Revelation 3:4

Thou hast a few names The best texts insert ἀλλὰ but between these words and the close of the preceding verse. So Rev. But, notwithstanding the general apathy of the Church, thou hast a few, etc. Compare Revelation 3:1, thou hast a name, and see on Revelation 11:13. Names is equivalent to persons, a few who may be rightly named as exceptions to the general conception. Even in Sardis Omit καὶ even. Defiled (ἐμόλυναν) See on 1 Peter 1:4. Garments See the same figure, Jde 1:23. The meaning is, have not sullied the purity of their Christian life. In white (ἐν λευκοῖς) With ἱματίοις garments understood. See on Revelation 2:17, and compare Zechariah 3:3, Zechariah 3:5. "White colors are suitable to the gods" (Plato, "Laws," xii., 956). So Virgil, of the tenants of Elysium: "Lo, priests of holy life and chaste while they in life had part; Lo, god-loved poets, men who spake things worthy Phoebus' heart: And they who bettered life on earth by new-found mastery; And they whose good deeds left a tale for men to name them by: continued...

Thou hast a few names even in Sardis {3} which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in {4} white: for they are {d} worthy. (3) That is, who have with all religion guarded themselves from sin and moral corruption, even from the very show of evil; Jude 1:23. (4) Pure from all spot, and shining with glory. So it is to be understood always hereafter, as in Re 3:5. (d) They are suitable and proper, that is, because they are justified in Christ, as they have truly showed it: for he who acts righteously is righteous in the same way that a tree bears good fruit; Ro 8:18.

Revelation 3:4 . Yet thou hast a few names — That is, persons; even in Sardis — Corrupt and indolent as the general state of the place is; who have not defiled their garments — Who, notwithstanding the common corruption, have preserved their purity, having neither spotted themselves, nor partaken of the guilt of other men’s sins. These persons, though few, had not separated themselves from the rest; otherwise the angel of this church would not have had them. Yet it was no virtue of his that they were unspotted; whereas it was his fault that they were but few. They shall walk with me in white — In joy, in perfect holiness, in glory. “It is well known that white robes were worn on occasions of great joy, and sometimes in triumphal processions; to both which there is probably a reference here. Priests also were clothed in white; and the addition of that dignity may likewise be implied as certainly coming within the scheme of Christ with regard to his people: see Revelation 1:6 . Some think here is an allusion to the custom of the sanhedrim, when they examined the candidates for the high-priesthood; if they judged the candidate worthy, they gave him a white garment; if unqualified, he was sent out from among them in mourning.” — Doddridge. For they are worthy — A few good among many bad are doubly acceptable unto God. O how much happier is this worthiness than that mentioned Revelation 16:6 .

Revelation WALKING IN WHITE Revelation 3:4 . The fond fancy that the primitive Church was a better Church than todays is utterly blown to pieces by the facts that are obvious in Scripture. Here, in the Apostolic time, under the very eye of the fervent Apostle of Love, and so recently after the establishment of Christianity on the seaboard of Asia, was a church, a young church, with all the faults of a decrepit old one, and in which Jesus Christ Himself could find nothing to commend, and about which He could only say that it had a name to live and was dead. The church at Sardis suffered no persecution. It was much too like the world to be worth the trouble of persecuting. It had no heresy; it did not care enough about religion to breed heresies. It was simply utterly apathetic and dead. And yet there was a salt in it, or it would have been rotten as well as dead. There wore ‘a few names, even in Sardis,’ which, in the midst of all the filth, had kept their skirts white. They had ‘not defiled their garments,’ and so with beautiful congruity the promise is given to them - ‘they shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.’ The promise, I said. It would have been wiser to have said the promises, for there are a great many wrapped up in germ in these quiet, simple words. Nearly all that we know, and all that we need to know, about that mysterious future is contained in them.

So my purpose now is, with perfectly inartificial simplicity, just to take these words and weigh them as a jeweler might weigh in his scales stones which are very small but very precious. I. We have here, then, the promise of continuous and progressive activity - ‘they shall walk.’ In Scripture we continually find that metaphor of the ‘walk’ as equivalent to an outward life of action. To make that idea prominent in our conceptions of the future is a great gain, for it teaches us at once how imperfect and one-sided are the thoughts about it which come with such fascination to most of us wearied men. It is a wonderful, unconscious confession of the troubled, toilsome, restless lives which most of us live, that the sweetest and most frequently recurring thought about the great future is, ‘There remaineth a rest for the people of God’; where the wearied muscles may be relaxed, and the tortured hearts may be quiet. But whilst we must not say one word to break or even to diminish the depth and sweetness of that aspect of the Christian hope, neither must we forget that it is only one phase of the complete whole, and that this promise of the text has to be taken with it. ‘They shall walk,’ in all the energies of a constant activity, far more intense than it was at its highest here, and yet never, by one hair’s breadth, trenching upon the serenity and indisturbance of that perpetual repose.

Thou hast a few names even in Sardis, a few persons even in that polluted place, which have not defiled their garments; who have kept their integrity and innocency. There is a garment of Christ’s righteousness, which, once put on, is never lost, nor can be defiled; but there are garments of holiness also: hence the apostle calls to Christians to be clothed with humility. As sin is expressed under the notion of nakedness, so holiness is expressed under the notion of a garment, Ezekiel 16:10 1 Peter 5:5 . Those who have not defiled their garments, are those that have kept a pure conscience. And they shall walk with me in white: the Romans used to clothe their nobles, and such as were competitors for honours, in white garments; the priests and Levites also amongst the Jews, when they ministered, were clothed in white, 2 Chronicles 5:12 . God and his holy angels are in Scripture set out to us as clothed in white, Daniel 7:9 Matthew 17:2 28:3 . Those that triumphed upon victories obtained, were clothed in white amongst the Romans. To these usages, or some of them, the allusion is, and the meaning is, they shall be to me as kings, and priests, and nobles, they shall be made partakers of my glory: for they are worthy; though they have not merited it, yet I have judged them worthy; they are worthy, though not with respect to their merit, yet with respect to my promise.

4 . Thou hast ] Read, But thou hast, and omit even. a few names ] Some understand, from the similar use of the word “names” in Acts 1:15 , that at this time it was usual for every Church to keep a register of all its members. 1 Timothy 5:9 seems certainly to imply such a register of office-bearers at least. It is possible indeed that the “names” are spoken of as entered in the heavenly Book of Life (cf. the next verse): but the use of that image would be far more forcible, if the readers of the Revelation were familiar with an approximate counterpart to that Book on earth. have not defiled their garments ] Which were cleansed ( Revelation 7:14 ) by the Blood of Christ, but may be defiled again by deadly sin. See St John’s I Ephesians 1:6-7 ; where we are told both of the absolute sufficiency, and of the conditional efficacy of that Blood for cleansing. It seems to be fanciful to inquire minutely what the “garments” are, whether their bodies or their baptismal robes: there may be an allusion to Zechariah 3:3 sqq. in white ] Song of Solomon 6:11 ; Song of Solomon 7:9 . It is idle to ask whether these are the same garments which they kept undefiled during their probation: but no doubt it is meant that their keeping these undefiled proves them “worthy” of those.