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).

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.

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