Revelation Chapter Three, Worthy

Revelation 3:4 “You have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.

We arrive at the deplorable spiritual state of the church in Sardis. The Lord attests that there are only a few in Sardis that have not defiled their garments; that is, conducted themselves carnally. Jude says of such people, “But others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh,” Jude 23.

Those who walk with Christ in white and are deemed worthy are seen several times in Revelation. In Revelation 4:4 we find the twenty four elders clothed in white robes, adorned with crowns of gold. Later we are given a view of the souls beneath the altar after breaking the fifth seal. When they cry out about the Lord avenging their blood (for they were martyred for their faith) God gives them each a white robe and tells them to be patient, Revelation 6:9-11. Where does this worthiness derive from? “Come now and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool,” Isaiah 1:18. The Lord makes us worthy, and the white we are clothed in comes entirely from Him. “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him, being abominable, disobedient, and disqualified for every good work,” Titus 1:15, 16.

Why are the unbelieving defiled and entirely disqualified? “But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our inequities, like the wind, have taken us away,” Isaiah 64:6. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you,” Isaiah 59:2. Human righteousness equates into sinful rebellion. Why? Because we have resisted and rejected the truth as it is found in Jesus Christ. “There is none righteous, no, not one…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:10, 23. This seminal truth is why the Father sent the Son to be the world’s Savior. If we do not accept the sinful, fallen state of mankind, then it is easy for us to believe we can supply our own righteousness if we simply set our standard high enough. But the standard of righteousness God employs is His own. It is sinless perfection. If we break the Law but once, we are sinners and have broken the Law completely, James 2:10.

This is what the Lord came for. God the Son incarnated as a Man to stand in our place and take the punishment our sins deserved. God’s justice demanded payment for our sins, and the only payment God metes out is separation. Sin causes physical death (sin is why our current bodies age and die), and spiritual death; our sinful state is why we are not naturally spiritually alive, but must be born again through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus explained it simply as being born first of water (physical birth) and secondly Spirit (being born from above, or spiritual birth), John 3:5. Those who walk worthy are not made so because they are by nature holy. They are cleansed by the Lord and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and they choose to submit to the will of God rather than the whims and lust of the flesh. As it was in Israel in the days of Elijah, so it was in Sardis. Northern Israel has become entirely apostate, and King Ahab was one of the ungodliest kings to sit on Samaria’s throne. Elijah bemoaned how the Jews had all abandoned true worship, but God replied to the prophet, “Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him,” 1 Kings 19:18.

God reserved, or set apart the faithful who demonstrated their trust in the living God by their actions, or in this case lack of action, see Malachi 3:17, 18. They did not submit to Baal worship, revealing their faith openly by what they would not do. One can imagine that this was similarly the case in Sardis, with the residue of the church being called worthy, for they did not defile their garments with the pollution that false teaching brought into the church.