Jesus sees beyond the superficial and sees the “congenital heart defects” of both people and churches. Here, he specifically looks at the church at Ephesus.
Ephesus was a large city, a quarter million people strong, and a popular site for religious tourism because of the Temple of Diana or Artemis, one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. It was a site of refuge for criminals, vs and once been a port city before the harbor silted in.
The church had a large number of high profile leaders. Paul was there for three years, the longest anywhere, along with Timothy, Aquila, Priscilla, Apollos, Tychicus, John – a “Who’s Who” of the early church. The books of 1 and 2 Timothy were written to Timothy while he was pastoring there.
Ephesus also features prominently in the book of Acts. The teaching of Paul began impacting the sale of silver idols, and so a silversmith named Demetrius stirred up the people to riot against the Apostles. All this to say, it was a prominent, important city and church.
The letter to the Ephesians here has the same format as those that follow. It starts with an introduction, describing Jesus in the context of the vision that John has just had. In this case, Jesus uses the vision of stars and lampstands to explicitly remind the church at Ephesus that, no matter how large, prominent and important it was, that they were a part of something even greater and broader.
Next comes evaluation. It starts with praise for the hard work and perseverance, as well as their discernment. Years before, as described in Acts 20, Paul explicitly warned the elders of the church to care for their flock and to protect them from the false teachers that would emerge, even from within their own body. The seem to have taken the warning seriously based on this praise. They have endured patiently and not grown weary. When considering that this church was essentially founded in the midst of a riot, this endurance is no small thing.
But Jesus goes on. They had abandoned, released, let go, even divorced themselves from the “love they had at first.” Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today recently described how this sort of thing emerged in his own life:
It may have been as the result of hearing a sermon, or perhaps reading a book. But I distinctly remember thinking that my Christian life was sorely lacking in the love of God. I didn’t have any affection for or yearning to know and love God. I wasn’t angry with him. I didn’t doubt his existence. I wasn’t wrestling with the problem of evil. I was being a faithful Christian as best I knew how. But it occurred to me that I didn’t feel any love for God…
I was living as a practical atheist, meaning my personal relationship with God did not really affect much inside me. I was at the time managing editor of Christianity Today, so naturally I edited and wrote a lot of things that were Christian to the core. But I realized that if I never prayed again, that I could still be a very good editor at a Christian publication, and a very good church member at my local parish. I knew how to get along with others, to manage staff, to work with my superiors, to work with fellow church members, and to write on Christian spirituality. But prayer wasn’t necessary to do all that. These other matters were all learned skills that had more or less become good habits. My personal relationship with God really didn’t make any difference.
This lack of love itself may have been a result of their dogged opposition to heresy. Did they perhaps get so good at hating what was evil that they forgot to love?
Next, Christ offers counsel – repent, turn, change. There is a threat there, too: if they do not change, their lampstand will be removed.
Then an aside – after calling out their lack of love, they get praised for hating properly. The Nicolaitans were a heresy that said that personal behavior and morality were unimportant. To love well, we must know how and what to hate (note that they hate the works, rather than the people themselves). We must hate threats to our children if we are to love and protect them.
Then it closes with the promise that those who conquer, those who reclaim their first love, they will be restored and eat from the tree of life, a restoration of the cosmic story of Eden.
Some lessons we can take from this. First, love discerns. It seeks the best for others but does so thoughtfully and
Love fades. If it is not kept powered from some other source, like entropy in any system, it will decline. We must go back to the source of love.
Finally, love revives. When we do go back to that source, we can find ourselves revived. Going back to Mark Galli, his prayer was “Lord, help me to want to love you.”
– Sermon Notes, Mahlon Friesen, Seed Church, Lynnwood, WA, May 26, 2019