First love

DEVOTION

THE REVELATION

FIRST LOVE

Rev 2:1-7

2:1 "To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

NIV

So we now address the seven letters that are to be written to the seven churches by John as dictated to him by Jesus. Again we must consider if this letter was written strictly to a church that was in the ancient town of Ephesus and if that is the case none of this has any bearing on our lives, yet we are told that we will be blessed if we read all this and hear it or understand it, and take it to heart. So this letter is not just for that church, it is for us. For anyone, including those supposed scholars and theologians who tell us it is absurd to think it has any other meaning then a letter to that historic church are themselves absurd. What we first must see here is that Jesus holds his messengers in his hand and that he walks among his church, his people. This should tell us something to be continuously on guard against supposed men of God which is one the comments made within the letter. When we have the Spirit and his gift of discernment we should be able to tell if a pastor, a messenger of the word of God has actually been sent by Jesus, or if he is there on his own account. All the letters have somewhat the same format. Jesus is telling us the good deeds that we do have, or the good habits, or behaviors that are pleasing to him, and commends us. Then he tells us some area of our life that still requires some work and if we can overcome those shortcomings we have a reward awaiting us. In this example he has informed us that we are doing exactly what he has given us discernment through the Spirit for. We have been able to detect those false teachers, those men of God we are being pastors or evangelists for their own purses, rather than as a calling from God. We have not been duped by these people. We are also being commended because even though we have had some struggles in this life, we have not grown weary, we have not given up on trusting in him, we have not gone back to trusting in our own selves to provide either salvation by doing good works, or for securing our future. We can continued to look to him with perseverance. Yet there is something we need to understand. Have we lost our first love? We surely remember how enthusiastic we were when we first were saved. That moment when all our sins were lifted from our shoulders and we were set free. We remember the miraculous times of worship and praise we felt as we knew deep within our hearts that Jesus is real. We remember all the miracles that happened in our lives, one after another. We remember that absolute trust we had in our Lord Jesus to take care of us. We remember how incredible it was to be drawn out of the darkness of lack of understanding into the light of his understanding. Have we lost all that? Have we replaced it with simply trying to be a “Good Christian”? Have we exchanged our first love, all that enthusiasm with the drudgery of being an intellectual giant in his word? Have we forsaken pure love for Jesus for the doctrines of denominations? Have we fallen from that height of pure excitement about Jesus to the depths of church life? So if we remember how we first lived, how we first loved him with all that enthusiasm and we know how we are now living, lacking somewhat in that enthusiasm then we also know we need to repent and return to our first love for Jesus, keeping it simple, loving him completely, trusting him absolutely for our salvation and for our lives. As a result we will be able to eat from the tree of life in the paradise of God. This is the same tree that was in the garden that Adam and Eve were able to eat from until they ate from that darn tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then they could no longer eat from the tree of life. So here it is, we can have all that knowledge we think we can garner about good and evil, all the study time, all the book learning, all the research, all the degrees we think are needed, but until we come to Jesus simply with all our love and adoration, forsaking all our knowledge, all our trust or pride in our good behavior we will never eat from that tree. But if we overcome all that, we will indeed eat from that tree of life, we will have eternal life simply because we love Jesus we every fiber of our being. Let’s get back to our first love.