Near the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount, Christ admonished His disciples about their mission in a dark and desolate world.
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. [Matthew 5:13-16. RSV]
When considering Christ’s instruction that the church should be salt and light to the world, it appears to conflict with His instruction at the end of His Sermon on the Mount in which the church is commanded to walk a separate path from that of the world. Throughout its history, the church often has had difficulty with balancing these seemingly contradictory commands. The early church was no exception.
In the first chapter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, while in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, John was instructed by Christ to record what he saw in the book and send it to seven churches in Asia. One by one, John revealed each of their works (good and bad) and their heart.
Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) A typical first century church, they had many great works and had labored and endured without growing weary. Their sin was that they had left their first love. It was not a matter of rejection but neglect. Fervency and zeal for Christ were no longer present and without which they were in jeopardy. There only hope was repentance and doing their first works again.
Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) Best described as the persecuted church. They suffered tribulation, poverty, and slander. They were encouraged to not fear the coming suffering, imprisonment, and for some even death because a crown of life awaited the faithful.
Pergamos (Revelation 2:12-17) It was labeled as the church where Satan dwelled. This church mixed with the world. They were faithful in spirit but filthy in flesh. They communed with persons of corrupt principles and practices which brought guilt and blemish upon the whole body. When those corrupt members of a church are punished, so too will the whole church be punished if they allow such corruption to continue.
Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) Although commended for their charity, service, faith, and patience, evil progresses and idolatry was practiced in the church. The church contained unrepentant and wicked seducers who drew God’s servants into fornication and offering sacrifices to idols.
Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) It was representative of the church that is dead or at the point of death even though it still has a minority of godly men and women. The great charge against this church was hypocrisy. It was not what it appeared to be. The ministry was languishing. There was a form of Godliness but not the power.
Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) It was a church of revival and spiritual progress. The church had proved itself faithful and obedient to the Word. As its name implies, it was a church of love and kindness to each other. Because of their excellent spirit, they were an excellent church. They kept the word and did not deny His name. No fault was attributed to the church, only mild reproof for having only a little strength or power.
Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-19) The worst of all of the seven Asian churches, Laodicea had nothing to commend it. Its great sin was that it was lukewarm—neither hot nor cold. Its indifference arose from self-conceitedness and self-delusion. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Christ reminded them of where true riches may be found, without which severe punishment would follow.[1]
The seven Asian churches found in Revelation were not the only first century Christian churches. However, they were selected by God to give timeless instruction for His people throughout the centuries to the end of the age. We must not make the mistake of assigning the sins of the Asian churches to any one age or to a particular church. Although the Laodicean church is a description of the final state of apostasy which the visible church will experience, one need only need to review the sins of the other churches to know that those sins are prevalent in every age.
Two thousand years after the assorted sins of the early Asian churches were exposed by God through John, the church is still having difficulty with Paul’s charge to be separate from the world. On the one hand we have some modern day religious legalists like the prideful Pharisee, about whom Luke wrote, who boasted of his separateness. The Pharisee trusted in himself that he was righteous. With smugness, a haughty spirit, and perhaps a condescending eye turned to the man that stood nearby, he prayed his prayer of thanksgiving. “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” [Luke 18:11b-12. RSV] On the other hand, it is apparent that in all of church history the church far more often errs on the side of worldliness than legalism.
In reality, it is not a contest between the church’s separateness from a wicked world or spreading salt and light to a lost and dying world. Sin is sin in whichever camp it resides—failure to be separate or failure to be salt and light. The absence of one shall surely sound the eventual death knell of the other.
In Part III, we shall examine the beginning of the great apostasy in the modern American church of the early twentieth century.
Larry G. Johnson
[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), pp. 1970-1974.
