V. Livingness versus Deadness

Although the Lord Jesus did not rebuke the local church in Sardis for doing anything wrong, He did tell this church that she was spiritually dead (3:1). In the excerpt below, Witness Lee utilizes both illustrations and Old Testament typology to convey the Lord’s feeling that it is much worse for a believer to be dead than to be wrong. He therefore exhorts the believers in the local churches, who belong to the living God, to pursue the experience and expression of the divine life.

In the fifth epistle, the one to Sardis, the Lord did not rebuke the church for anything wrong. There was nothing wrong, but she was dead! To be dead is more serious than to be wrong.

Allow me to illustrate in this way. Suppose there is a little boy in this hall who is very naughty and wrong in every aspect. But there is also another boy in the hall who is dead. There is nothing wrong with him, for he is adjusted and fully corrected. Which one would you prefer? Would you like to contact the naughty boy or the dead one? Of course, we all would prefer the living one, even though he is wrong.

The Lord hates dead things. He told Sardis, "I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God" (Rev. 3:1-2).

If we only have a moral mentality to know what is right and what is wrong, this proves that we do not have the sense of life. God is not a God of the dead. He is a God of the living! A local church must be living, even if it is wrong. Of course, I do not encourage anyone to be wrong, but we must be living! (72)

Witness Lee illustrates the seriousness of the condition of spiritual death with the Old Testament typology in Leviticus and its New Testament application.

Leviticus 11 tells us several times that whenever someone touches something which is dead, he is dirty. And this dirtiness cannot be cleansed only by water. A certain amount of time is also required for the cleansing. Therefore, to be dirty with deadness is more serious than to be dirty with sinfulness.

There are some who come to the meetings in the local church who are dead. If you touch them, you just touch deadness. I believe we all have had this experience. We must be careful with this kind of person. He is not a living person, but a dead one; therefore, we must flee from him. We should run away not only from sinful things, but especially from deadening things. Sometimes the things that come from the mouths of some people are just like a dead carcass. Their talk is just like dead bodies. We must not listen to this kind of talk. If we do, we simply touch death. Then for one week, sometimes, we are not able to praise. And sometimes we are even poisoned unto death. We must not be another Sardis. Every church must be living and alive. We must not try to be so right, but so living….Sometimes when we come to the meeting, we are so filled with the joy of the Lord that we have to shout, “Hallelujah, hallelujah!” But simply due to the religious custom we received from our background, we will not shout because we think we should not. This is something religious that kills us. We must not keep any religious customs. Religion kills, and religion is something old. Anything old will soon be dead. We must not make our meetings religious. We all must be very living, keeping ourselves open to the Spirit. (72-73)

From the Lord's word to the church in Sardis, the local churches should learn and become keen to His feeling toward spiritual deadness. To be moral and correct and yet dead, Witness Lee explains, is repugnant to the living God. In order to be pleasing to the Lord, a local church should be full of life and enjoyment.