Bible Commentaries
Revelation 3

Verse 1

A Dead and Alive Church

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.

1. Sardis, the capital of the Lydian Empire, was one of the great cities of primitive history. It had been noted for its commercial prosperity; it had been an important centre of trade; its situation on a high plateau in a district of great natural fertility marked it out as a ruling city. Wool-dyeing was invented there, and its manufactures of rugs and carpets, the raw material for which was furnished by the vast flocks of Phrygia, were as noted in their day as Persian or Morocco carpets are in modern times. The gold-laden sands of the river Pactolus which flowed through the city, and deposits of the mysterious metal called electrum, together with the minting of gold and silver coin, which was there first carried out, added to the fame, wealth, and reputation of the city in which Crœsus, richest of kings, had ruled, the city which Solon, wisest of men, had visited, and where he had rightly augured ruin, because he had mistrusted material wealth as necessarily hollow and treacherous.

2. The natural position of Sardis on a high rocky bluff over-looking the plain of Hermus, and separated by a considerable depression from the mountain range behind, was such as to give it the reputation of being impregnable. On three sides of the city the cliff was understood to be unscaleable; it was only necessary to guard the “causeway” by which it was connected with other high ground behind, and that could be held by a score of men against thousands. An impregnable city, but one which had often been taken—that was Sardis. The first time it was captured was in the sixth century b.c. The army of Crœsus had suffered defeat beyond the Halys, at the hand of Cyrus, and though the victorious enemy appeared before the walls of Sardis before a new army could be collected, neither Crœsus nor any of the inhabitants believed there was any danger of his penetrating their impregnable rock-fortress. The only way of approach, along the connecting isthmus, was strongly fortified and carefully guarded. The city slept securely. But accident or treachery revealed to the invaders the possibility of ascending the rock-face by some crack or ledge, the existence of which had been overlooked by the defenders. By this the soldiers of Cyrus clambered up, and Crœsus awoke to find his capital in the hands of the Persians. Cyrus had come upon Sardis “like a thief in the night.”

The Church is never in a more perilous state than when she has quiet and peace. 1 [Note: Luther, Table-Talk.]

3. Long afterwards in Greece the fate of Crœsus and of his city served to point the moral of overweening self-confidence and thoughtless security. But even the fact that it had thus become a proverb for foolish confidence did not save Sardis from suffering the same fate again, when, some three centuries later, it was captured by Antiochus through the exploit of the Cretan Lagoras, who climbed the steep hill and stole unobserved into the acropolis. For some time previous to the date of this letter to the Church at Sardis, the city had been slowly sinking in importance. Its manufactures and commercial position had been lost. Outdistanced by its younger rivals, Ephesus and Smyrna, on the sea-coast, it became a melancholy spectacle, a place of third-rate importance, unable to forget that it had once been chief. Even as a city, Sardis was pretentious and self-satisfied, yet moribund, having a “name to live” and yet dead. It was a city of failure; a city whose history blazoned forth the uncertainty of human fortunes, the weakness of human strength, and the shortness of the step that separates over-confident might from sudden and irreparable disaster; a city whose name was almost synonymous with pretensions unjustified, promise unfulfilled, appearance without reality, confidence that heralded ruin.

I remember on my first landing at a place [in West Africa] where there are three small factories only, but which I had seen marked large on the map, asking a resident white if this was all the settlement. “Oh no!” said he, “this is only the porter’s lodge; I’ll show you the settlement,” and he took me to the cemetery; that cemetery justified the large lettering on the map. 1 [Note: Mary Kingsley, in British Africa, 379.]

4. The social history of Sardis finds a singularly close reflection in the history of the Church of Christ within its walls, so that the Apostle could point the moral of the one by using language which was suggested by, and suggested, the other. The city, though still a place of importance, was a city of the past, retaining the name of greatness, but decayed from its former estate. The words of the text are singularly appropriate to its history: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and thou art dead.” The words are, of course, addressed to the Church of Sardis, and must be understood as describing its condition about 90–100 a.d., already decaying from its original high promise; but it seems clear that the writer must have been conscious of the historical parallel, and chose his words so as to express it. When he goes on to say, “Be thou watchful … for I have found no works of thine fulfilled.… If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee,” one’s thoughts are carried back to the two occasions when, through careless watching, the impregnable citadel failed to keep up its reputation and name and to fulfil its works.

Living on one’s reputation is a melancholy business. It is sad to see a threadbare merchant starving on the dwindling relics of his former fortune; to see the failing orator reproducing stale scraps of knowledge and rhetoric which once commanded applause; sad to listen to an old vocalist whose fame survives his voice; and saddest of all are those professors of religion who acquire no fresh strength and treasure, but who contrive to keep themselves in countenance by making the most of an ever attenuating reputation. We must not live in the opinion of others, but in our own rich and supporting consciousness; we must not live a fancied life in others’ breath, but a real, true life in the purity and power of our own soul. It is not what we were, but what we are. How are things with us to-day? The true spiritual life is never merely retrospective. What am I now, and what my hope? Am I gaining victories, overtaking new work, attaining fresh graces, bringing forth fruit unto God? 2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

Obtain and preserve a reputation. It is the usufruct of fame. It is expensive to obtain a reputation, for it only attaches to distinguished abilities, which are as rare as mediocrities are common. Once obtained, it is easily preserved. It confers many an obligation, but it does more. When it is owing to elevated powers or lofty spheres of action, it rises to a kind of veneration and yields a sort of majesty. But it is only a well-founded reputation that lasts permanently. 1 [Note: Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (ed. 1892), 56.]

I

A Church with a Name to Live

1. Of the Angel of the Church at Sardis, and, by implication of the Society which he represented, it was said, “Thou hast a name that thou livest,”—and yet thou “art dead.” Surely there never was a more terrible word than that. A name to live, and yet all the while dead! The nominal condition, we should all say, aggravates the actual. Better be dead, and know it, and wear no disguise, and practise no hypocrisy, than clothe the ghastly skeleton with the semblance of vitality, and be dead indeed while in name thou livest. Sardis, once a living Church, was now existing on the recollection of what it had been and done. It had kept the name and cherished traditions of the past; but its present character was poor and its experience low. How easy to keep the old, beautified, stirring names and cries when all the reality, force, and glow of their origin have perished! “Nominal” Christianity is a poor thing to live with. It is a poor thing in days of fierce temptation and of searching sorrow. In no days does it bring satisfaction to the heart. Nominal religion is a poor thing to die with. The mission of Christ is to bring in reality, to sweep away all mere semblances, artificialities, and names of religion; His one great purpose is to establish real relations between our soul and God. Alas for us if we have only the name of Christ! “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

When the church of Sardis was really dead, the principal means of keeping it in that condition was the name it had to be alive. 2 [Note: John Owen.]

