For you say, “I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing,” not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
Laodicea is the reverse of Philadelphia: nothing commended here, nothing reproved there. Yet it remained a candlestick, for a corrupt church is still a church. Christ calls Himself the Amen, steadfast in all His purposes, the faithful and true Witness whose testimony against the lukewarm will be believed, and the Beginning of God's creation, the First Cause and Governor of all things.
AI summary
Commenting on Revelation 3:14-22
As many as I love I rebuke and chasten,.... The persons the objects of Christ's love here intended are not angels, but the sons of men; and these not all of them, yet many of them, even all who are his own by his Father's gift and his own purchase; and who are called his church, and sometimes represented as such who love him and...
Verse 17. Because thou sayest, I am rich. So far as the language here is concerned, this may refer either to riches literally, or to and spiritual riches; that is, to a boast of having religion enough. Professor Stuart supposes that it refers to the former, and so do Wetstein, Vitringa, others. Doddridge, Rosenmuller, and others, understand it in the latter sense.