I do, however, have one thing against you: you have abandoned the love you showed at the beginning. So remember the place from which you have fallen. Repent, and do the works you did at the beginning. If not—if you don’t repent—I will come and remove your lampstand out of its place. ~REVELATION 2:4-5 [Kingdom New Testament]
The Lord has many positive things to say about this church in Ephesus. He compliments them on their hard labor, patience, not tolerating evil people, testing those claiming to be apostles and demonstrating them as frauds, on putting up with so much (patience again), and the fact that through it all they have not grown weary. If I had to roll all these positives into just one word, I’d say the good Lord was affirming them for their perseverance. (My friend Joe and I talk often about how underrated the quality of perseverance is in this life. That’s a Ripple for another day.)
The Church in Ephesus was killing it.
But…
There is one thing the Lord has against them.
He says that they have abandoned the love they showed at the beginning. Or as some other translations have it, their “first love” [great Stryper song by the way].
Most people tend to think that this means they abandoned their love of Christ, but pretty much every commentary I read disagrees with this conclusion, for everything in the context seems to say that their love of Christ has definitely not waned.
So what love have they abandoned that they first had?
It is most likely the love they had for one another at the beginning.
It may also refer to their lack of dependence on the Holy Spirit’s power.
G.K. Beale goes into the issue of how we can be so Spirit-led and guided at the beginning of our spiritual journey, but then succumb to the world’s ways and power for trying to further the Kingdom. Here are his poignant questions from his excellent commentary:
“can it be said that the church in the west has suffered in its evangelism through a lack of conscious dependence on the Spirit’s work in witnessing? Is it possible that we in the western world have relied too much on resources the world also has–techniques and technology–and lost sight of that greatest resource only believers in Christ have access to–the powerful work of the Holy Spirit?”
Now let’s talk about the problem of losing your love for others, which I think is linked to the Spirit dependence issue. It appears that this Ephesian church did in fact love the Lord, but at some point started going a little too far trying to ensure those around them were believing the right way. William Barclay says it like this, “It may well be that heresy-hunting had killed love, and orthodoxy had been achieved at the price of fellowship.” It’s possible that they got so hell-bent on maintaining orthodoxy that their love for one another started to ebb. This is the beginning of the end.
Brian Blount puts it this way:
“one might reasonably conclude that Christ was annoyed because the church had developed some sort of ‘works litmus test’ to determine which efforts of resistance, such as a love for Christ’s lordship, were worthy and which were not…Apparently, the Ephesians became too discerning. Preoccupation with the work of love for the lordship of Christ overwhelmed an allegiance to the first love they had once demonstrated toward each other…Once known as a loving community, they suddenly had become a policing one. Ephesian faith had become a matter of Ephesian quality control. Assessment became more important than love.”
I said this is the beginning of the end because Jesus calls them to repent, to turn back from this unfortunate place they have drifted to, or else He will remove their lamp stand out of its place. This does not mean they are annihilated or sent to hell, but that they will lose their status as a leading witnessing church for Jesus. He will have to take that away because they are off course. Sometimes we need a course correction, which is good, because it shows we were on the right path before and that Jesus cares about us. No one can pluck us out of His hand, yet He cuts off every branch that does not bear fruit. This is one of the many tensions we must balance in the spiritual life.
I don’t hear a harsh rebuke here, but rather a gentle Pneuma nudge. There are 10,000 ways in which we can abandon the love we once had. For me, a little over a year ago I received this Pneuma nudge telling me that I had drifted from my earlier practice of one to two hours a day spent with the sole purpose of connecting with Jesus. I had even told myself, “Don’t ever forsake this! Let nothing crowd this out, no matter how good it may seem.” And yet, over time, I allowed it to evaporate. Thankfully Jesus lovingly brought me back to what I so desperately need every single day; time simply connect, commune, converse, soak, dwell. be….ABIDE.
So the first step is to recognize and admit where we’ve gone awry. Then to turn the other way and return to whatever we need to return to. This of course does not mean going back to milk from a ba-ba, but rather back to that meat we know we require for spiritual vitality.
Matthew Henry is so dang good. So let’s finish with his words on this passage:
Those that have lost their first love must remember whence they have fallen; they must compare their present with their former state, and consider how much better it was with them then than now, how much peace, strength, purity, and pleasure they have lost, by leaving their first love–how much more comfortably they could lie down and sleep at night,–how much more cheerfully they could awake in the morning,–how much better they could bear afflictions, and how much more becomingly they could enjoy the favours of Providence,–how much easier the thoughts of death were to them, and how much stronger their desires and hopes of heaven.
