Rev 3:16 for those who missed the memo.
When I read the text I see warm/cold water contrasted with lukewarm. Warm/cold being good and desirable and lukewarm being bad and undesirable.
What I don't see is the temperature of water a scale of our passion, cold being no belief, lukewarm wishy-washy and hot being "on fire for Jesus".
Do we really want to believe that God desires unbelief over the struggling Christian? What a horrible picture of God that reveals. Be perfect or don't come at all. Completely counter-gospel.
No, that is wrong interpretation. Jesus would never breathe such a thing, particularly of people who are believers. I had the same issue with the teaching on that verse as you. Clearly Jesus was saying that cold and hot were both
good, but lukewarm was not.
But this experience is what taught me what that verse really means:
Back in the early 70s, during the Vietnam war, I was assigned to a base in Thailand. As soon as I landed, my military sponsor took me to lunch "out in the 'ville," that is, to a local Thai eating establishment right outside the base.
We walked into the littler restaurant, which was empty at the moment. Because the restaurant catered to American GIs, they had a small buffet set up of slided bread and an assortment of sliced meats.
But my sponsor didn't go to the buffet, he went to a table where we sat and waited for service. And waited, and waited.
I started getting nervous and suggested we just go to the buffet.
He said, "Oh, noooo, noooo!"
I said, "Why not?"
"You don't know how long that foods been sitting out there. It might have been sitting out since Tuesday."
Then he leaned close to me and said: "Look, in countries like this, if the food is right off the fire, you can eat it. If the food is right off the ice, you can eat it. But if it's room temperature, spit it out! It will kill you!"
I understood the verses in Revelation in that moment.
People in the first century certainly knew the same thing. Everyone would be totally familiar with that concept. They knew that food could be kept edible bubbling in the pot. They knew they could keep food edible by keeping it in a jar in a flowing stream.
They also knew that food kept at "room temperature" (not yet knowing about "temperature"
per se, calling it "lukewarm") would spoil quickly and become toxic.
Thus, "
...since you were neither hot nor cold, I spat you out of my mouth."
The point Jesus is making here is the same point God has always made: "
I want you to be a peculiar people." The point is not hot or cold per se, the point is to not be room temperature.
The world is room temperature. To be room temperature is to be like the world...and made toxic by the world.
A Christian may be seen as "cold" by the world when we don't get excited over the things that excite them. A Christian may be seen as "hot" to the world because get XOJ (excited over Jesus), which makes no sense to them.
But we are not supposed to be like the world.
