Revelation 2:1-7 To the Ephesians: Love God passionately

Revelation 2-3 The letters to the churches address specific characteristics of churches with advice directly from Jesus. There may be some information on these seven churches in first-century Asia other than the words recorded here, but we will focus on what Jesus says. So the most likely application to us is to try to assess if these specific characteristics apply to us. If the shoe fits, wear it.

Revelation 2:1-7 We have a letter from Paul to the Ephesians, perhaps written considerably earlier. Here, Jesus identifies Himself with the stars and the lamp stands of Rev 1:17-20. He commends them for their works, and for their discernment of false apostles, and for their endurance for His name's sake. And after a reproof, He commends them again on the same theme.

          Correctly discerning accurate doctrine was extremely important during the first century because the canon of Scripture had not yet been formalized. Good and evil are easier to recognize because of the innate sense that we have, built into every person (not just Christians!) of right and wrong. But Christian doctrine is more than right and wrong, it involves propositions about the nature and character of God, about specifics that transcend ordinary categories of right and wrong, including the incarnation and the atonement. And yet, discernment of accurate doctrine concerning Christ is not just a matter of logic, starting with the Scriptures, and correct reasoning. Since the Ephesians to whom these words are addressed did not have the starting point, there was a different avenue by which they could determine which apostles were true and which were false. This can be found in John 14:21 & 26. So Jesus' commendation has the effect of recognizing that they were sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

          The heresy of the Nicolaitans is generally thought to be as described by the early church fathers.

"The Nicolaitanes are the followers of that Nicolas who was one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by the apostles. They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these men is very plainly pointed out in the Apocalypse of John, [when they are represented] as teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols." [Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, i. 26, §3]

It may not have been hard to recognize that it was against the nature of the new life in Christ to practice unrestrained indulgence, but it nonetheless took some measure of fortitude, self-control, and self-discipline to resist the temptation that such a life poses, and the heresy that would have justified it.

          This challenge is no less present today, except that it is the world system that practices unrestrained licentiousness. To have a theology that compromises with that world system would be the same heresy as that of Nicolas. To be in the world but not of the world, to be a light to the world and a city set on a hilltop requires believers to be recognizably different from the world.

          In the middle of these commendations, Jesus identifies a problem. The Ephesians had left their first love. To love God means many different things. The Bible presents and develops the metaphor of the relationship between a husband and wife to exemplify the relationship of Christ to the church, and this is reiterated in Revelation 21:2. This lament by Christ may be interpreted (not the only possible interpretation) that when they were new believers, the Ephesians loved Jesus like a wife loves her husband when they are newlyweds, but as that love aged, it became cold. He wants them to love Him like they did at first, with the devotion and enthusiasm for their relationship that is as intense as a new bride. The reference to eating of the tree of life is repeated in Revelation 22:2, which immediately follows the dazzling description of the new Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, in Revelation 21:10-27. So the Ephesians are advised to turn away from their coldness of heart and love Christ with a fervency that will reincorporate them into that amazing bride of Christ.

          How hard it is to maintain this level of desire over decades of relationship! Whether one is talking about marriage or a love relationship with Christ, the challenge of familiarity is the loss of excitement. We can intellectually accept the proposition that God is amazing and the opportunity to experience His presence should always invoke the wonder and awe. But after a while we get used to His Presence. I have no idea how this plays out in heaven, for all eternity. In this life, we need to continually do what we can, which is to seek a fresh revelation of God for our entire life. God is so incomprehensibly complex that we could not exhaust the discovery of new things about Him, at least in this life. One hopes that these new things that He reveals will lead us to continually be excited and passionate about knowing Him and being with Him. Perhaps our passion should continually result simply from our appreciation of His nature and character, but most of us do not seem to be wired that way. We need to make the commitment (and keep it) to continually seek Him out of understanding of these things, until we reach that condition of the passion of first love. It may be that this is, in itself, the fruit of the tree of life. In other words, we cannot eat of the tree of life in God's paradise unless we have passionate love for God, because that is what it is.