In Staffordshire it is interesting and amusing to mark the contrast between the names of the places and their actual character; Roseville, Swan Village, Daisy Bank, Bloomfield, Tividale, and so forth. Roseville is utterly innocent of the garden queen; Daisy Bank is a cinder heap; the last creature you would expect to see on the inky canal of Swan Village is the bird of snow; Tividale is a realm of furnaces and dirt; and many a summer has come and gone since Bloomfield smiled a field of flowers. Once it was a region of beauty, gardens, orchards, and dells; now slag, soot, and desolation mock its old poetic names. So it is sometimes with a Church. There is a startling, mournful contrast between its grand history, heroic workers, marked achievements, and its present poverty and deadness! Yet it lives on its splendid past, and flatters itself in the life and work of vanished generations. 1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

2. Sardis was renowned among men. The world looked, and beheld with admiration what was to it the splendour of her worship; it listened, and heard with enthusiasm the music of her praise. And the Church was pleased that it should be so. Not in humility, lowliness, and deeds of self-sacrificing love did she seek her “name,” but in what the world would have been equally delighted with, though the inspiring soul of it all had been folly or sin. The fact that this Church should have had the name and fame of life is very startling, and may well summon each and all to an earnest heart-searching. There would be nothing nearly so startling, if Sardis had been counted by the Churches round about as a Church fallen into lethargy and hastening to death. But there is no appearance of the kind. Laodicea, we know, deceived herself, but nothing implies that she deceived others. She counted herself rich, when she was most poor; but there is no hint to make us think that others counted her so as well. Sardis, on the other hand, had a name that she lived, was well spoken of, regarded, we may well believe, as a model Church, and can therefore have been by no means wanting in the outer manifestations of spiritual life; while yet all these shows of life did but conceal the realities of death.

The order of Discretion’s questions [to Christian at the House Beautiful] is significant. First come those about his experience, and last that about his name. There are many people whose first question is that of names. This is what they judge by and are interested in. A famous name telling of old family, or influence, or wealth is all that is needed for entrance to many a house of good society on earth. Here it is good to find in regard to all such matters the grand equality of the Church. Of lord and labourer alike it asks first—or ought to ask—not “What is thy name?” but “What has been thine experience?” and “What is the direction in which thy life is moving?” 1 [Note: J. Kelman, The Road, i. 100.]

It is quite possible that a Church may enjoy a high reputation for purity, spirituality, and efficiency—a reputation gained through years of faithfulness—and yet have entirely lost the attributes which once gained it credit. Some firms in the city are known throughout the world. They have been in existence for a century or more. They once brought out a valuable article, and forthwith did a large business; only their goods would do; they were known everywhere and realized immense fortunes. But to-day the old partners are dead, and the firm is a shadow of its old self. They no longer produce the superlative article; they simply trade on the old name. It is much the same sometimes with a religious community. Churches rise into being in conviction, faith, devotion, enthusiasm, and sacrifice; they attain a worthy fame; and their degenerate successors too often trade on the reputation enjoyed by a worldly and languishing denomination. So an individual may acquire in early years a high reputation for character and service, and then continue to live on such reputation, no longer doing the first works. 2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson.]

How men may become dead to the spirit of Christ’s teaching while engaged in the holiest offices, and betray His cause while outwardly reverencing His name, is illustrated in a picture by the Hon. John Collier, which was exhibited in the Academy of 1896. The picture illustrates an incident in the life of Pope Urban VI., related in Lea’s History of the Inquisition. Hearing of a conspiracy among his cardinals, the Pope invited the ringleaders to his country residence, the Castle of Nocera, when he put them to excruciating tortures to extract from them the details of the conspiracy. Urban VI. walked to and from in the garden beneath the window of the torture-chamber reciting his breviary aloud to encourage the torturers in their work. The artist has depicted him walking beneath, clad in the garments of his holy office, reading earnestly from his manual of devotion, and using it for such diabolic ends as to encourage the fiendish cruelty going on above. With keen irony the painter has filled the little side-walk alongside of which the Pope treads with white lilies—emblem of purity. A peacock, the symbol of eternity, is seen sculptured on the walls, while over the window of the torture-chamber there is engraven a cross. 1 [Note: J. Burns, Illustrations from Art, 316.]

3. The symptom which is singled out in the letter to the Church as characterizing its condition is what we should call slackness, ineffectiveness. “I have found no works of thine fulfilled before my God.” Works were not wanting; but all alike were branded with incompleteness, perfunctoriness, unreality. There had been a serious slackening of moral fibre, an inclination to slur over the distinctions between the standard of Christ and the standard of the world, and to fling away some of the distinctive practices and forms of self-denial which were provided as safeguards of the specifically Christian character. Sardis had been too much for them; its atmosphere of self-pleasing, of self-indulgence, had poisoned the well-springs of their faith, making it sickly, feeble, and ineffective. Instead of their overcoming the world, the world had overcome them.

The Church in Sardis had no heresies needing correction. It had not life enough to produce even such morbid secretions. Neither weeds nor flowers grow in winter. There may be a lower depth than the condition of things when people are all thinking, and some of them thinking wrongly, about Christian truth. Better the heresies of Ephesus and Thyatira than the acquiescent deadness of Sardis. It had no immoralities. The gross corruptions of some in Pergamum had no parallel there. Sardis is rebuked for none, because its evil was deeper and sadder. It was not flagrantly corrupt, it was only—dead. Of course it had no persecutions. Faithful Smyrna had tribulation unto death, hanging like a thunder-cloud overhead. But Sardis had not life enough to be obnoxious. Why should the world trouble itself about a dead Church? It exactly answers the world’s purpose, and is really only a bit of the world under another name.

Preaching at St. George’s in the East, London, June 22, 1879, he said: “However it may be with the East-End of London, I am not sure whether the West-End has any reason to plume itself on its superior godliness, whether the dukes and duchesses, the earls and countesses, the squires and knights and their ladies, are much more like what men and women ought to be than the costermongers and women of the East of London. No doubt at the West-End churches are filled; but, if we ask what fills the West-End churches, it is not certain that we can give a satisfactory answer to the question. I am not sure that they are always filled with people hungering and thirsting after righteousness, or with people who wish to know what the Christian temper and the Christian life are, in order that they may exhibit the one and live the other. It is all very well to attract people by a spectacular service and an eloquent harangue; but I was told the other day of a noted preacher who drew an enormous crowd to hear him under the dome of St. Paul’s, and yet, immediately the service was over, the people rushed out asking who had won the Grand Prix de Paris.” 1 [Note: J. W. Diggle, Bishop Fraser’s Lancashire Life, 341.]

4. When a Church is dead, or only half alive, the defect shows itself specifically and certainly in this manner: The Church’s work is only half done, and can be but half fulfilled, when only a portion of its members fulfil their allotted task to their Master. If, in a Church which numbers five hundred, only fifty are doing the utmost they can do, the Church’s measure of work will not be fulfilled before the judgment-seat of God. Fifty individuals cannot do what it takes five hundred to do. A half-done work, how it is spoiled! The work of a Church that is wearily done, in its life and extent, by a few living men and women in it, is poorly done; they do it with such a struggle; they are so weary and worn out; they have no pleasure, they have no enthusiasm, in doing it. How can they have? One man cannot do another man’s work. One link of a chain cannot do duty for another link, and if the one goes, sometimes the chain is worth nothing at all. The work of a dead or half-dead Church stands before God’s judgment-seat unfulfilled. Work is indispensable to the enjoyment of a Church’s good. No Church can heartily enjoy what we call religious privileges unless it is working hard; and no individual member of that Church will get the good of it unless he is taking a part in the Church’s work. He does not need to be an office-bearer or anything of that sort; his work may be just friendliness to others in the house of God, showing a kind spirit to them or taking an interest in them, showing neighbourliness by his Church character.

