“I have this against you, that you have lost your first love.” Rev. 2: 4
The church in Ephesus, with an estimated 50,000 members at one time, maintained sound doctrine and fought to expose and fight against heresy and all other sorts of evil. That was its focus. That had become its duty.
That was Jesus’ appraisal of the church’s spiritual condition. And though He commended the church for its hard work, patience, and well-intentioned actions, something was still wrong. The church had fallen away from its first love.
Today there are churches that resemble the Ephesus church. They are churches that are set on finding fault and criticizing others as a main responsibility; so much so, that they have become a cold, insensitive, legalistic environment that relishes the idea of imposing discipline. They tell themselves that they’re doing God’s work.
But obviously that isn’t the way that God sees it, for I’m reminded of Jesus telling the Pharisees that, yes, it is good to tithe and perform other duties. But one shouldn’t overlook the weightier matters: justice, mercy, the love of God (Matthew 23: 23; Luke 11: 42).
That’s what Jesus has against some of today’s churches. The love first experienced with Him is gone. The joy of being in a one-on-one relationship with the Lord and the desire to express His patience, mercy, and forgiveness has fallen to the wayside. The enthusiasm of that first love, which motivated all the works that followed, particularly evangelism, is replaced with a love that’s self-centered instead of Christ-centered. When that happens, out goes whatever affection there used to be for fellow Christians and for saving the souls of unbelievers. The religion that’s left is no longer based on the gospel.
Jesus’ counsel to every generation of Christians in this situation is to don’t let go of the happy and peaceful memory of being born again. He says to turn around from the present and return to the first works: sharing testimony, daily bible reading/study, scripture memorization, sharing others’ burdens, etc. Otherwise, we will no longer be considered and used as a lampstand (witness) for the Lord (Rev. 2: 5).
Listen to Jesus through the Spirit. The way to recapture the first love is by doing the first works. For love is more than a feeling. Love is action. How important is it to have our works motivated by love? God says through 1 Corinthians 13: 3 that if we don’t have love, whatever we do is of no profit to us.
By the way, corporately, Ephesus’ first love was faithfulness in spreading the purity and simplicity of the gospel. That’s why some scholars symbolically note Ephesus as representing the whole of the Christian church during the 1st century, in which there was rapid growth until a decline in the last decade.