Revelation
SARDIS - (Rev. iii. i - 7.)
IN the address to the Church at Thyatira, we have found
the Lord announcing His coming, and bidding His saints wait to share with Him
then the authority which the false church was assuming to have already.
Thyatira presents us thus with a phase of things which goes on at least till
the Lord comes for His saints; not, indeed, till the rising of the Sun of
Righteousness upon the world, but until He comes as the Morning-Star, the
herald of the day before the day appears.
In Sardis, we have,
therefore, not a development of the Thyatira condition, but in many respects,
as it is easy to see, what is in entire opposition to it.
Thyatira, or
popery, is the last phase of the church in its Jewish hierarchic and
ritualistic growth; and although there has been all through a remnant different
in spirit, and becoming finally more or less distinctly separate, even
outwardly, as among the Waldensian and kindred bodies, yet up to this point
there has been in fact a certain unity: it could claim to be, before the eyes
of men at least, the Catholic church.
True, there had been already a
separation; not now of others from it, but of this latest development itself
from others. Rome had separated herself from the churches of the east - the
Greek and Syrian churches, which remained in the condition we have traced at
Pergamos. The Catholic church of the west had become the Roman Catholic. Yet,
in character, the system was the same throughout; here more, there less,
developed - that was all. But now we come to a new thing, - a breach and a new
beginning. There is now in Sardis, not the claim of infallibility, not (as what
is prominent) corruption of doctrine, not persecution of the saints, - not the
exercise of authority in the same sense, - none of these things characterize
Sardis. What characterizes is sufficiently definite in the Lord’s charge
here: it is lack of spiritual power, - nay, in the body as such, of life
itself. "Thou hast a name to live, and thou art dead."
Yet they had
"received and heard," and are bidden to "hold fast" this, "and repent." Just as
Ephesus had been, at the commencement of decline, called back to remember their
first state, so here there has been a fresh beginning in God’s grace, a
recovery of His word and truth, a new beginning, from which (alas!) already
there is decline. Again, they have not answered to His grace, and those things
which remained among them from this revival were languishing and ready to die.
And no wonder, when the charge against them is considered. The body addressed
is a professing but unconverted one: with a name to live, it is dead.
There is but too little difficulty in applying this. A breach with Rome, a
restoration of the Word of God, a fresh revival of truth, ending, however, in a
system or systems characterized by a fatal defect of spiritual power, and
churches with an unconverted membership, God’s saints being scattered
through the mass, - living themselves, but unable to vitalize it: such are the
characteristics, easily to be read, of the national churches which sprang out
of the Protestant Reformation.
Let it be well understood: it is not the
Reformation itself that is depicted here. So far as it was this, the
Reformation was the blessed work of God, and the Lord does not judge, and can
never need to judge, His own work. He refers to what His grace had done for
them - to what they had received and heard. Their responsibility was, to take
heed to it, and hold it fast; and already they had failed in doing so. This was
therefore the ground of judgment.
Notice how Christ is represented
here. He has "the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars." There is no
failure in the fullness of spiritual energy on His part, no possibility of
failure in His love and care for His people. Yet this power is not found
practically in that which has sprung out of the seed sown by the Reformation.
With more pretension than before, for they have now a name to live - a name
assumed to be in the book of life, SARDIS the actual condition of the mass is
that of death: not feebleness merely, but death.
Yet there are
exceptions: not simply those alive, but still more - that have not defiled
their garments; and of these the Lord speaks in the warmest terms of praise.
"They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy." Indeed, these are only
"a few names." Others may be alive, but in a scene of death (and the defilement
which results from contact with the dead is emphasized in the symbols of the
Old Testament) the many of those alive even are defiled. But the mass are dead
altogether - dead, with a name to live.
In His promise to the
overcomer, the Lord further refers to this: "He that overcometh, the same shall
be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot his name out of the book of
life." The book of life is understood by the majority of people to be only in
the Lord’s hands, and all the names written in it to be written by
Himself. Hence, those ignorant of the gospel stumble over this blotting out of
the book of life, as supposing it is the blotting out of the names of those
once saved. But there is no such thought here. There is not the slightest hint
that those mentioned ever had life at all: they had a "name to live " - only a
name.
