but a persistent vigilance.
The church in Ephesus has remained faithful to sound doctrine. Their problem was that they had forsaken the heart part of their relationship. Jesus had commended them for their endurance to the truth and their stance against false teaching and false prophesy, but his complaint against them was that they had forsaken their first love. What was their first love? Jesus spoke of two commandments: vertical love for God and horizontal love for one another. Had they grown cold in their commitment to loving God and loving one another in their stressing of the truth? ἀφῆκες (aphekes) has the idea of forsaking, not just forgetting. They had forsaken their mission and the highest command of Jesus.
There are quite a few perspectives of what this first love actually was. Beale believes that “lost their first love” means that they had forsaken their witness to the world.87 Thomas thinks that first love is primarily referencing Jesus. Love has an important place in Johannine literature (see John 13:34–35). The first work is love for one another, and this is reflective of our love for Jesus.88 Mounce believes that the losing of their first love refers mainly to their love for one another.89 Thomas is on the right track. Loss of love was caused by their struggle with false teachers and their hatred of heretical teachings, which led to harsh attitudes toward one another. This led to a lessoning of love among the brothers. We cannot separate a love for Jesus and a love for the brothers. This is clear from 1 John. If we say we love Jesus and do not love our brothers, we are lying. So, a loss of first love would include both a loss of love for the brothers as well as a loss of love for Christ. They go together. They had become like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son, doing the right things out of duty, but not from a motivation of love.
Christianity is not just a matter of the mind, it is a matter of the heart, of the affections. The Ephesian church was great about their commitment to doctrinal truth, but they were lacking in their commitment to genuine love. The command from Jesus is to “remember.” Remember what? Remember the place from where they had fallen. They were also to repent from this forsaking of their first love and do the works they did at first. They must continue to persevere in the truth, but without forsaking the love of Christ. “Remember” is in the present imperative, which stands in contrast with “repent” in the aorist imperative. They must keep calling to mind the love from which they had fallen, and then make a clean break from that attitude.90
Jesus’ threat is serious. He threatened that if they did not repent, he would come and remove the lampstand from its place, that is, the light and presence of the Holy Spirit would be taken away. The glory would be removed just as the glory of God left the temple in the days of Ezekiel. Aune reiterates, this is “nothing less than a threat to obliterate the Ephesian congregation as an empirical Christian community.”91 Is this an imminent threat or an eschatological threat? I believe it should be both/and, but it was more of an imminent threat given the presence of Jesus among the churches, walking among the lampstands.
How is our commitment to genuine love both in the church and out of it? Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in right doctrine and protecting our interests as a church body, that we forget that not only are we supposed to be ministering and loving one another, but also those outside the church. This begins with a genuine love for Jesus, not only a doctrinal love, but a love that impacts our actions, a love that is real and relational. Christianity is not just a set of dos and don’ts or a series of rituals and creeds. Christianity, as the name suggests, is at the core about a relationship with Christ.
There are too many people who can quote Bible verses and give out statements of faith, but who have no love or compassion in their lives. One theologian has said (I don’t remember who), “The glum, sour faces of many Christians . . . They give the impression that, instead of coming from the Father’s joyful banquet, they have just come from the Sheriff who has auctioned off their sins and now are sorry they can’t get them back again.” In Philemon, Paul reminds us that our good doctrine of Jesus can actually be encouraged by our right love for others. He says to Philemon, “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ” (Philemon 4–6). The love we have for one another and for the world will instruct our understanding of Jesus.
Without love, a congregation ceases to be the church, and so Jesus warned against the removal of the lampstand. I’m going to close you down if you don’t start loving me and loving one another, he’s saying. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, there’s a place called Morris Antique Mall. Nothing on the inside distinguishes this antique store from dozens like it in Hot Springs. There is a musty smell and dusty relics of years gone by. But if you look closely at the outside of the Morris Antique Mall, you’ll see something that makes it distinct: before it was an antique store, it was a church building. Like the church that became the Morris Antique Mall is no longer there, neither is the congregation in Ephesus.
Jesus shifted the rebuke back to a closing word of encouragement for this congregation. The opening phrase of verse 6, ἀλλὰ τοῦτο ἔχεις (alla touto ekseis), is a way of saying, “But this you have that you are doing well.” The Ephesian church could not tolerate the works of the Nicolaitans. They hated their works, just as Jesus did. The Nicolaitans allowed for compromise and went beyond what was allowed in the apostolic letter to the Gentile churches from Acts 15:29. They taught that some degree of pagan temple participation was acceptable, even compromising with the prohibition of burning incense to the image of the emperor.92
What would Jesus say of the modern church concerning moral purity? Are we not taking part in the practices of groups similar to the Nicolaitans? We would be quick to say that we have nothing to do with those kinds of groups. But what of the world have we allowed to creep into our homes and into our churches? If there is, at times, no statistical difference between the people outside of the church and the people inside of the church in regards to ethical standards and moral purity, that speaks a lot to our moral condition and how much we have allowed ourselves to offer sacrifices at our modern-day altars of the emperor, the materialism and self-absorption and obsession with achievement.
Our problem in evangelical churches is not so much that we don’t teach the right things (though this is becoming an increasingly disturbing issue), but that we don’t live out that which we teach. Parents must be willing to take strong stands on these issues. And their children must be willing to accept them. We must remember that Jesus is the one who walks among us. He holds his churches in his right hand. He knows our deeds. We must, therefore, put off the practices of the Nicolaitans of our generation and refuse to be influenced by them. Jesus hates their deeds. We must also hate their deeds.
In our churches today, there must be a combination of doctrine, love, and purity. Only these three combined will make an impact in our world. People will not be able to call into question our message, because the purity of our lives will prove our message is true. But our message needs to be acted out in love. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another.” 2 Corinthians 5:14 says, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died.” If there is no doctrine but love and purity, you come across as a liberal philanthropist who believes that many roads lead to God and thus denies the glory that is only due Jesus (see 1:9–20).
If there is no love, but doctrine and purity, like in the Ephesian church, you come across as cold and uncompassionate with no heart relationship with God. There are many religious people in the world (like ascetics) who
