Original Meaning

THIS LETTER ADDRESSES Sardis, a “dead” church (3:1). Jesus’ oracle to Ephesus challenges a loveless church; his oracle to Smyrna encourages a persecuted church; his oracle to Pergamum addresses both persecution and compromise; his oracle to Thyatira challenges compromise. But Jesus’ word to Sardis summons a sleeping church to wake up.1

Sardis was full of sophisticated paganism; for example, Greeks had identified the early Asiatic mother goddess with their Demeter, and early in the first century Romans had identified this goddess with the deified empress Livia.2 That no mention of persecution against Christians is mentioned in such a city is significant; it probably reflects the secure position that the Jewish community, which rejected pagan worship, had attained, and suggests that Christians shared this benefit of toleration.3

Sardis had a significant and powerful Jewish community.4 When they later built a new synagogue next to the city gymnasium (a center of pagan Greek culture), the synagogue was roughly the length of a football field, certainly one of the largest in antiquity.5 In contrast to churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia, however (cf. 2:9; 3:9), 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.6

Jesus’ reproof of a church with a name that is alive yet it is dead (3:1) may have evoked a variety of local associations. For instance, some of the most prominent local pagan religion focused on seasonal renewal of life.7 Perhaps less likely, some have also suggested an allusion to the opposing hills of Sardis, the Acropolis and Necropolis, so that the Christians there appear lively like the Acropolis but are actually dead like the city’s almost equally visible necropolis.8

But local Christians would more likely recall other images of dead and alive relevant to their region. For instance, several decades before Revelation was written, Sardis had been devastated by an earthquake,9 and its architecture after the rebuilding suggests continuing fear of another one.10 Likewise, Sardian Christians are perhaps identifying with the widely known ancient tradition of their city. Sardis maintained an ancient “reputation” (lit., “name”) as a great city from the time of its most famous ruler, Croesus, but at the time Revelation is written, Sardis had little more than its ancient name.11 To be sure, Jesus addresses the church and not the history of the city.12 But cities had enduring reputations, and local inhabitants grew up aware of such reputations. Whatever the specific basis for the image used here, however, its most important function is a deliberate contrast with the Lord himself, who was dead and is now alive (1:18; 2:8). The spiritual state of the believers in this city is hindering them from appropriating Jesus’ own resurrection power.

Jesus’ warning that he will come on them as a “thief” (3:3), presumably unexpectedly as in the night, recalls Jesus’ words about the end times (Matt. 24:43; cf. Luke 12:39) often repeated by early Christians (1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10; Rev. 16:15).13 But this warning would also prove especially alarming to proud Sardians schooled from youth in the history of their city. Conquerors had never overtaken Sardis by conventional war, but had twice conquered it unexpectedly because Sardians had failed to watch adequately.14 (The Greek word behind NIV’s “wake up” is translated “watch” in other texts, e.g., Matt. 24:42–43.) Indeed, a city that appeared powerful yet was easily captured provided a ready target for derision (Sib. Or. 4.93).

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.15 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).

The promise that the overcomers in Sardis will not be blotted out “from the book of life” (3:5) implies the obverse, namely, that much of the church in Sardis is close to spiritual death (3:2) 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).16 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.17 The promise that Jesus will confess the faithful remnant before his Father echoes what he told his disciples (Matt. 10:32; Luke 12:8).

Bridging Contexts

SOME ELEMENTS OF the letter speak concretely to Sardis, but this no more makes the exhortations irrelevant to modern readers than concrete local color does in Paul’s letters. All the churches are invited to learn from Jesus’ warnings to the others (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22), and the exhortation to “watch” or “wake up” (3:2) applies to all (16:15; cf. 1 Thess. 5:2). 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—that is, to those that are guided more by their culture than by Jesus’ voice or any sense of future reckoning before him.

Also, it is important to hear the blunt warning of the text and not to reduce it on the basis of our more comfortable theological presuppositions. Our faith in the Bible as God’s Word requires us to revise our thinking to fit the text, not the reverse. Take, for example, the implication of lostness for those who fail to overcome (3:5, see next section).

Contemporary Significance

WARNING TO A dead church. The Sardian Christians were different from the other churches discussed so far. 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 (3:3). Such a warning should generate introspection for modern 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 (cf. 16:15). 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.18 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.19 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.20 Whether we are seeking to win resistant converts or fighting for justice for the poor or unborn, it is always easy to grow weary in well-doing and follow the crowd—especially when the church around us has become part of it.

Further, like both the city of Sardis and the Sardian Christians, it is too easy for us to depend on past achievements instead of looking to God’s call for us in the future (cf. Phil. 3:12–14). We may 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.

Changing from within. That a minority in Sardis remained unsoiled (Rev. 3:4) may challenge the presuppositions that some faithful Christians outside churches like Sardis’s church may hold. It is noteworthy that Jesus does not call the righteous believers in the church of Sardis to migrate to another city or even start an alternative church elsewhere in town. There are genuine Christians in many “sleeping” (and drowsy) churches today, at least in churches that many other Christians would consider “asleep.” Some conservative Christians look down on biblically faithful Christians in denominations that have strayed from their biblical roots; but God calls some Christians to remain in those denominations to call them back to faithfulness. There does come a point when a church is no longer a church (2:5) and separation (either into a distinct witnessing minority or by departure) may be necessary (18:4), but it is not wise for those of us in more spiritually comfortable situations to judge our colleagues who have remained to fight a battle we judged not our own.

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.”22 Cohen gradually drifted away from Christian circles and ultimately died lonely and forgotten. As Chuck Colson notes:

Cohen was echoing the millions of professing Christians who, though unwilling to admit it, through their very lives pose the same question. Not about being Christian gangsters, but about being Christianized versions of whatever they already are—and are determined to remain.23