We left off in the book of Revelation 3, right in the middle of the message to the church in Sardis. This is a church that the Lord said had a reputation for being alive, but the Lord’s evaluation was that they were dead. So, He is trying to wake them up. He is calling them to wake up and to change. We have looked at all of that already. Now we are going to look at the ending of this particular message as He talks about the reward that would be theirs if they heed what He has to say.
So, we pick it up at Revelation 3:5 when He says, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” There are three different rewards given to those who overcome. So, the first thing we need to do is determine what is an overcomer. There are those that look at words like this in the Scripture and think that this is an elite group of Christians. These are the ones that have overcome and have become famous or powerful or useful or super Christians in some form or the other. That is not the way the word is used in the Bible, and it is not the way it is being used here. As we go forward, we see that the overcomers are true believers. So, in the church at Sardis, like all churches I suppose, there was a mixed bag of people. There were people there that truly knew Christ and truly loved Him. He already mentioned those people in an earlier verse. There are also some there that are going through the motions. They are not truly saved. They profess something, but they don’t really live it, and He recognizes some of them do not really know Christ. Perhaps John doesn’t know who is a true believer and who is not. He doesn’t try to distinguish that here except to say, “those that have overcome.” Those that have overcome sin because of the power and the blood of Christ who has died for our sins – that person would be the overcomer. That’s who He is talking about here. The believers in the church at Sardis.
Then He goes on to say that those that overcome will be clothed in white garments in Revelation 3:5, “He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments.” Interesting here with the term – white garments – this could imply many different things. Often at victory celebrations in ancient times they wore white. Also, at festivals when people were coming to a fancy party of some kind, perhaps a ball for a king, they would wear very white clothing. Most often, the word white in this regard speaks of purity. They would have their sins forgiven and completely wiped out and they would have white garments in that sense. “Whiter than snow,” as we see in Isaiah. That is probably what He has in mind here. The overcomers will be people who will be dressed, in this metaphorical sense, in white. They will be purified. Their sins will be forgiven . . .
