Revelation 2

¹ “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. ² “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, 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. ³ I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. ⁴ But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. ⁵ Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. ⁶ Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. ⁷ He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’

One of the greatest descriptions of being in love that I have ever read is Leo Tolstoy’s description of Levin after Kitty, who he loves, expresses her love for him in Anna Kerinina. Listen to how this sensation of being in love affects Levin:

            All that night and morning Levin lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything.  He was convinced he could fly upwards or lift the corner of the house, if need be.[1]

Does that sound familiar to you? Do you recall the first feelings of the love you realized existed between you and another? Do you remember its effect on you?

Now I ask you: how do we go from that kind of thing to sitting in a restaurant across a table from our spouses barely speaking for the better part of an hour? How do some couples go from finding one another’s quirks charming and endearing to wanting to murder the other over the cap not being put back on the toothpaste? How do we go over genuine over-the-top concern at the slightest cough from our beloved in the first blushes of love to “Could you please take some Nyquil or something, I’m trying to sleep?!”

How do we forget our first love?

I do not know, but I know this: if love is not cultivated it is forgotten.

As it goes with our love for one another, so it goes with our love for God.

The seven letters of Revelation are written to seven churches in Asia Minor and, indeed, to the church throughout space and time. They are written to us. The first is to the church of Ephesus, an extremely important city in the ancient world of which we have some amazingly well-preserved ruins today. It was a prosperous and large city with a temple to the goddess Artemis that was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. Artemis loomed large in Ephesus, as historian Holly Beers writes:

In Greek mythology Artemis and her brother, Apollo, are born to Zeus and Leto. Artemis serves as her mother’s midwife in this origin story, delivering her twin brother, Apollo. The Ephesians appropriated this myth and transferred its geographical location to a grove outside their city, a move that served to support their special relationship with Artemis…During the period of the New Testament, the historical evidence points to the likelihood of Ephesians hosting two major festivals in her honor every year. One was a celebration of her birth, complete with music, dancers, sacrifices, feasts, and priests acting out the role of demonic protectors of Artemis during her birth, frightening away the goddess Hera. The second was the Artemisia, which likely included competitions in music, theater, and athletics. There is also some evidence for female priestesses as officials of her temple.

Along with being associated with a general focus on health and safety (as her name was often understood to communicate those values), Artemis was acclaimed as greatest, holiest, and most manifest along with the titles “Queen of the Cosmos,” “Lady” (female version of “Lord”), and “Savior.” She was a specific kind of savior to the many women who petitioned her for safety in childbirth. She was the patron goddess of Ephesus, and her temple, the Artemision, was built outside the wall, a little over a mile from the city center. The Artemision was famous in antiquity, known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world for its size and grandeur. It measured approximately 140 by 75 yards (four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens) and included 127 columns that stood over 60 feet high. The works of many of the greatest sculptors and painters of the day decorated it, and because of its financial deposits—assets that included land and water—and ability to lend money, it functioned at the center of the city’s economic life.[2]

In addition to this, there was also in Ephesus a temple to Domitian, the Emperor under whom John was exiled to Patmos and under whom the church of Ephesus was suffering. It was to this church in this socio-politico-religio-context that the words of Christ in Revelation 2 come.

The Divine Encouragement: Good Deeds, Endurance, Right Doctrine

In Revelation 2:1-7 the Lord offers the church (1) encouragement, (2) judgement, and (3) a solution. We begin with the divine encouragement.

¹ “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. ² “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, 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. ³ I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.

⁶ Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

The Lord Jesus knows the condition of His church. He knows this because He “holds the seven stars in his right hand” and He “walks among the seven golden lampstands” which are the churches. He speaks from authority and knowledge. And, positively, Jesus commends the church of Ephesus for their good deeds, for their endurance, and for their right doctrine.

Good Deeds

Jesus describes the good deeds of the Ephesian Christians with two words.

¹ “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. ² “‘I know your works, your toil…

“Your works, your toil…”

These were obedient, hard working, followers of Jesus. There is no hint here of the kind of immorality occurring within or being tolerated by the Ephesians as it was, in contrast, by the Corinthians. No, they are good people doing good things.

Endurance

What is more, they are not wavering in their faith. There in a city with a temple dedicated to the ruler who was threatening them, the church is commended for their endurance.

