Jesus has no praise to offer the church in Sardis. This is a message of censure and a demand for immediate change. After introducing Himself as “He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars” (Revelation 3:1), Jesus gets right to the point: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (verse 1).
Does any other congregation of Revelation receive so harsh an evaluation? Later, Jesus will bring the Laodicean church to task for being “wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked” (verse 17), but even this evaluation seems to pale in comparison to being identified as spiritually dead.[1]
The concept of a name appears four times in this short letter to Sardis. Jesus begins by revealing that their name is contrary to their true nature. Despite having a name of being alive—of being a living part of the Church of God—the Christians in Sardis were the spiritual equivalent of corpses. There was a disconnect between how they appeared to others and who they really were—a disconnect that was going to end very, very poorly if they didn’t take steps to correct it.
Up until Sardis, threats and persecutions figure prominently in the letters to the churches. Ephesus is taking a stand against false teachers. Smyrna is under attack from the synagogue of Satan. Pergamos must contend with the Nicolaitans, and Thyatira must expel the false prophetess Jezebel.
But Sardis . . . in His message to Sardis, Jesus names no spiritual threat. He mentions no looming persecution from agents of the devil. It seems possible that God’s people in Sardis weren’t actively facing any major trials.[2] It’s possible that everything in Sardis was fine.
If that’s the case, then maybe fine was part of the problem.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:3). As Christians, we must remember that any trial we face in this physical life has its roots in a much bigger spiritual war—one being waged on a battlefield our human senses can’t directly perceive.
Still, the physical challenges can be a helpful reminder of the bigger spiritual picture. When our faith brings us into conflict with our professions, our communities or even our families, it’s easier to remember that an unseen foe is operating behind the scenes, actively attempting to sabotage our focus and weaken our resolve.
When things are calm, it can start to feel like our foe is taking a break.
He isn’t.
That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with a lack of persecution. We shouldn’t be actively seeking out trials for the sake of trials. But it’s vital to remember that an absence of physical challenges does not mean the spiritual war is over.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). A lack of tangible, physical problems can lull us into a false sense of complacency. It can dull our spiritual self-awareness and leave us distracted and unprepared for Satan’s next tactic.
Whether we are actively facing trials or experiencing a moment of respite, our connection with God and His Word must remain our top priority.
Jesus reminded His disciples, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away . . . I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned” (John 15:1-2, 5-6).
Disconnected from the true vine, we quickly become useless, shriveled-up deadwood. This was the case in Sardis. Although the members there are still identified as part of God’s Church (Revelation 3:1), their spiritual disconnection from God has turned them into dead branches. They haven’t yet been broken off and discarded, but that decisive moment is looming.
And so Jesus warns the congregation, “Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God” (verse 2).
Jesus, who knows the works of all His congregations, has not found the works of the members in Sardis “perfect before God.” It’s important to note that the Greek word Jesus used here (plēroō, Strong’s #G4137) doesn’t imply the kind of flawless perfection we think about in English, but rather a sense of fullness and completeness.
The members in Sardis had not been doing the works God expected of His people. More to the point, they didn’t seem to be doing anything at all! They were so comfortable, so stagnant, so totally removed from God’s will for them that the congregation was spiritually dead or dying.
What happens to your relationship with God when you aren’t actively defending it from Satan’s attacks? What happens when things are going well in your life?
Do you still put time and energy into your fellowship with God? Or is it tempting to start coasting—to get comfortable with the way things are instead of focusing on growing and bearing fruit?
In the hands of the devil, peace can become a tool that accomplishes what outright assault never could: convincing us to lower our guard.
The solution for the imperfect (and seemingly abandoned) works of Sardis begins with the command to “be watchful” (Revelation 3:2)—or, as it can also be translated, “wake up!” (NIV).
The members in Sardis aren’t aware that they are in the final throes of a spiritual death. They aren’t paying attention. This letter is designed to rouse them from their stupor and stir them to action before they reach a point of no return.
To remedy their inadequate and incomplete works, they must “remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent” (verse 3). Like those in the Ephesian church, the members in Sardis must think back to the beginning—remember the message, the promise and the hope they had received and heard.
Why were they there?
Why are any of us here?
Because the gospel of God’s soon-coming Kingdom promises us a future worth fighting for. Nothing in this life is wonderful enough (or terrible enough) to justify taking our eyes off of that promise.
We must not become so comfortable existing where we are that we forget where we’re going.
We must not forget that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13)—wanderers, foreigners, sojourners who are only passing through this broken and decaying world, journeying toward something far greater:
Our home.
The Kingdom. The future in which Jesus has prepared a place for us.
If an absence of conflict convinces us to start seeing the world around us as our permanent home, then we are in the same danger as the church in Sardis. Jesus warned them, “Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3).
If they wouldn’t watch—if they refused to wake up and pay attention—then the consequence would be as swift and as disastrous as a thief in the night.
The city of Sardis knew a thing or two about the importance of watchfulness. The town’s citadel sat atop 1,500-foot-high rock walls, making it virtually impregnable. And yet “twice in its history the acropolis had fallen to the enemy due to a lack of vigilance on the part of the defenders” (Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, p. 93)—once in 549 B.C. and again in 216 B.C. In both instances, a handful of people were able to exploit an overlooked weakness in the citadel, leaving the entire city open to defeat.
Paul warned the Thessalonians, “For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, ‘Peace and safety!’ then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:2-6).
Like the members in Sardis, we risk “sudden destruction” if we begin to grow comfortable in a state of relative peace and safety. We can never, ever afford to forget that we are engaged in a spiritual war with an enemy who “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
With God’s help, it’s a war we can and will win—but that victory is impossible if we settle down and drift off to sleep.
