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losing our first love

Losing Our First Love: Revelation 2:1-7

By Thomas Schreiner

Charles Spurgeon says the following about losing our first love in his sermon on Revelation 2:1-7,

“When we first loved the Saviour how earnest we were; there was not a single thing in the Bible, that we did not think most precious; there was not one command of his that we did not think to be like fine gold and choice silver. . . . Again, how happy you used to be in the ways of God. Your love was of that happy character that you could sing all day long; but now your religion has lost its lustre, the gold has become dim; you know that when you come to the Sacramental table, you often come there without enjoying it. There was a time when every bitter thing was sweet; whenever you heard the Word, it was all precious to you. . . . Again: when we were in our first love, what would we do for Christ; now how little will we do. Some of the actions which we performed when we were young Christians, but just converted, when we look back upon them, seem to have been wild and like idle tales. . . .”

The apostle John writes in Revelation 2:1-7,

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. 3 I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

It is hard to know who the angel is in every church. This is one of those difficult details in Revelation. Some take it to be the pastor in the church. But nowhere else in the NT are pastors called angels, and everywhere else in Revelation angels are called heavenly creatures. Therefore, John likely refers to angels who function as representatives of the churches, reminding the church of their heavenly existence, namely, that they are in a sense already in heaven even though they are suffering on earth. We are told here that Jesus holds the seven stars, i.e., the seven angels of the seven churches in his hand. In other words, Jesus is in control of the churches, since he is in control of their heavenly representatives. And Jesus walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands as the Son of Man. The seven golden lampstands refer to the churches. The churches are to be lampstands that shine in the world. What John emphasizes here is that Jesus walks among the lampstands. He has fellowship with each of the churches. He knows what is happening in every church.

This brings us immediately to verses 2-3, “I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.” Jesus commends this church for their good works and endurance. They were concerned about pleasing God and sticking with the Christian faith. They weren’t flash in the pan Christians. I remember years ago when we worked with the youth in a church and a very dynamic speaker came to the church. Virtually all the youth who weren’t walking with the Lord got very excited about the things of the Lord under the influence of this speaker. But it didn’t last. After a few weeks they relapsed to where they were before. They were flash in the pan Christians.

But the Ephesians weren’t like this. They regularly gathered with other believers to hear God’s word and pray. Even if they didn’t feel like it, they got up every day and kept God’s commandments. They weren’t giving into sexual sin. They were not giving into explosions of anger. They loved their children and raised them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. There is something to be said for Christians who faithfully day after day after day just do their job. These Christians endured for Christ’s sake, and they had not grown weary. They were disciplined Christians. Here the Ephesians are a great example for all of us. How we need steady and faithful Christians. The salt of the earth type whom you can count on, those who regularly pray and read scripture, and those who do the will of the Lord. They aren’t flitting around to this or that worldly thing. They are not driven around like a leaf in the wind by their emotions. They do the right thing even if they do not feel like it.

Not only were the Ephesians solid, steady Christians, but they were doctrinally orthodox. Paul evangelized in Ephesus for nearly three years. In Acts 20 he predicted that the Ephesians would be threatened by false teachers. 1 Timothy was written to Timothy while he was in Ephesus during the 60s of the first century. We see from 1 Timothy that false teachers did indeed come into Ephesus. Now we read that in the 90s that the Ephesians had obeyed Paul and fought back against false teachers. The Ephesians tested those who claimed to be apostles of Jesus Christ (v. 2) and found that they were false. In other words, they were doctrinally vigilant and theologically orthodox. They thought deeply about what was being taught in their midst. They were like the Bereans of Acts 17 who examined the scriptures every day to see what was so. They weren’t like Christians who accept everything they hear. If someone says they believe in Jesus, we need to ask, which Jesus? If someone says they are an apostle of Jesus, we need to ask, are they apostles of the true Jesus? There are a lot of Jesuses out there today: Jesus the political revolutionary. The Jesus of Mormonism. The Jesus of Jehovah Witnesses. The liberal Jesus. The postmodern Jesus. And there is the biblical Jesus. When people say they believe in Jesus, we need to make sure that it is the Jesus found in scripture. And the Ephesians did that.

We see in verse 5 that the Ephesian church is also to be commended for hating the teaching and works of the Nicolaitans. We are not totally sure what the Nocolaitans taught, but we can guess from verses 13-15 in this chapter that it involved sexual sin and idolatry. Jesus commends the Ephesians for hating their teaching and their work. Notice, Jesus says in verse 6 that he hates their teaching too. Did you hear that word “hate”? Jesus is not a namby-pamby Jesus, always smiling and gentle. There are teachings that he hates and detests. He hates teachings that do not honor God as God and that destroy human beings. Spurgeon emphasized how preachers need backbones and courage to preach the truth of God’s word. He said, “I saw, just now, outside the shop of a marine-store dealer, a placard which runs thus: ‘Fifty tons of bones wanted.’ ‘Yes,’ I said to myself, ‘mostly backbones.’ Fifty tons of them! I could indicate a place where they could take fifty tons, and not be overstocked.” We need faith in God’s word to preach that the only payment for our sins is the blood of Christ. We have a great debt that only the death of Christ can pay for. We need a passion for the truth and inerrancy of God’s word. There are many serpents out there who say, “Has God said? …” and “You will not surely die” if you disbelieve. We need to stand up and say, “Thus says the Lord.” We have people out there who try to solve the problem of evil by saying God doesn’t know what will happen in the future. But we need Christians who will stand up and say that our God knows the end from the beginning, and that neither good nor evil occurs unless the Lord has ordained it. We have some in the church who say that a difference in roles between men and women is not in God’s word, and we need believers who will stand up and say, “The pattern God has ordained between men and women is beautiful, and it will bring the most happiness and peace and joy.”

