In verse 4 the Lord says, “But you have a few names in Sardis who have not defiled their garments.” Garments in the Bible signify what we are in our walk and living. To defile the garments means particularly to stain them with deadness. Death is more defiling before God than sin (Lev. 11:24-25; Num. 6:6, 7, 9). In this verse, the defilement denotes anything of the death nature. The defilement in Sardis was not the defilement of sin; it was the defilement of death. Death is dirtier than sin. According to the Old Testament, if anyone sinned, he could be forgiven simply by offering the sin offering (Lev. 4:27-31). However, anyone who touched the dead body of a man had to wait seven days before he could be cleansed (Num. 19:11, 16). This indicates that the defilement of death is more serious than that of sin. Christians today have no consciousness of death. If you go to Las Vegas to gamble in a casino, you will sense that you have sinned. But if you came to a meeting in a dead way, you may not sense the seriousness of it. But in the eyes of God, this death situation is more serious than gambling in a Las Vegas casino. Although Christians condemn sin, they do not condemn deadness. People sit in the meetings like corpses and they see nothing wrong with it. I do not like to be near anything dead. One day, my mother died. Although we all loved her, none of us dared to stay near her dead body overnight. If your dear wife would dirty herself while doing something for you, you would love her more than ever before. But if she were to die, you would not want to be near her dead body. The Lord hates death. However, most Christians in the reformed churches do not have this concept of death. They may say, “What is wrong with the denominational churches?” They are not only wrong—they are filled with death. Though there may be nothing wrong with the corpses in a mortuary, they are full of death. Death is the greatest problem. How ugly it is! It is a stench to God, and He cannot tolerate it.
In the local churches, we all must hate death. I would rather see the people in the churches wrong than to see them dead. Many times I have asked the brothers and sisters why they do not function in the meetings. Often their reply was, “I’m afraid of making a mistake.” To this, I responded, “The more mistakes you make, the better. Living children make many mistakes. But the dead children in the cemeteries make no mistakes at all.” If you simply sit in the meeting without doing anything, you will never be wrong. Although you may be right, you will be dead right. I would rather be livingly wrong than dead right. I may make mistakes, but everyone will know how living I am. Which do you prefer—to be dead right or livingly wrong?
Speaking of these who have not defiled their garments, the Lord says that “they shall walk with Me in white for they are worthy” (v. 4). White not only signifies purity, but also approvedness. White garments here signify the walk and living which are unspotted by death and which will be approved by the Lord. It is a qualification for walking with the Lord, especially in the coming kingdom.
If you read the context of Revelation 2 and 3, you will see that every time the Lord gives a promise in these seven epistles, strictly speaking it refers to the coming kingdom. It never refers to eternity, to our eternal destiny. Rather, it refers to our future in the coming kingdom. This is the basic and governing principle in understanding all the promises in these seven epistles. In verse 4 the Lord promises that the living ones, those who have not defiled their garments, will walk with Him in white. When will this be? In the wedding day of Christ which will last for a thousand years. To walk with the Lord in white means to walk with Him during these thousand years. In principle, this must also be applied to our walk with the Lord today.
In verse 5 the Lord says, “He who overcomes, he shall be clothed in white garments, and I will by no means erase his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” To overcome here means to overcome the deadness of the Protestant churches, that is, to overcome dead Protestantism. The whole of verse 5 is the Lord’s promise to the overcomers. It will be fulfilled in the millennial kingdom after He comes back.