Christ’s Church exists in order to make possible, to make known, to make active, the work which Christ, by His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, achieved once for all. It was done, it was finished, the task given Him to do. But only through man could it be laid open to man. He needs men to be His instruments, His organ, by which His own activity, supreme and unique, may find channels of entry—may be solicited, evoked, distributed. In securing men who know His true Name, He is securing a seat, a home, into which He can throw His own spiritual forces. They become, through so believing, the means by which His special and personal powers can liberate and discharge themselves. As He is the Light of the world, so they become, in Him, the eye through which the light illuminates the body: “Ye are the light of the world.” As He is the sole purifying Sacrifice, so they become, organized into His Name, the seed of all purification—the salt through which the bulk of men are saved from corrupting: “Ye are the salt of the world.” In becoming clean in Him, they become the instruments of further cleansing: “If I have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash the feet of others.” In confessing His Name, in becoming stones built into His Temple, they become necessarily the seat and sanctuary whence issue the motives, powers, operations, activities of His authoritative Name. 1 [Note: H. Scott Holland.]

II

Life for a Dying Church

We are justified in concluding that such a condition as that of the Church at Sardis is not final and irreversible. The very fact that this letter came to that community indicates that it was possible to restore and revive. They were not so utterly dead as moribund, as is seen from the fact that in the next verse “ready to die” is the expression applied to some among them, or perhaps to some lingering works which still survived. They were at the point of death, with much of their spiritual life extinct, but here and there was a spark among the ashes, which His eye saw, and His breath could fan into a flame. To the people of a Church sunken in spiritual deadness and torpor, the lamp of faith waning and almost extinguished in their hearts, the Lord presents Himself as having the fulness of all spiritual gifts; able therefore to revive, able to recover, able to bring back from the very gates of spiritual death, those who would employ the little last remaining strength which they still retained, in calling, even when thus “in extremis” upon Him.

1. We may assume that the name by which the Lord reveals Himself at the opening of this message, “He that hath the seven Spirits of God,” had a special bearing upon the state of the Angel and the Church to whom the message was to be transmitted. The Spirit was thought of, to use the later terminology of the Church, as the “Giver of Life” and of all its sevenfold gifts; the seven Spirits of God were but forms of that Divine life which He—one, yet manifold—imparted. These He, the Lord of the Churches, possessed and could call His own; for thus it is that He can “quicken whom he will”: thus He can impart the Divine life, in all its marvellous variety, to those who stand in need of it.

Bengel suggests, and earlier commentators had anticipated the suggestion, that the name of the Angel of the Church in Sardis may have contained some assertion of life; which stood in miserable contradiction with the realities of death which the Lord beheld in him; a name therefore which in his case was not the utterance of a truth, but a lie; the name affirming and implying that he was alive, while in truth he was dead; “ Zosimos” would be such a name in Greek, “ Vitalis” in Latin. Hengstenberg considers the suggestion not improbable, but it appears exceedingly improbable and far-fetched. The use of “name” as equivalent to fame, reputation, character, is as common in Greek as in English. 1 [Note: R. C. Trench.]

2. Christ as the Giver of life is the thought which a dead or decaying Church like that of Sardis needs most. There is a Spirit which gives life, and Christ is the Lord of that Spirit. The whole fulness of the Divine energies is gathered in the Holy Spirit, and this is His chiefest work—to breathe into our deadness the breath of life. Many other blessed offices are His, and many other names belong to Him; but highest of all is the name which expresses His mightiest work, “the Spirit of Life.” … The “rushing mighty wind” is its best emblem—blowing where it listeth, unsustained, and free, visible only in its effects, and yet heard by every ear that is not deaf, sometimes soft and low, as the respiration of a sleeping child, sometimes loud and strong as the storm. The very name “the Spirit” emphasizes that aspect of His work in which He is conceived of as the source of life.

There is the antidote for a dead Church, a living Spirit in the sevenfold perfectness of His operations. He is the Spirit of consolation, of adoption, of supplication, of holiness and wisdom, of power, and of love, and of a sound mind; and into all our deadness there will come the life-breath which shall surely quicken it all. Here, and here only, is the hope of a dead Church, and here is the explanation of that which is unique in the history of Christianity as compared with all other religions—its power of self-recuperation, and, when it is apparently nearest extinction, the marvellous, the miraculous, way in which it flames up again because the Spirit of the Lord is poured forth. It brings into prominence not so much the existence and the operations of that Divine Spirit who vitalizes the Church as the continual energy and activity of the ascended Christ in bestowing that Spirit. He has the seven Spirits as He has all other attributes; Himself in His earthly life being filled with its fulness, and it abiding with Him for ever, He has it to impart.

“The Church is not a thing like the Athenæum Club,” he cried. “If the Athenæum Club lost all its members, the Athenæum Club would dissolve and cease to exist. But when we belong to the Church we belong to something which is outside all of us: which is outside everything you talk about, outside the Cardinals and the Pope. They belong to it, but it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God.” 1 [Note: G. K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross.]

3. One great channel through which spiritual life is imparted to a dying Church is suggested by the picture of our Lord as having “the seven stars.” The “stars” are the “angels of the churches,” by whom we are probably to understand their bishops and pastors. If so, then we have a striking thought symbolized by the juxtaposition. Christ, as it were, holds in the one hand the empty vessels, and in the other the brimming cup, from which He will pour out the supply for their emptiness. The lesson taught us is, that in a dead Church the teachers mostly partake of the deadness, and are responsible for it. But, further, we learn that Christ’s way of reviving a decaying and all but effete Church is oftenest by filling single men full of His Spirit, and then sending them out to kindle a soul under the ribs of death. The Lord of the Churches is able to bring together the gifts of life and the ministry for which those gifts are needed. If those who minister are without the gifts, it is because they have not asked for them. The union of the two attributes is, therefore, one both of encouragement and of warning. If each star shines with its peculiar radiance, it is because it is under the power and influence of the sevenfold Spirit; if it has no life or light, and ceases to shine, there is the danger of its falling away from its place in that glorious band, and becoming as one of the “wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.”

That minister who receives a body of people more or less cast down, and wearied in the great battle of the soul, and sends them forth full of good cheer and enthusiasm, has done his work and deserved well of his people. He has shown himself a true shepherd, and he had not done this service without knowing both the Will of God and the life of man, without draining a wide watershed of experience—from high hills where the soul has been alone with God, and from deep valleys where the soul has tasted the agonies of life—into the stream that shall be the motive power of many lives on the plains beneath. 1 [Note: J. Watson, The Cure of Souls.]

