Core Values for the Church in the Messages of Christ to the Seven Churches in Revelation 2-3
If there is a place in scripture that gives us concentrated exposition of what we may take as the “core values” for Christ’s church, it is the Risen Lord’s messages to the seven churches in Asia Minor at the end of the 1 st century A.D. in Revelation 2-3. In these seven messages (the number “seven” being the number of completeness) Christ addresses the whole church of that time and today with a profile of its core values. These are the dynamics that by their presence or absence make or unmake communities as viable expressions of the church (see the “City” and “Core Values” columns in the chart below). So it behooves us to pay careful attention to what Christ says to them/us! Further, it seems possible to correlate the well-known “Seven Deadly Sins” to these core values as their antitheses wit...