Revelation 3:1–6

1To the Angel of the church in Sardis write: These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
4Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. 6He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

Christ’s introduction to the church at Sardis is almost identical to that in the letter to the church at Ephesus, and there are similarities between the two churches. Like the Ephesians, they have lost the power of their outward witness to Christ. Sardis was a city which had known fame in the past but whose glory had faded, and Christ now warns the church that they are in a similar predicament. The attitude of the city had infected the church. They retained a reputation (literally name) for being spiritually alive, but in fact were spiritually nearly dead.

Founded about 1200 B.C., Sardis had been one of the greatest cities in the ancient world, capital of the fabulously wealthy Lydian kingdom.

Its seemingly impregnable location caused the inhabitants of Sardis to become overconfident. That complacency eventually led to the city’s downfall. Through carelessness, the unimaginable happened: Sardis was conquered. The news of its downfall sent shock waves through the Greek world. Even in John’s day, several centuries later, a proverbial saying equated “to capture the acropolis of Sardis” with “to do the impossible.

History repeated itself more than three and a half centuries later when Antiochus the Great conquered Sardis by utilizing the services of a sure-footed mountain climber from Crete (195 B.C.).

Sardis never regained its independence, eventually coming under Roman control in 133 B.C. A catastrophic earthquake destroyed the city in A.D. 17, but it was rebuilt with the generous financial aid of Emperor Tiberius.

The Condition of the Church

There is no hint here of outward persecution or inner heresy. The distinctive character of the church’s faith had rather been so far lost in accommodation to society that it aroused no opposition. Spiritual poverty and complacency were thus leading the church into moral error

Sardis had a significant and powerful Jewish community. Jesus’ followers seem to have coexisted peacefully with the synagogue community, and therefore likely coexisted peacefully with the city establishment as a whole. Lacking the world’s opposition, they may have grown comfortable in their relationship with the world.

Because the Sardis church was dead, Christ skipped the usual commendation for the moment and went directly to His concerns for it. Though its outward appearance may have fooled men (it had a name, or reputation of being alive), the Sardis church could not fool the omniscient Lord Jesus Christ, who knew its deeds. With His infallible knowledge, He pronounced the Sardis church to be dead. Like so many churches today it was defiled by the world, characterized by inward decay, and populated by unredeemed people playing church.

What are the danger signs that a church is dying?

A church is in danger when it is content to rest on its past laurels, when it is more concerned with liturgical forms than spiritual reality,

When it focuses on curing social ills rather than changing people’s hearts through sharing the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ,

When it is more concerned with material than spiritual things, when it is more concerned with what men think than what God said.

When it is more enamored with doctrinal creeds and systems of theology than with the Word of God, or when it loses its conviction that every word of the Bible is the word of God Himself.

No matter what its attendance, no matter how impressive its buildings, no matter what its status in the community, such a church, having denied the only source of spiritual life, is dead.

These are just a few hints that a church might be dead or dying.

The congregation at Sardis was performing deeds; they were going through the motions. But those deeds, Christ declared, were not completed in the sight of My God. Though sufficient to give the Sardis church a reputation before men, those deeds were insufficient and unacceptable in God’s sight.

Jesus gives a warning for the remainder to wake up

In response to their almost dead condition, they are to wake up and strengthen the things that remain and which are about to die. The readers had become lethargic about the radical demands of their faith in the midst of a pagan culture.

The mention of things that remain implies that the readers had begun a life of faithful service, but something had happened which impeded further progress. What is in question is their name.

Do they truly bear the name of Christ? This is what is now in doubt. There certainly had been life here, but the genuine deeds of the past (referring to a faithful witness to Christ) was gone.

The fact that Christ appears to them holding the seven stars, representing angelic support, and also the seven spirits, representing the power of the Holy Spirit, means that He has supernatural strength available to enable them to have a renewed obedience.

This is particularly appropriate since the church of Sardis is the only one among the seven that is so lethargic in fulfilling their Christian role that they are on the verge of being considered spiritually dead.

Because their deeds have not been found complete, they must remember what they have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. If they will not wake up, Jesus says, I will come like a thief, not in support but in judgment, this is not to His final return but to a historical judgment upon the local church.

Jesus’ warning that he will come on them as a “thief”.

That those who have not “soiled” their clothes will walk with Jesus “dressed in white” (3:4) is significant. In the temples of Asia and elsewhere, worshipers dared not approach deities with soiled clothes; the normal apparel for approaching the gods in temples was white or linen.

Jesus presumably promises here that his followers who have not polluted themselves with the paganism of their culture will participate in the new Jerusalem; though that city will have no specific temple (21:22), it will be a temple city, the dwelling of God (21:3, 16). Those who fail to watch will be found naked (16:15).

It is difficult to discern the precise point along the continuum of the eschatological process in mind. The reason for the ambiguity may be intentional in order to heighten the element of imminence so that the readers would sense the urgency to solve their problem.

The thief imagery here points more to the thought of a historical visitation of Christ before his final appearance, which will conclude history.

Only a few of the Sardian Christians had not “soiled their garments”, a phrase which refers to some kind of compromise with pagan or idolatrous practices. The word “soiled” occurs also in 14:4, where it refers to those “not defiled with women,” which, in context (see 14:8 on the concept of idolatrous fornication with Babylon) refers not so much to literal sexual immorality (though that might be involved) as to involvement with pagan or idolatrous activity.