It will be seen that this beloved minister, who mingled daily with all classes of the community, “radiating happiness” wherever he went; who toiled unceasingly in the dark places where “the poor of the earth hide themselves together”; whose visits were like rays of sunshine to the weary sufferers in city hospitals and elsewhere; who was rejoicing and sorrowing with his people all day long; and whose pulpit ministrations from week to week were an undiminished source of spiritual inspiration, moral uplift and good cheer, was himself not infrequently carrying a secret load of care. Yet we do not remember that he ever once used the expression “it is hard,” although his deeply affectionate nature was charged with that quick and ready sympathy for the sufferings of others which must always mean pain to its possessor. The sight of any one enduring physical or mental pain which he could not alleviate unmanned him; but his habitual and unfailing eagerness to point to the bright side of even the darkest experiences was in itself a true consolation. It was as if he stood, a radiant figure, in the midst of us all, calling always, “Be of good cheer, I see land!” 2 [Note: Hector Mackinnon: A Memoir, by his Wife (1914), 97.]

4. What is the life of a Church? The life of a Church is loving loyalty to Jesus Christ, present more or less in the actual human heart of all the members; an inner, hidden thing, that we cannot weigh in a balance, that we cannot set down in figures in an annual report, that we cannot exhibit to a non-believer or a worldling, but the greatest, the most powerful force in all our world. The life of a Church is the living, real presence of Jesus Christ as a daily influence on the conduct, the thoughts, the words, the deeds of all the members of that Church. The life of a Church is the living presence of Jesus Christ in every committee of management, in every meeting of Sunday-school teachers, in every social gathering of the congregation; a living loyalty and devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ, born out of a grateful certainty that He died to save us, born out of a grand sympathy with Him, and under the belief that He is willing to save all the men and women and all the little children who are round about us. That is the living life of a Church, and nothing else is. We may have a perfect orthodoxy and death; we may have great activity, and yet we may have death. Nothing is the life of a Church but actual, living loyalty and love to the real, living Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ. A living Church will show its life in such things as hearty singing, earnest prayers, faithful service, generous liberality to every good cause. A living Church will show its life by bravery and courage in taking up new responsibilities that may offer themselves, and working them most heartily. A living Church is living, not because it does one or all of these things, but because it loves loyalty to the Lord Jesus who died for it, and feels that goodness and holiness are the grandest things in the world.

If it turns out that the world is the Church, and the Church is the world, why, the Sinners must just forgive the Saints and the Saints must learn to stand being forgiven. 1 [Note: Mary E. Coleridge.]

5. There is a note of wistful urgency in the epistle to the Church of Sardis to remember the past, to keep hold on what remains, and to repent. And there is also an implicit promise; for Christ would never call on men to do either what is impossible or what has not a promise attached to its performance. It is not on the note of promise, however, but on that of warning, that part of the letter closes. Evidently the thread of hope is slender, and the Church of Sardis is warned that if it does not hearken to this counsel, if it does not exchange its attitude of listless security for one of wakeful watchfulness, its fate will be like that of the city of Sardis. The enemy crept in upon the careless city “like a thief in the night”; and as a thief in the night will Christ return against the careless Church, unlooked for, undesired, not for mercy, but for judgment.

It should not be difficult to realize the effect of the reading of this letter in the hearing of the congregation in Sardis, on some Sunday evening in the second half of the first century. It would strike all as a picture, terrible in its accuracy, of the condition of that Church as seen by God. Surely it would stir the corporate conscience of that Church to a sense of its imminent danger, due to its want of spiritual life, of true brotherly love, of devotion to Christ its Head. It would call out in many, if not in all, the resolve to watch, to watch so as to repel the insidious approaches and attacks of the worldly spirit; to be more faithful in the discharge of the humblest duties imposed upon them by their Master’s will. To some it would give a new sense of responsibility, involved in the very fact that the atmosphere around them was cold, hostile. They would feel uplifted by the thought that the honour of their Lord, as well as the safety of their Church, was specially entrusted to their care. It would send them forth into the night, determined to be even more loyal, more faithful, more set on overcoming the world, because they felt that the eye of their Master was upon them, that He was not indifferent to any work they might do, or patience they might show, and that each day’s victory over the world and self was the pledge of a final victory, of which only eternity would reveal the joy. 1 [Note: C. A. Scott, The Book of the Revelation, 124.]

The Rev. Robert Macdonald, then of Blairgowrie, afterwards of North Leith, says in his recollections of McCheyne, “I remember, on one of the earliest visits I paid to London, I was going up to Mr. Nisbet’s shop, as he and another gentleman were coming out. Mr. Nisbet said to the other, ‘This is a friend of Mr. McCheyne’s.’ The gentleman at once took hold of me, and said, ‘Did you know that remarkable man?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he was an intimate friend of mine.’ ‘What do you think,’ he went on, ‘was the secret of that man’s holiness?’ and, without waiting, he answered his own question: ‘Don’t you think it was watchfulness?’ I think he was right, the more I consider it. Often he was with me at the manse at Blairgowrie, and he always left a benediction behind him. He was always on his guard. My old Adam would have been almost glad to see a slip, I forgot so many things myself. This was his characteristic, If a man purge himself … he shall be a vessel unto honour.” 1 [Note: A. Smellie, Robert Murray McCheyne, 224.]

A Dead and Alive Church

Literature

Bindley (T. H.), The Messages to the Seven Churches, 60.

Carpenter (W. B.), The Revelation (Ellicott’s New Testament Commentary), 52.

Cook (H.), in The Home Preacher, 464.

Crosby (H.), The Seven Churches of Asia, 102.

Davies (T.), Sermons and Expositions, i. 481.

Elmslie (W. G.), Memoir and Sermons, 119.

Jerdan (C.), Pastures of Tender Grass, 155.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Epistles of John to Revelation, 232.

Parker (T.), Collected Works, ix. 1.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 102.

Pounder (R. W.), Historical Notes on the Book of Revelation, 135.

Ramsay (W. M.), The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, 354, 369.

Scott (C. A.), The Book of the Revelation, 113.

Scott (J. J.), The Apocalypse, 67.

Trench (R. C.), Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia, 157.

Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, ii. 106.

Whyte (A.), Bible Characters: Our Lord’s Characters, 284.

Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 305 (A. Maclaren); lix. 33 (H. S. Holland).

Church of England Magazine, liii. 128 (W. Stevenson).

Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 405 (W. M. Ramsay).

Expositor, 1st Ser., iii. 204 (E. H. Plumptre).

Literary Churchman, xxxiii. (1887) 197 (J. B. C. Murphy).

Verse 20

The Waiting Guest

Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.— Revelation 3:20.

The Church of Laodicea, to which these words were originally addressed, had grievously declined, so that it scarce retained any sign of spiritual life. Words cannot be found to express more strongly a decayed and almost desperate moral condition than those which Christ addresses to this once flourishing community. Spiritual pride, strange to say, is the most common attendant and fatal sign of spiritual degeneracy, as though, the worse men grew, the better they fancied themselves. But when Christ solemnly rebuked the Church of Laodicea, depicting its condition in terms which lead us to expect nothing else than its final condemnation, then it is that, in place of assuming the office of Judge and thundering forth the vengeance of heaven, Christ still presents Himself as a pleader with the obdurate, and makes one more effort to prevail on them to be saved. This is one of those exquisite transitions which give the Bible such power of persuasiveness.

