/ not grown weary. This sounds very much like John is writing to a church under siege, and while it is common for us at our distance to think of these believers as very near the source, as it were, in fact they are most likely at least a full generation, if not two, removed from the first believers in this part of the Roman Empire. That is, if these churches were founded in the 50s, as seems most likely, their present membership would be composed of only a few who were there from their beginnings. Thus it is not difficult for persons in their seventies to hear these words in light of their many years of service to our Lord, who have “stayed with the stuff” as it were and have “not grown weary,” even though there might have been every good reason for them to have done so.
Given this kind of commendation, one is then not quite prepared for the critique and call for repentance that follow, a critique that is easy enough to understand in terms of its meaning as such (the love you had at first), but is less so in terms of the object of their love. Was John referring to their love for Christ, or for one another and others? Although the scholarly house is rather evenly divided on this matter, one wonders whether John was not purposefully ambiguous, considering that in his understanding of things (in the Gospel and First John) love for Christ and love for his people are so closely interrelated. Although there are no specifics as to how this failure might have expressed itself in Ephesus, the clue is most likely to be found in the following admonition that they repent and do the things you did at first. The reason this failure calls for repentance is found in John’s Gospel: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (13:35). Their failure at this key point means that the gospel as good news for sinners can no longer be heard for the good news that it is. Thus the call for repentance, and the threat that follows.
The significance of this failure in terms of Johannine Christianity4 is to be found in the admonition, consider how far you have fallen!, which is followed by a warning that at the same time keeps the imagery intact: If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. This particular warning has created no end of trouble for later believers, who for the most part perceive the punishment to far exceed the crime. But that says more about us than it does about the author of the Johannine literature, since he perceived the whole of the Christian faith to be a matter of experiencing God’s love for us through Christ and then returning that love to him by loving others. From his perspective, to fail at this point is to fail exceedingly—if not altogether—which is why for him the “punishment” is precisely in keeping with the “crime.” And “love” for John is not simply a matter of attitude toward others; the only love worthy of the name from his perspective lies in their doing the things you did at first. Thus the only correct response to their current failure is to “repent.”
The tension John feels for this church, a church with which tradition tells us he had a long and enduring relationship, is to be found in a second word of praise (a phenomenon unique to this letter). Thus, as though loathe to let the last word to them be one of censure and warning, he adds, But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. With this word our own later understanding of the passage begins to grow dim, since apart from the further reference to them in 2:15 (regarding Pergamum) there is no other known mention of the “Nicolaitans” in ancient literature. This leaves room, of course, for a large number of guesses; but the only one that borders on certainty is that these people were followers of a man named Nicolaus. But who he was, and what he taught, simply cannot be known from our distance, and speculation here is ultimately useless. What we know for sure is that Christ “hates” their “practices” (v. 6) and their “teaching” (2:15), which for John are always related realities.
This second word of praise for the Ephesian church is then followed by the admonition, which is repeated in identical form at the end of each of the seven letters: Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Two matters need to be noted. First, whether intentionally so or not, John’s Trinitarian understanding of God emerges here as assumption and without reflection. The lead-in to these letters at the end of chapter 1 makes it clear that the living Christ is the one who is speaking these words to the churches, words which God the Father gave him (1:1); now we learn that Christ’s way of doing so is by means of the Spirit. Nothing profound is intended by this; almost certainly it simply betrays John’s theological perspective without his trying to do so. Second, and to repeat an obvious point made at the outset, here is the further evidence that John intends each of the churches to hear what the living Christ by his Spirit has to say to each of the others.
John concludes each of these letters with a promise that is addressed to those who are victorious,5 language that assumes that at least one way of perceiving Christian life is that of continuous warfare, presumably in the ultimate battle of life against Satan and his minions. The promise in this first instance takes the reader back, apparently deliberately, to the beginning point of all human life—the garden of Eden. Thus the first promise to the “victors” in the book serves along with the imagery in 22:26 to bookend the entire narrative of John’s Apocalypse, and in the latter occurrence to bookend the entire Christian Bible. Thus what Adam and Eve were forbidden to do because of their failure to obey, God’s redeemed people will experience as a restored Eden, where they are now allowed to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. It is difficult to imagine a more striking and powerful imagery than this one, with which John sets the tone for what he understood as the ultimate concern of his Revelation. And again, even though this is addressed to the believers in Ephesus, by the very nature of the book it is equally intended for the others who were to read it.
To the Church in Smyrna (2:8–11)
8“To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:
These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. 9I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.
11Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Those who are victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.
John’s second letter is directed to the church in Smyrna, a city about fifty miles north of Ephesus at the head of a deep gulf, and therefore with an excellent harbor. In wealth, commercial importance, and splendor, it was one of the foremost cities of Asia Minor. A temple in honor of the emperor Tiberius had been granted the city in 20 CE; hence it had also become a leading site for emperor worship. The origin of the church itself is unknown, but is probably related to Paul’s mission to Ephesus on one of his several stays there. The church in Smyrna is better known to us in the years just beyond John’s time, through the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. On his way to Rome for martyrdom Ignatius had stopped for a short stay in Smyrna, where he also wrote four of his seven preserved letters. The letter he wrote back to the church in Smyrna and to Polycarp, its “bishop,”7 when he traveled further north to Troas, on the same western end of Anatolia (present-day Turkey), serves as the basic source of what little later information we have.
Turning to the present text, as with each of the letters, this one begins with these are the words of him (Christ), who in this case is described by a combination of two phrases taken from the Lord’s own words in 1:17–18. He is the First and the Last, which as noted regarding this phrase in 1:17, is language borrowed from Yahweh’s self-identification in Isaiah 44:6. Thus Christ is presented first of all as the Eternal One, to which is added the most significant event of his incarnation—who died and came to life again. The significance of these appellations for this church can be found in the content of the
