“First Love”
The Church at Ephesus…
Revelation 2:1- (NIV) “To the angel (Or messenger) of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
So here we go, right out of the gate, Jesus does not waste any time in telling us what the Christians in Ephesus are doing right, and most glaringly, wrong. He starts verse two by commending them for being hard workers, for not quitting, and for staying true to the faith. They are a church that has a solid understanding of Biblical truth, and they are not afraid to make it happen, but as good as those traits are, God tells them it’s not enough. Somewhere along the way they lost their “first love.”
In order to fully understand this statement, we have to uncover and define what their first love actually was. For many it has been interpreted as their love for God. And while that is absolutely essential for a church, and an individual, to grow to spiritual maturity and be effective in reaching lost people, upon further review, that clearly is not the case. He just commended them for their perseverance, their commitment to the truth of the Gospel, and even working themselves hard for it. People do not do all of that unless they have love, a passion, for something or someone.
When Deidre and I were first dating, and then engaged, I would have done anything for her. (I still would, by the way.) I remember one time I drove from the college I was attending in Dover, DE to Baltimore, MD. I made that trip because I received word that her sister, Julie, was in labor, and that there were complications with her niece, Caitlin’s birth. So, without hesitation, I jumped in the car and drove the two hours to be there in case Deidre needed me for anything. When I got there, I realized I had only partial information, maybe I should have been slower to act, because Deidre was stuck at her college in St. David’s, PA. I waited at the hospital with Deidre’s family for Caitlin to be born. I checked in with everyone and made sure everything was ok, then I drove two more hours to Eastern University so she would not be alone that evening. I did this, knowing I still had to drive back to my dorm that night, at least another hour. So, because I loved her, I was willing to drive over five hours just to be able to spend about ninety minutes with her, in that stressful moment.
Back to the text: I don’t think their problem was loving Jesus. If that was the case, what was their first love that had been abandoned? Look at the context of Scripture, as a whole, and let’s draw some conclusions. Since we are talking about Ephesus, we have to go back and look at the letter Paul wrote to that very same church just a few years before.
Here is my first observation. As long as the founders of the church, the first leaders, the Apostles, were in control, the church was pure, it was all about its “First Love”. But as new leaders came into place it became more about maintaining the people they had. Their passion became polluted, and it was more about the work of the church, and the doctrines of the church, than about lost people being reached by the church. We see the original passion referenced in Ephesians 1:15. Here, Paul commends them for the faith in Jesus Christ and their love for the “saints,” or the people of God.
Jesus said in John 13:35- (NIV) “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Jesus made it the hinge pin, the very foundation by which the entire Gospel swings – our love for each other. So, through this word picture and example, the first thing that God says has hurt the church, caused us to decline, and made people not want to be a part, is our lack of love for others, specifically inside, but also outside the church.
I grew up in a church that was pretty dysfunctional. We did not have a lot of love for each other. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we all had our favorites, or cliques that we hung out with, but the majority were not in those circles. I knew this by the way we all talked about each other behind closed doors, and most telling, by how fast we left the church when the pastor dismissed. We “loved each other enough to get to heaven,” which ironically is not enough. Because in order to love someone that much we had to be willing to lay down our lives for them. That is just another reason why Jesus came, we can’t even love people enough to be saved. Jesus has to even do that for us.
But once this love of and from God comes into our lives, truly permeates every element of our bodies, we cannot help but love others. It is an outpouring of God’s love in our lives that splashes out onto others.
True to form, Jesus then gives them, and us, a chance to make this right. In verse five he says, “…repent and do the things you did at first…” He then goes into a seemingly unconnected analogy of a lampstand - it is referencing the light of the Gospel. The light that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:15 when he said, “You are the light of the world…” So how do we keep our light shining? How do we reach others, specifically, another generation for Jesus? The first answer is found in the correction the church at Ephesus received. We must return to our love for each other. No more divisions, “sides” and segregations. If we want to plant, revitalize, and grow the church, we must do it from a posture of love. If we want to grow and mature as believers, we must do it from the posture of love.
I had a conversation with a pastor this week. We were talking about how this plays out in the real world. It came down to “taking the journey together”, or as they used to do in biblical times, walking together. Here’s the deal, you don’t have to agree with or believe the same thing everyone in your life does. There are some that you must be in agreement with, naturally, but not everyone. For those people it is seeking to understand first, then to be understood. Not everyone in your life is there for you to convince of your rightness. Some people are there to help you understand and see another perspective. True love is accepting people where they are, not having to agree to condone behavior – just to love.
If we do this, he promises, in verse seven, that the right to eat the tree of life, or salvation, will come belong to us. Many churches today do not see a single person give their life to Christ. Some for weeks, some maybe for months, and for far too many, for years. There have been no baptisms, no conversions, no moving of the Spirit in the lives of people. Just dry, dead, stale times of gathering together to remember the “good old days” of the church’s glory. Isaiah 43:18- (NIV) says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing!”
The longer we spend dwelling on the successes and the failures of the past, personally as well as the church, the more we continue to invest into it. We cannot move forward while looking in the back mirror. I have seen it done in the movies, but that is just not realistic. In order to move forward you must be looking where you are going. That means to be fully engaged in the present, with our eyes, our vision, set on where we are headed. I, personally, do not have time to spend on something that I cannot change anyway. It is time to lift up your eyes, take them off the rearview mirror, and accelerate toward your purpose and destiny – to reach lost people for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A healthy, growing, vibrant church is one that is fulfilling the great commission, going, saving, baptizing and discipling. That must be our first love!
The main enemy of this goal, in the text, were the Nicolaitans. According to Barkley in The 7 Churches, this descriptive name means, “to conquer” (niko) “the people” (laos). Their primary focus was not to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, but to rule. They were more concerned with separating the “clergy” and the “laity.” To make ministry the job of the professional pastors. They wanted to put a “Holy Order of Men” over the people. To this idea, God says he hates it.
There are only a couple of times in the Bible that God is described as hating something. One is in Proverbs 6:16- (NIV) “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, 18 a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, 19 a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.” Our text, Revelation 2:6 is the next most common. In this verse a ruling ministry class is put on the same plain as the sins listed in Proverbs 6. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, God has given us, what we are referring to now as the “APEST”, “…Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, and for the edifying, or uplifting of the Body of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-13) It was never God’s intention for there to be people who do ministry and those who watch ministry. There was only the intention of people reaching people through their ministries.
That is why we have adopted a stance of, “Who can we say ‘Yes!’ to?” When people bring ideas of ministry, we consider it our job to equip them, train them, and to help them get the resources and people to fulfill their calling and specific ministry. We want them to take ownership in their ministry. This can result in controlled chaos, but it is beautiful. At Encounter, we see ourselves as leading a church that is centralized in message, accountability, and direction, but decentralized in fulfillment of that message. Our vision is a church where people can hear from God, pursue those callings and dreams, and be in a place that not only allows it, but encourages it.
Again, we are getting back to our first love. We are focusing on the people God loves, helping them find fulfillment in life, and partnering with them to make an impact in their world.
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