“But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and the helmet of our hope of salvation. For God has not appointed us to suffer wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:8-9, BSB).
The church in Sardis needed to wake up and strengthen “the things which remain” (Revelation 3:2). They needed to “remember, then, what you received and heard” (verse 3, ESV). What core doctrines and teachings had they drifted from? What important habits had they discarded? The last remaining vestiges of godly works remaining to their name were at risk of dying off for good. We can shake our heads at them for finding themselves in this condition, or we can heed the warning:
Any Christian can start to get a little drowsy and begin to compromise when the pressure is off.
Having established that the reputation of Sardis was out of sync with its true identity (its “name”), Jesus continues the theme—this time adding hope into the mix.
In Pergamos and Thyatira, the spiritual problems weren’t fully integrated into the congregation. Jesus used key words like “few,” “them” and “the rest” (Revelation 2:14, 16, 24) to signify clear divisions between the offenders and the congregation at large.
In Sardis, the opposite is true. The congregation at large is the offender, and the faithful servants are the exception.
But they’re there. Even in a congregation God calls dead, there are a few seeds of hope. Jesus continues, “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy” (Revelation 3:4).
Here, the idea of a name becomes not the reputation of a congregation, but the identity of an individual. A small handful of members in Sardis are awake and undefiled. They haven’t polluted their identity by compromising with the world around them, and they haven’t become so comfortable with this life that they’ve lost interest in what matters.
Jesus extends a promise not just to the few, but the entire congregation: “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels” (verse 5).
Notice the heavy emphasis on names at the end of this letter:
Those who overcome and keep themselves undefiled will keep their names in the Book of Life and have their names proclaimed by Jesus Christ in the throne room of heaven.
The overcomer’s name (identity) is accurately tied to the way he lives his life. There is no discrepancy—no reputation of being alive while actually being dead.
More than once, the book of Revelation revisits this idea of being clothed in white. The bride of Christ is “arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright [white in the KJV], for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints” (Revelation 19:8). In contrast with the incomplete works of the congregation in Sardis, we see this bright white linen symbolizing acts of righteousness from God’s people.
But who makes the linen white and clean?
Not us.
No matter how many righteous things we do, we can’t turn a dirty garment into a clean one. We can’t clean our own failures and shortcomings.
But Jesus can.
Revelation also describes “a great multitude” of people “clothed with white robes,” who have all “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9, 14).
The imagery is meant to be striking—a huge crowd of people, washing their robes in blood. Normally, blood would stain white clothes—but here, the blood of Christ is what removes the stains and makes the robes white.
Without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we would be dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1). Without His blood, our names and our garments would be forever stained by our own failures and shortcomings. It is exclusively because of Him that we can hope to walk in white in the first place.
And so these white robes are doing double duty. They remind us of the righteous lifestyle we must be pursuing and striving to emulate, and they remind us that our redemption and salvation from sin cannot possibly be earned. Even the righteousness we have after repentance comes “from God by faith” (Philippians 3:9) and not from ourselves.
We are given white garments; we don’t earn white garments.
A Christian’s life is one of striving to do the right things, all the while understanding that no amount of doing can earn us the incredible future God has in store for us. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
And yet, in the very next verse, what do we read? “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (verse 10).
The undefiled names in Sardis had kept themselves from the compromise and spiritual death of the congregation around them—they were still doing while others were dying.[3] As a result, their names will be preserved in the Book of Life and declared before God and His angels.
This understanding of God’s Book of Life stretches at least as far back as Moses (Exodus 32:32).
God made it clear that trading places was not an option: “Whoever has sinned against Me, I will blot him out of My book” (verse 33). The members in Sardis would have understood the reference in a modern way as well: “When a criminal’s name was removed from the civic register of an Asiatic town, he lost his citizenship” (Martin Kiddle, The Revelation of St. John, p. 47). To have your name removed from God’s Book of Life is to forfeit eternal life as a citizen of God’s Kingdom.
These faithful Christians who were walking worthily before Christ were assured that their place in God’s Kingdom was a certainty. As long as they continued overcoming, their names would remain in the Book. More than that, Jesus promised a special honor: “I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels” (Revelation 3:5).
Surrounded by those who had a name (a reputation) of being alive, these faithful names were reminded that their faithfulness would be rewarded—that their names would remain in the Book of Life, announced by Jesus Christ in the throne room of heaven.
Our name—our reputation—our true identity before Jesus Christ and God the Father—is more precious than all the treasures of this world. “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, loving favor rather than silver and gold” (Proverbs 22:1).
What’s in a name?
Long before Shakespeare was around to ask that question, Jesus answered it for the church in Sardis:
Everything that matters.
Footnotes
[1] While the church as a whole is described as “dead,” verse 4 indicates that there were some members who had “not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.”
[2] Archaeological expeditions in Sardis have uncovered a large, ornately decorated fourth-century Jewish synagogue in a prominent, high-traffic area of the city. Although this synagogue can’t tell us too much about the congregation that existed hundreds of years earlier, a synagogue so comfortably integrated into the city suggests that the Jews and gentiles of Sardis got along unusually well. But why?
[3] It’s worth noting that Jesus describes these undefiled names as “worthy” (Revelations 3:4) to walk before Him. In his Gospel account, John explains that “as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). It can seem almost contradictory, but we are worthy to walk before Christ because He makes us worthy to walk before Him.
The remainder of the congregation in Sardis is a reminder that our God-given worthiness is not a blank check that enables us to coast into God’s Kingdom. God’s gift must translate into action on our part—walking worthily (Colossians 1:10)—but neither should we doubt our worthiness to be part of God’s family. That’s a right we’ve been given by a very loving God. We are worthy because He makes us worthy.
