Seven Little Letters (Revelation 2-3)

Following John’s introduction and vision of Christ in Rev 1, he records a series of seven small letters, like “mini epistles,” nestled into Rev 2-3. For whatever reason, these messages receive less attention than the major, standalone letters of the New Testament (NT), whether those written by Paul or by others such as Peter, John, James, and Jude.

• Perhaps we overlook these messages because the independent NT letters overshadow them.
• Or perhaps we overlook them because we’re more concerned with the events and visions of the chapters that follow (Rev 4-22). After all, peaking into the future, into heaven, and into the eternal state is far more interesting than reading about the spiritual condition of some ancient churches.
• Then again, perhaps we overlook these letters because we don’t understand them. Are they written to real churches? What does it mean to “leave your first love” or to be “lukewarm”? Who are the Nicolaitans and Jezebel, what is the throne of Satan, who are the overcomers, and what about those various rewards that are promised to them?

Though questions like this arrest our minds, we should read this section of Scripture with interest and devotion, just as though we’re reading Romans, Hebrews, or 1 Peter. Like John’s glorious vision of Christ before (Rev 1) and the spectacular events and scenes that follow (Rev 4-22), the message of these letters should motivate us to persevere as followers of Christ, facing challenges to our faith in a hostile world with confidence rather than fear and with peace rather than anxiety.

Before we study each of these letters individually, let’s familiarize ourselves with the purpose for these letters and the pattern or template that they follow. This overview will provide us with the backdrop and framework we need to understand the message that each letter reveals from Christ.

The Purpose for the Letters

People who study Revelation generally interpret this section in one of two ways, either as historical or prophetic.

The Historical Viewpoint

Those who interpret these letters from a historical point of view recognize that there are some prophetic elements in these letters, such as references to Christ’s second coming and promises that describe some future, eternal blessings. Even so, these interpreters believe that John wrote these letters to seven actual churches in first-century Asia Minor for the purpose of diagnosing their present, spiritual condition.

The Prophetic Viewpoint

Those who interpret these letters from a prophetic point of view also accept (usually) that John wrote these letters to seven actual churches in Asia Minor. Yet they also believe that John wrote for the greater prophetic purpose of describing seven eras in church history, spanning from the first century to the second coming of Christ. Though this viewpoint sounds interesting, it is ultimately unlikely.

The prophetic viewpoint proposes something like this:

• Ephesus represents the Apostolic Church Era (AD 33-100). It began with the ministry of the apostles and ended with the death of the apostles.
• Smyrna represents the Persecuted Church Era (AD 100-313). It began when the apostles died and ended when Emperor Constantine combined Christianity with the Roman Empire.
• Pergamos represents the Comprised Church Era (AD 313-590). It began when Emperor Constantine combined Christianity with the Roman Empire and was eventually replaced by the Middle (or Dark) Ages.
• Thyatira represents the Corrupt Church Era (AD 590-1517). It spans the period we call the Middle (or Dark) Ages and ends with the Reformation led by Martin Luther.
• Sardis represents the Reformation Church Era (AD 1517-1750). It began when Martin Luther initiated the Reformation and continued until the Great Awakening and modern missionary movement.
• Philadelphia represents the Missionary Church Era (AD 1750-1900). It began when people like William Carey sparked the modern missionary movement and continued until the modern age.
• Laodicea represents the Lukewarm Church Era (AD 1900-now). It began when the modern missionary movement died down when materialism and theological liberalism infiltrated the church.

Problems with the Prophetic Viewpoint

Though interpretations like this arouse curiosity, they suffer from serious flaws and are not based on a reliable Bible study method.

John’s original audience would have had no way of knowing that this was the purpose for these letters. Each letter describes things exactly as they were for each congregation at that first-century moment in time. Nothing in these letters or the surrounding material of Revelation indicates that John was also foreshadowing future eras of church history.

The only way to reach this conclusion is to look back from our modern era and piece this interpretation together in retrospect. Even then, dividing church history into seven distinct eras is an ambiguous task. Though some events, like Constantine’s merger with Christianity and Luther’s break from the Roman Catholic Church are clear, other dates proposed as the start and end of these eras in church history are arbitrary and elusive. Those who take this view vary widely about when the Dark Ages began and when missionary expansion gave way to being lukewarm.

If this view were true, then what purpose does it serve? What good is such a perspective give to the first-century churches who were enduring difficult trials for their faith? In fact, first-century believers, including John himself, believed and taught that Christ could return within their lifetime (1 Thess 4:15-17; 1 John 2:28; Rev 22:20). Such an outlook does not match this prophetic interpretation of the seven letters.

