Buy This From Me

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.

Rev 3:18

The key to this verse is the three little words buy from me. Jesus has everything the church at Laodicea really needs to function. It is nice to have buildings and beautiful music. These are not wrong, but they are not what the church needs. What it needs is what our Lord describes here, gold, white clothing, and eye salve. He alone possesses them. That is why it really does not make any difference whether we are persecuted, hounded by the government, put to death, or patronized and accepted. What the church needs is to be obtained only from Jesus, and our Lord tells us what it is.

First, gold refined in the fire. Peter tells us that our faith is like gold refined in the fire: More precious even than gold that perishes, though it be tried by fire, (1 Peter 1:7). Faith in God. Faith in his Word. Faith comes from Jesus. As we look to him our faith is awakened and stirred. We then see how true the Scriptures are, how they explain life and fit with what we experience daily. This awakens a sense of confidence and faith, and that is what this church needed. It lacked faith in God but was resting on its own abilities or the world's resources.

Then, second, they needed white clothes to cover their shameful nakedness. Everyone is morally naked before God. Every one of us knows something about ourselves that we would not want anyone else to know. But God knows! He sees us in our nakedness. What does he offer for it? The righteousness of Christ! White clothes stand for redemption, for righteousness imparted by Christ. We are no longer to be clothed with our own self-righteousness, but we are to be clothed with the righteousness of Christ himself, a perfect righteousness which God accepts. White clothes stand for a changed character; they mark someone who has taken his robes and washed them in the blood of the Lamb.

Then the third thing that is needed is eye salve. Laodicea was noted for its eye ointment. Jesus says they need spiritual eye salve that will enable them to see. Everywhere in Scripture we have mention of an anointing of the Spirit that opens eyes to understand the truth of God. John speaks of this in his first letter. He says, The anointing that you received from him remains in you and you do not need anyone to teach you, but his anointing is real, not counterfeit, and teaches you all truth (1 John 2:27). That does not do away with the need for human teachers. It means that unless the Spirit within you is opening your eyes to the meaning of truth taught, it will fall upon deaf ears. But if we have the Spirit of Christ within, our eyes are opened to understand the Word of God and we see the Bible in a new, fresh and wonderful way.

Lord, I desire to get from you what I can get nowhere else. Grant me greater faith, a new sense of my righteous standing before you, and spiritual eye salve to see more of your truth written in the Word. Amen.