The text was originally spoken in reference to the unworthy members of a little Church of early believers in Asia Minor, but it passes far beyond the limits of the lukewarm Laodiceans to whom it was addressed. And the “any man” is wide enough to warrant us in stretching out the representation as far as the bounds of humanity extend, and in believing that wherever there is a closed heart there is a knocking Christ.

Of all the pictures which flashed before the mind of the prisoner-seer of Patmos, the most wonderful is that which shows Jesus standing as a suppliant at a door, and that the door of a church ( Revelation 3:20). It was only the other day that I discovered for myself the reason why this is the most wonderful picture in the Apocalypse. Others may have found it out before, but it was only then that I saw that the words in Revelation 3:14 should be read as an inscription over the door—“The Church of the Laodiceans.” I had not thought of that before; the door had been any door to me. And while it was wonderful that Jesus should stand there and knock, His action has all the effect of a surprise when it is seen that He is standing and knocking at the door of the Church of the Laodiceans, of which He had said, “Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” What was the matter with this Church? It was not a society of unbelievers or hypocrites. It was not accused of unfaithfulness or of heresy, or of any gross or open sin. It was not even a cold Church. Evidently it was not without some faith or love or obedience. Jesus said it was “lukewarm” obedience. What was the cause of this lukewarmness? Our answer is found in the position of Jesus. He is standing at the door—outside. The Church bore His name, and called Him Lord and worshipped Him, but He was not “in the midst” of it. That is enough to account for its spiritual condition. Intensity of devotion is impossible while He remains at the door. 1 [Note: J. Reid, in The Churchman, Feb. 1910, p. 133.]

We have represented in the text—

I. The Waiting Christ.

II. The Closed Door.

III. The Door Opened.

IV. The Entrance and the Feast.

I

The Waiting Christ

Who knocks? The exalted Christ. What is the door? The closed heart of man. What does He desire? Entrance. What are His knockings and His voice? All providences, all monitions of His Spirit in man’s spirit and conscience, the direct invitations of His written or spoken word—in brief, whatsoever sways our hearts to yield to Him and enthrone Him. This is the meaning, in the fewest possible words, of this great text.

1. This wonderful picture of Christ standing at the door like a weary traveller asking to be let in just reverses the common view which one is apt to take of the religious life. We commonly think of truth as hiding itself within its closed door and of ourselves as trying to get into it. We speak of “finding Christ,” or “proving God,” or “getting religion,” as if all these things were mysteries to be explored, hidden behind doors which must be unlocked; as if, in the relation between man and God, man did all the searching, and God was a hidden God. But the fundamental fact of the religious life is this—that the power and love of God are seeking man; that before we love Him, He loves us; that before we know Him, He knows us; that antecedent to our recognition of Him must be our receptivity of Him. Coleridge said that he believed in the Bible because it found him. It is for the same reason that man believes in God. God finds him.

It is coming more and more to be seen that such religious progress as man has made is not so much his endeavour to find God, as God’s endeavour to find him; that it is more satisfactory to represent man’s religious history as a continuous knocking on the part of God at the door of man’s heart than as a continuous spontaneous search on man’s part after God. To Christians, indeed, no other view is at all possible; for of course to represent the relation between man and God as search on man’s part instead of revelation on God’s part would be to empty the idea of God of all meaning.

The sunlight travels far from its source in the deep of heaven—so far that, though it can be expressed in figures, the imagination fails to take in the magnitude of the sum; but when the rays of light have travelled unimpeded so far, and come to the door of my eye, if I shut that door—a thin film of flesh—the light is kept out, and I remain in darkness. Alas! the Light that travelled so far, and came so near—the Light that sought entrance into my heart, and that I kept out—was the Light of life! 1 [Note: W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, 278.]

Behold, I knock! Methinks if on My face

Thou wouldst but rest thine eyes,

Wouldst mark the crown of thorns, the sharp nails trace,

Thou couldst not Me despise!

Thee have I yearned for with a love so strong,

Thee have I sought so earnestly and long;

My road led from a cross unto this place;

Behold, I knock!

2. But we have in the text a hint of the Divine long-suffering, which does not merely knock, and then, if it be not opened to it at once, go away and leave us to ourselves, to our own impenitence and hardness of heart. Christ rather, as one who knows that He has a message which it supremely concerns men that they should receive, and who will therefore take no denial, knocks, and, not being admitted, knocks again, with all the importunity of love. “Behold! I stand at the door and knock.” There is in the words a revelation of an infinite long-suffering and patience. The door has long been fastened; we have, like some lazy servant, thought that if we did not answer the knock, the Knocker would go away when He was weary. But we have miscalculated the elasticity and the unfailingness of that patient Christ’s love. Rejected, He abides; spurned, He returns.

There is a familiar picture by Holman Hunt that paints the idea of our text. There is shown a cottage neglected, falling into ruin. In front of the window tall thistles spring up, and long grass waves on the pathway, leading to the door overgrown with moss and rank poisonous weeds. In front of the fast-closed door with rusted hinges a tall and stately figure stands amid the night dews and the darkness with a face that tells of toil and long, weary waiting, and one hand uplifted to knock and another bearing a light that may perhaps flash through some of the chinks of the door. It is Christ, the Son of God, seeking to get into our sinful hearts. 1 [Note: W.G. Elmslie, Memoir and Sermons, 86.]

3. Christ does not only knock; He also speaks; He makes His “voice” to be heard—a more precious benefit still! It is true, indeed, that we cannot in our interpretation draw any strict line of distinction between Christ knocking and Christ speaking. Both represent His dealings of infinite love with souls for winning them to receive Him; yet at the same time, considering that in this natural world a knock may be anyone’s, and on any errand, while the voice accompanying that knock would at once designate who it was that stood without, and with what intention, we have a right, so far as we may venture to distinguish between the two, to see in the voice the more inward appeal, the closer dealing of Christ with the soul, speaking directly by His Spirit to the spirit of the man; in the knocking those more outward gracious dealings, of sorrow and joy, of sickness and health, and the like, which He sends and, sending, uses for the bringing of His elect, in one way or another, by smooth paths or by rough, to Himself. The “voice” very often will interpret and make intelligible the purpose of the “knock.”

Will anyone venture to say, “This mysterious voice has never uttered itself to spiritual ear of mine”? Is it indeed so? Have we then never had our times of gracious visitation? Assuredly we all have had them, and not seldom. We may indeed have missed them and their meaning altogether; but the times themselves not the less have been ours—times of a great joy, and times of a great sorrow; times when our God has given to us so much, and times when He has taken away so much; times of weary sickness, and times of unlooked-for recovery; times with no ominous hour for long years knocking at our door with its tidings of mishap; or times when we have had sorrow upon sorrow; times when we have been made to enter on the miserable possession of our past sins; times when we have walked in the glorious liberty of the children of God; times when the world was sweet unto us, and when the world was bitter; times when we walked compassed with troops of friends, and times when lonely paths were appointed for our treading. Has not our God been speaking to us in all this joy and in all this sorrow? He can gently speak as well as loudly knock; and happy is the man who has ears to hear. In every gracious thought that visits us, in every yearning after better things, in every solemn resolution for the days to come, in every tender memory of days gone by, Christ is standing before our door, saying, “It is I.”

