Returning to Our First Love
Notes
Transcript
Revelation 2:1–7
Revelation 2:1–7
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Ephesus was a leading seaport and the capital of the Roman province of Asia in the first century. It was fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire, and it embodied wealth-driven values, with superstition permeating daily life. Sexual immorality was rampant, and its commerce constantly mingling with indulgence. It was “the Vanity Fair of the Ancient World.” (Barclay)
The most dominant cult in Ephesus was the worship of Artemis, but at least seventeen other deities received worship in the city. Alongside these religious systems Magical practices, sorcery, and soothsaying flourished. With advocates of competing religions and philosophies regularly proclaiming their messages in the public square, there was a ready marketplace of conflicting truth claims.
Paul had evangelized it and then used it as his base of ministry for at least three years. Others who ministered in the church before and after Paul’s extended stay were Priscilla and Aquilla, Apollos, Timothy, and the apostle John. It was a very important city in the early history of the church of Jesus Christ. Yet it was not without issues.
The internal struggles of the church at Ephesus were equally demanding. Those who converted from Judaism, paganism, and/or the various philosophical traditions carried their old habits and traditions into their new faith. They had to learn to discern what from their past was compatible with the Christian faith. Arising disagreements fractured the congregation, with factions forming around competing ideas and agendas. False teaching emerged as a particularly acute threat with the church battling serious doctrinal deception with Paul addressing it in his letter to the Ephesians.
The gospel was fruitful in Ephesus, yet the city remained a difficult place.
By the time of the writing of Revelation, the church had existed there for at least forty to fifty years.
1. Commendation for Consistent Commitment, 2:1-3.
1. Commendation for Consistent Commitment, 2:1-3.
This begins the series of addresses to the seven specific churches in the province. These messages are a more specific expression of God’s word to these churches in the book of Revelation as a whole.
John is commanded to write to “the angel of the church,” this heavenly being is understood to be the representative of this community of God’s people on earth. It becomes clear as we go through each letter that the messages of each largely apply also to the individuals who make up the congregations as well as to the churches as corporate groups.
The sender is described similar to what is described in 1:13 and 1:16; the wording communicates more strongly Christ’s resilient and intimate connection with the angel and the church he addresses. Verse 1 says that Christ “grasps/holds firmly,” connoting an unshakeable grip and firm direction of His service. He declares that he “walks” in their midst, a picture of active engagement with His churches in their everyday experience of life. He has intimate knowledge of their hard circumstances, their successes, as well as their failings, and is vigilant to guard their fidelity.
Christ is the one who authoritatively speaks to His own, with penetrating knowledge of their condition reflecting both matters to commend and a major failing He must rebuke.
“Deeds” — works, which is then further as their “toil and perseverance.”
“Toil” — when often used of Christian service in the NT, it emphasizes a service that requires the utmost a person can give—heartfelt and rewarding effort, often expended in difficult circumstances.
“Perseverance” — enduring and remaining faithful to Christ, not giving up in the face of their adversities and rejecting seductive and opposing influences.
Remaining faithful requires the difficult task of assessing the fidelity, the true character, of others, especially those who make claims to leadership among God’s people. then acting with resolve and courage if they fail to measure up. The Ephesians had resisted certain “evil” or destructive people, seeing through their pretense and refusing to allow them to harm the church. Some who passed themselves off as “apostles” probably meant passing themselves off as itinerant but authoritative Christian teachers or missionaries, not a claim to the preeminent status of the Twelve or Paul. It was Paul who at the earliest stages in their history warned the leaders of the Ephesian church against the threats of false teachers from outside and inside the church and the need to Guard against it, Acts 20:28-32
“Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
“I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
“Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
“And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
This is not just for this church; all churches must heed this call for vigilance.
Christ’s commendation continues, reinforcing what He has just said but also building ominously toward the contrast that will come with His rebuke in verse 4. Three words (or related words) are repeated here, reiterating the church’s laudable “perseverance” (steadfastness), having “endured” (bore, carried, picked up; the idea of bearing up under trials), and “have not grown weary” (labor that could have caused them to give up in exhaustion). They were commended for their loyalty, demonstrated by their bearing up “for My name’s sake,” where “name” is representative of the character and essence of the person. This reflects a theme found elsewhere in the NT: the call to identify with Christ even if it brings rejection and persecution, John 15:21
“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.
2. Call to Renewed Relationship, 2:4-5.
2. Call to Renewed Relationship, 2:4-5.
The church in Ephesus had demonstrated remarkable external faithfulness—doctrinal vigilance, perseverance, and endurance—yet here is the singular indictment of Christ: they have left (abandoned) their first love. This exposes a disconnect between their outward activity and inward devotion. Here the “first love” refers to the intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. Over time, their commendable works became hollow because they lacked this relational foundation. Their zeal for truth and persevering labor was absent of what the Lord valued most — tender, fervent affection for Himself.
