The Church That Lost Its Love (Revelation 2:1-7)

Big Idea: The sign of a faithful church is enduring love for Jesus.

I don’t know if I have a favorite church in the Bible, but if I did, it would probably be the church in Ephesus.

Let me tell you what I like about it.

Here’s what we know about the church in Ephesus. Ephesus was the fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire. When John wrote Revelation, the population would have been about 225,000. It was an urban center, a world-class city.

It was a major financial center, and home to the Pan-Ionian games. It had a temple to the goddess Artemis, considered one of the seven wonders of the world. It had an amphitheater that could hold more people than the Air Canada Centre. It was a center of business, politics, and religion. It was one of the most important cities in the eastern Mediterranean. It’s just the kind of city I would have loved.

That's the city, but what about the church? The church was founded by the apostle Paul (Acts 18:19). His coworkers Priscilla and Aquila helped the church grow. It was such an important church that Paul returned there and spent another two and a half years (Acts 19:1-10). Paul spent more time there than in any other church.

And then Paul left his spiritual son Timothy to lead the church. Church tradition says that Timothy continued to pastor there until he was murdered by the Romans. Then, according to tradition, the apostle John took over, the same John who wrote the book of Revelation. It’s here, according to tradition, that he wrote the Gospel of John. Tradition also says that John brought Mary, the mother of Jesus, with him. It became the center of the entire Christian movement.

Darrell Johnson says:

Can you imagine what it would have been like to worship on Christmas Eve with Mary in the congregation?
What a church! Founded by the apostle Paul, nurtured by Priscilla and Aquila and Timothy, pastored by the apostle John, and home to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I would have loved this church!

And out of all the churches, it’s this one that Jesus addresses first.

Letters to the Churches

We’ve just begun a series on Revelation that is going to take us right to next May. Revelation is a lot of things. One of them is that it is a letter, a letter to a group of churches. Jesus has a message for the church, and he addresses seven churches in particular.

Why these seven? There were more churches around than just these seven. He refers to them as representative churches. We’ve already seen that John uses the number seven a lot. Seven is the number of completeness. In addressing these seven churches, he is addressing the complete church. “It turns out that the seven churches of Asia embody every major issue with which the church has struggled in every age in every cultural setting” (Johnson).

The seven letters are going to follow a similar pattern. Jesus has a message for his church, and it’s important that we listen.

Verse 1 says, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write…” We have to wrestle with what this means. Jesus has already mentioned the angels of the seven churches in the previous verse (1:20). Who are these angels? We don’t know for sure. Angel can mean messenger, so some think that Revelation is talking about the pastors, who would have been the main messengers in the church. But every other time angel is mentioned in Revelation, it’s talking about an actual angel. The inference: it seems that each of the seven churches has an angel assigned to it. Again, Revelation peels back the curtain and shows us what is really going on, including that angels are actively involved in the life of the church. There’s more going on than meets the eye.

Pay attention to who is speaking to the church. “The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (2:1). Jesus holds the church. The church is under his care; he will not let them go. Not only that, but he walks among the churches. He knows us intimately. Jesus is actively engaged with his churches. He knows us, both our successes and our struggles. He doesn’t stand apart from us; he stands among us.

What a comfort to know that our Lord stands among his churches. Jesus puts angels over his churches. Even better, Jesus stands among his churches. He’s actively involved with us. He knows and cares for you, GFC East.

Commendations

Jesus has some commendations for the church in Ephesus. Specifically, he has four:

• “I know your works, your toil” (2:2) — They’re an active church. This is a church that is busy with activity. They’re not lazy. Toil has the idea of strenuous and exhausting labor. This is a church that works hard.
• “and your patient endurance” (2:2) — This is a church that has persevered through hard times. They’ve been knocked down, but they keep going. They haven’t given up in the face of adversity.
• “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” (2:2) — This is a church with doctrinal discernment. They had encountered false teachers and rejected them. In verse 6, he mentions the Nicolaitans, a sect that seemed to promote false teaching. The Ephesian church knew how to reject false teaching.
• “I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary” (2:3) — They didn’t just start out strongly. They had been going now for forty years through some hard times, and they hadn’t yet faltered.