This view either overlooks or minimizes the simple, observable fact that these cities were placed into a particular order based upon their location in the circular postal route of roads in Asia Minor. Therefore, their sequence has an objective, practical purpose, not an esoteric, prophetic one.

This view wrongly assumes that we can characterize all churches worldwide unilaterally, which is a faulty assumption indeed. The first century region of Asia Minor alone demonstrates the fallacy of attempting to paint all churches in an era with the same brush. Seven churches in the same geographic area displayed a wide range of characteristics, both positive and negative, just as churches today also display a wide range of differences.

The Historical Viewpoint

The proper way to study and understand these seven small messages is to interpret them as letters written to seven actual congregations to diagnose their spiritual condition at that time. By following this approach, we should then allow these letters to provide us with biblical instruction for today, just as we do for other NT letters

Lessons for the Church

As we study these letters, we first should ask what we can learn as a church in our own present spiritual condition. To underscore why this response is important, consider the repeated phrase near the end of each letter, “What the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7, etc.). Though each letter had a specific church in mind, it spoke with authority and relevance to other churches as well.  By the way that John arranged and circulated this entire book, we know that he intended for this entire section to be read by each congregation. They didn’t only read the section that pertained to their own church directly.

Lessons for the Individual Member

As we study these letters, we should also ask what we can learn from them on a case-by-case basis as individual followers of Christ. Notice how John also repeats this instruction near the end of each letter, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says…” (Rev 2:7, etc.). This statement shifts away from John’s regular use of plural nouns (“you”) throughout each letter to a singular reference (“him”). By doing this, he narrows the spotlight from the congregation as a whole to the individual men and women, boys and girls who are listening to the message.

With these thoughts in mind, we should read these letters with a pair of lenses, not one. The first lens should ask the question, “How can our church learn from the message Christ gave to each of these seven churches?” The second lens should ask, “How can I learn from the message Christ gave to each of these churches?” We cannot emphasize this second question strongly enough because though we can diagnose the spiritual condition of a congregation as a large, single group, we can only change as a group (whether for good or bad) one person at a time. It is useless to diagnose the spiritual weaknesses of your church, for instance, if you make no progress in overcoming your personal weaknesses as a member.

The Pattern of the Letters

As we study these seven letters, we’ll soon recognize that each letter follows a similar pattern and includes some similar features. This basic overview and preview of pattern and its features is as follows:

• A personal introduction to the messenger and the church
• A description of Christ
• An assessment of the spiritual condition of the church
• A promise of personal blessing

To help us understand these letters more clearly and benefit from them in a more profound, spiritual way. Let’s familiarize ourselves with these elements. In doing so, we’ll give particular attention to the last element, the reward for true believers, by asking the question, “Who is an overcomer?”

A Personal Introduction

Each letter opens by saying,

“To the angel of the church in [city name] write.” As we’ve already mentioned previously and in prior study of Rev 1, these seven churches were located in seven cities listed in the order of their geographic position on the circular road network in Asia Minor. As such, they are listed in the sequence in which the letter would have been delivered. It is likely that John wrote one copy of this letter (not seven) as a papyrus (paper) scroll about 15 ft. long.

A messenger then would have carried this scroll by boat from the island of Patmos, then by foot to the city of Ephesus. He would have read this letter to the congregation in that city when they assembled together to worship. Did he read it all at once or in subsequent sessions? Did he read it only once or multiple times? Though we don’t know the answer to these questions, we know that another messenger would have carried this scroll to the next city in the sequence (Smyrna) and read it in a similar fashion to the church that was there, then the same thing would have happened for Pergamos, and so on.

A Description of Christ

The opening phrase, “these things says,” has more significance than we may first assume. In fact, we may easily skim right over these words to read what’s next. This phraseology (esp. in Greek) resembles an exalted, prophetic phrase used by ancient Persian kings, but especially by OT prophets. In the OT, this phrase signaled something far more important than a message from the royal ruler of an earthly empire. It signaled an authoritative message coming from the God of heaven, Yahweh himself. So by speaking this way in Rev 2-3, Christ is identifying himself as Yahweh, the ruler of heaven and earth and the sovereign caretaker of his people.

Each letter refers back to some specific details from John’s opening vision of Christ (Rev 1:12-18). This reminds us that this glorious, overwhelming vision of the exalted Christ should encourage and influence us as churches and followers of Christ to persevere in our own lives. This vision of Christ should motivate our weekly lives as people living in the world and our regular worship gatherings as a church. It is not something to read and forget but is rather something that we should refer back to repeatedly, allowing the various details of this vision to encourage us in particular ways depending on what kind of challenges we’re facing.

