicea was prosperous. After an earthquake devastated the region around 60 AD, the city of Laodicea refused the financial assistance that Rome offered. They did not need m- Rome's money. They rebuilt entirely with their own wealth, and that was their identity, the city that needed nothing from no one.

Their economy had basically three pillars. First, they were known for their fine black wool, a distinctive raven's wool textile that was exporting and, and basically prized across the region. And second, they were a center of ophthalmology, producing a famous eye salve called Phrygian powder that was known for treating eye disease.

And third, Laodicea was a major banking and financial center. Money flowed through the city from across trade routes that intersected there. And then there was the water. To the north, uh, Hierapolis had hot mineral springs, genuinely therapeutic. People came from across the region for healing. To the south, Colossae had cold mountain springs, refreshing, clean, good drinking water.

Laodicea had neither. The city's water was piped in by an aqueduct from springs about eight kilometers away. By the time it arrived, it was lukewarm and so laden with minerals that the aqueduct pipes had to regularly be cleared out of deposits. It was the kind of water that when you took a drink, you really wanted to spit it out.

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Hold all of that in your mind for a moment and read Revelation three, verses fifteen through seventeen. "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one t- or the other. Because you are lukewarm, neither hot, hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing,' but you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked."

Lukewarm. Every person in Laodicea knew exactly what that meant. Their own water, the water that made you wanna spit it out. Jesus had just said that the church's faith had become the spiritual equivalent of Laodicea's water supply. "I am rich. I have acquired wealth. I do not need a thing." This is not a paraphrase.

This is the actual self-image of the city. They turned down Rome. They do not need anyone's help, right? And the church has absorbed that identity so completely that it has become their spiritual posture as well. We have what we need. We are fine. We are doing well enough. Leave us alone. And then Jesus inverts all three of their industries into one sentence, "Wretched, pitiful, poor."

That is the banking city that turned down Rome. Blind, that is the city that made eye salves. Naked, that's the city that clothed the region in fine black wool. Jesus knows their economy better than they do. He knows exactly where their pride lives, and he names it. Revelation 3:18, "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire so that you can truly become rich, and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salves to put on your eyes so you can see."

He offers them what they already think they have from a source they have stopped going to.

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And then the verse immediately before verse 20, Revelation 3:19, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent." The word translated to love there is phileo, in the Greek, uh, a word of personal affection.

In the New Testament, this word is never used to describe Jesus's or God's relationship with unbelievers. It is a language of existing relationship, a friendship, a family. Jesus is not speaking to people who have never known him. He's speaking to people he loves who have drifted and who need to come back.

The call is not first conversion. It is repentance, return. That is the immediate context of verse 20. Now, read Revelation 3:20 with all of that behind it. "Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, open the door. I will come in and eat with them and they with me." The door is the church, not a heart that has never opened to Christ.

A community that already bears his name, already meets in his honor, and has somehow, through comfort and prosperity and self-sufficiently, drifted so far from active dependence on him that he is no longer at the center of their common life. He, he's on the outside, and he is knocking to be let back in. N.T.

Wright, in his commentary on Revelation, frames the whole passage as a call for the community to wake up and recover what it has lost. G.K. Beale, in his detailed commentary on the Greek text, connects verse twenty directly to verse nineteen. The open door is the response to repentance, and the fellowship Jesus offers is the restored relationship that repentance makes possible.

The invitation is not new. It is a return.

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"I will come and eat with them and they with me." Now, in the ancient Near East, table fellowship was the most intimate act of relationship available. To share a meal was to share your life. A host who invited you to his table was offering not just food, but access to his home, his family, his standing in the community.

Jesus is not offering to be tolerated in their buildings. He is offering a restored intimacy, a recovered friendship, a shared life at the same table. Now, the Greek word translated to knock is, uh, chropo, and it's a present active participle. He is still knocking, and he has not given up and walked away.

The mercy and the confrontation are the same things. He's been standing there long enough that the overgrowth in Hunt's painting has had time to grow over the door, and yet he's still there. "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door." I-It's a note on the word anyone. The letter is addressed to the congregation as a whole, but the response is personal.

