“Nevertheless, you do have a few names in Sardis that did not defile their outer garments, and they shall walk with me in white ones, because they are worthy.

Revelation 3:4,

Because of negligence on the part of a body of elders, a congregation as a whole may fall into deep spiritual sleep. Yet, some individuals therein may strive courageously to keep their Christian identity pure and unspotted and thus continue to have a good name with Jehovah.​—Proverbs 22:1.

11, 12. (a) Even during the great apostasy, how must some have been like those faithful “few names” in Sardis? (b) What relief came to wheatlike Christians during the Lord’s day?

¹¹ Yes, those “outer garments” refer to a person’s righteous identity as a Christian. (Compare Revelation 16:15; 19:8.) It must be heartwarming for Jesus to see that, despite the apathy of the great majority, “a few names,” a few anointed Christians in Sardis, still manage to keep this identity. Likewise, when professed Christians were absorbed into Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, during the long centuries of the great apostasy, there must always have been a few individuals who tried, against great odds, to do Jehovah’s will. These were righteous like wheat hidden amid a profusion of sectarian weeds.​—Revelation 17:3-6; Matthew 13:24-29.

¹² Jesus promised that he would be with these wheatlike Christians “all the days until the conclusion of the system of things.” He knows who they are and what good names they made for themselves. (Matthew 28:20; Ecclesiastes 7:1) Imagine the joy of those faithful “few” who were still alive at the start of the Lord’s day! They were finally separated from spiritually dead Christendom and were gathered into a righteous congregation more like the congregation in Smyrna.​—Matthew 13:40-43.

13. What blessings are in store for anointed Christians who do not “defile their outer garments”?

¹³ Those in Sardis who are faithful to the end and do not sully their Christian identity attain the realization of a wonderful hope.