Revelation 3:1-6

The message to Sardis. The title of the speaker (drawn from Revelation 1:4; Revelation 1:16; Revelation 1:20), as general as in the similar letter to Ephesus, has no special bearing on the subsequent address, unless an antithesis be implied between the plenitude of the divine spirit and the deadness of a church which had the name or credit of being “alive”. The sweeping verdict of Revelation 3:1 upon the formalism of the local church which had lapsed from its pristine vitality, just as the township of S. had by this time declined from its old historical prestige is modified by the recognition of better elements not yet too far gone in decay to be recovered (2) and of a goodly nucleus of members. The metaphor is paralleled by a Jewish estimate of orthodoxy (Kidd. 71 b) which dubbed Mesene as “dead,” Media as “ill,” Elymais as “in extremis,” and the strict inhabitants of the Ghetto between the Tigris and the Euphrates as “healthy”.