Rev 3:17 For you claim, “I’m rich and getting richer—I don’t need a thing.” Yet you are clueless that you’re miserable, poor, blind, barren, and naked!
Rev 3:18 So I counsel you to purchase gold perfected by fire, so that you can be truly rich. Purchase a white garment to cover and clothe your shameful Adam-nakedness. Purchase eye salve to be placed over your eyes so that you can truly see.
Rev 3:19 All those I dearly love I unmask and train. So repent and be eager to pursue what is right.
How different were these Christians at Laodicea from those whom the Lord recognized as truly rich at Smyrna. The Laodiceans may well have been marvelous Christians with much of which to be proud, but it would have been better if they had not themselves boasted of it but had left it to others to applaud them.
Spiritual things are not to be boasted of. One can boast of worldly riches, and the paper money will not fly away unspent nor will the amount magically decrease, but the spiritual riches you boast of vanish with the telling. When a Christian says he is strong, at that moment his strength has gone. lf the face of a Moses really shines, he is never the one to be aware of it. We always hope that we are growing spiritually, but it is not for us to appraise our own progress.