On the contrary, you find in Rev. xiii. 8 the very opposite
thought as to those "written," as we ought to read it, with the margin of the
Revised Version, "from the foundation of the world in the book of the Lamb
slain." There, this fact of their being written in the book from the foundation
of the world is given as their security from being deceived by and worshipping
the beast. Sovereign grace, that is, is their only and sufficient
security.
Here, on the other hand, the book has got into man’s
hand, and he writes names in it as he pleases. It is a figure, of course, all
through. The Lord, in His own time, corrects the book, and then He blots out
the names of those to whom only the name belongs.
Now the "name to
live" has a very special meaning in connection with Reformation times. The
putting people’s names into the book of life (while here on earth) is in
no way characteristic of popery. Saints, for them, are only the dead, and not
the living. The living she warns that "no man knows whether he is worthy of
favour or hatred," and that it is not safe to be too sure. Her pardons,
indulgences, sacraments, only show by their very multiplicity how difficult a
thing she believes salvation is. Darkness is the essence of her system, and she
thrives upon it.
On the other hand, the Reformation recovered the
blessed gospel, and the word of reconciliation was preached with no uncertain
sound. The doctrine of assurance was maintained with the utmost energy, and was
stigmatized by the Council of Trent as "the vain confidence of the heretics."
They even pushed it to an extreme, asserting (at least, some of the most
prominent reformers did,) that assurance was of the very essence of saving
faith itself, and that unless a man knew himself to be forgiven, he might be
sure that he was not forgiven.
It is plain, then, that Protestantism
put a man’s name in the book of life in a way that popery did not at
all.
Two immense things the Reformation gave us, which have never since
been wholly lost, - an open Bible, in a language to be understood; and on the
other hand, the gospel, at least in some of its most essential features. These
are inestimable blessings, which would that we had hearts to value more.
Of
the men, too, who were the dear and honoured instruments in handing them down
to us we cannot speak with enough affection and esteem. God honoured them - how
many ! - taking them to Himself in fiery chariots, from which their voices
come, thrilling us with the accents of the heaven opening to receive them.
Those who disparage them will have to hear, one day, their names confessed and
honoured by Him they served, as those of whom the world was not worthy. But on
the other hand, we must not make, as many are doing, the Reformation the
measure of divine truth. They are not loyal to the Reformation really who
accept any thing beside Scripture as the measure and test of this. The broken
and conflicting voices which are heard the moment it is a question no longer of
the gospel but of the church and its government, assure us that if here
Scripture has spoken, the churches of the Reformation do not in the same sense
convey to us its utterances. Lutherism is not Calvinism, the Church of England
is not the Church of Geneva here. We must needs, whether we will or not, take
Scripture to decide amid claims so conflicting; and when we do so, we find,
with no great difficulty, that no one of these takes us back to the Church as
it was at the beginning - the body of Christ, or the house of living stones -
at all.
Instead of this, as is well known, the churches of the
Reformation were essentially national churches. Not in every country, of
course, able to attain the full ideal, - as in France, where Rome retained its
ascendency by such cruel means, - but always of that pattern. Rome had herself
prepared the way for this. The nations of Europe were already professedly
Christian nations, and it was not to be expected that those who escaped from
Jezebel’s tyranny would give up their long hereditary claim to
Christianity. The adoption of an evangelical creed did not and could not change
the reality of what they were. They learned the formula, put their names upon
the church-books as Protestants, learned to battle fiercely for the gospel of
peace, and how could you deny their title to be Christians? Yet, as to the
many, it was but the "name to live."
We must learn to distinguish two
elements in the ecclesiastical revolution of those times. There was, first of
all, a most mighty and most manifest work of God. The Scriptures, released from
their imprisonment in a foreign tongue, began to speak to responsive human
hearts with the decision and persuasiveness that the Word of God alone can
have. Christ began once more to teach as one having authority, and not as the
scribes. The blessed doctrine of justification by faith every where brought
souls held fast in bondage into liberty and the knowledge of a Saviour-God. The
ecclesiastical yoke could not hold any longer those whom the truth had freed;
and where Christ had become thus the soul’s rightful Lord, the yoke of
Rome was but the tyranny of Antichrist.
