The Lord addresses the members of the church at Sardis in today's passage. In the Apostle John's day, Sardis was a wealthy city. It did a brisk business minting coins. It was well known for its production of luxurious carpets. It was also home to the cult of Cybele, a mother-goddess who was the Roman counterpart to the Greek goddess Diana. These goddess cults were connected with fertility festivals involving all sorts of sexual immorality. The city of Sardis was destroyed by a major earthquake during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, but what is left of the ruins has proven to archaeologists that the temple of Cybele lay at the center of the city and that it was the largest building there. Having the temple at the center of the city sent a message to the citizens that everything in Sardis was to revolve around the goddess Cybele.
The Lord Jesus Christ, the One about whom all things are to revolve, has some harsh words for the church at Sardis. "To 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. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God." (Revelation 3:1-2) As we learned in Chapter 1, the number seven in the Scriptures symbolizes completeness and perfection. The Lord Jesus has chosen two aspects of His appearance to John to emphasize to the church at Sardis. The seven spirits before the throne of God, which we talked about in Chapter 1, probably refer to the perfection and completeness of the Holy Spirit. The Lord is speaking to a church where the Holy Spirit is mostly absent. Some of the members genuinely love the Lord, as we will see later. But for the most part this church is Christian in name only. They have a reputation for being alive (for belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ) but are actually dead (not truly born again by the Spirit).
By referencing the seven stars He holds in His hand, which symbolize the leaders of the seven churches in Revelation, Jesus reminds the church at Sardis that without Him there would be no church. Without Him there would be no salvation. No amount of good deeds on their part is able to save them, for salvation has always been by faith and not by works. Naturally they will want to do the things Jesus would do after giving their hearts to Him, but many of these people are doing the things Jesus would do without belonging to Him. This is not a new attitude that began after the advent of Christ, for even in the Old Testament we regularly found the Lord chastising some of the people of the nation of Israel for only going through the motions, for saying and doing all the right things but being far from Him at heart: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." (Isaiah 29:13a) There have always been people who make an outward show of religion but who have no relationship with the Lord.
The church age which Sardis is believed to represent began in about 1517 AD and lasted to around 1800 AD. This means it includes the Reformation, when Protestantism became a state religion, when large groups of people and sometimes entire countries adopted Protestantism without actually being born again through the Spirit. Now, there's nothing wrong with being Protestant. I'm Protestant myself and a member of a Baptist church. What was wrong was that a lot of these people declared themselves members of this or that Protestant denomination as if allying themselves with a particular church saved them. It is Jesus Christ who saves us, not Protestantism or Catholicism or any other faction of Christianity. It is Jesus Christ who saves us, not having our names on the membership roll of a church. We can have our names written down at our church. We can have a reputation for being a Christian. But if we have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, then our names are not written in the book of life (Revelation 13:8, Revelation 21:27), and the Lord will have to say of us, "You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead."
The church members of Sardis need to be told some hard truths so they can correct their errors. The reason the Holy Spirit reveals our errors to us for our benefit, so we can correct them. One reason the people of the Sardis church have become blind to their errors is because they've been neglecting the gospel of Christ and the word of God. "Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, 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." (Revelation 3:3) Sardis was indeed a "sleeping" city. Its citizens were wealthy, lazy, and complacent. The people could not even be bothered to fortify themselves against invasion. Sardis could not be invaded by sea because of the steep cliff walls, and by land there was only a narrow way up to it. The city did have walls but they were not kept guarded. Twice Sardis was invaded because the city was not guarded: by Cyrus the Great in 549 BC and by Antiochus Epiphanes in 218 BC. The fact that the city was invaded twice by soldiers coming over its walls proves to us that the citizens did not learn from their mistakes. Why, after the first time this happened, did the people not defend their city against further invasions? In our passage today, the Lord is giving the church members of Sardis an opportunity to learn from their mistakes. But if they remain lazy and halfhearted, they won't rejoice at the return of Christ, for His return will bring judgment upon them.
He concludes with words of praise for those whose faith is genuine. "Yet 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. The one who is victorious will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and His angels. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches." (Revelation 3:4-6)
Some have used Christ's reference to names being blotted out of the book of life to prove their theory that it's possible to commit apostasy and lose one's salvation. I don't personally hold this viewpoint, and neither do the majority of today's mainstream Bible scholars and theologians who certainly know more about the word of God than I do. The late John Walvoord, who was a gifted preacher and Christian author and who served more than thirty years as the president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote one of the best reference books in existence on Revelation. He explained Revelation 3:5 like this: "Some have considered the book of life not as the roll of those who are saved but rather a list of those for whom Christ died, that is, all humanity who have possessed physical life. As they come to maturity and are faced with the responsibility of accepting or rejecting Christ, their names are blotted out if they fail to receive Jesus Christ as Savior; whereas those who do accept Christ as Savior are confirmed in their position in the book of life, and their names are confessed before the Father and the heavenly angels." (From the book The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, page 82.)
Whatever the interpretation may be of Revelation 3:5, the Lord urges "whoever has ears" to hear what He's saying. Joining a church doesn't save our souls. Doing good works in the name of Jesus Christ doesn't save our souls. Having an admirable reputation in the community doesn't save our souls. Our souls are saved by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, by accepting His sacrifice on our behalf, and by making Him the Lord of our lives.
I hope you will all be able to join me tomorrow to study what the Lord has to say to the church which represents the current age we're living in. I'm very excited to see what the Lord has to say about our own time in history.
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