The announcement, “I know your works,” appears throughout these letters as well and reveals that Christ has absolute, comprehensive, and intimate knowledge of the true nature of our lives and spiritual walk both as a church and as individual believers.

If you’re presently dabbling with or fallen down into sin, but you’re a true believer, this statement should sober you up and bring you to your senses, just as a disobedient child will be brought to his senses when his parent walks into the room and catches him in disobedient behavior.

But if you’re striving to live for Christ in the face of difficult circumstances and wrestling with temptations in dependence on Christ, then these words should bring peace and encouragement to your heart knowing that Christ sees not only your external behavior (which may sometimes give a bad impression!), but he sees your internal disposition as well and knows whether you are leaning hard on him.

An Assessment of the Spiritual Condition of the Church

We won’t say much about this key feature, though it is the most substantial part of each letter, taking up the most space by far.

In this part of each letter, Christ identifies positive qualities and condemns negative qualities of each church. That said, it’s fascinating to note that he mentions no negative qualities for either for the churches at Smyrna or Philadelphia, and he mentions no positive qualities for the church at Laodicea (ouch!).

To understand this section of each letter, we have to understand a little bit about the cultural and geographic background of each city, otherwise we may reach some mistaken conclusions. Yet digging into this information is important to do because it enables us to evaluate how we may resemble both the positive and negative qualities in our church and in our lives. Doing so, then, allows us to target needed areas of spiritual growth and enables us to be encouraged by how God is working out Christ’s victory in our lives.

A Universal Appeal to Everyone

Eventually, conscientious believers would have made hand-written copies of this book (Revelation) to distribute to other churches both within and beyond Asia Minor, but the original copy was probably circulated to each of these initial seven churches one at a time. That makes the repeated appeal strategically important, which says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7, etc.). At this point in history, printing presses had not been invented (nor would they exist for nearly one-and-a-half centuries, until when Gutenberg invented the first printing press around 1440 AD).

With this background in mind, we know that the people in these first-century churches had to pay close attention whenever they listened to the Scriptures being read in their church, esp. NT Scriptures. Copies of the Old Testament (OT) Scriptures were generally available to hear at local Jewish synagogues, and wealthy Jews who had converted to Christianity may also have owned some copies of their own. Even so, it’s not like everyone had copies of the OT sitting around their homes as family Bibles, and this difficulty was further magnified by the fact that NT Scriptures were relatively new and had neither been copied nor circulated widely.

For the book of Revelation, this was especially true. As these first seven churches heard the book being read to them, it would have been very important to listen carefully to what they heard because once the book had been read to them, it would have been carried to the church in the next city and they wouldn’t have known with any certainty when they might be able to hear the message again. Due to this uncertain accessibility, everyone who heard this letter was encouraged to pay careful attention or they would forget what they had heard.

A Reward for True Believers

Though John instructed everyone who heard these letters (and this book) to pay careful attention, he didn’t assume that everyone who listened (and identified as a Christian) was a genuine follower of Christ, nor did he promise a blessing or reward just for listening. Perhaps you recall how John has guaranteed a special blessing to those who both hear and keep the teachings of this book (Rev 1:3). Just hearing, reading, or studying this book alone would not lead to this blessing. To receive this blessing, a person must also keep what they heard, which is a concept that includes both retaining what they heard and putting what they heard into practice by allowing it to dictate and influence the way they approached their everyday lives.

John makes a similar distinction at the end of each letter when he says, “To him who overcomes…” (Rev 2:7). By doing this, he is differentiating between everyone in the church who listens to the message being read (the larger group) and those who genuinely identify with its teachings (a smaller subgroup). The assumption here is that not everyone who claims to follow Christ is a true believer. Not all who identify with Christ and a Bible-teaching church have genuine faith that will persevere to the end. In fact, it seems that the church at Sardis may have had very few genuine believers at all (Rev 3:1-6).

There is some debate today about the identify of these overcomers. Who is this overcomer who receives these eternal rewards from Christ?

Two Wrong Interpretations of the Overcomers

Some suggest that these are people who were genuinely born again for a period of time but who eventually forfeited their salvation by withdrawing from Christ. As John has already recorded in the Gospel of John, Jesus taught that salvation is eternally secure for every person who believes the truth about Jesus (John 10:27-30) and whoever believes on him receives everlasting life (John 3:16). The idea that a true believer may forfeit or lose his salvation is contrary to NT doctrine.

