Revelation 3:15 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

I would thou wert cold or hot.— This is not to be understood absolutely, but comparatively; as when our Saviour says, If any one come to me and hateth not his father, &c. the meaning is, not that a Christian should absolutely hate his father, but that he should love Christ above him, or any worldlyconsideration. So here Christ does not approve of coldness in religious matters absolutely; but declares that lukewarmness therein is a worse disposition than absolute coldness: the reason of this is plain; because that faint heat here expressed to be in the angel of Laodicea, is a false and deceitful principle, which makes a man presumeupon himself, as if he were good enough, and hinders him from aiming at genuine Christian experience and holiness of heart: whereas flat coldness is plain and sensible, and does not fill a man with such false notions; but makes him rather immediately, upon feeling the truth of it through grace, ready to hearken to the admonitions of Christ. So that in reality, when exactly compared, it is a better disposition than lukewarmness, which must of necessitybring along with it negligence and hypocrisy, by making them seem wise and good in their own conceits; and it is plain from what follows, that the Laodiceans were so.