² “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance…

³ I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.

The words are vivid: “endurance…enduring patiently…bearing up…have not grown weary.” Here are four references to the unwavering nature of the Ephesians’ faith in verses 2-3. They were facing great challenges but they were not giving up.

Quitting was certainly a temptation presented to the Ephesian Christians by the devil. He presents the same to us as well. Jay Adams writes:

In counseling, week after week, I continually encounter one outstanding failure among Christians:  a lack of what the Bible calls “endurance”; they give up.[3]

In this area, the church of Ephesus is a healthy model for us. They were a small island of obedience and faith in the midst of a sea of godlessness and paganism. Yet they held on to the teachings of Jesus!

Right Doctrine

They were also doctrinally sound. This is made clear in two different ways in our text.

² “‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, 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.

In verse 2 they are commended for being able to see through and rightly call out false apostles, men who claimed to be upright in doctrine and in concerned for the church but who were, in fact, wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29). The Ephesian Christians “found them to be false.” What does this have to do with right doctrine? It has to do with right doctrine because only a high commitment to the truthfulness of God’s word and a knowledge of it equips us with the tools of discernment necessary to spot false teachers. And it is the presence of genuine conviction about right doctrine that leads us to call out and reject false teachers. There was no easy-breezy liberalism in the church of Ephesus!

Also, in verse 6:

⁶ Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Here we see the same dynamic at work but the false teachers are given a name: the Nicolaitans. This is a mysterious group about which we do not know a great deal. Grant Osborne writes:

We don’t know much about the Nicolaitans; they are mentioned only here and in 2:14–15, 20–23. The second-century church fathers Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria link them with Nicolaus, one of the seven deacons of Acts 6:5, but there is no known evidence for this. Most modern interpreters associate them with an early form of Gnosticism, a second-century movement in which the “knowledge” (Greek gnosis ) of secret teachings becomes salvation. This is linked also with the heresies opposed in 1–2 Timothy and 1 John. The Nicolaitans’ practices apparently centered on idolatry, including participation in temple rites and trade guild banquets (“food sacrificed to idols” in 2:14, 20), and sexual immorality. Broadly speaking, there were two problems. The first was syncretism: having an accommodating attitude toward paganism and allowing Christians to participate in emperor worship. The second was libertinism: showing freedom from sin by doing what you want on the premise that it doesn’t affect your salvation.[4]

These seem like reasonable deductions: these people were trying to wed the church and her doctrine to the dominant pagan culture with the result that the moral framework of the church was threatened. This kind of mischief was seen, diagnosed, called out, and rejected by the church. It must be so today as well.

We must remain diligent about what we teach and what we do, about our doctrine and our practice. We must not be seduced by nice-sounding ideas that, in reality, behind their masks, gut the church of biblical morality and teaching.

So here we should applaud the church of Ephesus! These are admirable traits! Would that we were more like this.

The Divine Rebuke: Abandonment

Even so, Jesus has a word of rebuke for them, and it is a painful word to hear:

⁴ But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

My goodness! With all that good that we just talked about—good works, endurance, right doctrine—they had yet abandoned or forsaken their first love! Leon Morris writes, “Forsaken (aphēkes) is a strong term; they had completely abandoned their first fine flush of enthusiastic love.”[5]

How can this be? How can we think rightly and act rightly but not love rightly?! Amazingly it can be done. To get at this we need to understand what that “love” was that they had abandoned. Ultimately, of course, all failures in love are failures in our love for God for our love for God animates all other loves. This is why Jesus said we are to (1) love God and (2) love one another in that specific order (Matthew 22:36-40).

But there is some reason to think that the specific form this abandonment of first love had taken in the Ephesian church had to do with their failure to love others and reach others with the gospel as they were supposed to. Oddly enough, the church’s scrupulous care for their internal integrity may paradoxically hint at their failure of outward love, as G.K. Beale writes:

Their focus was on maintaining the inward purity of the church, for which they are commended, so the rebuke must deal with their focus toward the outside world. This is why Christ chooses to introduce Himself in the way He does in v. 1. The mention that He walks among the seven golden lampstands is intended to remind the introverted readers that the primary role in relation to their Lord should be that of a light of witness to the outside world. A passionate love for Christ leads us to love those outside and seek to win them.[6]

There is wisdom here. Beale rightly points to something that should be obvious: the church is symbolized by a lampstand, an instrument that gives light to others. To be sure this church was jealous over the purity of the light they had been given in the gospel, but were they letting this light shine? Notice also how, in Matthew 12, the images of the quality of the church’s love and the fervency of the church’s mission and proclaiming witness are linked:

¹² And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³ But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

If we love God rightly we will reach the world with intention and with passion! Faithful and bold proclamation is not antithetical to guarding sound doctrine. On the contrary, our passion for right doctrine should compel us to proclaim the gospel more boldly because clarity of doctrine should help us understand more keenly just how badly the world needs it!

