Revelation 3:19

_ _ (Job 5:17; Proverbs 3:11, Proverbs 3:12; Hebrews 12:5, Hebrews 12:6.) So in the case of Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:11-13).

_ _ As many — All. “He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. And shalt thou be an exception? If excepted from suffering the scourge, thou art excepted from the number of the sons” [Augustine]. This is an encouragement to Laodicea not to despair, but to regard the rebuke as a token for good, if she profit by it.

_ _ I love — Greek, “philo,” the love of gratuitous affection, independent of any grounds for esteem in the object loved. But in the case of Philadelphia (Revelation 3:9), “I have loved thee” (Greek, “egapesa”) with the love of esteem, founded on the judgment. Compare the note in my English Gnomon of Bengel, John 21:15-17.

_ _ I rebuke — The “I” in the Greek stands first in the sentence emphatically. I in My dealings, so altogether unlike man’s, in the case of all whom I love, rebuke. The Greek, “elencho,” is the same verb as in John 16:8, “(the Holy Ghost) will convince (rebuke unto conviction) the world of sin.”

_ _ chasten — “chastise.” The Greek, “paideu,” which in classical Greek means to instruct, in the New Testament means to instruct by chastisement (Hebrews 12:5, Hebrews 12:6). David was rebuked unto conviction, when he cried, “I have sinned against the Lord”; the chastening followed when his child was taken from him (2 Samuel 12:13, 2 Samuel 12:14). In the divine chastening, the sinner at one and the same time winces under the rod and learns righteousness.

_ _ be zealous — habitually. Present tense in the Greek, of a lifelong course of zeal. The opposite of “lukewarm.” The Greek by alliteration marks this: Laodicea had not been “hot” (Greek, “zestos”), she is therefore urged to “be zealous” (Greek, “zeleue”): both are derived from the same verb, Greek, “zeo,” “to boil.”

_ _ repent — Greek aorist: of an act to be once for all done, and done at once.