Now the Ephesians were doing well doctrinally and behaviorally. But they had one serious defect. “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev 2:4). Is he talking about their love for God or their love for others? We can answer by saying that these two are inseparable. We see John addressing this very issue in his first letter. “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21). We can say with confidence that true love for others flows from our love for God. The Ephesians were straying not in their doctrine, nor in their behavior, but in their affections. This problem may be very hard to perceive. You may be doing all the right things and believing all the right things, and yet a coldness entangles your heart. You are a like a person who is home for Christmas dinner and on the outside you are laughing and warm and friendly, but you are thinking the whole time, “I wish I were with my friends instead of being here.” Those who have lost their first love are like that. They are in church every Sunday, but their love and affection for the things of God is draining away. Such a lack of love and affection can be excused in a number of ways. We may deceive ourselves by focusing on our good works and right beliefs, saying, “I must be alright because I am doing and believing the right things.”

That is likely what the Ephesians said about themselves. But they were clearly wandering from the Lord, and were not prizing him in their heart. Now we could over-interpret what Jesus says here. Jesus isn’t saying that we always have ardent feelings for the Lord, or we have lost our first love. It has rightly been said that if we stare at our feelings long enough, we lose them. If you ask yourself in the midst of looking at a waterfall cascading down a cliff, whether you are appreciating the beauty sufficiently, you will lose any sense of its beauty. The object (the waterfall) is what arouses beauty (not your own soul). So too, some who are particularly introspective could constantly be asking themselves if they love Jesus, and end up focusing on their feelings rather than Jesus. Jesus is not asking believers whether they feel from the first instant when they get up in the morning and at every imaginable moment whether they feel love for him. No, his point is whether love for him is a regular feature and pattern for our lives. It is like being married. We don’t feel every moment of the day joy and affection for our spouses, but if joy and affection are not a regular part of our married life, if our marriage is just doing the right things for our spouse, without any affection or joy, then our marriage is in trouble. That is what happened to the Ephesians. Their affection was dried up. Their works and beliefs had descended to the mechanical.

Our spiritual lives are like a potted plant. A potted plant doesn’t need water every second to thrive. But it needs regular watering to prosper. We too need regular waterings of love for God. Otherwise, we become dry flowers that are near death. So what should we do if we have lost our first love? We see Jesus’ instructions in verse 5, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” We are to remember that first flame of love that we had for the Lord. Remember the days of your conversion and your passion for the Lord. And upon remembering, repent and turn from works that are not animated by love, but which have become lifeless and loveless.

What does it mean to repent? It means that we turn to the Lord and ask him to renew our first love. We ask him to have mercy upon us. We ask him to shine his face upon us anew. We ask him to grant us a new strength to love him and to love fellow-believers. This is no minor matter, for Jesus says that he will remove the lampstand of a church that loses its love for him. The church will no longer shine with the love of Christ and have a bold witness for the gospel. The church may disappear entirely as did all the churches in Turkey, or it may become a church in name only, with no power of the gospel.

And this message was not just for the church of Ephesus, even in the first century. Jesus says in verse 7, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” The message found here is the message for all the churches. They are the inspired word of the Holy Spirit for all the churches. And they are a call to conquer and to persevere to the end. Only the one who conquers will eat of the tree of life in the garden. Here John picks up the language of Eden, where we find the tree of life in paradise. The tree of life and paradise point to the future blessedness promised for God’s people. But this paradise, this tree of life is only for those who conquer. In other words, the tree of life is only for those who have given their lives to Jesus Christ, for those who have put their trust in him to experience forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life. But true faith is never a one time decision to trust Christ. True faith conquers. True faith overcomes. True faith is a persevering faith. Only those who so overcome will eat of the tree of life in paradise. So, let us pray for a renewal of our first love. Let us pray for persevering faith.



Thomas Schreiner joined the Southern Seminary faculty in 1997 after serving 11 years on the faculty at Bethel Theological Seminary. He also taught New Testament at Azusa Pacific University. Dr. Schreiner, a Pauline scholar, is the author or editor of several books including, Romans, in the Baker Exegetical Commentary Series on the New Testament; Interpreting the Pauline Epistles; The Law and Its Fulfillment: A Pauline Theology of Law; The Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance and Assurance; Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives of Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace, co-edited with Bruce A. Ware; Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of I Timothy 2:9-15; Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ, Magnifying God in Christ: A Summary of New Testament Theology, and Galatians

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