The boy Samuel, lying sleeping before the light in the inner sanctuary, heard the voice of God, and thought it was only the grey-bearded priest that spoke. We often make the same mistake, and confound the utterances of Christ Himself with the speech of men. Recognize who it is that pleads with you; and do not fancy that when Christ speaks it is Eli that is calling; but say, “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.”

It will be as well, I think, to explain these locutions of God, and to describe what the soul feels when it receives them, in order that you may understand the matter; for ever since that time of which I am speaking, when our Lord granted me that grace, it has been an ordinary occurrence until now, as will appear by what I have yet to say.

The words are very distinctly formed; but by the bodily ear they are not heard. They are, however, much more clearly understood than they would be if they were heard by the ear. It is impossible not to understand them, whatever resistance we may offer. When we wish not to hear anything in this world, we can stop our ears, or give attention to something else: so that, even if we do hear, at least we can refuse to understand. In this locution of God addressed to the soul there is no escape, for in spite of ourselves we must listen; and the understanding must apply itself so thoroughly to the comprehension of that which God wills we should hear that it is nothing to the purpose whether we will it or not; for it is His will, who can do all things. We should understand that His will must be done; and He reveals Himself as our true Lord, having dominion over us. I know this by much experience. 1 [Note: The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (ed. 1911), 213.]

II

The Closed Door

1. The “knock” and the “voice” may alike remain unheard and unheeded. It is in the power of every man to close his ear to them; therefore the hypothetical form which this gracious promise takes: “If any man hear my voice, and open the door.” There is no irresistible grace here. It is the man himself who must open the door. Christ indeed knocks, claims admittance as to His own; so lifts up His voice that it may be heard, in one sense must be heard, by him; but He does not break open the door, or force an entrance by violence. There is a sense in which every man is lord of the house of his own heart; it is his fortress; he must open the gates of it; unless he does so, Christ cannot enter. And, as a necessary complement of this power to open, there belongs also to man the mournful prerogative and privilege of refusing to open; he may keep the door shut, even to the end. He may thus continue to the last blindly at strife with his own blessedness, a miserable conqueror who conquers to his own ever-lasting loss and defeat. There are times in our lives when we are not at home to the serious thoughts that come to visit us, to the higher life embodied in Christ that would enter in, when we dare to exercise towards God that tremendous power which all of us have, the power not to open the door even to Him, to disregard even His knocking.

I remember hearing some years ago of an incident which occurred near Inverness. A beautiful yacht had been sailing in the Moray Firth. The owners of it—two young men—landed at Inverness, purposing to take a walking tour through the Highlands. But they lost their way, and darkness found them wandering aimlessly about in a very desolate spot. At last, about midnight, they fortunately came upon a little cottage, at the door of which they knocked long and loudly for admittance. But the inmates were all in bed, and curtly the young men were told to go elsewhere, and make no more disturbance there. Luckily, they found shelter in another house some distance away. But next morning the inhospitable people heard a rumour that filled them with chagrin, and gave them a lesson they would not be likely soon to forget. What do you think it was? Just this: that the two young men who knocked in vain at their door the previous night were Prince George (now our King) and his brother the late Duke of Clarence—the most illustrious visitors in the kingdom. You can fancy the shame the people must have felt thus unconsciously to have shown themselves so inhospitable to the noblest persons in all the land. But are we any better? Are we not, indeed, much worse, if we shut Jesus Christ, the greatest of all Kings, out of our hearts? 1 [Note: W. Hay, God’s Looking-Glass, 91.]

The late Dr. William Arnot of Edinburgh relates a story that beautifully illustrates this text: “I was visiting,” said he, “among my people of Edinburgh. I looked up at the high houses to see whether Betty Gordon, an aged saint of God, was at home. I knew she was in, for when she went away she always carefully pulled down the blind, and this day the blind was not drawn. I knew that she was poor, but she trusted God, and I was glad that somebody had given me some money that morning to give to the poor. I put aside Betty’s rent for a month in my pocket and climbed up the winding stone stairs to her door. I knocked softly, but there was no answer. Then I knocked louder, but there was still no answer. At last I said, ‘Betty forgot to pull down the blind, and she has gone out. What a pity!’ Then I went down the stairs. The next morning I went back and knocked at the door. After a little waiting, Betty came and opened it. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is it you, Mr. Arnot? I am so glad to see you! Come in!’ There were tears in her eyes and a look of care. I said, ‘Betty, what are you crying for?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘Mr. Arnot, I am so afraid of the landlord. He came yesterday, and I hadna the rent, and I didna open the door, and now I am afraid of him coming; for he is a hard man.’ ‘Betty,’ I asked, ‘what time did he come yesterday?’ ‘He came between eleven and twelve o’clock,’ she said. ‘It was twenty-five minutes to twelve’. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was not the landlord; it was I, and I brought to you this money to pay your rent.’ She looked at me, and said, ‘Oh, was it you? Did you bring me that money to pay my rent, and I kept the door shut againt you, and I would-na let you in? And I heard you knocking, and I heard you ringing, and I said, That is the landlord; I wish he would go away. And it was my ain meenister. It was my ain Lord who had sent ye as His messenger, and I wouldna let ye in.’ ” 1 [Note: J.L. Brandt, Soul Saving, 185.]

2. Although it must be for Christ a sad thing—a thing which cuts Him to the heart—that we should trust Him so little as not to care to admit Him, yet it is less for His own sake than for ours that He is vexed. Ours is the loss. He comes with blessings in both hands. This Prince of Love has help and healing for every part of us. It is our unwillingness to open up to Him, and nothing else, that checks the current of His benefactions, and reduces Him to stand, with hands still “laden” and half His kindly purpose unfulfilled, a suppliant Saviour. Yet He will do no more than knock and call. Though the urgency is on His side, He will not open. Though as crowned King He stands, with title to command and power to compel, yet He will not open. God will do no violence to man’s reluctance; nor does it beseem One who draws near in grace ungraciously to force a passage. Nor in truth can the door to our heart’s affections be broken through from without, only opened consentingly from within. Permission He must crave; He cannot, and He will not, enter undesired. A man is the only being that can open the door of his own heart for Christ to come in. The whole responsibility of accepting or rejecting God’s gracious Word, which comes to him all in good faith, lies with the man himself. He knows that at each time when his heart and conscience have been brought in contact with the offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, if he had liked he could have opened the door and welcomed the entrance of the Saviour. And he knows that nobody and nothing kept it fast except only himself. “Ye will not come to me,” said Christ, “that ye might have life.” Men, indeed, do pile up such mountains of rubbish against the door that it cannot be opened, but it was they that put the rubbish there; and they are responsible if the hinges are so rusty that they will not move, or the doorway is clogged that there is no room for it to open.

