‘To the angel 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. 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. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken the love you had at first. 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. But you have this in your favour: you hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 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.
Revelation 2:1-7 NIVUK
Imagine you're at the airport. You've just arrived. You have your luggage in your hand. You stand in line to check in for your flights. The line seems interminable. The wait seems to be forever.
Eventually you reach the front. You hand over your ticket. And then it happens. The check-in clerk asks for your passport.
You've left it at home.
The one thing you need to do what you need to do, and you don't have it. You've forgotten it.
This is the message the Ephesian church received from God through John. It is startling. Downright alarming. They had everything in order: their deeds, their hard work, their perseverance. Theologically they were on point. No issues there at all. Practically? Not an issue.
Yet without their first love it was all dry. It was barren. It was empty. It was a waste.
And God was threatening to remove their lampstand from its place – in effect, to remove the church.
What a serious threat!
But how could it have gone so badly wrong?
Well, let’s look at what the church was doing right.
We see their deeds – that they are good and that they cannot tolerate those who are evil.
If we look through the famous chapter of Ephesians 2, we come across these masterful verses that form the core of the great doctrine of salvation:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no-one can boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9 NIVUK
Sola gracia. Not by works. The great high point of the Reformation. The verse that turned the teachings of the then church on its head. Marvellous. Utterly marvellous.
But how many of us miss the little bridesmaid verse that follows?
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 NIVUK
This verse states that we are God’s good handiwork – very good, according to Genesis 1:31 – that has been made to do good works that God had prepared for us. In other words, God creates the opportunities; we make the most of them (Ephesians 5:16; cf. Colossians 4:5).
The Ephesian church was commended for doing exactly that – for obeying, for responding to God’s call and for taking those opportunities to do good works.
As part of this, they also repudiated those who did evil.
We don’t know too much about the Nicolaitans from the Bible. And what we know about them from church history is often contradictory, depending on which writer you read. However, what we can glean from them is that they used (or possibly abused) the name of one of the first deacons who was appointed the same time as Stephen (Acts 6:5). This Nicolas was a convert to Judaism from Antioch, where Christianity was later to become strong.
The historians who write about this Nicolatian sect are united in one thing: they were a highly sexually promiscuous sect who saw no harm in sex and prostitution being used in worship. In other words, they had imported serious immorality from the pagan temples of the ancient world into the church.
Right from its very foundation, there were rules against this in Jewish law (Deuteronomy 23:17). There was even a ban on anyone using the proceeds of shrine prostitution as part of their religious duties (Deuteronomy 23:18).
So such sexual immorality was deeply offensive to the Jews. This is why the first Gentile Christians were only asked to meet two requirements: to refrain from eating the blood of strangled animals and from sexual immorality (Acts 15:20, 29).
What we have here is an Ephesian church that is fully prepared to stand out and be different by banning those who have compromised with worldly attitudes from taking part in their fellowship. So they not only do good, but they absolutely do not condone those who abuse the name of Christ to do bad.
Nothing wrong there at all.
Secondly, we see their hard work.
In fact, the Greek word goes even further. We could equally translate this word as ‘toil’. Literally, it means ‘to beat one’s breast with sorrow’ – like the pictures we often see at Middle Eastern funerals.
So, while the good deeds refers to industry and activity that has a positive result, hard work refers to times when our work is difficult, perhaps even unbearable. It refers to those days when we feel the sting of the Fall: when we battle metaphorical thorns and thistles (Genesis 3:18); when we feel that the sky above us is bronze and the land beneath us iron (Deuteronomy 28:23). The idea here is that the Ephesians have kept going, even when they don’t seem to be making much headway and the going is tough, because they believe this promise:
Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15:58 NIVUK
Again, nothing wrong here.
We also see their perseverance.
Perseverance is patience with muscle.
And the Ephesian church certainly had tough events through which they were required to persevere:
Jews who publicly maligned Paul’s teaching (Acts 19:9)
Priestly sons who tried to counterfeit it (Acts 19:14-16)
A riot instigated by jealous pagans (Acts 19:23-41)
And that was just the beginning. Revelation 2:3 indicates that their suffering didn’t just come from hard work – it also came from active persecution. But they did not grow weary, weak or faint. They kept going.
