“Behold! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20)

This verse is often quoted in the course of presenting the gospel, as a call for one to place their trust in Jesus. The “door,” it is presumed, is the entrance to the most intimate and personal space of one’s life, within one’s heart. The call is to allow Jesus in both relationally, as well as to reign as Lord over their life.

This is a prime example of taking a passage out of its context. While the imagery is compelling, and the message it is presumed to convey, true; it is not actually the meaning of this passage.

These words appear amid Jesus’ letter to the church at Laodicea. The image stands as a central part of a corrective to a church that had become seemingly self-sufficient and self-satisfied in their material wealth. They no doubt had interpreted their relative prosperity as a sign of God’s providential blessing upon them; and, perhaps it was. There is no indication either way.

Though, wherever material prosperity is, the desire to preserve and protect it is not far off. It is part of our human nature to cling tightly to “things”: wealth, possessions, status, privilege, and power. Things that become part of our identity, how we understand ourselves, and how we view others. Yet, doing so goes against the grain of the gospel of Jesus.

The posture of our hands in relation to the things of this world is indicative of the proximity of Jesus to the central place in our hearts, and communities. The more tightly we hold, the further out he becomes.

Now, here, it is important to note that while there is certainly a ‘personal’ application to this letter, it is foremost a letter to a church, a community of God’s people who had collectively strayed from living out the way of Jesus. Jesus has been put out of the church! His name may have been on their lips but they were living by some other way. They’d come to ground their identity in their situation, rather than Christ.

As with his letters to the other churches in Revelation 2-3, Jesus is not merely rebuking personal sin but communal sin. Sin that is reinforced through the teaching and ethical practices of the Christian community, evidently, as Paul said, “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5).

Jesus corrects any perception they might have about their sense of divine favor or providential blessing, writing:

“For you say, ‘I’m rich; I have become wealthy and need nothing,’ and you don’t realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” (Revelation 3:17)

The solution, Jesus says, is to answer the door and let him back into fellowship with the community. To re-image ourselves with Christ, rather than any other earthly thing we might set our confidence or hope in. It’ll mean releasing your grip on the things of this world. It’ll be uncomfortable but refining and purifying, humbling and healing (Revelation 3:18).

Lest we read this dismissively as a message for others, it’s best we take time to sit with the Spirit, allow him space to search our hearts, and see if there be any unChristlike way in us in any way that we’ve put Christ out of the church, in any way our community has become an echo chamber, lulling us into a sense of safety and security, self-righteousness and self-satisfaction.

Do you believe you have any real need for communion with Jesus; or is he merely a figurehead, a malleable caricature you can mold into the likeness of the particular aims and narrative of your community or group?

How might Jesus correct and challenge you or your community today, if he were writing to you today? In what ways have you/your community come to image social, economic, cultural, or political identities more than Christ?

If these are difficult questions to answer, we might have more in common with Laodicea than we think.