Reputation vs Reality: The Church in Sardis
Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.
Revelation 3:4
The Church is covered with phony-bolognas. Countless men, women, and children will take on the name of Christ by profession but lack possession of the Savior by faith. What’s true today has been true for millennia. The church in Sardis was a leprous land. It was covered with spiritual disease. Unlike the churches in Smyrna and Philadelphia that remain faithful under fire, the church in Sardis is bending the knee to the wrong lord and savior. They have a reputation of being alive, but they’re dead (3:1). They have a reputation of being spiritually clean, but truly they are leprous through and through. Most of the saints in Sardis are saints in name only. The external looks good, but the internal is full of disease and death. King Jesus who speaks Spirit-inspired words graciously calls them to align the internal with the external. The Spirit-wrought remedy of reputation-only believism is to wake up, remember, and repent.
Wake Up!
You may be surprised to learn of the connection between Leviticus and Revelation, but it’s present. In truth, the word “leprosy” isn’t used in Revelation 3 (or anywhere else in Revelation, if I recall). The concept, however, is employed in verse 4. When you have time, read Leviticus 13-14, two lengthy chapters on leprosy, and notice that leprosy is shorthand for sin disease. Sin, like leprosy, penetrates below the surface, spreads everywhere, and so affects everything we touch: ourselves (13:45), our garments (13:47-52), and our houses (14:33ff). An Israelite could deny his skin disease, but he’s fooling no one. He is always aware of his skin disease, others see it, and, most importantly, God sees it. Similarly, we may deny our sin disease, but we’re deceiving ourselves, kidding no one, and remain under God’s holy gaze. We sin because we’re sinners. Pretending to be alive will not make God think we’re any less dead.
I know of a man who’s struggled with sexual sin for years. I’ll spare you the details. But even though he’ll go to counseling, he refuses to see the severity of his sin, and the seriousness of his condition. He deceives himself because he’s “doing all the right things”: reading the Bible, memorizing Scripture, going to counseling, and filling his week serving the local church. He has the reputation of being alive, even thriving in Christ, but Jesus sees. God knows. He must wake up to the reality that he cannot cover for his sin and be covered by the Savior. He has become his own priest and has declared himself clean, but the High Priest has pronounced him leprous, as one man dead (Revelation 3:1; Numbers 12:12). There’s no remedy for anyone until the seven spirits of God (i.e., the Holy Spirit) convict us inwardly of our sins, and we run for a spiritual cleansing to the One who has the Spirit without measure (John 3:34).
Remember!
People who have a reputation for godliness have the appearance but not the reality. They have been told the words of Christ. But until there’s a Spiritual wake-up call, they’re empty words. But the remedy to this externalism is not different words but the same words spoken by the Son and through the Spirit. The church in Sardis had received the words and heard them (Revelation 3:3). How often is this the case for the people in the pew? So many saints in name only hear the Word of Christ through the Spirit of Christ Sunday after Sunday. The way forward is back: Return to those very words, and believe! There’s power in the words. There’s life, real life, not reputation-only life, in those words. By the grace of the Spirit, we have these words in full in the Scripture (2 Peter 1:21).
He who is the Good News speaks to us the gospel, and he preaches peace to our hearts (Ephesians 2:17). Will we wake up, take up and read? Will we remember what we learned as children? Will what is said in Sunday School go in one ear and out the other? Will the words preached Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day be for our condemnation or our salvation?
Repent!
The heart that is truly changed truly changes. Our good works do not save us, but they are evidence that God is at work in us. Façades won’t furnish faith. The church in Sardis was full of outwardly compliant but inwardly defiant saints in name only. Real life comes from the Son working in our hearts through the Spirit. And real life will have real change from the inside out. From heart to hands. And in that order.
The leprous sinner sees himself and runs to the Good Physician for a healing. The repentant, sin-diseased Sardian hates his garment stained by the flesh (Jude 23) and burns it under the wrath of God outpoured on the High Priest. Not many in Sardis had the real thing, but some did. They did not soil their garments but have washed them clean in the blood of the Lamb. This reality held out hope for others in Sardis and in local churches the world over. As long as there is today, today is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). For all who through true repentance remove the garment, Christ clothes in white (Revelation 3:5). He who was diseased can be healed. He who was dirty can be made clean. He who had the reputation only can have the reality. White garments await all who wake up, remember, and repent.
Rev. Dr. Michael Mock is the Pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Fresno, CA and an ACBC-certified Biblical Counselor. He’s the author of Hey, Dad, Why Do We…?: Kids Ask the Greatest Questions, Old Testament Introduction and Workbook, New Testament Introduction and Workbook, Comfort from Corinthians: A Devotional Walkthrough of 2nd Corinthians for Sinful and Struggling Saints, and A Confessional Marriage: Marriage Based on the Firm Foundation and a Faithful Confession. You can find his books here: Amazon.com: Dr. Michael D. Mock: books, biography, latest update.
Image: By Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany – Sardis Synagogue, late 3rd century AD, Sardis, Lydia, Turkey, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45906673
