22.  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Vs. 14-22.—­It appears that in Paul’s time a Christian church had been planted in Laodicea. (Col. ii. 1; iv. 16.) This church had the benefit of his ministry as well as that of Ephesus:  and as both these churches were comparatively near to all the other five, we may suppose that a man of his zealous, active and persevering character and habits, would “impart unto them some spiritual gift.” (Rom. i. 11.)

It is evident that this church had degenerated more than all the others.  In her there is nothing to commend.  Her officers and members are described in their real character by him who is the “Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning of the creation of God.”  Each of these titles speaks the divine dignity of Christ.  They are all to be understood in an absolute, not in a comparative sense.  As “there is none good (absolutely so,) but one; that is, God,” Matt. xix. 17; so Christ only is the “Amen” in such sense that he “cannot lie” as a “witness.’” He “speaks that which he has seen with his Father.” (John viii. 38.) Jesus is, moreover, the “Beginning;” the author, owner and sovereign ruler of “the creation of God.”  This is clearly taught in Col. i. 15-18, where the same person, who (in v. 18) is called “the beginning,” as here; is (in v. 17,) said to “be before all things;” by whom (v. 16,) “were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth.”—­Creation is a work proper to God only.  But our Redeemer has “created all things.”  Now, according to Heb. iii. 4, “he that built all things is God;” therefore he of whom these things are spoken is “the Most High God.”  And so said the inspired prophet long ago, “For thy Maker is thine husband.” (Isa. liv. 5.) In the language of Jeremiah, (x. 11,)—­thus do we say to Arians, Socinians, and other self-styled Unitarians,—­“The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens:”  and their blinded votaries, “except they repent, shall all likewise perish.”—­However far the body of this church had declined, it does not appear that they had yet, as a community, gone the length of “denying the Lord that bought them.”

Spiritual pride, self-sufficiency, seems to have been the prevailing sin among these degenerate professors.  Like the Pharisee, they would boast of their riches, the spiritual gifts which they possessed, by which they flattered themselves that “they were not as other men.”  Possibly they might excel in knowledge, that “knowledge which puffeth up;” in utterance,—­“great swelling words of vanity,” by which they gained both “filthy lucre” and the admiration of an ignorant and carnal multitude.  Such is too often the actual condition of ministers and people, when they are all the while under the power of sin, and wholly “blind” to their spiritual destitution.  Self-deception is fatal; and it would be just in the Lord Jesus to