Scripture Daily

Context No. 1364 of 4322 · Revelation

Context · Reflection

Revelation 3:1-6: in context

1“And to the angel of the assembly in Sardis write: “He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars says these things: “I know your works, that you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2Wake up and strengthen the things that remain, which you were about to throw away, for I have found no works of yours perfected before my God. 3Remember therefore how you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If therefore you won’t watch, I will come as a thief, and you won’t know what hour I will come upon you. 4Nevertheless you have a few names in Sardis that didn’t defile their garments. They will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. 5He who overcomes will be arrayed in white garments, and I will in no way blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. 6He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies.

To the church in Sardis the risen Christ sends a sobering word. I know your works, he says; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before my God. Remember what you received and heard; keep it, and repent. If you will not wake, I will come like a thief, at an hour you do not know. Yet, he adds, you still have a few in Sardis who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed in white, and I will never blot his name from the book of life.

The hard word here is the gap Christ names: you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Sardis had a name, a standing, a reputation among the churches for vitality; from the outside it looked alive. But the one who sees past reputation to reality saw something else, a church going through the motions, its works unfinished before God, its life more remembered than present, in truth dead beneath the living name. That is a searching thing to hear, because reputation and reality can drift far apart, and the reputation is often the last thing to die. A person, like a church, can keep a name for being spiritually alive, admired by others, active and respected, long after the inner reality has hollowed out; and the danger is that the good name lets us go on undisturbed, mistaking the reputation for the thing itself. Christ's counsel to Sardis is not despair but waking: wake up, strengthen what remains, remember what you first received, repent. Where there is still a spark, however faint, it can be fanned back to life. The letter asks each of us the question it asked Sardis: does my reputation for being alive match the reality before God, or have the two come apart, so that I am living on a name while the thing it names has quietly died? Better to face that now than to be found out when he comes.

Does my reputation for being spiritually alive match the reality before God, or have the two drifted apart, so that I am living on a name while the life it names has quietly hollowed out, and will I heed the call to wake up and strengthen what remains?

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