The Persecuted Church

Jim ButlerRevelation 2:8–11

Revelation 2:8–11 contains Christ's letter to the persecuted church at Smyrna — a letter with no condemnation, only commendation and solemn warning. Christ describes himself as the one who was dead and came to life, a self-description that speaks directly to a congregation facing imprisonment and death: the cross precedes the crown, and this pattern is not accidental but definitive for all who follow Christ. The sermon works through Christ's commendation of the Smyrnaean church's works, tribulation, and poverty; his warning of intensified suffering; and his exhortation to fearless, faithful endurance with the crown of life as the promised reward. The governing application is that the contemporary Western church, soft and largely untested, must recover the militant, cross-bearing posture that characterized the saints at Smyrna.