Revelation: The part I understand

I don't understand a whole lot from the book of Revelations, I must admit, but I understand the first three chapters. I love the first three chapters of Revelations. Seven different churches, seven different situations. From each one there is something to learn. Five have serious issues that need to be addressed. One is suffering persecution. And one is the example we should follow.

In this blog I want to talk about the church in Ephesus. This is the first church that is mentioned out of all the churches, which means that it is the one the apostle John had on the forefront of his thoughts when he was thinking about the churches and what they needed to hear. After the introduction, the letter to the church of Ephesus starts likes this:

"I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars;"

This was a church that held fast to truth. They tested false doctrine and did not allow it in their midst. This means that the members of the church in Ephesus knew the scripture and the gospel well. They could recognize false teaching, and they had the courage to push it away and not fall for sweet sounding words. This was also a church that labored and that did good works. The passage goes on to say:

"And you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name's sake, and have not become weary."

This church had gone through some hard times it seems to indicate, but they had persevered. In Christ's name they labored, and they did not grow weary of their labor. That is a far cry from the burned-out church workers and pastors that populate so many of our churches today. Weary is an accurate description of many churches today, but the church of Ephesus was not weary.

"Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love."

Wait, what?!?! Isn't this the church we are supposed to emulate? These people were zealous for truth, hard-working, laboring for Christ, patient. How could they be all that and yet John still find fault with them? The answer is simple really: they had forgotten the reason for why they did what they did. These people went through the motions, they did all the right things. I believe that their motives were pure but their eyes were blind. They got so caught up in doing things for God that they lost their focus. They left their first love.

The first love of any Christian is Christ and the Gospel. How could it not be so? We were lost, but now we're found. We were dead in sin and had no way of escape, but Christ broke through our chains and paid the price for our sin with His death on calvary. Then He defeated death, the punishment for our sin, by rising from the day and ascending into heaven, where He reigns as king at the right hand of God. The gospel is glorious, is it not? It has to be our first love because without it, there would be no love at all. The gospel is where we must start, but it is also the place we must stay.

Christians have a tendency to move on from the gospel. I am reading a book called "Counsel from the Cross" for the second time because it is that good, and the authors emphasize this quite a bit. We think we understand the gospel, and so we move on to other things. We start finding the passages that talk about how Christians should live their lives, and start applying those verses to our lives. We start developing theologies and opinions based on what we learn through scripture. But in the midst of all that, the tendency is to do exactly what the churh at Ephesus did. We, too, can leave our first love. And, I contend, we do it quite often.

We stop being amazed by the cross. We hear it so often, we stop hearing it. Why are we astonished at the church in Ephesus when we do the exact same thing all the time? We do the right things. We fight false doctrine. We persevere. But we do it without the gospel in mind. My friends, we have left our first love, too. This is why I believe John put the letter to the church in Ephesus first: what he had to say to them applied to all of the other churches. The lukewarm church? Where was their first love? The corrupt church? They needed to go back to the gospel.

What I want to challenge you with is this: Have you left your first love? Are you going through the motions but have long ago forgotten why? I suggest you look back to the cross and fall in love again.