Peter Holloway

We have a sign on our front door, it reads ‘Welcome Friends’. It’s interesting the difference friendship makes to a welcome. It’s not that we’re unfriendly, or don’t welcome people we don’t already count as friends, but just think for a minute about the difference in your attitude when you are expecting a knock on the door and when you’re not.

When we’ve arranged for friends to come round we are expecting them, we are looking forward to what’s to come. We go to the door with a smile already crossing our face. But sometimes, usually when we’ve just sat down with a cup of tea, we hear an unexpected knock on the door: is it a cold caller? As we go to the door we are usually just that bit more wary, not sure of how to receive until we know who it is we are receiving.

In Revelation 3:20 there is a direct message from the risen Jesus to the Church. It’s directed at those who already know him – he’s a friend. But the shocking thing is that he’s on the outside, knocking to get in! Remember, these are Christians that Jesus is talking to!

When we invite friends round, it very often comes with the offer of a meal. As we eat together folks relax, relationships are built, questions are asked and answers given – we get to know one another.

For many people today their relationship with God is transactional. Let me explain that: we make our relationship with God a deal, an agreement, an acknowledgement of our sin and God’s forgiveness through Christ. But we leave it there. The deal’s been done, we’re saved. That’s what makes for Revelation 3 lukewarm Christians! We often use the term ‘accepting Christ’ as a description of our salvation. That somehow seems such a poor concept of what Jesus is and what he wants. He doesn’t want to be accepted, he wants to be welcomed!

Read Revelation chapter 1 through to 3:20 and try to see the risen, exalted, incandescent Jesus of chapter 1 standing outside the door to you: knocking, waiting. Try to imagine what it would be like to open that door to Jesus as the best of all friends, and to welcome him in with open arms and a laden table. Try to imagine a life spent around the table of our hearts with the Lord Jesus Christ breaking bread with us, getting to know him as he knows us. That’s a relationship, not a transaction.

Jesus is saying to each one of us in our apathy and lukewarm faith: LOOK! I’m outside knocking! If anyone opens up and welcomes me to the table, I WILL come in and share it with them!

What an incredible offer and privilege – let’s all throw wide the doors with glad abandon and welcome our Lord into our lives.