Smyrna
NO word of reproof is spoken to this Church. Theirs was a position of trial and poverty — just the last thing naturally we should like. The address comes in most suitably, according to the divine order, after that to Ephesus. We have already seen that the root of decline was in the loss of first love to Christ. The Lord then allowed the trial of persecution in order to arrest decline and recall the heart to Himself. This is often the case with the individual as well as with the Church. Not that trial necessarily takes the form of outward persecution; it may come in various ways. The devil was, it is true, the one who stirred up the persecution; God may allow him to do so, just as He did in the case of Job, but it is for our good and blessing in the end.
The attitude in which the Lord Himself is presented to this Church is full of encouragement and consolation — the First and the Last, who became dead and lived. He too had been in this world and had met with all the power of Satan, He knew what trial and reproach were. He had passed through death, voluntarily on His part, and now He was alive out of death. If He marks out the path for His people and encourages them to fear none of those things which they were about to suffer, it is the same path in which He has walked Himself, and He places a limit to their time of trial. Speaking historically, the state here described would cover the period of persecution under the heathen emperors, which closed about the year 310 A.D.; but, as in the case of all these addresses, the moral principles are found at all times and should be taken to heart by us as well as by those addressed in the charge.
But if Satan was active in raising untoward persecution, he was also at work in another way. Another form of trial here was the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but do lie. This expression must not be taken to refer to literal Jews; it has the same kind of symbolic meaning which we find so often in the Apocalypse. It was opposition from those who laid claim to an ancient and venerable religion, who boasted of the law, the ordinances, &c. These Judaizing teachers were a pest and plague of the early Church, as we learn from the Epistles to the Galatians, Philippians, &c. People will readily follow what accredits man in the flesh, and gives a place and standing and dignity to the first man. True Christianity, on the other hand, makes absolutely nothing of man, for his history is ended in the cross of Christ; and all who are born of God are brought into the new creation, where man after the flesh has no place, but where all things are of God. It was this Judaizing spirit, a worldly religion, adapting itself to man in the flesh, but really a satanic counterfeit of the true gospel, which grew to such proportions, as time went on, in the early Church. It is striking to notice that, where God again revived the true gospel in its fullness, as we shall see was the case in the church at Philadelphia, we find the same satanic counter-movement to supplant the truth.
How graciously the Lord encourages them here! Were they subjected to trial, imprisonment, and death? Well, He says, be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. It is His own gift, and it is life. in association with Himself. So also the promise to the overcomer is in perfect accord with the state of the Church — he will in no wise be hurt of the second death. Some of them might be slain, many indeed willingly gave up their lives rather than deny Christ and the truth, as history records; death might reach the body, but it was only for a little while. The second death, which is the lake of fire (chap. 20:14), could in no wise touch them.
“We know that when Christ shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”