To a Long-Lost Love

Introduction

Nothing can compare with the intimacy of a letter

Emails and texts are distant from us, but a letter in the mail shows the intentionality and affection a person has for someone in being so considerate despite the “inconvenience” it was to send it.

Letters revived the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when they both thought it was beyond repair.

Letters sustain troops of all kinds on the battlefront.

Why do you think they’re called “care packages”?

Letters keep love alive.

Keepsake cards

The medium is the message

The substance of a message matters as much as the message itself

Letters to the church, written from Paul to Peter, were always intended to exhort the congregations in question to continue to contend for the gospel, no matter how bad off they might be. For the apostles, God always proved himself faithful in all circumstances, and the growth and health of his church had always been according to his sovereign will.

In this first of the seven letters to the churches in Asia Minor, Christ reminds those in Ephesus of their past faithfulness to the cause of the gospel. However, they have exhausted themselves over their own kingdom-driven volition. Apart from the Spirit, no one can survive. So, they, along with all believers who are and are yet to be, must return to the love we had at first.

Tried and True (vv. 1-3)

The seven churches to which Christ addresses his revelation through John represent the breadth of the body of Christ as we know it.

The church in Ephesus was already thought highly of by Christians in John’s day

Planted by Priscilla and Aquilla (Acts 18:18)

Led by Timothy

A “Dream Team” for Christ

Praised by Ignatius of Antioch, an early church father who wrote his own “seven letters” to the churches in Asia Minor while on his way to be martyred in Rome around 117 AD

If you’re looking for a congregation with an all-star legacy of faithfulness, look no further than the church in Ephesus

In this letter, Christ displays his absolute lordship over those of his body (v. 1)

No church goes out on its own in seeking to fulfill its mission

Under-shepherds report to the Shepherd himself

Be wary of those who stray from the firmness of the fold in the name of “innovation”

Our witness is always on the line (v. 2)

The church is responsible to God alone for its actions

The judgment of unbelievers can never be the sole means by which we measure the worthiness of our deeds

God will always recognize faithfulness in a sea of faithlessness

How salty are we?

We should be so saturated with biblical truth that we can’t help but have more of it and those who want the same too.

Never assume that simply sitting in the sanctuary christens one for sainthood.

The church is a crucible for separating the fakers from the makers.

Commitment to the gospel means leaving no confusion as to what life in the body of Christ is really about.

Remembering why we suffer will empower us to glorify God even in the midst of oppression (v. 3)

Claiming suffering for anything for any reason isn’t virtuous in and of itself.

The martyrs wouldn’t have much patience for the Karens of the world.

Christ has come to set us free from enslavement to the virtue-signaling so much of those around us revel in.

Identity, not image, is central to who we are.

To be in Christ is to suffer as he did (Mk. 8:35)

Forgetting the First and Greatest Commandment (vv. 4-5)

Looking back on our experiences, we often forget where the wonder went.

Soul and the art of simply being

It’s often what’s most basic to us that matters most.

The record Christ has for us might not always line up for the one we have for ourselves. Plenty of churches continue to send missionaries, plant churches, support charities, preach the gospel faithfully, and maybe even have a good potluck or two. Yet none of these things can make up for a fundamental lack of essential Christian virtue at the most basic level. Having the capacity to explain all the ins and outs of biblical wisdom cannot substitute for what John himself consistently calls for us to do: love one another.

The Ephesians were thoroughly Berean, constantly seeking the truth in all things. In their zeal, they forgot to remember the reason for it all in the first place.

Theology is meant to increase our love for God and each other, not decrease it.

R. C. Sproul: “God has made us with a harmony of heart and head, of thought and action…The more we know Him the more we are able to love Him. the more we love Him the more we seek to know Him. To be central in our hearts He must be foremost in our minds.”

You never graduate from the gospel, but its first entrance exam is loving your neighbor as yourself.

Rarely is our doctrine of love given top priority in the debates occuring in the American church today.

Retracing our fall from faithfulness is the only way to retrieve it once again (v. 5)

How terrifying it is to deceive ourselves into thinking we’re prospering just because we seem to be getting it all right in our own eyes.

Size doesn’t make perfect (megachurches)

The refrain of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

We have a King, and it’s clear what he wants us to do.

Longing for the “glory days” sometimes means just getting back to the basics.

Repentance is a turning away from what’s wrong toward what’s right.

Trying to excuse our mistakes by scapegoating the culture only makes it worse; it’s Christ’s church, not the world’s.

Our creativity can often get the best of us. Let Jesus set up the standards for what a healthy church looks like.

Without a lampstand, there can be no light.

How many churches think they’re glimmering today when they’re really sinking further and further into decay?

F. W. Krummacher: “The heathen world has no Juda, and could not produce such a character. Such a monster matures only in the radiant sphere of Christianity. He entered into too close contact with the Savior not to become entirely His or wholly Satan’s.”

For Christ to remove his sovereign blessing doesn’t mean a church will always close its doors, but it will cease to be an embassy for the kingdom of God and can only become a halfway house for the moral therapeutic deists of the world.

Be bold. Hold fast to the Scriptures and the disciplines. Face your fear of true commitment to the gospel and realize what’s at stake. Only then can you shine.

A Glimmer of Grace (vv. 6-7)

All is not lost when orthodoxy still remains (v. 6)

We don’t really know what the Nicolaitans taught, but it was contrary enough to the Word of God to make Christ’s rage become kindled.

A hatred for false teaching warms our hearts toward God and man because we know how good the revealed and honest counsel of Scripture is for us.

You only get right practice when there’s right belief to back it up.

No Trinity means no unity, and no unity means no serenity, and no serenity means no morality.

If we continue to stand for truth, the hope of renewal and revival will always be on the horizon.

Returning to the heart of worship promises paradise (v. 7)

The spiritual fruit borne out of love leads to eternal life in Christ.

Conclusion

When was the last time you heard somebody ask you: “How have you been loving lately?”

For many Christians in America right now, the ballot box has trumped the breaking of brotherly bread in importance.

What was displayed at the Capitol on January 6th was nothing less than ungodly, satanic idolatry. As the church, we must actively condemn Christian nationalism as an ideology that seeks to undermine the essence of the gospel and the mission of God in its determination to absolutize the United States as the Lord’s “chosen nation.” No political order can serve as our Messiah, and we must stand up and proclaim loudly and without qualification that only the rock of Christ is our assurance, not 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The motivation that should get us scurrying out of our beds on Sunday morning is that our God has not changed and will not forsake his promise to return for us, and while we expectantly wait for him, we cannot cease coming together to make much of what his Son has done for us and is doing to the rest of the world through us.

Our task won’t be finished until we hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Don’t let the hysterics of this age distract you from the work that is at hand.

Your first love when you came to Christ might have been the relationships you formed or the preaching and teaching you received. Work to rediscover the sparks that made you fully realize your identity as a believer and get back at it.

We must keep the home-wrecking divisiveness of the unbelieving world from seeping into the folds of the household of God.

Irwyn Ince, Jr.: “The particular expression of love that the world should see when it looks at Jesus’ church is the evident overcoming of divisions.”

The bonds of affection which bind us all together transcend kith and kin because they are grounded in our supreme, universal union with Christ himself as sons and daughters of God, making the reconciliation we are able to achieve unprecedented for those outside of him.

Christ commands us to reclaim the integral call to love in our witness as the church. All attempts apart from doing so to be faithful will never be fruitful. This letter is addressed to a long-lost love, and the only way we can find it again is by starting from the beginning of this great divine drama of redemption in looking to how we have been saved from ourselves so that we might help save others.