This was the first and most
powerful element in Protestantism; not a political movement, but a movement of
faith. Luther, solitary at Worms, in the presence of the mightiest political
power in Europe, was the testimony that the work was of Him. His strength was
manifest in human weakness. Had that place of weakness been retained all
through, - had but God been allowed to show that power was of Him alone, how
different would have been the result! And it is due to the foremost name of
Protestantism to acknowledge that, as far as carnal weapons were concerned,
Luther would have rightly refused them a place in a warfare which was
God’s. At any rate, to think of Protestantism as essentially a political
movement is to do it glaring injustice, and to contradict the plainest
facts.
On the other hand, we cannot ignore the political element which
so soon entered into it. Rome had made the nations every where feel the iron
hand of her despotism, and the national reaction against her was the natural
result of her intolerable and insolent oppression. The notorious wickedness of
her chiefs had long destroyed all real respect. Her power stood now in an
excessive and degrading superstition She lived upon men's vices and their
fears, and where the light fell and removed the darkness, the fears were
removed also, where the vices were not. Men learned to look upon the power they
had cringed to with contrary feelings, deep in proportion to their depth
before. Their interests, political and otherwise, coincided with the spiritual
movement which divine power had produced. Soldiers, politicians, governments,
made common cause with the men of faith. It was hard not to welcome such
apparently God-sent allies, when on every side persecution raged. The movement
increased in external power and importance, but its character was in just that
proportion lowered and perverted.
And now there was need of defined
principles to give cohesion to elements which the Spirit of God no longer
sufficed to bind together. Outside, there was the pressure of Rome, a compact
and immensely powerful body, armed, drilled, and intensely hostile.
Organization was soon a necessity; but of what or whom? To proclaim the true
Church would have been to cast off their allies, to insure the continuance of
persecution and reproach, to leave Rome unchecked, triumphant. I do not say
that the true thought of the Church ever dawned upon them; but I do say that
their alliance with the world was a sure means of hindering their seeing it.
There were formed instead national churches, with evangelical creeds, used as
pieces of state-craft, and political power to back them, not divine.
It
is simple enough, that if a creed had been a necessity for His Church, the
wisdom of God could easily have given us an infallible one, and His love could
not have failed to do so. On the contrary, He has given us that which He
testifies to as able to furnish the man of God thoroughly unto all good works,
but which people feel at once to be as different from a creed as can
be.
Why do people want a creed? As something more plainly and easily
read than Scripture. Scripture is infinite: the creed must be definite. Of
Scripture, every one makes what he likes; what is wanted is something different
- something that shall not be capable of two meanings, plain to all - spiritual
and unspiritual, Church and world alike.
It has been before contended that
Scripture is clearer, plainer really, than any word of man; and so indeed it
is; beside being, in divine wisdom, written so as to meet, as nothing else can
meet, with perfect foresight of the future, all the thoughts of men. It is thus
the only sufficient guard and protection against heresy to the end of time. And
yet it is no contradiction to this to own that there is some truth from the
point of view taken by those who contend for this, between the creed and
Scripture. From their point of view. For the apostle’s words limit us
somewhat when we speak of the intelligibility of Scripture. "All Scripture is
given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness," - but for what? - "that the MAN
OF GOD may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
So
that Scripture, profitable for doctrine as it is, does need a certain state of
soul for its proper apprehension. It needs not indeed great attainments, human
learning, deep research, - although all these have their use, and are not
despised by it; but it absolutely requires (what may be found in the lowest and
poorest just as well,) devotedness - that we be God’s men: what by
possession and profession all Christians are, but alas! not what all, even of
true Christians, always practically are. This is the single eye, which we must
have for the body Ito be full of light. But this being so, we can easily see
that the Bible is not just the book for a court of law, and it is not the
suited thing for a national creed. The truth is not meant to be accessible to
the merely natural mind. Nay, "the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them,
because they are spiritually discerned." The Bible is not crystalized for us
into doctrines, but its truths are exhibited and only known as living realities
to those who are in the true sense alive. It is so essentially unlike a creed,
that we may be assured that nothing like a creed was in God’s design. He
did not mean to give what might serve as a motto for political partizanship, or
a banner for any other than spiritual warfare.
Nationalism, then, - the
union of the living and the dead - was never in His mind. He meant spirituality
to be a first necessity, and an absolute one, for the discernment of His
thoughts: and men, when they substitute in this respect the blessed word of God
for their plainer creed, show really that herein they are at cross purposes
with Him.
"Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead," is the exact
moral description, as it is the plain condemnation of nationalism. Of more
this, no doubt, but still of this. It is not the idea of the Church of God at
all, but a Christianized world, with Christians scattered through it: a place
so defiling, that but few indeed can keep their garments undefiled. Connected
with the truth, as popery is not, such a system betrays the truth which it
professedly upholds. The character of the last days is developed by it: "Men
shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, proud, blas. phemers," the
retaining all that is natural to them under the garb of Christianity; "having a
form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." The direct command is, "From
such, turn away."
This is the effect of popularized truth, -
popularized as God never meant His truth to be. Of course this is to be
distinguished from the preaching of His truth, than which nothing assuredly
is more in accordance with His mind. His gospel is to go forth to every
creature, and the blessings of an open Bible we could scarcely exaggerate. But
by "popularized truth" is meant, what we have already been speaking of, truth
made into a party badge, so as to be accepted by those with whom Christ is not;
for He was never really popular, and still is not.
Popularized truth
means, truth that has lost its power. It may be that for which martyrs died,
and which when first given of God, or when afresh given, was full of quickening
power. Popularized, it is so far lifeless. No exercise of soul in receiving it;
no cross in professing it; men have got from their fathers what their fathers
got from God: to their fathers it was shame, to them it is honour. There is
nothing to test conscience, nothing to make them ask, Dare I take this without
human sanction to commend - nay, in the face of all human discountenance? Yet
only thus have we got it truly from God. The martyrs they talk of took it thus
and suffered for it: they take it from their fathers - a principle which would
have condemned the martyrs; and they take it without the slightest thought of
being martyrs.
Truth is proclaimed as powerless by the unholy lives of
its professors, while unholiness is recommended by the practice of those who
are orthodox as to truth. And thus truth tends to die out of itself, as
valueless, remaining all the while in the national creed, embalmed as a
memorial of the past. "Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain,
which are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God."
This has been long experienced with regard to all national systems too
manifestly to need more than a bare allusion.
It is a system designedly
adapted to worldly minds, and to be worked by political machinery. The Word of
God is no necessity to it, except, it may be, to furnish a table of lessons;
for the authoritative standard is the creed. The Spirit of God is not necessary
to it; for colleges can manufacture preachers, and ecclesiastics ordain and
send them forth apart from this. Christians are not necessary to it; they are
too uncertain as a constituent part of a nation or its government to be capable
of being reckoned on; nor is there any means of certainly determining who they
are. A sacrament, - baptism or the Lord’s supper, - takes here the place
of less manageable tests.
And the grieved and insulted Spirit may be
besought to breathe upon the lifeless mass, and fill the sails of the ship of
state. But He must keep within the bounds prescribed by ritual, hierarchy, and
parliament, or He will be treated as schismatical. And it must be remarked how
often in this case a schism springs out of a large and manifest revival. Souls
brought near to God, and made to feel the value of His Word, are not made
thereby the more docile servants of a state-religion. The new wine will not be
held in the old bottles. Statesmen are not thus favourable to such fresh
enthusiasm, and no wonder: it divides the house which it is to their interest
to keep as one.
But is not here the history of the churches of the
Reformation - of Protestantism, in fact, - during the three centuries of its
existence? Is not this the true account of its divisions, for which it is
reproached? The Spirit of God is not, indeed, the author of confusion, but of
peace, - of unity, and not disunion. But when people talk of schism, they
should remember to what that term applies. As found in Scripture, it is "schism
in the body" that is reprobated, and the body of Christ is not a national
church. When men have joined together the living and the dead, - when they have
subjugated consciences to formularies instead of Scripture, - to hierarchies
instead of God, or to hierarchies in the name of God, what have they forced the
blessed Spirit to do but to draw afresh the line they have obliterated between
the living and the dead, between man’s word and God’s, between human
authority and divine?
And His mode of doing this has been constantly to
bring out of the inexhaustible treasure of His Word some fresh or forgotten
truth, which would I do that which the popularized truth in the creed had
almost ceased to do - would test the souls of His people as to whether they
were indeed the descendants of those who confessed Him of old, whose tombs they
built, and whose memories they had in honour. The fresh truth calls for fresh
confession; costs, and is meant to cost, something; brings its confessors into
opposition to the course around them, and separates them at once from those
whose only desire is to go with the stream, and with whom the profession of
Christ and the cross are widely separate.
SARDIS - continued
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