Yesterday we began looking at the church at Laodicea.  This church had the dubious distinction of making the Lord Jesus Christ sick – He wanted to spit them out of His mouth!  They also were seriously disconnected from reality.

You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’

But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

Revelation 3:15-17

The spiritual version of The Emperor’s invisible clothes was afflicting this body of Christians-in-name.  In their own eyes, they were rich, self-sufficient, and wise.  However, the laser sharp eyes of Jesus saw differently.  In reality, they were not a healthy church – they were wretched.  They were not rich and self-sufficient – they were pitiful and poor.  They were not wise – they were blind to truth. Like the emperor marching through the streets in his shame, these false believers thought they were displaying rich garments of their own righteousness – and in reality, they were naked.

Self-righteousness is incredibly enticing and deceptive.

Sometimes self-righteousness evidences itself as legalism – legalists proudly keep track of the rules they have kept and grade those around them based on their individualized rule book.  Legalists often fall into a trap of failing to see their desperate need for grace.  Rather than falling empty-handed before the cross, acknowledging that they deserve nothing, they pile their good works before God’s throne and expect them to be enough.  They believe that they deserve grace.

In other cases, self-righteousness rears its head as liberalism.  A perception of intellectualism, “wisdom,” and “insight” convinces some people that they are above the need for God’s grace and simple faith.  Following Satan’s example of old, they try their best to reduce God, to make Him small and tame, and to place themselves upon the throne.  If they don’t like what God’s Word says, they deny or reinterpret with complicated intellectual-sounding arguments.  They remake God in their own image – and their “Christianity” revolves around their own thoughts, their own ways, what is right in their eyes.

Self-righteousness is enticing because leaning on the righteousness of Christ makes us small.  Realizing that we cannot earn grace, that we cannot out-think God, that we must humble ourselves before Him and see ourselves as what we truly are makes us uncomfortable.  We are forced to realize that we are incredibly small and profoundly sinful before an awesome and unspeakably holy God.   So instead, we choose to believe the same lies that Satan has been feeding humanity since Eden.

Did God really say…? [Just disregard what you see there in the Bible.  You know better than that.  You are more enlightened than those simpletons thousands of years ago.  The world has changed.]

You will not surely die! [A "good" God would never judge sin.  Hell isn't real - it's a figure of speech!]

You will be like God! [It's all about you!  You are the center of the universe!]

Those same lies can be repackaged in a myriad of ways, but fundamentally they boil down to the same thing over and over.  They might even be paraphrased as ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’

The Laodicean syndrome of self-righteousness convinces you that you are clothed in grandeur, but in reality you are shamefully naked.  It convinces you that you are wise and significant when in reality you are pitiful and blind.  In the next post we will look at Jesus’ prescription for this syndrome, which is something we modern Christians need to hear – the sickness has reached epidemic proportions.

For further reading, I would recommend Sarah Mae’s excellent post about legalism and this post about truly being saved.

If you have missed posts from the Revelation series, you can find them all listed here.  To make sure you don’t miss any more, I hope you will consider subscribing in a reader or by email!

Art used (with permission) by Pat Marvenko Smith, copyright 1992. To order prints visit her “Revelation Illustrated” site,  http://revelationillustrated.com.