This was a good church. As John Stott describes them, they were “energetic in their service, patient in their suffering, orthodox in their faith.” What could possibly be wrong with a church like that? Yet, “the Lord looks with a piercing eye of flame and discovers a great flaw.”

Concern

Here’s the flaw that Jesus identifies: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (2:4).

This church had everything going for them except for the most important thing. This was such a serious problem that it threatened the very existence of the church. Verse 5 says, “If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” This is a potentially fatal condition for a church. The church that had been used to bring light into a dark place might be cast into darkness themselves.

Jesus says that, over the years, they had abandoned the enthusiastic, authentic love for Christ that they had. A subtle but serious erosion had taken place. As Al Martin says, “Their heads were correct in their judgments, their hands were busy in service, but their hearts had become cold, lacking true affection.” They were all hands and head, but no heart. They had the veneer of busy outward activity that masked the decline that had taken place internally. Perhaps few would have noticed, but Jesus did, and he expressed serious concern.

It is a fact that our affections in any relationship seem to cool over time. If you are a follower of Jesus, at some point you became aware of your sin and your guilt before a holy God. You also became aware of what Jesus did to save you from your sins. If you’re like me, you were overwhelmed when you realized all that Jesus had done for you.

At some point, if you came to Jesus, you were earnest. “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” (Spurgeon). The songs we sing were real to you; you could hardly believe as you came to the Lord’s Supper what Jesus had done for you.

It’s like what God said through the prophet Jeremiah: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride…” (Jeremiah 2:2).

But now, as Spurgeon puts it:

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 … whenever you heard the Word, it was all precious to you. Now you can grumble at the minister…
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.

There was a time that your love burned hot for the Lord. Sadly, though, we can remain doctrinally pure and busy and slowly lose our affection for God. One of our greatest dangers is that we slowly lose our love for God and not even notice. It’s a danger that all of us face. When this happens, it’s a spiritually dangerous condition, and Jesus advises us that corrective action is needed.

The Prescription and Promise

What’s the corrective action? Three things in verse 5: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.”

• Remember — Reflect on what you have lost. Recognize your condition. Think back to the early days. Remember the love that you once had for Jesus Christ, and look in comparison at the present situation. Maybe those memories will re-inspire you to get to that point again and recover what you’ve lost. Begin with acknowledging the truth: that you’re not where you used to be.
• Repent — The word repent in verse 5 means to change your course. It suggests a continuing attitude of changing your ways. Remember the relationship you once had, and now begin to think differently about your relationship with Jesus Christ. Change your schedules, habits, and commitments. And do it on an ongoing basis, not just once.
• Do the works you did at first — Do the things that restore and build that love relationship with God. Sometimes our actions come before our feelings. For a couple who has fallen out of love, that means do what you did when you first fell in love. Buy gifts for each other, go on dates. For a believer who has lost his or her love with God, do the things that will rekindle that love. Worship with God’s people. Get in his word. Pray. Serve. Establish a regimen that will keep you in that first-love relationship with Christ.

Here’s the promise to the church if they take these actions: “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (2:7). The tree of life represents God’s provision for our deepest needs. It’s a theme that began in the Garden of Eden, where the tree of life provides healing and life forever to anyone who eats from it. We lost access to the tree of life because of sin, but God is restoring it to us in the new creation.

When we rekindle our love for God, we’re promised that we will one day get to eat from the tree. We will experience ultimate deliverance, restoration, healing, and life on that day.

What’s the call to us? “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7). Jesus wants us to heed this message, examine our hearts, and to take corrective action if necessary. The sign of a faithful church is enduring love for Jesus.

We can do everything right as a church, but if we lose our love for Jesus, nothing else matters. Even great accomplishments without love amount to nothing. We can have great worship services, excellent theology, great ministries, solid preaching, and yet fall short of what God wants from us. The greatest commandment is to love God with our entire being (Matthew 22:36-40). Nothing matters more.

And when we see how much Jesus has loved us, and that he is here right now standing among his churches, holding us even now, how could we not rekindle our love for Jesus?