The significance here lies in what Christ asserts, namely that any church or individual Christian may exemplify every good work while lacking personal, daily fellowship with Christ, thereby rendering all such activities meaningless in the Master’s eyes.
The language itself matters: this was not an involuntary matter. They had “left” their first love— a deliberate action indicating culpable choice. The command to love carries with it a moral accountability; it is an action that lies within the human will.
To maintain faithfulness, we must guard our love for the Lord. The Ephesians’ failure to do so resulted in spiritual decline and eventual divine punishment.
This abandonment mirrors Israel’s pattern. They began with a fervent hunger for God when called from the wilderness, then gradually allowing other concerns to eclipse intimacy with Him. Any spiritual deterioration, if not promptly corrected , becomes dangerous.
The church is called to remember their fallen state, repent and restore their former deeds wrapped in devotion to the Savior. If they fail to do so, Christ promises to remove their lampstand. The light of their testimony for the Lord will be gone; they will no longer be part of the circle of His churches. Christians are lights in a dark world, testifying to God’s love in Christ only in so far as they live in love themselves.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Do all things without grumbling or disputing;
so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,
holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.
So the correction? Authentic devotion to Christ maintained and continually growing, expressing itself in deeds driven by love and pleasing to lover of our souls whom we ourselves love. Christ’s call to make it right by rebuilding and restoring their previous pattern of conduct, “to do the deeds you did at first.” It is each believer individually and as a church that bears accountability for the state of their love toward God. Check your heart condition.
3. Consequence of Committed Conquest, 2:6-7.
3. Consequence of Committed Conquest, 2:6-7.
These believers, who saw through the pretense of false apostles, also characteristically resist what “the Nicolaitans” were trying to accomplish in Ephesus. That resistance is described as hatred, which Christ himself shares. The common biblical sense of the term is not to show emotional hostility or intense ill will against something but to act in strong opposition to it, to renounce or reject it (BDAG).
“The Nicolaitans” were a group known among the Christians in Asia Minor, though Revelation does not tell us anything specific about the founder of this group. In the second century, Irenaeus identifies him as the Nicolaus mentioned in Acts 6:5.
This group seems to have advocated accommodation to the surrounding pagan culture and its idolatrous practices. Jesus underlines the importance of fidelity to the truth he commended in the previous verses; the motivation and tone of their resistance to such false teaching need to be changed, but that resistance itself must continue.
Today, there is a pervasive intermingling of secular attitudes and lifestyles that are advocated as acceptable Christianity. One such example is what researchers have called moralistic therapeutic deism. It is a religion of relational niceness, feeling good about oneself, and a distant paternalistic God. Its tenets are:
(1) the central importance of being nice — God is benevolent and nonjudgmental, and his only demand on me is that I should be nice as well.
(2) the importance of feeling good about myself and living out my dreams — the main purpose of religion is to help me find happiness, peace, and personal fulfillment.
(3) a laid-back deity who makes no demands of me but is available for emergencies if I ever need him — For most of life, I am on my own and don’t need to pay much attention to him.
It should be obvious that this “Christian-ish” religion fails on both points that Jesus speaks to the Ephesians about: fidelity to God’s truth and heartfelt love for God and people.
The conclusion of this message is a command to hear and a promise to the overcomer. The command to hear is very similar to Jesus’s words describing the purpose of His parables, Matt 13:9
“He who has ears, let him hear.”
where he acknowledges that some are unreceptive and will not comprehend the spiritual truths veiled within the parable, but He calls all those to whom God has granted understanding to obey what they hear. This fulfills what is seen in Isaiah 6:9-10
He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.’
“Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.”
about stubborn people continuing to resist even a word from God. The call here is for individuals within the community to respond, even if others do not. The clear intent of this command is to provoke an active response by those who are receptive: they must pay attention and obey.
The audience for this message goes beyond the church at Ephesus, and broader even than the seven churches in Asia, to all the Christian congregations across the centuries. To the degree that other churches fit the pattern seen here, they should take encouragement or rebuke from what the Spirit says to these churches.
The promise that closes this message points beyond the current difficulties to God’s future consummation described in Revelation 21-22. The individual Christian is addressed once more as “the one who overcomes.”
For believers, overcoming involves spiritual victory over the sinful snares of a wicked world promised to those who truly belong to Christ and persevere by maintaining a faithful testimony and doctrinal faithfulness amidst the pressures and sufferings of this present life, for the joy of the life to come.
There is promised to the overcomer a glorious blessing, which picks up two images of ultimate deliverance:
“To eat from the Tree of Life...” — life-giving restoration.
“… that is in the Paradise of God” — communion with God.
This picture echoes the entire biblical story of divine redemption from beginning to end. It points to a divine renewal of all God’s creation; it includes the spiritual salvation of individual humans, but is so much deeper and broader than just that
The “tree of life” is a symbol of God’s provision for all humanity’s needs in a life lived in obedience to and intimate fellowship with Him.
“Paradise” represents the original, Edenic context for such a life—a life that humans lost in the Fall but that God intends to restore in His renewal of all things in the future.
