Silence can be deadly. You’d think something as passive as silence would have very little effect on anything. For instance, think about when someone is getting bullied. Silently standing by can be just as harmful as actually bullying. Another example, if a doctor gets your results back from a test, yet fails to tell you anything, you could very easily be heading toward your death and never know it.

On an even more significant level, churches possess the life-giving message of the Gospel apart from which people will experience eternity apart from the glorious goodness of our great God. When churches are silent concerning this message, people will die, and ultimately, the church will die. This is made crystal clear with the church at Sardis.

G.K. Beale  argues that the church at Sardis has developed an incomplete witness. Based upon the introductory image, which alludes to the idea of witness, and the idea that the church has a good reputation but incomplete works, the church at Sardis appears to have failed to complete their witness and conquer.  (The Book of Revelation 273-274) In whatever form their compromise took, they clearly were lacking in their evangelistic witness to the world. Satan wants nothing more than for the church to fail in this area, and Jesus will not endure a church who refuses to repent of this sin.

The passage isn’t clear whether Sardis was lacking in their verbal or physical witness to the Gospel. Whether their words or their actions were silent does not matter, their witness was incomplete. We must recognize that our witness must be holistic. We cannot allow any part of our lives to be silent when it comes to the Gospel.

Without works that portray the Gospel, our message will likely fall on deaf ears.

But even worse, without the message of the Gospel flowing from our lips, our works will only provide temporary healing and lead people to eternal torment.

May our churches flee death by completely and boldly proclaiming the Gospel through our words and deeds.