Bible Commentaries
Revelation 3

Verses 1-22

III 1-6 Sardis —Built on a hill that looked impregnable but was fissured mud, not rock, it had twice been surprised and taken, by the Persian Cyrus and by Antiochus the Great. Its special cult was the NatureGoddess of Asia, Cybele (Artemis, etc.) but also that of the Emperor. Had the local Christians succumbed to these?

1-3. ’I know thy works’—hitherto a formula of praise: here, stern rebuke. If the Sardians do not repent, Christ will come ’like a thief’, just when unexpected (cf. 16:15, certainly an echo of Mt 24:42 ff.; Lk 12:36 ff.). 4 f. ’Names’, i.e. persons. ’White’ robes. In the Graeco-Roman world white symbolized not only purity but also joy and especially triumph.

7-13 Philadelphia —A small earthquake-racked town: for long, its people had hardly dared to live within its walls. The Christians here were few, but faithful. 7. Christ, the Holy One (in the Apoc, always a divine title), the True One (i.e. authentic: no false Messias: used ten times in the Apoc, nine in John’s Gospel, once in the First Epistle: otherwise, only four times in Heb and once in 1 Thess—a thoroughly Johannine word), opens with his divinely authoritative Keys (cf.Is 22:22) (8 ) a door for the Philadelphians’ influence.

9. Persecution was to reach them from Jews rather than from pagans—’men from the synagogue of Satan—who say they are Jews but are not—they lie!’—yet even they shall recognize that ’I have loved thee’.

10. But a persecution is about to break out ’everywhere’. If the Philadelphians hold good ’and shall have preserved the doctrine of Christ’s endurance’ (i.e. the teaching that the Christian must persevere as Christ did, and for him) they shall be kept safe here and for ever.

12. Christ will make the Conqueror a column in God’s Temple and never shall he leave it: Christ will engrave on it the Name of God, that of the New Jerusalem, and, ’my own new Name’. Our incorporation into Christ. The columns are not the temple, yet without them it cannot stand (cf. St Paul: without the head, the body dies: but without the body, the head is meaningless: see Col 1:18). On columns and tiles of temples was often engraved the name of the god to whom they were sacred: here, the Christian has on him the consecrating name of God, but also that of the supernatural Jerusalem, the Church (cf.Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22): and also, Christ’s own ’New Name’ (above, 2:17): he gives a new name, a new self, to the Christian: here, he receives a New Name owing to the Christian’s incorporation into him: the Mystical Christ-Jesus and his Christians co-corporate is always growing. See Col 1:24; 2:19.

14-21, Laodikia —A proud self-sufficient city famed for banks and gold-traffic; for its glossy black wool; its eye-salve (collyrium) exported throughout the Empire, and opposite the hot springs of Hierapolis, nausea-provoking when tepid. 14. Christ, proclaiming his absolute paramountcy, says (15 f.) that the tepidity of the Laodikeans will make him vomit them out of his mouth.

17. They say: ’I am rich! I have made my money! I am in need of nothing!’ — ’and dost not know that thou art the pitiable one— poor, blind and naked’.

19. Terrible rebuke, but due precisely to Christ’s loving them, and followed by words of tenderest intimacy.

20. ’See, I am standing at the door and am knocking. If a man opens to me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me.’ The Communion of ’one with One’, even in this life, but looking forward to the final call when the victorious soul shall share Christ’s throne even as Christ shares God’s. (3:14 is almost verbally what St Paul wrote in Col 1:15. He meant that letter to be read by neighbouring Laodikia too.)

These letters vividly portray the life of Asiatic Christians—mostly humble folks; poor, and the poorer because of the demands of their Faith, and tempted to compromise with prosperous paganism— to yield to the suggestion that a pagan-Christian mysticism was conceivable; to be beaten down, if not by the insane worship of the Nature-Goddess, then by the overwhelming dominance of imperial Rome. And vivid is the personality of John—inflexible, still the ’ son of the thunderbolt’, yet intimately aware of each detail of his readers’ environment—his symbolism is never haphazard: his heart is as tender as Paul’s. Complete and authoritative is his theology of Christ, eternal Son of God, all-wise, all-powerful, yet ’moving around’ among his Christians, knocking till they open, building them into himself, giving them that Manna, that Dawn-Star which are himself; giving, and receiving, the New Name proper to the New Self—Christ and Christian co-corporate.