When Holman Hunt painted that wonderful picture of the thorn-crowned King outside the door knocking, he showed his picture to his dearest friend, in the studio before it was publicly exhibited. His friend looked at it, at the kingly figure of Christ, at the rough and rugged door, and at the clinging tendrils which had spread themselves over the door. Suddenly he said: “Hunt, you have made a terrible mistake here.” “What mistake have I made?” said the artist. “Why, you have painted a door without a handle.” “That is not a mistake,” replied Hunt. “That door has no handle on the outside. It is inside.” 1 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan.]

But all night long that voice spake urgently,

“Open to Me.”

Still harping in mine ears:

“ Rise, let Me in.”

Pleading with tears:

“ Open to Me, that I may come to thee.”

While the dew dropped, while the dark hours were cold:

“ My Feet bleed, see My Face,

See My Hands bleed that bring thee grace,

My Heart doth bleed for thee,—

Open to Me.”

So till the break of day:

Then died away

That voice, in silence as of sorrow;

Then footsteps echoing like a sigh

Passed me by,

Lingering footsteps slow to pass.

On the morrow

I saw upon the grass

Each footprint marked in blood, and on my door

The mark of blood for evermore. 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 241.]

3. It is one of the commonplaces of our experience that we do not like people to force themselves on our acquaintance, to force their friendship on us; and any attempt to do that generally results in creating dislike to those who try to come into our hearts without knocking, who do not respect the privacy of our choice of friends, but walk straight in without announcing themselves or waiting till they are asked to come in. Now it makes the great truth of God’s search for us, God’s wonderful insistence in meeting us at every point of life, all the more solemn that it is part of the Divine humility, part of God’s respect for our freedom, a proof that He wants love and trust that are freely given, that He does not force Himself on our acquaintance, as it were. So we come to this, that to do nothing is to keep our Saviour outside; and that is the way in which most men that miss Him do miss Him. There are many who have sat in the inner chamber, and heard the gracious hand on the outer panel, and have kept their hands folded and their feet still, and done nothing. To do nothing is to do the most dreadful of things, for it is to keep the door shut in the face of Christ. No passionate antagonism is needed, no vehement rejection, no intellectual denial of His truth and His promises. If we want to ruin ourselves, we have simply to do nothing!

Why does Christ not come in? Is not this Divine Spirit omnipotent? Has He not power to enter where He will, to breathe where He chooses, to blow where He listeth? Why, then, does He stand without, knocking at the door of a frail human heart? Could He not break down that door in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and annihilate that opposing barrier which disputes His claim to universal empire? Yes, but in so doing He would annihilate also the man. What makes me a man is just my power to open the door. If I had no power to open or to forbear opening, I would not be responsible. He meant me to respond to Himself, to open on His knocking at the door. He could have no joy in breaking down the door, in taking the kingdom of my heart by violence; there would be no response in that, no answer of a heart, no acceptance of a will by His will. Therefore, He prefers to stand without till I open, to knock till I hear, to speak till I respond. 1 [Note: G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 144.]

My friend Mr. Collier, of Manchester, told me of an incident that occurred during one of his mission services at the Central Hall. Holman Hunt’s picture was on the screen. In front sat a working man and his little boy. A great hush was over the audience. Presently the little boy nudged the man and said, “Dad, why don’t they let Him in?” The man was a little nonplussed, then after a moment’s silence said, “I don’t know, Jimmy. I expect they don’t want Him to come in.” Again a moment’s silence, and Jimmy said, “It’s not that. Everybody wants Him.” After a pause he continued, “I know why they don’t let Him in. They live at the back of the house.” The man who refuses to admit Jesus has some motive, something kept behind and out of sight. He is living at the back. 1 [Note: G. Campbell Morgan.]

III

The Door Opened

1. Notice the simple conditions of the text—“If any man will hear my voice and open the door.” Christ does not say: “If any man make himself moral; if any man will try and make himself better; if any man has deep sorrow; if any man has powerful faith.” No, that is not it. This is what He says: “If any man will hear my voice, and open the door.” The condition of His entrance is simple trust in Him as the Saviour of the soul. That is opening the door, and if we do that, then, just as when we open the shutters, in comes the sunshine; just as when we lift the sluice in flows the crystal stream into the slimy, empty lock, so Christ will enter in.

2. The text is a metaphor, but the declaration, that “if any man open the door” Jesus Christ “will come in to him,” is not a metaphor; it is the very heart and centre of the gospel: “I will come in to him,” dwell in him, be really incorporated in his being. There is no more certain fact in the whole world than the actual dwelling of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is in heaven, in the spirits of the people that love Him and trust Him. Into our emptiness He will come with His fulness; into our sinfulness He will come with His righteousness; into our death He will come with His triumphant and immortal life; and He being in us, we shall be full and pure and live for ever, and be blessed with the blessedness of Jesus.

The manner and the way, whereby Christ’s righteousness and obedience, death and sufferings without, become profitable unto us, and are made ours, is by receiving Him, and becoming one with Him in our hearts, embracing and entertaining that Holy Seed which, as it is embraced and entertained, becometh a Holy Birth in us, which in Scripture is called: “Christ formed within”; “Christ within, the hope of glory” ( Galatians 4:19; Colossians 1:27), by which the body of sin and death is done away, and we cleansed and washed and purged from our sins, not imaginarily but really; and we really and truly made righteous and holy and pure in the sight of God: and it is through the union betwixt Him and us (His righteous life and nature brought forth in us, and we made one with it, as the branches are with the vine), that we have a true title and right to what He hath done and suffered for us.

It is not the works of Christ wrought in us, nor the works which we work in His spirit and power, that we rest and rely upon as the ground and foundation of our justification; but it is Christ Himself, the Worker revealed in us, indwelling in us; His life and spirit covering us, that is the ground of our justification. 1 [Note: Robert Barclay, Truth Cleared of Calumnies (Works, i. 164).]

IV

The Entrance and the Feast

1. “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” These words speak to us in lovely, sympathetic language of a close, familiar, happy communion between Christ and our poor selves, which shall make all life as a feast in company with Him. We remember who is the mouthpiece of Jesus Christ here. It is the disciple who knew most of what quietness of blessedness and serenity of adoring communion there were in leaning on Christ’s breast at supper, casting back his head on that loving bosom; looking into those deep, sad eyes, and asking questions which were sure of answer. And St. John, as he wrote down the words, “I will sup with him, and he with me,” perhaps remembered that Upper Room where, amidst all the bitter herbs, there was such strange joy and tranquillity. But whether he did or not, may we not take the picture as suggesting to us the possibilities of loving fellowship, of quiet repose, of absolute satisfaction of all desires and needs, which will be ours if we open the door of our hearts by faith and let Jesus Christ come in?

