Revelation 3:14–16

Revelation 3:14 — "To the angel of the assembly in Laodicea write"

The letter opens with the now-familiar epistolary formula shared by all seven letters in chapters 2–3. "The angel" (Greek: ángelos) of the assembly is most naturally understood as the bishop or presiding minister of the local church, the one accountable for its spiritual condition, though the Fathers also read it as the church's heavenly guardian. Laodicea was one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman province of Asia, situated in the Lycus Valley (modern Turkey), famed for its banking, glossy black wool, and a renowned medical school that produced an eye-salve known as Phrygian powder. All three of these civic boasts will be inverted by Christ later in the letter (vv. 17–18). Crucially, the Christ who speaks here is introduced in verse 14 as "the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation" — a title drawn from Isaiah 65:16 and Colossians 1:15–18. This self-identification is no accident: against a church drowning in self-deception, Christ presents himself as the perfectly faithful witness, the one who sees and names reality without distortion. He is the standard against which their complacency is measured.

Revelation 3:15 — "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot."

"I know your works" (oîda sou tà érga) opens each of the seven letters, but nowhere does it fall more heavily than here — for there is nothing to commend before the rebuke. Christ's knowledge is complete and intimate, a divine omniscience that penetrates the comfortable self-image Laodicea has constructed.

The metaphor of temperature requires contextual grounding to avoid misreading. A common but shallow interpretation takes "cold" as sinful indifference and "hot" as holy fervor, making "lukewarm" a middle ground. But this misreads the image. Biblical scholars and the patristic tradition (notably Origen and later commentators) point to the geography: the nearby city of Hierapolis was famous for its scalding hot mineral springs (therapeutically useful), while the city of Colossae had cold, fresh, refreshing water. Laodicea's own water supply, piped in via aqueduct, arrived tepid and mineral-laden — it was literally nauseating and practically useless. Both hot and cold water serve a purpose; lukewarm water serves none. Christ is not praising cold indifference; he is lamenting that the Laodiceans are useless — good for nothing spiritually. The wish "I wish you were cold or hot" is an expression of divine longing, echoing the Prophets' language of God's frustrated desire for his people's wholehearted return (Hosea 11:8; Jeremiah 3:19).

Revelation 3:16 — "So, because you are lukewarm…I will vomit you out of my mouth."

The Greek verb emésai — "to vomit" or "spew out" — is startlingly visceral, and it is deliberate. This is not the language of cool rejection but of physical revulsion. The image functions on multiple levels. Literally, it evokes the tepid, noxious water of Laodicea's own aqueduct — the community has become, for Christ, what their own water supply was for them. Sacramentally and ecclesiologically, to be "vomited out of his mouth" suggests expulsion from Christ's body, a severance from the communion that the Eucharist enacts and the Church embodies. The mouth of Christ, in patristic exegesis (especially Origen and Augustine), is also associated with the Word — to be expelled from his mouth is to be expelled from the living Word that gives life.

This is a conditional and urgent warning, not a final verdict. The letter continues in vv. 17–22 with an offer of repentance, so the threat functions as a medicinal shock — the cold water of prophetic rebuke applied to a church too warm and drowsy to feel it. The structure mirrors the Hebrew prophetic pattern: announcement of judgment followed by an urgent call to conversion.

Catholic tradition reads this passage through several interlocking lenses that give it a depth unavailable to purely historical exegesis.

On Lukewarmness as a Spiritual Vice: The Church's tradition identifies lukewarmness with acedia — the spiritual torpor or sloth catalogued by Evagrius Ponticus and later codified among the seven deadly sins by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 35). Aquinas defines acedia as "sorrow at spiritual good" — a disinclination toward the demands of divine love. Laodicea's lukewarmness is not primarily moral laxity but a disordered relationship with God himself: they are not pained by their distance from Christ because they do not feel that distance. The Catechism of the Catholic Church warns that "the virtue of religion disposes us to have the right attitude with regard to God" (CCC 2095) and that indifference and ingratitude toward grace are forms of sin (CCC 2094).

On Expulsion from the Body of Christ: The image of being "vomited out" has Eucharistic resonances the Fathers were quick to exploit. St. Augustine (Tractates on John, 26) and the Didache (9–10) both link communion with Christ to a radical either/or: one cannot be half-incorporated. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (§14) teaches that full incorporation into the Church requires faith, sacraments, and governance — but also charity. Those incorporated outwardly but lacking the charity that animates the body are not saved by that mere external membership.

On Divine Zealous Love: St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila — both Doctors of the Church — identify lukewarmness as the great obstacle of the spiritual life, precisely because it is so difficult to diagnose in oneself. John warns in The Dark Night of the Soul that souls attached to spiritual consolation, rather than to God himself, produce exactly the tepidity described here: a Christianity of comfort rather than cross. Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (§81–83), echoes this diagnosis, lamenting a "spiritual worldliness" that cloaks self-referential mediocrity in the language of faith.

Laodicea is the most contemporary of the seven churches. Wealthy, self-sufficient, spiritually comfortable, and culturally respectable — it is the church of the merely nominal Catholic, the Mass-attending believer whose faith makes no real claim on their choices, finances, relationships, or moral imagination. The indictment is not aimed at the openly hostile or the openly devout, but at those in between: people who find Christianity agreeable in principle but costly in practice and so keep it at a safe, tepid distance.

For Catholics today, Christ's words cut through the false security of practicing religion as social habit or cultural identity. Receiving the Eucharist while systematically refusing conversion — in one's marriage, finances, use of time, treatment of the poor, moral compromises — is precisely the lukewarmness named here. The practical invitation of these verses is radical self-examination: Where in my faith life am I content with "good enough"? Where have I insulated myself from the full heat of the Gospel's demands? The antidote is not emotional frenzy but genuine surrender — the kind of prayer, fasting, confession, and charity that cost something. St. Ignatius of Loyola called this magis — the "more" that refuses spiritual mediocrity. These three verses demand it.