Lost Love Rebuked
LOST LOVE REBUKED
REVELATION 2:1-7
Have you lost your first love for Christ?
The key phrase in all the seven letters is “I know.” Our knowledge of ourselves is at the best distorted by self-interest, ignorance and prejudice. We see in part and we know in part. Christ’s knowledge is complete, objective and constructive. He rebukes so as to restore.
The church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and later John’s home, had all the makings of an ideal church. It not only did what it should, but continued when the ground was stony and the going hard. It was not influenced by outward appearances, but tested the claims of those who claimed special gifts and position (2:2, “apostles”). But though it had not grown weary in well doing (2:3), the original motives and driving force had gone (2:4). The rendering “abandoned” (2:4) should make us sit up. The KJV “lost” (NIV “forsaken”) may make us think of a very human cooling of ardor, something that is inevitable when love is thought of as mainly or entirely a matter of feelings. But here was the deliberate adoption of a lower standard. The works had ceased to be the outpouring of love and had become essentially legalistic, for the demands of love were proving too costly. Where this happens in a church, it is near spiritual death.
The root of the matter was still there, however, as was seen in their treatment of the Nicolaitans (2:6), ie the followers of one Nicolaus, of whom absolutely nothing is known. Certain popular guesses are best disregarded. That love was there was shown by their hating neither the heretics nor their teaching, but their works. A teaching, however plausible, which produces the wrong results, must be false; if the results are right, its errors must be marginal. Love will always detect the loveless life, even if it is bewildered by the loveless teaching.
“To him who conquers” (2:7): to be counted righteous by faith is only the beginning of a life leading to the victor’s crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8). Eternal life comes through the act of faith, but the rewards through a life of faith. Conquerors know they will be members of the glorified church, the new Jerusalem, where the tree of life is (22:2).
Thought What excuse will I give Christ for failure?