Cold, Hot or Lukewarm?

“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:16.

Jesus issued this stark warning to the angel of the church in Laodicea, and it stands as one of the most sobering and frequently misunderstood passages in Scripture. Learn more about Jesus’s warnings to the angels of the seven churches of Asia in “God’s Letters.” Are we cold, hot or lukewarm?

When Christ declares, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth,” He is not addressing the openly wicked, for they know they are broken and reject repentance and Christ. Their judgment is already sealed in the pages of Biblical prophecy, and Jesus’s own words. Matthew 25:31-46

The urgent warning of Revelation 3:16, however, is reserved for a dangerous group trapped in a lethal condition: the lukewarm, those who claim the name of Christ while living apart from His righteousness, and relying on self, earthly possessions, wealth and stature. They are highly dangerous to the body of Christ because their compromise can quietly bring down a whole church, infecting the pews with stagnation, silencing bold truth and replacing Holy Ghost power with a club of self-deception. Yet, they themselves are in immediate peril because their outward reliance on “self as enough” makes them entirely immune to spiritual conviction. While the openly wicked are fully aware of their brokenness, the lukewarm are insulated by a toxic illusion of safety. You cannot offer medicine to someone who is convinced they are perfectly healthy; their self-righteousness acts like armor against the Holy Spirit, making them completely unreachable because they believe they have already arrived.

Go to BibleGateway.com to follow along with Scripture references.

To grasp the depth of Jesus’s warning, it helps to understand the geography of Laodicea, the city to whom Jesus was speaking in Revelation 3:16, a city known for its useless, toxic water supply. Nearby Hierapolis, a heavily pagan city, offered hot springs renowned for their healing and therapeutic properties, while Colossae provided cold springs that were refreshing and invigorating to the weary traveler. By the time the water reached Laodicea through aqueducts, it was tepid (lukewarm), mineral-laden, and nauseating to drink. It was neither useful for healing nor for refreshment. Both the hot and the cold are useful to the Master (Jesus Christ); both serve a divine purpose.

This functional blueprint of spiritual temperature is woven directly across the pages of the Old Testament as well. Long before the book of Revelation was written, the prophets routinely identified God’s approved servants by these exact thermal dynamics. The “hot” believer operating under the heavy fire of righteous indignation mirrors the prophet Jeremiah, who declared that God’s word was shut up in his bones as a “burning fire” he could not contain, Jeremiah 20:9, serving a divine agency to purge corruption and shatter legalism. Conversely, the “cold” believer, bringing life-giving comfort, reflects the wisdom of Proverbs 25:25, which states that “as cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” Both operations require a direct pipeline to the Living God. The tragic alternative is the toxic middle ground exposed by the prophet Elijah on Mount Carmel when he thundered against fence-sitting compromise, demanding, “How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” 1 Kings 18:21. It is the identical indictment found in Hosea 7:8, where God warns that “Ephraim is a cake not turned,” a half-baked, distorted mixture left doughy on one side and scorched on the other. Just like the stagnant aqueducts of Laodicea, the Old Testament proves that God heavily utilizes the burning fire of the hot and the thirst-quenching stream of the cold, but utterly vomits out the useless compromise of the half-baked middle.

Let’s look at the original Greek text Jesus used. When Christ declares, “I would thou wert cold or hot,” He uses words that carry deep functional meanings.

The Cold Believer

The Greek word for cold is “psychros,” which literally means icy cold or chilled water. This is the exact root Jesus uses in Matthew 10:42 when He promises a reward to anyone who gives a “cup of cold water” to a disciple. Scripturally, a cup of cold water is the ultimate act of refreshment, relief and sustaining life to someone who is weary, parched and failing. This scriptural truth explains why a believer can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, but not necessarily experience the ‘fire’ aspect yet, or maybe ever. The Holy Spirit manifests in Scripture through two distinct, necessary operations: Refining Fire (for purification and aggressive power), Malachi 3:2, Matthew 3:11, and Living Water (for fruitfulness, growth and refreshment). John 7:38, Isaiah 44:3.

Being “cold” represents the refreshing, life-giving presence of the Spirit in a believer who has eagerly strived every day to master the fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23. They are like a deep, chilled mountain well. Unless also baptized in fire, they do not scorch or burn away evil; instead, they sustain the body of Christ through absolute yielding to the peaceful fruits of righteousness: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance (self-control). When a broken, dying world encounters them, they receive a “cup of cold water” that restores their soul. If you are “cold,” you are a refreshment that restores life and provides comfort and hope.

This is the exact supernatural breakout described in Isaiah 35:6-7, where the prophet declares that in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert, turning the parched ground into a pool and the thirsty land into springs of water. When laid side-by-side with the geography of Laodicea, this Old Testament promise explodes with a terrifying accuracy. In its original Hebrew text, the phrase for parched ground specifically refers to a mirage, a low, sun-baked desert basin where water pools up, sits stagnant under the scorching heat, collects heavy mineral sediment and evaporates into a toxic crust.