With a lukewarm church, Jesus is calling to individual people who may still have ears to hear him. The corporate drift does not seal every individual inside. The knocking reaches you whether or not the person sitting next to you has woken up yet.

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All right, so let's bring this home. Let's bring this down to something concrete.

Laodicea's problem was not false doctrine. It was not immortality. It was not the kind of dramatic failure that makes for obvious church discipline. Their problem was comfort a-and prosperity, a self-sufficiency so complete that they had stopped needing to depend on Jesus for anything at all. They had the wool a-and the eye salve and the banking and the aqueduct and the good reputation, and somewhere in the middle of having all of that, the living relationship with Christ that was supposed to be the center of everything had gone quiet.

And that, that, that pattern is not confined to first century Turkey. A church or an individual Christian can become so organized, so resourceful, so settled in the rhythms of Christian activity that they actually-- uh, the living presence of Christ has become something assumed rather than sought, something acknowledged in the bulletin rather than encountered in the room.

You can have the programs, the facilities, the reputation for good work, the comfortable congregation, and Jesus can still be outside the door knocking while the service runs on schedule The question is not whether you attend church. The question is whether Jesus is in the room, and whether, if you are honest, you would notice the difference.

If anyone hears my voice, not if the institution hears, not if the leadership votes to open the door. Anyone, anyone at all, the invitation is a personal call-out even when you are surrounded by the comfortable and the settled. Your response, your personal response to the knocking does not depend on everyone else's responding first.

And then there's a question of what is being offered when the door opens. It's not a doctrine. It's not a program. It's a meal, table fellowship, the most intimate thing Jesus could offer in the cultural language of his world. He is not offering to be a line item in your church's statement of faith. He's offering to come in and sit down and share a meal with you, to be genuinely, personally present at the center of your life.

That is what Laodicea, the, the church had lost. Not necessarily their salvation, not really their orthodoxy, but the living, daily, dependent relationship with Christ that makes faith something more than a comfortable cultural identity, something that actually costs you the self-sufficiency you have been so proud of.

The verse is not less inviting when you read it this way. It is more inviting because it addresses you personally, not a stranger who has never opened the door, but someone who once knew what it was like to have Jesus at the center, who has drifted into the ordinary comfort of well-managed Christianity, and who is hearing a knock that has been going on longer than they may have realized.

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So let me wrap this up. Revelation three verse twenty is one of the more visually recognized verses in the church. William Holman Hunt's painting fixed an image into the imagination of Western church that has shaped how we see this verse for a hundred and fifty years. The evangelical use that followed was well-intentioned, and the Gospel invitation is absolutely real.

But the verse was written to a church, the most comfortable church in Revelation, the only one Jesus had nothing good to say about, a community so prosperous, so self-sufficient, so settled into its own competence that it had functionally excluded the one it claimed to follow. Jesus used their own water, their own economy, their own city identity against them.

He knew them completely, and he was not writing them off. He loved them. Phileo, the word for close friendship or personal affection. He was confronting them because he loved them, and what he w- was confronting them with was the reality that the door they had let drift shut was the door he was still standing at, still willing to knock at.

And here's the takeaway. Revelation three verse 20 is not just Jesus at the door of an unbeliever's heart. It is Jesus outside a church that has gotten too comfortable and too self-sufficient to notice he's no longer at its center. The invitation is not to start. It's to come back. It's to continue. Here is something concrete for you for this week.

Read Revelation three verses 14 through 22 in one sitting. Ask two questions as you go. What does Jesus know about this church that they do not know about themselves? And is there any version of this letter that could be addressed to me or the community I'm part of? And I'll leave you with Revelation three verse 19.

Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. The rebuke is not rejection. It's not meant to be malicious. The rebuke is what love does when the door has been closed for too long.

Next time, we're going to move on to a verse that sounds like wisdom and gets used most conversations as an excuse.

You probably know the first half of it and have never read the rest. Matthew seven verse one. Judge not lest you be judged. Most people have never read verse two or verse five, or maybe they have and they forgot about it. Anyways, I'll see you then. Until next time, keep loving your neighbors. Dive into God's word daily.

May the Lord bless you and keep you and fill you with his peace. Take care. God bless. And I'll see you in the next episode.