From this, it appears that the Christians in Sardis had for the most part fallen into a stupor of compromise and fear of the consequences of a bold witness for Christ.

The promise that the overcomers in Sardis will not be blotted out “from the book of life” (3:5) implies that much of the church in Sardis is close to spiritual death and will not see the kingdom.

The image of blotting out stems from Exodus 32:32–33, which came to be applied to a heavenly book of life (Ps. 69:28; Dan. 12:1; Luke 10:20; Phil. 4:3). An ancient audience in Asia may have heard this image against the citizen-registers known throughout Asia Minor; in an earlier period Sardis was known for its royal archives. In some places (best documented from Athens), names of errant citizens were deleted from the register immediately prior to their execution.

The book of life appears five other times in Revelation (13:8; 17:8; 20:12, 15; 21:27), and contains the names of believers written in it before the foundation of the world.

The promise I will not erase his name contains no inference that the names of the genuinely saved might for some reason be erased, but is rather an assurance that they will not.

What does this say for us Today?

All the churches are invited to learn from Jesus’ warnings to the others, and the exhortation to “watch” or “wake up” (3:2) applies to all

We can apply this to everyone, for we must all be ready for the Lord’s return or judgment. But we should apply the point of the text most securely where analogies are closest, so that the warning to “wake up” is especially relevant to sleeping churches, to those that are guided more by their culture than by Jesus’ voice or any sense of future reckoning before him.

Satan did not have to pressure them with persecution or temptation; their church was already dead. They had become comfortable with the world, had no price to pay for their faith in Jesus Christ, and would therefore be taken by surprise.

2 Timothy 3 5 holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away. 6For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts

The evident meaning is that the church had an outward ‘form of religion’, but not ‘the power thereof’.

This warning should generate introspection for us, current Western Christians. As a church, the believers in Sardis undoubtedly dreamed that they were awake. Jesus may not be satisfied with the status quo in our lives or our churches.

Staying awake is difficult when the world around us remains asleep.

Revelation 16:15 (Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.)

In Nazi Germany some 7,000 of 18,000 pastors in the state church opposed the Aryan clause that excluded Christians of Jewish descent from working in the church.

In time, the Confessing Church formed to protest the state church’s compromises with Hitler, but gradually Hitler began to woo this very church. He allowed some of their distinctives and provided legitimacy for them if they would simply acquiesce to his expansionist plans.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer fought this compromise, but became an increasingly isolated minority voice in view of the “practical realities” of the church’s situation. He claimed “that the failure of German Christians to resist the Nazi rise to power stemmed from their lack of moral clarity”; the only people who can stand firm in such situations are those whose standard is not reason or conscience but God and his Word.

 

Just like the Sardis Christians, it is too easy for us to depend on past achievements instead of looking to God’s call for us in the future (Phil. 3:12–14). We recall the example of Gideon, who made a golden ephod to commemorate his victory, yet failed to destroy this ephod even when his people began worshiping it (Judg. 8:27).

By lowering the standards, he set the stage for the return to Baal worship after his death and the disintegration of his spiritual legacy in Israel, and he effectively undercut the good he had achieved earlier in his life (8:33). Gideon looked back to his past victory, but should have made better plans for the future.

Judges 8:27And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel played the harlot after it there; and it became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house.
33And it came to pass, as soon as Gideon was dead, that the children of Israel turned again, and played the harlot after the Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god. 34And the children of Israel remembered not Jehovah their God, who had delivered them out of the hand of all their enemies on every side;

A Chance to Repent

That a minority in Sardis remained unsoiled (Rev. 3:4 There are genuine Christians in many “sleeping” (and drowsy) churches today, at least in churches that many other Christians would consider “asleep.”

On those who do not persevere. The implicit warning of 3:5 (that those who do not overcome will be blotted from the book of life) challenges some popular ideas in traditional North American religion. Arminians teach that apostasy can reverse the results of conversion; historic Calvinists teach that people who fail to persevere were never converted to begin with. What is most important is that both agree on the end result: Those who do not persevere are lost. But many (especially in my own Baptist tradition) have wrongly reinterpreted the Calvinist teaching so as to allow into heaven anyone who once professed salvation, an idea refuted both here and regularly throughout the New Testament (e.g., Mark 4:16–19; John 8:30–32; 15:6; Rom. 11:20–22; Gal. 4:19; 5:4; 2 Peter 2:20–22; see also comment on Rev. 2:26).

In personal evangelism, I have often encountered nominal evangelicals who rarely give thought to the Lord Jesus Christ, yet suppose that they are bound for heaven because they once were baptized or followed someone in the sinner’s prayer. The promise that those who persevere will not be blotted from the book of life also offers a serious warning to many nominal Christians in our culture who depend purely on a past profession of faith to ensure their salvation.

When Mickey Cohen, a famous Los Angeles gangster of the late 1940s, made a public profession of faith in Christ, his new Christian friends were elated. But as time passed, they began to wonder why he did not leave his gangster lifestyle.21 When they confronted him concerning this question, however, he protested, “You never told me I had to give up my career. You never told me that I had to give up my friends. There are Christian movie stars, Christian athletes, Christian businessmen. So what’s the matter with being a Christian gangster? If I have to give up all that—if that’s Christianity—count me out.”