Let Thy Holy Spirit be pleased, not only to stand before the door and knock, but also to come in. If I do not open the door, it were too unreasonable to request such a miracle to come in when the doors were shut, as Thou didst to the apostles. Yet let me humbly beg of Thee, that Thou wouldst make the iron gate of my heart open of its own accord. Then let Thy Spirit be pleased to sup in my heart; I have given it an invitation, and I hope I shall give it room. But, O Thou that sendest the guest, send the meat also; and if I be so unmannerly as not to make the Holy Spirit welcome, O let Thy effectual grace make me to make it welcome. 1 [Note: Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts in Bad Times.]

Speechless Sorrow sat with me;

I was sighing wearily,

Lamp and fire were out: the rain

Wildly beat the window-pane.

In the dark we heard a knock,

And a hand was on the lock;

One in waiting spake to me,

Saying sweetly,

“I am come to sup with thee!”

All my room was dark and damp;

“Sorrow,” said I, “trim the lamp;

Light the fire, and cheer thy face;

Set the guest-chair in its place.”

And again I heard the knock;

In the dark I found the lock:—

“ Enter! I have turned the key!

Enter, Stranger!

Who art come to sup with me.”

Opening wide the door He came,

But I could not speak His name;

In the guest-chair took His place;

But I could not see His face!

When my cheerful fire was beaming,

When my little lamp was gleaming,

And the feast was spread for three,

Lo! my Master

Was the Guest that supped with me! 2 [Note: Harriet M. Kimball.]

2. “I will come in to him, and will sup with him” suggests that our Lord not only confers a blessing but receives one; that He not only gives us satisfaction in His presence, but gets satisfaction out of our presence. It is one of the most beautiful thoughts presented to us in the Bible, that “the Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy.” We often think of what God can do for us. Do we ever think of what we can do for God? We often talk about our trusting God. Have we a holy ambition to be such that it shall be possible for God to trust us? We think of our loving God. Do we ever think of His loving us? We think of God’s giving us pleasure. Do we ever think of our giving Him pleasure? And yet our blessed Lord indicates that if the door is opened to Him, and He comes in to a soul that has hitherto excluded Him, He is going to bring a blessing and to get a blessing; He is going to confer good and to receive it; He is going to impart joy, and His own Divine heart is going to get a thrill of joy from the obedience, and the confidence, and the communion of the willing soul.

Oh that we could take that simple view of things, as to feel that the one thing which lies before us is to please God! What gain is it to please the world, to please the great, nay, even to please those whom we love, compared with this? What gain is it to be applauded, admired, courted, followed, compared with this one aim of not being disobedient to a heavenly vision? What can this world offer comparable with that insight into spiritual things, that keen faith, that heavenly peace, that high sanctity, that everlasting righteousness, that hope of glory, which they have who in sincerity love and follow our Lord Jesus Christ? 1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, viii. 32.]

3. Where Christ is welcomed as guest, He assumes the place of host. “I will sup with him, and he with me.” After the Resurrection, when the two disciples, moved to hospitality, implored the unknown Stranger to come in and partake of their humble fare, He yielded to their importunity and, when they were in the guest-chamber, took His place at the head of the table, and blessed the bread and gave it to them. In the beginning of His miracles, He manifested forth His glory in this, that, invited as a common guest to the rustic wedding, He provided the failing wine. And so, wherever a poor man opens his heart and says, “Come in, and I will give Thee my best,” Jesus Christ comes in, and gives the man His best, that the man may render it back to Him. He accepts the poorest from each, and He gives the richest to each.

With One so condescending and communicative, the blessed soul in whom Jesus dwells ventures to be open too. With happy boldness we begin to tell Him everything. We consult Him even in trifles. We lay great and little cares on Him. We ask His aid in every affair. Thus He shares in all of ours as we in His, and communion attains completion. When such an exchange of sweet and secret actings on one another becomes the habit of the inner life, then these two grow together—the soul and its Saviour—inweaved into each other, till neither can be at any moment satisfied without the other’s presence, or is to be thought of as sundered or alone. This action and reaction, this varied play of friendship, this sense of common possession, this familiar commerce of giving and receiving—what else is this but the joy of supping with Him and He with us?

All life to the positive mystic is full of God here and now. Dante found that “In His will is our peace.” His dying to self was not a blind negation: it was a living unto God, in whom the personality is strengthened, purified, consecrated and made conjunct with a life larger than, yet kindred to, its own. The “I” and the “Thou” are only lost as they are in love: lost to be enriched, surrendered to be ennobled: the soul comes back, laden with precious fruits, with new activities, with intellect, conscience, will—nay, the whole being sanctified and enlarged.

The mystical books tell of the saint who knocked at the door of Paradise. “Who is there?” asked the Lord. “It is I,” answered the saint, but the gate did not open. Again the saint tremblingly drew near and knocked. “Who is there?” said the voice from within. “It is Thou,” replied the saint, grown wiser, and immediately the door opened. He had found the Paradise of the soul. And it is in the apprehension of the “Not I” that the “I” passes into a higher state of activity, where it is at once “in tune with the infinite,” and passes into a new power of life and service. “We know that we have passed from death into life.” Because He wills, and we will with Him in conscious choice, is the secret of positive mysticism. 1 [Note: D. Butler, George Fox in Scotland, 108.]

4.The promise of the text is fulfilled immediately when the door of the heart is opened, but it shadows and prophesies a nobler fulfilment in the heavens. Here and now Christ and we may sit together, but the feast will be like the Passover, eaten with loins girt and staff in hand, the Red Sea and the wilderness waiting to be trodden. But there comes a more perfect form of the communion, when Christ at the last will bring His servants to His table in His Kingdom, and there their works shall follow them; and He and they shall sit together for ever, and for ever “rejoice in the fatness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.”

Come in, Thou Saviour-King, who art knocking at our very souls this day for leave to show us all Thy love, come in and traverse these unclean chambers of our being! Purge them by Thy blood. Enlighten their darkness. Fill their empty spaces with Thy riches. Make what is ours, Thine. See, we give it unto Thee—infirmity, error, sorrow: bear it with us! Make what is Thine, ours. See, we open ourselves wide for it—pardon, strength, gladness: share Thy blessings with us! So shall we sup with Thee and Thou with us; till in this communion our spirits echo after their poor measure that ever-sounding song which circles round Thy heavenly banquet-hall—“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing!” 1 [Note: J. O. Dykes.]

I love Thee, Lord, for Thou didst first love me,

And didst a home in this poor mansion seek.

I heard Thy knock, and straight unbarred my heart,

And listened wondering to Thine accents meek.

I long had lived unknowing of Thy love,

And selfishness directed all my will;

The name of God was but a name to me,

And earthly thoughts and aims enthralled me still.

Briers and thorns obstructed all approach,

And tangled weeds lay rotting at the door;

But Thou didst come, with bleeding hands and feet,

And ask admittance to my sin-stained floor.

I saw Thy love, I heard Thy pleading voice;

Thy words of grace enkindled high desire;

And, led by Thee, my Father I adored,

And on me fell the Holy Spirit’s fire.

I love Thee, Lord, but oh! how cold my love:

Abide Thou still within my trembling heart;

Lay Thou on me the purifying cross,

And let Thy life within my life have part. 1 [Note: J. Drummond, Johannine Thoughts, 30.]

The Waiting Guest

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