Nothing wrong here.
But yet it wasn’t enough.
All because of something they were doing wrong.
They had forsaken their first love.
And the language here is dramatic. The Greek word for ‘forsaken’ is also useful in 1 Corinthians 7:11-13 to describe a man leaving his wife and divorcing her.
It can also mean ‘to neglect’.
These are tough, harsh words.
The word for ‘first’, as in English, can refer to a temporal position (i.e. first in a race), but also first in priority or rank. In other words, the Ephesians had neglected their first love – the love from which all other loves flow.
But what is that love?
‘The most important one,’ answered Jesus, ‘is this: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
Mark 12:29-30 NIVUK
This word really ought to chill us to the bone. The Ephesian church had so much going for it, yet the Lord threatened to remove their church from its place for one startling reason: their love for God had grown cold. And with that love for God, their other loves for others and for self would have inevitably suffered.
The Ephesian church, for all that it had in its favour, was a church that has forgotten to love.
This is an entirely possible state of affairs. Do we not remember Paul’s purple prose in 1 Corinthians 13?
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NIVUK
A church that forgets to love carries out its every ministry in vain. Love is the first commandment. Love is the new commandment. Love is fulfilment of the law.
We are not commanded to hold our services a certain way. We are not commanded to sing certain songs. We are not commanded to have a certain church structure.
But we are commanded to love. Woe betide us if we do not:
‘A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’
John 13:34-35 NIVUK
Over the last few years there has been a lot of debate of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman.
But there is zero debate over what makes a Christian a Christian and a church a church.
It’s love. That’s it. Nothing else. Love for God. Love for our fellow man. Love for ourselves.
If we miss that, we don’t just risk our church being removed from its place, but we also risk not even being recognised as Christians.
So how can we avoid this?
After seeing what the Ephesian church did right and what they did wrong, we will now see how they should fix it.
They should repent:
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.
Revelation 2:5 NIVUK
The Ephesians were to take three simple steps:
Consider how far they had fallen. To do this we have to see where we once were, where we are now, and the distance between them. This calls for us to recognise that things were much better when we truly loved God, others and ourselves.
Repent. In other words, turn their backs on where they are now. Disregard it. Look the other way. Do an about-face.
Do the things they did at first. This reminds me of Peter. Jesus called him as a disciple using a miraculous catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11). Peter failed His Lord. He denied Jesus. But Jesus called him back using a similar miraculous catch of fish on the same lake (John 21:1-6). How do we get back the same love we had before? By doing the same things we did for God before, with the same energy and desire and vigour.
The Ephesian church is a parable – and a quite scary one at that. You see, if you go to the city of Ephesus today, you will find that it is now a ruin. You will see that, although Christians often visit the city, there is no active church there.
The lampstand was uprooted from its place?
And why?
Amidst all the things for which they could be commended – their deeds, hard work and perseverance – even their pristine theological orthodoxy – they forgot to obey the new and greatest commandment.
They forgot to love.
There is a missionary in our church who married a Japanese man and went out there to serve God. When she first arrived, she spoke to a more experienced missionary and asked if she could pass on any tips or advice. She was hoping for some evangelistic trick, some way to get under the skin and straight to the heart of these inscrutable Japanese people with their difficult language.
The more experienced missionary gave her two words of advice: ‘Love them.’
That’s it. That will always be enough.
Do you want your fellow church attenders to be better Christians? Love them.
Do you want the kids in your church to be better behaved? Love them.
Do you want your pastor to preach better sermons? Love him.
Do you want your church leaders to take better decisions? Love them.
Do you want to follow Christ more closely? Love them.
Do you want your family, friends, colleagues and neighbours to come to Christ? Love them.
Love them.
The endgame for the church is to love. Because love is the fulfilment of the law. Because love is the embodiment of who God is.
Because love is the only way to obey.
So love them.
Because by loving them, we become who we are meant to be.
Questions
Is there anything wrong with the three things the Ephesian church got right?
What danger is there in seeking to do these things but not loving?
Is it possible to love God without loving our neighbours and ourselves?
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