Letter Two

“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life.’” ~Revelation 2:8

Have you heard the saying, “If you find a perfect church, don’t go to it, because you’ll be the one to ruin it”? There’s some truth to this, but in reality, there is no perfect church, only more or less pure churches. Well, there are also places that call themselves a church, which are no church at all. In any case, can you imagine receiving a letter from Christ wherein He says nothing bad about your congregation and offers no critique or warning?

The letter to the church in Smyrna is one such letter. And we could imagine the members of that congregation rejoicing that their church is marked as being faithful and healthy. Although, if they celebrate too much — as if they had done this by their own strength or wisdom — surely their pastor would have reminded them of Proverbs 3:34, which teaches us that God opposes the proud! But we would probably be quite happy to get a letter like this…until we look a bit closer.

While it’s true this letter has no critique, it’s also chock-full of statements about pressure, poverty, and prison! The church with no warning from Jesus is a church that lives with warning sirens blaring all around them: Suffering is here! Satan is on the attack! Slander comes from next door! Friends, the church in Smyrna, far from living the high life of material or personal comfort, was in a perpetual state of tribulation, testing, and trouble. Would we really want to receive this letter?

This isn’t theoretical, by the way. Consider the “twelfth martyr of Smyrna,” Polycarp. Three early church fathers tell us that this man, who was burned at the stake in AD 155, was a disciple of the apostle John himself. Can you picture him in the congregation when the letter to Smyrna was read for the first time? If he was there, he would have heard the words “Be faithful unto death” (Rev. 2:10) fall from his pastor’s lips. And he was.

The truth is, we want the pleasantries of a letter with no critique without the difficulties that shape churches that have nothing to critique. The letter to the church in Smyrna is a stark reminder that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:23; cf. Rev. 2:9). This letter shows us that tribulation and persecution and threat of death are part and parcel of life in Christ’s Kingdom (Matt. 16:24-25). It reminds us that the things we often think of as least desirable are the very things Jesus uses to confirm to us our citizenship in heaven. In fact, our suffering is uniquely Christ-shaped, for it follows the pattern of the One who “died” and yet “came to life” (Rev. 2:8). And if we are in Him, we too shall ultimately be raised to eternal life (Rom. 6:5). I pray our church would receive a letter like this one.

Rev. Kyle Lockhart, Pastor