The Seven Churches of Revelation

The Church at Smyrna

Revelation 2:8-11 (KJV) · A proud, beautiful coastal city devoted to the emperor's worship · 2 of 7

The church at Smyrna was poor, persecuted, and slandered, yet the risen Christ calls it rich and finds nothing in it to rebuke. He warns that harder suffering is coming, even prison and death, and calls them not to fear but to be faithful unto death, promising the crown of life and freedom from the second death. It is the shortest of the seven letters, and the tenderest.

The letter of Christ to Smyrna

And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.Revelation 2:8-11 (KJV)

How Jesus describes himself to Smyrna

To the suffering church Christ presents himself as the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive. To a people facing death, he is the One who has already gone through death and come out the other side alive forever. He is the first and the last, before all their enemies and after them, holding the beginning and the end of the whole story in his hands.

There is deep comfort in the way he introduces himself. He does not come to the persecuted with a display of power that would only shame their weakness. He comes as the One who himself was killed and now lives, so that every believer who faces death can look at him and know that death is not the end. The Lord who says be faithful unto death has himself been faithful unto death, and has conquered it.

What Christ commends

I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, he says, and then, in a parenthesis that changes everything, but thou art rich. In the eyes of the world Smyrna was a poor and struggling church, pressed by hardship and want. In the eyes of Christ it was rich, wealthy in the only currency that lasts, faithful under pressure and treasured by God.

He also knows the slander they endured, the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan, the bitter opposition that lied about them and stirred up their neighbors against them. Christ sees it all. He does not explain away their poverty or their pain, but he renames it. What looked like loss he calls riches. What looked like defeat he counts as honor. He knows exactly what his suffering people are worth, and he says so before he asks anything of them, so that they will suffer as the rich, not as the abandoned.

The word of comfort, where a rebuke would go

To Smyrna, as to Philadelphia, Christ speaks no rebuke at all. Where the other letters turn to correction, this one turns to comfort. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. The Lord is honest that suffering is coming, and worse than what they have known: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days.

He does not promise to spare them the fire. He promises to be with them in it, and to set a limit on it. The ten days speak of a trial that is real but measured, held within bounds by the One who is the first and the last. He tells them plainly what is ahead so that when it comes they will not be shaken, but will remember that their Lord foresaw it, permitted it only within limits, and stood with them through every hour. A church forewarned by Christ is a church already comforted, for it knows that nothing about to befall it has taken him by surprise, and that the hand permitting the trial is the same pierced hand that will hold them through it and crown them at the end.

His call, and his promise to the one who overcomes

The call is one of the most famous words Christ ever spoke to a church: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. Faithfulness is asked all the way to the end, even if the end is death itself. And to those who give everything, he promises everything: a crown of life, the victor's wreath that does not fade, life that death cannot touch.

He that overcometh, he adds, shall not be hurt of the second death. The first death, the death of the body, may indeed come to them, and he does not pretend otherwise. But the second death, the final and eternal separation from God, will never touch them. The most it can cost a faithful believer to follow Christ is a death that only opens onto life. For the church under threat, that is everything: the worst the world can do has already been swallowed up in the victory of the One who was dead, and is alive.

Smyrna, the real city

Smyrna, the modern city of Izmir in Turkey, was one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world, a proud rival of Ephesus for the title first city of Asia. It was famous for its loyalty to Rome and was an early and eager center of the imperial cult, where citizens were pressed to burn incense and confess Caesar as lord. For Christians who would call no one Lord but Jesus, that pressure could be deadly.

It was here, by the witness of the early church, that the aged bishop Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John, was burned at the stake decades later, refusing to curse the Christ he had served, as he said, for eighty and six years. The letter to Smyrna reads like a word prepared in advance for exactly such faithfulness. Its poor, pressed, slandered church became a byword for endurance, proof that the churches Christ calls rich are not always the ones the world would envy.

What this letter says to the church, and to us

Smyrna is the letter for every believer and every congregation that suffers for the name of Jesus, whether by poverty, slander, imprisonment, or death. To them Christ says the two things they most need to hear: I know, and I am the first and the last who was dead and is alive. He does not offer escape. He offers his own presence, his sure limit on the trial, and a crown on the far side of faithfulness.

For those of us who suffer little for our faith, Smyrna searches us in a different way. It reminds us that Christ measures wealth and success by a scale utterly unlike the world's, that a church can be poor and pressed and yet the richest of all seven, and that faithfulness, not comfort or numbers, is what he crowns. Wherever his people are hated for his sake, the One who conquered death stands with them and calls them home.

It is worth pausing on how much Christ leaves unexplained. He never tells Smyrna why they must suffer, or why the devil is permitted to cast some of them into prison. He gives them something better than an explanation: himself. He is the first and the last, so nothing that touches them lies outside his reach; he was dead and is alive, so death has already been defeated in advance; and he sets a limit of ten days on their trial, so their suffering is measured, not endless. The faith Smyrna is called to is not a grim endurance but a trust anchored in the character of the Lord who suffered first. Those who follow him into the fire follow One who has already walked through it and out the other side, and who waits at the end with a crown that no death can take away.

These were seven real churches in real cities of Asia Minor, near the end of the first century, and the letters were addressed to them by name. The church has always read them also as a word of the risen Christ to his whole church in every age, and to each believer who has an ear to hear. They are not a coded calendar of the end of the world, and no date is set here. They are the searching, loving words of the Lord who still walks among his churches.

The other churches: Ephesus · Pergamos · Thyatira · Sardis · Philadelphia · Laodicea · All seven