Bible Studies for Life
Adjunct Professor of Biblical Perspectives, Samford University
Return to Your First Love
Revelation 2:1–7
About a year ago I sat in the pews at my church’s weekly communion service and I heard a word from God about my relationship with Him. Those who have had similar experiences of hearing the Spirit of God speak in an emphatic way can likely attest that a word from God is sometimes comforting, sometimes confronting. A timely word from the Word of God, a needed word, can christen our eyes with tears of relief.
But sometimes the message we hear is not comforting but discomfiting: “Go and say, ‘you shall be ever hearing, but never understanding,’” and our skin is stained by tears of regret or scorn or fear of the message meant for us and our hearers. But a prophetic word from the Word of God can still comfort, even if its message confronts.
It is, in some sense, a comfort to hear a word from the Lord, regardless of the message, because it is indicative of God’s great love that He speaks to us at all. It is God’s kindness, after all, that leads us to repentance. When John relays his revelation to the church at Ephesus, it is just such a word.
Endurance in faith and adherence to right doctrine are good, but they are not enough. (1–3)
In the Book of Revelation, John is exiled on an island called Patmos (Rev. 1:9–11). John “sees” a word of God given to each of the seven churches. The book of Revelation is apocalyptic literature, and it is set within a culture of persecution in the first century. Apocalyptic literature draws on rich symbolism and numerology and correlates what is happening on earth to battles taking place in heaven. Such literature posits that God will “right” all that is wrong on earth in heaven, those who are persecuted will be vindicated and the mighty on this earth will one day be thrown down.
In the midst of this persecution, the churches at Ephesus had turned away from their first love, Jesus. True love for Jesus — and true wisdom — acknowledges that we are all broken bodies who need the broken body of the Christ at whose table we gather. From the first sigh of Creation to the final “Come, Lord Jesus” of Revelation, the desire of God is that His people find their home not in themselves and in what they can do for God but in God Himself.
Everything we do is to be motivated by a love for Christ. (4)
C.S. Lewis said, “Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self. But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly,’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that.” In the end, true love for God recognizes that one’s true self is Christ in us, the only hope of glory (Col. 1:27). True love for Christ means returning to that center, that first love.
Return to a passionate love for Christ. (5–7)
Returning to our first love means identifying the Christ in us who completes His work not out of selfish ambition or envy or any selfish gain but so God is glorified and the Church is edified. It is not about self-aggrandizement or even self-protection, but about the aggrandizement of God.
True love for God is about embracing the love of God through the cross of Christ. It is about hearing God’s confrontational word to “repent” and recognizing in it God’s love for us and God’s desire to be in relationship with us.
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