Sunday
Sunday
The Letter to Ephesus—Love
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
Revelation 2:4
Jesus’s first letter was addressed to Ephesus. It was the capital of the Roman province of Asia, and its citizens liked to call it their metropolis. It was also a prosperous business center and the proud guardian of the temple to Diana, which was one of the seven wonders of the world.
Moreover, the church in Ephesus had much to commend it. Jesus singled out three virtues for special mention, namely their hard work, their endurance of hardships, and their theological discernment, coupled with an unwillingness to tolerate evil or error. A few years later, at the beginning of the second century, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to Rome to be executed as a Christian, wrote to the Ephesians in very complimentary terms: “You all live according to truth, and no heresy has a home among you; indeed you do not so much as listen to anyone if they speak of anything except concerning Jesus Christ and his truth.”
Nevertheless, although the Ephesian church appeared to be a model church, Jesus had a complaint to register: “You have forsaken your first love.” All the Ephesians’ virtues did not compensate for this lack. It was no doubt at the time of their conversion that their love for him had been ardent and fresh, but now the fires had died down. One remembers Yahweh’s complaint to Jeremiah about Jerusalem: “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me” (Jer. 2:2). As with Jerusalem so with Ephesus, the heavenly bridegroom sought to woo his bride back to the first ecstasy of her love: “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (Rev. 2:5). Without love everything is nothing.
For further reading: Revelation 2:1–7