![]() ![]() Neither weeds nor flowers grow in winter. It had not life enough to produce even such morbid secretions. The church in Sardis, to which Christ is presented under this aspect as the possessor of ‘the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars,’ had no heresies needing correction. The correspondence can usually be observed without difficulty, and in this case is very obvious. The titles by which our Lord speaks of Himself in the letters to the seven churches are chosen to correspond with the spiritual condition of the community addressed. The remedy is progress-forgetting the things behind, lest looking with complacency upon the past, moral and spiritual stagnation should set in, and spiritual death should follow. Self-satisfaction, which springs up when a certain reputation has been acquired, is the very road to self-deception. But those who used both the doctrinal and moral improvements as the fulcrum of a selfish power and earthly rank, were the same men after all as their fathers, only accommodated to a new age” (Mozley). ![]() The belief of the Pharisees, the religious practice of the Pharisees, was an improvement upon the life of the sensual and idolatrous Jews whom the prophets denounced. Living with the credit of superior piety, it was easy to grow satisfied with the reputation, and to forget to keep open the channels through which grace and life could flow, and to fail to realise that the adoption of habits of life higher than those around them, or those who lived before them, was no guarantee of real spiritual life for “the real virtues of one age become the spurious ones of the next. It is the reputation for piety possessed by the Church of Sardis which is referred to. Here, then, lies the appropriateness of the description given of Christ, as the source of life and light to His Church.Ī name that thou livest.-It is only needful to mention, and to dismiss the fanciful conjecture, that the name of the angel was Zosimos, or some parallel name, signifying life-bearing or living. If those who minister are without gifts it is because they have not asked for them.” This the angel of the Sardian Church had not done his faith and the faith of the Church around him had sunk into a superficial, though perhaps ostentatious, state. “He is able,” to use the language of Professor Plumptre, “to bring together the gifts of life, and the ministry for which those gifts are needed. His promise is, “I will send the Comforter unto you” ( John 15:26), as possessing all power in heaven and earth. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ ( Romans 8:9 Romans 8:11). In this language it is difficult to overlook the unhesitating way in which Christ is spoken of as owning or possessing that Holy Spirit who alone can make angels of His Church to shine as stars. There Christ was seen holding the stars in His right hand here it is said He hath the seven Spirits and also the seven stars. The writer is described in words similar to those in Revelation 1:4, as the one who hath the seven spirits of God, and the seven stars but there is a difference. The worship of Cybele was the prevailing one its rites, like those of Dionysos and Aphrodite, encouraged impurity. An earthquake laid it waste in the reign of Tiberius a pestilence followed, but the city seems to have recovered its prosperity before the date of this epistle. It is said that gold and silver coins were first, minted at Sardis, and that resident merchants first became a class there. The metal known as electrum, a kind of bronze, was the produce of Sardis and in early times gold-dust was found in the sand of the Pactolus, the little stream which passed through the Agora of Sardis, and washed the walls of the Temple of Cybele. The art of dyeing is said to have been invented here and many-coloured carpets or mats found in the houses of the wealthy were manufactured here. It was the great entrepôt of dyed woollen fabrics, the sheep of “many-flocked” Phrygia supplying the raw material. (1) Sardis.-The modern Sart-now a mere village of paltry huts-once the capital of the old Lydian monarchy, and associated with the names of Crœsus, Cyrus, and Alexander. ![]() Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersIII. ![]()
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