This physical pollution perfectly illustrates the spiritual state of a lukewarm believer. Their faith is a toxic mixture because they try to blend the things of the Spirit with the things of the world, relying on self and religious performance. It is a religion built entirely on human effort and pride, a frantic performance to look spiritually rich on the outside while remaining completely bankrupt and compromised on the inside. But Isaiah promises that when the Holy Spirit moves, He shatters these stagnant, man-made basins. The word for spring here denotes a fountain that forcefully bubbles up, gushes and erupts directly out of the deep earth. A true spring can never become lukewarm, because it is a moving torrent directly connected to an underground aquifer, completely bypassing the baked, dirty surface of the desert. God never intended His Holy Spirit to pool up, stagnate and become toxic under the illusion of self-reliance; He intended it to erupt as a torrent, moving as the boiling, refining fire of the hot to purge corruption, and rushing as the icy, life-saving stream of the cold to restore a dying world.

The Hot Believer

The Greek word for “hot” is zestos, meaning boiling or bubbling over with heat. If you are “hot,” you are a fire that exposes, burns away, cleanses/heals. This spiritual reality reveals that the ‘hot’ Spiritual condition is not about emotional hype, or anger from ego, but instead, divine, purpose-driven ordination: To be hot signifies a believer baptized in the Holy Ghost and fire, purified by God’s refining flame, possessing meat-level faith, righteous discernment and a zero-tolerance policy for evil and wickedness. This is the active, purifying force of the Spirit that burns away sin and speaks God’s truth with prophetic boldness. The “hot” believer has undergone the agonizing Baptism of Fire, Matthew 3:11, that incinerates the dross of the fleshly nature, giving them a burning zeal for truth and discernment of good and evil.

This dual operation of the Spirit is verified throughout the Old Testament, where God frequently designated His servants to carry one specific temperature for their entire calling. The prophet Elijah operated exclusively under the boiling, zero-tolerance, “hot” fire, deployed solely to shatter demonic deception and confront corrupt systems. Conversely, his successor, Elisha, was anointed primarily to be a “cold,” life-sustaining stream, purifying toxic water supplies, providing for bankrupt widows, and bringing restoration to the weary. Both prophets were fully validated, fully useful and completely plugged into the pipeline of the Living God, yet their operations were entirely different.

A believer can be genuinely filled with the Holy Spirit and walk as a deep, chilled well of refreshment for the Body of Christ without ever being called into the agonizing furnace of the refining fire. While some are set apart for a single-temperature season, the ultimate standard of spiritual maturity is found in leaders like Moses, Jeremiah and especially Jesus, who yielded so completely to the Spirit that they could switch temperatures instantly, bringing a scorching sword of righteous indignation to the corrupt elite, but pouring out a fountain of tears and refreshing water over a broken, sin-weary soul.

The fire of righteous indignation (Jesus overturning the tables) is never a chaotic, fleshly, ego-driven tantrum; it is calculated, protective warfare. When Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, or when He slammed the Pharisees as white-washed sepulchres, his reaction was not gentle or kind by earthly standards, but it was the ultimate manifestation of the Father’s goodness and desire for truth and justice. True holy fire does not lose control: Jesus took the time to physically braid a whip before turning over the tables. His anger was a sharp, surgical weapon deployed to smash a predatory system and shield the vulnerable who were being fleeced in the very place they prayed and worshipped God.

Jesus (and others) carried the absolute fullness of the fire, yet He changed His spiritual temperature instantly based on the person standing in front of Him. He brought a blazing sword to the corrupt religious elites and hardened hearts, but He brought a cup of cool, refreshing water to the broken, oppressed and weary souls looking for liberty.

The Lukewarm Believer

The lukewarm believer, however, completely short-circuits this divine design by refusing to be either cold or hot. The true horror of the lukewarm condition is that it is a toxic compromise. A lukewarm “Christian” tries to mix the things of the Spirit with the things of self-righteousness, fleshly wealth and human power and performance. They taint the water. They are neither hot enough to provide cleansing, nor cold enough to refresh a thirsty soul. They are a useless compromise. The lukewarm condition is not a state of indifference or a simple lack of faith, but rather a state of self-deception. 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12. The Laodiceans in Revelation 3:16 were not atheists; they were religious people who were self-deceived: they proclaimed righteousness while living in self and apart from God. For this reason, Jesus taught them, “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” Revelation 3:17

This physical luxury and comfort is exactly what kills a believer’s prayer life. Prayer is a fundamental act of total dependence on God, but when bank accounts grow, financial security increases and social status rises, the flesh tricks the mind into forgetting it needs God. Because they believe they have everything they need, they stop remembering that they need God. They mistake God’s kindness for His approval, completely unaware of the warning in Romans 2:4 that the goodness of God is given to lead a heart to repentance, not to fuel self-sufficiency. The lukewarm condition sets in the moment a person allows their earthly riches to blind them to their spiritual poverty, entirely unaware that they have locked the true Provider out of their heart.

