Jesus’ problem was with their embrace of Jezebel.
Jezebel was an actual historic figure during the time of the prophet Elijah who was known for being incredibly evil. In Revelation, in relation to the letter to Thyatira, her name is used to signify a prominent woman who undermined loyalty to God by promoting tolerance toward certain pagan practices; specifically, eating food sacrificed to idols and engaging in sexual immorality.
Thyatira was well known as a center for trade guilds. They were so strong that you couldn’t work without belonging to one of them. But the trade guilds were very pagan in orientation. Membership involved attending the guild banquets where meat that had been sacrificed to idols would be eaten in celebration of the idol.
This put the Christian in a difficult position. If they didn’t attend, they were out of a job. If they did attend, they would be compromising their faith. Jezebel came along and said: “No problem – eat away! It’s okay – God understands.”
So many of them did.
This led to greater compromise because those feasts were tied to acts of sexual immorality—particularly with the Temple prostitutes. In essence, “Jezebel” was teaching that you could embrace doing all the good of the Christ life while simultaneously engaging in an immoral lifestyle – or at the very least accepting and tolerating and even affirming it in others.
They were a church full of love, but no truth. Love and acceptance turned into affirmation and licentiousness. They would give food to the hungry and housing to the homeless, but then worship false gods and sleep with prostitutes—and they felt this was fine. The heart of the condemnation was that this was tolerated without being confronted by the church itself. It was as though nobody wanted to seem intolerant or judgmental about what appeared to be a personal lifestyle choice.
But Jesus says that they should have never let that spirit, much less that teaching, exist within the church or within anyone’s life.
The letter to Thyatira is increasingly the letter that churches need sent to them today. They are socially minded in terms of ministry and justice, but in so being, they seem complacent on sexual ethics. Even compromising, as if affirming homoerotic lifestyles, gay marriages, non-binary identities and more is part of what it means to be loving and socially conscious.
Jesus commended the church at Thyatira for their social commitments but reminded them that there is no place for the spirit of Jezebel in a Christian Church.
This article on Thyatira and Laodicea originally appeared here, and is used by permission.
