Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
Revelation 3:20 (KJV)
The sentence gets quoted to people who are not in church, as an appeal to let Christ into a life. It was dictated to a congregation, and whoever opens the door in verse twenty is already a member of it.
The painting that fixed the reading
Most of us picture it before we read it. William Holman Hunt painted The Light of the World in 1853, and the original hangs in a side chapel at Keble College in Oxford. Christ waits at night with a lantern, and the door in front of him is grown over with ivy, its nails and hinges rusted, with no handle on the outside at all.
The picture is magnificent, and it settled the verse for the English-speaking world. One man, one door, one soul deciding. The trouble is that the sentence was written to a whole church, and the door in it is theirs.
Whose letter this is
The letter opens “unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans,” in Revelation 3:14, six verses above the knocking. The words are dictated to a named congregation in a named city, the last of seven, and the whole of it is addressed to people who already meet on Sundays.
He tells them this. They are lukewarm, and he says he would rather they were cold or hot, either one. They say they are rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing, and he tells them they are wretched and poor and blind and naked. Then he offers three things, and they line up one for one against what has just been said of them. They said rich, so he offers gold tried in the fire. He had called them naked, so he offers white clothing. He had called them blind, so he offers ointment for the eyes. The remedy is itemized against the diagnosis, and every item has to be bought from him.
The clothing is the sharpest of the three. Strabo says the country around Laodicea raised sheep whose wool beat even the Milesian for softness and came in raven-black, and that the trade brought the city a splendid revenue. The town whose money came out of black wool is offered white to put on.
Laodicea is the only one that gets nothing
I read all seven letters to check this, because it is the sort of claim that sounds better than it is.
Ephesus is credited with labor and patience and with testing false apostles. Smyrna gets tribulation and poverty and the line “but thou art rich.” Pergamos holds fast his name where Satan dwells. Thyatira is praised for charity and service and faith. Even Sardis, which has a name that it lives and is dead, is told there are a few names in it who have not defiled their garments. Philadelphia has kept his word and not denied his name.
The pairing with Smyrna is exact, and they are the second letter and the last. Smyrna is poor, and gets told in a parenthesis that it is rich. Laodicea says it is rich, and gets told it does not know that it is poor.
Laodicea is the only church of the seven with nothing good named about it. The knock in verse twenty is what he says to the one congregation he has just finished finding nothing in.
Two doors in the same chapter
Twelve verses above the knocking, the letter to Philadelphia opens with a door as well.
I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.
Revelation 3:8 (KJV)
The church with a little strength gets a door standing open that nobody can close. The church with everything gets Christ on the wrong side of a shut one. Both are in the same chapter, dictated on the same day, and the difference between them is not how much either one had. One of them still needed something.
Not a story about people who never came
John is not writing to people who never came. He is writing to a church with a healthy budget that had stopped needing anything, which is a harder thing to preach at than an empty building, and a much commoner one.
The town had done it before. Tacitus records that Laodicea was flattened by an earthquake in the year sixty and put itself back up out of its own resources, with no relief from Rome. “Have need of nothing” was a thing that place had proved in public.
Singular, and conditional
The individual language is really there. If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him. Singular, and conditional, and it is the reason the evangelistic use of this verse is not a mistake so much as a narrowing.
And the verse before it settles the tone of the knocking.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Revelation 3:19 (KJV)
Nobody writes that to a stranger. The owner of the house is outside, and the people inside have not noticed he left.
What is actually being offered
Look at what he proposes once the door opens. Not a transaction and not a decision card. He says he will come in and have supper, which in that world meant the evening meal, the long one, the one you do not rush.
The book does end with a wide invitation, and it is addressed to anybody who is thirsty. Revelation 22:17 is the verse for the person outside. Revelation 3:20 is for the person inside who thinks the building is doing fine.
A message written to somebody else does not transfer by changing the address. Jeremiah 29:11 keeps having the same trouble, and so does the line about two or three gathered. It transfers when you are willing to be the one it was written to.
Hunt got the door right. It opens from the inside only. What he got wrong is who was already in there.