Some who rightly affirm the doctrine of eternal security for believers suggest an alternative identity for these “overcomers.” They identify these people as a special group of Christians who are overcomers in the sense that they are not defeated by anxiety, doubts, fearfulness, and sinful habits. Some might claim that these are the spiritual or Spirit-filled Christians who live a victorious Christian life, while other believers are backslidden, carnal, and unfruitful. According to this view, only victorious Christians receive the rewards previewed in these letters. Though they will affirm that so-called carnal and defeated Christians will be saved from sin and given a place in God’s eternal kingdom, they also believe that these Christians will miss out on the additional blessings reserved only for victorious Christians. Though this interpretation is thought-provoking, it doesn’t reflect biblical teaching accurately.

Overcomers are True Believers

The preferred identification for these overcomers mentioned at the end of end of these letters is those followers of Christ who persevere in their faith to the end of their lives. No matter how many trials they face, even if they face martyrdom, they do not recant. They do not just start out by claiming to have faith in Christ. They demonstrate the reality of their faith in Christ by finishing their lives, as well, as followers of him.

Here are some reasons from Scripture that support this conclusion, that the overcomers of Rev 2-3 are true believers who persevere in their faith to the end:

In 1 John, one of his pastoral letters to believers in Asia Minor, John teaches that overcomers are those who believe “that Jesus is the Son of God” (1 John 5:4-5). By describing overcomers this way, John makes it clear that when he calls someone an overcomer, he is describing someone who has believed on Christ for salvation, which is every believer. At the end of his gospel, he records Jesus as saying that if you “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” that you will “have life throughout his name” (John 20:31). To believe on Jesus as the Son of God means that you have eternal life, and this means that you are true believer, a child of God, and an overcomer. John does not use this description of overcomer to describe a special subgroup of believers who achieve a higher level of spiritual victory than others. Every true believer will overcome the world. There is no such thing as a Christian who is not an overcomer. According to John, an overcomer = a true believer.

When John speaks of overcoming, he refers primarily to the overcoming that comes from Christ’s victorious work, not from the believers spiritual activity or performance (cf. John 16:33; 1 John 4:4; Rev 5:5). So, the question here is not whether a believer has performed well enough to be called an overcomer, but whether he or she has truly been united with the conquering one, who is Jesus Christ. Again, the question here is not whether we’ve entered a Christian subgroup called “victorious Christians,” but whether were a member of the group called Christians at all.

Also in 1 John, John calls true believers “little children” (1 John 2:1, 28; 3:1, 2, 7, 10, 18; 4:4; 5:2, 21). This in mind, 1 John 4:4 teaches that those who are “little children” are “from God” (which means “of” God as in “fathered by God” or “regenerated by God”) and that this same group has overcome the influence of false teaching and beliefs that are opposed to Christ.

Near the end of Revelation, John writes, “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my son” (Rev 21:7). The context that precedes this statement indicates that John is referring to all believers, not just a small group of those who’ve experienced a special level of victory which others have not. In Rev 21:3, he says that God will dwell among his people. In Rev 21:4, he says that God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. In Rev 21:5, he said that God will make everything new. As you can tell, these are the eternal blessings that God will give to every believer, not just some. To make this even more clear, the following verse contrasts this group of people with those who will be cast into the Lake of Fire, which are those who are outside the born-again family of God. There is no third group of people who are rescued from the Lake of Fire on one hand but denied the blessings of God’s eternal kingdom on the other. Either you’re an overcomer or you’re cast into the Lake of Fire. According to John, every believer is an overcomer.

If the overcomers in Rev 2-3 are only victorious Christians but not so-called carnal Christians, then these letters are ultimately frustrating and unhelpful because they say nothing about what defeated Christians should expect in the future.

Some of the rewards previewed in these letters clearly refer to rewards given to all believers, not just some.

• Those who overcome, for instance, will not be “hurt by the second death,” which is a reference to the Lake of Fire (Rev. 2:11; cf. Rev 20:6, 14; 21:8).
• They will also be allowed to “eat from the tree of life” (Rev 2:7; cf. Rev. 22:2, 14).
• What’s more, they have assurance that Christ will not “blot out their names from the Book of Life” and Christ will “confess their name before the Father” (Rev 3:5; cf. Phil 4:3; Matt. 10:32; Luke 12:8).

Key Takeaways

As we study our way through these letters to the seven churches in Asia Minor, I hope that we will be encouraged to persevere with peace and confidence through the trials and hardships that we are facing today as individual believers and as a church. I hope that this study will focus our hearts more closely on our glorified and exalted Christ and that we will become more united and determined to overcome the challenges we face for God’s glory.

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Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.