In other words, it is a great, great tragedy to be a person who (a) prizes sound doctrine and (b) loses a desire to reach the lost for Jesus. If our love for orthodoxy eclipses our love for souls then it reveals that something is truly wrong with our doctrine! The Ephesian church seems to have become a church with its head in the right place but its feet in comfortable slippers.

To love God as we ought is to tell the watching world of their need for Him.

Remember: when you first came to know Jesus you wanted people to know! That first love lit your heart on fire! The thought of hiding your newfound relationship would have been obscene to you back then. Have you grown cold in your first love? Have you abandoned your first love?

The Solution: Remembrance and Repentance

What, then, do we do if we realize we have abandoned our first love? Jesus gives us the solution:

⁵ Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Remember.

Repent.

Remember not only what you used to be but remember why you used to be that way: you were positively caught up and stupefied by the amazing love of Jesus Christ! Back before you started caring so much about the carpet and the temperature and the music and the length of sermons and the myriad things that irritate you, you could handle it all because Christ was so big to you and Christ was so beautiful to you!

Remember!

Remember when the holy fire of God fell on you and the scales dropped from your eyes and you saw it and knew it and took hold of it with trembling fingers!

Remember!

Remember back then when you would lie awake in bed at night and smile and cry at the amazing thought that even in light of all you had done Jesus had come to you and wrapped nail-pierced arms around you!

It is telling that among the things the Holy Spirit does in our lives, Jesus tell us in John 14 that the Spirit has a ministry of remembrance!

²⁵ “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

“I will give you the Spirit who will help you remember!” God says.

Do not forget! Do not forget! Remember!

Dig deep, deeeeeep: back before serving on committees and having religious responsibilities and your knowledge and awareness of church or denominational politics. Remember back before the off-key singing of the guy in the pew next to you bothered you so much. Remember back before you started getting up and getting dressed and going to church because, well, it is Sunday after all! Remember back before you got your feelings hurt or you got offended or you and that other person got your wires cross.

Think! Think back! Concentrate! Do you remember when you could hear the sound of the hammer and nails and hear Jesus saying “Father, forgive them! Forgive them! Forgive her! Forgive him! They know not what they do!”? Do you remember when the cross would stop you in your tracks. Back before you grew cold and distracted and irritable.

Remember how you used to love! Remember how you used to love God and love others! Remember? Remember what that was like?

And suddenly we remember something else: we remember that Jesus built into the church an act of remembrance, a central, physical act to help us not forget. Paul writes of it in 1 Corinthians 11:

²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Ah! Eat this so you will not forget! Eat this so you will keep loving! Eat this “in remembrance of me”!

Yes, drink this so that you will not get distracted. Drink this so that you can see me again through the fog of your countless distractions! Drink this and remember!

And remembering, repent:

⁵ Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Remember and repent…or He will come and remove our lampstand from its place.

Church! Church!! He will come and remove us if we do not love as we ought, if we do not remember, if we do not repent.

Let us come back to our first love.

Let us come back to Jesus.

 

[1] Leo Tolstoy.  Anna Karenina.  (Garden City, NY:  Nelson Doubleday, Inc., na), 366.

[2] Beers, Holly. A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman (A Week in the Life Series) (p. 16). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[3] Jay E. Adams.  Godliness through Discipline.  (Phillipsburg, NJ:  P&R Publishing, 1972), p.18-19.

[4] Osborne, Grant R. Revelation Verse by Verse (Osborne New Testament Commentaries) (Kindle Locations 921-929). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] Morris, Leon L.. Revelation (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries) (Kindle Locations 912-913). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

[6] Beale, G. K.,Campbell, David. Revelation (Kindle Locations 1202-1205). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.