This state of self-deception makes the lukewarm believer spiritually nauseating to God (I will vomit him out). The lukewarm Christian believes they are already rich and safe. They claim the label of the fire but lack the Spirit to back it. They refuse the pruning of the vine to produce fruit. They claim the water but offer no refreshment to lost souls. Their faith is a toxic mixture of human effort and divine claims, a religion without power, having a form of godliness but denying its power, 2 Timothy 3:5, that serves no purpose in God’s kingdom. The spewing out of the mouth is not merely a correction but a total rejection of a faith that is all claim and no reality.

This is the essence of the sin that causes God to spew a person out: claiming to know Jesus while living outside His righteousness, trusting in one’s own religious acts, rather than depending entirely on God’s grace and His Son, which always produce Holy acts in believers (Look what God did), not self-righteous acts (Look at me; Look what I did). It is the condition of the Pharisee who thanks God he is not like the tax collector, Luke 18:11, or the worker of iniquity who cries, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?” only to be told, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matthew 7:21-23. Not, I knew you once, but “I never knew you.” This is a state of self-deception.

This dangerous state of delusion is exactly what the prophet Micaiah exposed in 1 Kings 22:19-23, where a company of 400 compromised, self-serving prophets, who loudly claimed to speak for the Lord, were actually being controlled by a demonic, lying spirit because they loved royal favor and earthly stature more than raw, unfiltered truth.

God rejects the person who honors Him with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. Matthew 15:8-9: “This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”

The Remedy

The remedy for this deadly condition is not to try harder, to generate more emotional heat, or to increase religious activity, serving poisoned water. The call of the Spirit is to repentance, faith in God and unconditional love for God and humanity, including a return to total dependence on Christ. Jesus counsels the lukewarm, “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” Revelation 3:18. This gold represents true righteousness that comes only through the refining guidance of the Holy Spirit, not through human works or manmade rituals and traditions. It requires admitting that we are wretched and needy, tearing down the facade of self-sufficiency, and allowing God to prune the vine so we produce genuine fruit of the Spirit.

I know the reality of this supernatural boundary because my own life was completely rewritten by it. In 2021, while reading the Amplified Bible from start to finish in just four months, I prayed for and received the gift of tongues. This led me into a season of tasting many of the spiritual gifts available to believers, which you can read about in “Holy Spirit Transforms,” or check out all of “My Testimony” here.

This process of tasting gifts completely exposes the true weight of Psalm 34:8 to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” It was not a poetic metaphor; it was a sudden, supernatural overhaul of my spiritual tastebuds. Involuntarily, my soul instantly knew what was against God’s will and purpose for my life. I found I could no longer watch the worldly movies I used to love or listen to the music I once liked. I did not need a rulebook or a checklist to force me to behave. The pure indwelling fire of the Holy Spirit simply made the compromise of this world physically and spiritually visible. This is what the lukewarm are entirely missing. They try to grit their teeth and fake a holy appearance, completely blind to the fact that if they had ever truly tasted the pure, raw presence of God, their appetite for the stagnant mud of this world would be instantly and permanently shattered.

This explains why the road to heaven is narrow and crooked and few find it. Many Christians are deceived into thinking they are doing enough. If you are not cold or hot, then you are lukewarm, and you are not doing enough.

Until we abandon the illusion of our own self-sufficiency, and embrace the purifying blood of Jesus Christ, and the refreshing water (cold), and fire (hot), imparted by God’s Holy Spirit, we remain in the dangerous middle ground that God utterly rejects, the “lukewarm” that Jesus will spew out of his mouth. The wicked are already judged if they do not repent and surrender to God, but the lukewarm are in immediate peril because they are asleep at the wheel of their own souls, deceived by a false faith, faith in self, that cannot save. Only Jesus Christ can save. “Do this, knowing that this is a critical time. It is already the hour for you to awaken from your sleep [of spiritual complacency]; for our salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed [in Christ].” Romans 13:11 AMP

When the line of eternity is drawn, or the silver cord of life is loosed, Ecclesiastes 12:6-7, the Master leaves no territory for a half-hearted, lukewarm gathering. God requires absolute allegiance, a faith that produces restorative compassion for the broken, and/or a razor-sharp, zero tolerance for wickedness. Scripture thunders that a house divided against itself cannot stand, proving that if your life is not a weapon deployed entirely for His cause, your silence is a direct vote for His enemy. Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:25; Luke 11:23

May His light shine brightest in believers in this, the world’s greatest hour of need.

In the light and love of Jesus Christ. Amen.