3. “ Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing” --3:17-19. Based on this statement the Lord said: I counsel thee. He informed them, with words of severity, that they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked-- which, without any other words to be added, simply meant that they were in utter spiritual destitution. He recommended, in their own dialect of merchandising, that they buy of him a gold of greater value than their material wealth; and the white raiment of righteousness to clothe their nakedness; so that the shame of thy nakedness does not appear: as yet, their nakedness had not been exposed; it was within their membership. This note of judgment was a warning of the divine exposure of their spiritual nakedness. To correct their state of spiritual blindness the Lord admonished them to anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see--to get rid of their self-deception. This figurative language, of course, cannot be literally applied. The eyesalve meant spiritual enlightenment, as in Psalms 19:8 : “ The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.” The gold which the Lord persuaded them to buy meant the raiment of righteousness, as in 1 Peter 5:5 : “ Be clothed with humility” ; and Revelation 7:14 : “ These are they . . . which washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” These are strong analogies employed by the Lord counselling the Laodiceans to seek the true riches. There were no charges of the evils of error which existed in some of the churches. The Laodiceans professed the truths of the gospel, but with a materialistic apathy which rendered them unconscious of being out of communion with Christ. To assure them of divine love and concern for their restoration, Jesus said: As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. The severity of his rebuke was not rejection but a sign of love which seeks to prevent their condition reaching that stage. The mandate, Be zealous and repent, meant the zeal of repentance itself; that it could not be performed in the apathy and passivity of their present attitude. In Matthew 12:41, Jesus said that the people of Nineveh “ repented at the preaching of Jonah,” but in referring to that event in the book of Jonah, it reads: “ When God saw their works.” That is evidently the meaning of the zeal of repentance. It cannot be performed in nonchalance.