Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 3:1

"And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars: I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead." — Revelation 3:1 (ASV)

Sardis.—The modern Sart—now a mere village of paltry huts—was once the capital of the old Lydian monarchy and is associated with the names of Croesus, Cyrus, and Alexander. It was the great trading hub for dyed woollen fabrics, with the sheep of “many-flocked” Phrygia supplying the raw material. The art of dyeing is said to have been invented here, and many-coloured carpets or mats found in the homes of the wealthy were manufactured here.

The metal known as electrum, a kind of bronze, was a product of Sardis. In early times, gold dust was found in the sand of the Pactolus, the little stream that passed through the Agora of Sardis and washed the walls of the Temple of Cybele. It is said that gold and silver coins were first minted at Sardis, and that resident merchants first became a distinct class there. An earthquake devastated it in the reign of Tiberius, and a pestilence followed, but the city seems to have recovered its prosperity before the date of this epistle. The worship of Cybele was the prevailing one; its rites, like those of Dionysos and Aphrodite, encouraged impurity.

The writer is described in words similar to those in Revelation 1:4, as the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, but there is a difference. There, Christ was seen holding the stars in His right hand; here it is said He has the seven Spirits and also the seven stars. In this language, it is difficult to overlook the unhesitating way in which Christ is spoken of as owning or possessing the Holy Spirit, who alone can make the angels of His Church shine as stars. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9; Romans 8:11). His promise is, “I will send the Comforter unto you” (John 15:26), as He possesses all power in heaven and earth.

“He is able,” to use the language of Professor Plumptre, “to bring together the gifts of life, and the ministry for which those gifts are needed. If those who minister are without gifts; it is because they have not asked for them.” This the angel of the Sardian Church had not done; his faith and the faith of the Church around him had sunk into a superficial, though perhaps ostentatious, state. Here, then, lies the appropriateness of the description given of Christ as the source of life and light to His Church.

A name that thou livest.—It is only necessary to mention, and to dismiss, the fanciful conjecture that the name of the angel was Zosimos, or some parallel name, signifying life-bearing or living.

It is the reputation for piety possessed by the Church of Sardis that is referred to. Living with the credit of superior piety, it was easy to grow satisfied with this reputation, to forget to keep open the channels through which grace and life could flow, and to fail to realise that the adoption of habits of life higher than those around them, or those who lived before them, was no guarantee of real spiritual life.

For, as Mozley states, “the real virtues of one age become the spurious ones of the next... The belief of the Pharisees, the religious practice of the Pharisees, was an improvement upon the life of the sensual and idolatrous Jews whom the prophets denounced. But those who used both the doctrinal and moral improvements as the fulcrum of a selfish power and earthly rank were, after all, the same men as their fathers, only accommodated to a new age” (Mozley).

Self-satisfaction, which springs up when a certain reputation has been acquired, is the very road to self-deception. The remedy is progress—forgetting the things behind, so that moral and spiritual stagnation (from looking with complacency upon the past) does not set in, and spiritual death does not follow.