So it is Christians first and foremost, who have subsided into a lukewarm state, who are encouraged and pleaded with here. They are also rebuked: ‘As many as I love,’ you who have truly come to me, ‘I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.’ Do not shrug this off. Take this very seriously and earnestly, and repent. Be ashamed. Weep about your condition before God. Repent of it; ask for his forgiveness; turn away from it. See Christ in his glory. He is the Creator of the world. He is the eternal Son of God. See Calvary and the price he has paid. To open that door relent, repent and submit to his government. Say as a Christian, ‘Lord come back and govern my life, and be my central shrine, and my whole sphere of concern, and I will yield to thee fully.’ The result will be pardon, fresh blessing and joy and light and proving of him.
But some are lukewarm in a more serious way. You are not against the Lord. You are not totally indifferent. You do not entirely lack interest. You want to feel that you believe in him and that you are his, but you are not. There is so much missing. ‘Oh, but I assent to the Bible and to Jesus Christ.’ That is not enough. ‘I am obliging, I come out to services, what more can I do?’ Not enough. ‘I worship and I mean it in a way.’ It is not enough. You could be unsaved. Had you ever had a crisis that brought you to Christ? Have you ever seen your sinfulness and pleaded with him to forgive you and called upon his name? Have you trusted in Calvary? If it were not for Christ dying on Calvary’s cross in indescribable agony you would be lost. Is that your position? Can you say, ‘I believe in him, I have given my life to him. I have consciously rejected my old life. I have said, Lord, I was dead and foolish and self-confident and blind. I needed to be changed, I needed to be converted. And I came and I pleaded with him. I searched for him until I knew a dramatic change had taken place in my life. I received a new nature and a new outlook, and I was different.’ Is that your experience? Nothing less than that is being a true Christian. Belief is part of it but it is not enough. You must totally yield to him.
You can be a believer and you can be unforgiven, unchanged and have no vital communion with the Lord through Jesus Christ. Christ will say to you one day if you die like that, ‘I never knew you.’ Those are his words. ‘Depart from me ye that work iniquity.’ But it was not iniquity, I believed, I worshipped. No, the Lord will say. You came so far and there you stopped. And you would not yield your life and you would not depend on me and you would not repent of your sin deeply and properly. There was no close relationship. There was no personal spiritual walk.