As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
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
To him that overcometh,.... The lukewarmness, and self-confidence, and security of this state: will I grant to sit with me in my throne; at the close of this church state, which will be the last of this kind, consisting of imperfect saints, Christ will descend from heaven with the souls of all the righteous, and raise their bodies and unite them to them; which, with...
Verse 19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Of course, only on the supposition that they deserve it. The meaning is, that it is a proof of love on his part, if his professed friends go astray, to recall them by admonitions and by trials.