Daily Thought

How remarkable that One before whose feet John fell as dead, should choose to speak to a church that had known better days, 1. 17; 2. 5! This One has rights over those He holds responsible - the seven stars, 1. 20; 2. 1. He also moves among the seven lampstands - the seven churches He now addresses, v. 1, so His awesome authority is unchallengeable and His assessment of their state unerring, but, as they are to hear, not coldly critical of their shortcomings.

The Lord of the churches knew that they had experienced the two sides of active service - they had endured wearying toil and exercised the patient endurance that must accompany it, v. 2. He also knew that they had to face up to evil men and false apostles, v. 2. They had great respect for Christ’s name in all they did. So much pressure was upon them, yet they did not fail, v. 3, except in one crucial respect: they left their first love, v. 4.

How telling the words the Ephesian Christians now hear! ‘I have against thee, that thou hast left thy first love’, v. 4 JND. To their credit, they had this, ‘Thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans’, v. 6. Weighed in the divine balance, their hating evil did not compensate for their deserting their first love. Their abandoning of their first love was decisive and so critical in their relationship with Christ. They were unfaithful to Christ, their first love, their best and peerless love. Surely there would be some response to these things He said.

Will He abandon them? We hear His appeal to them, as if it were to us, ‘Remember. Repent. Reinstate the first works’, v. 5. When Paul had written to them, there had been twenty references to love, none of which reproached them. How far they had fallen from that lofty position! How needful their repentance if they were to continue to be owned by Him, v. 5! He that was speaking desired their first works to be reinstated. He was looking for ‘the kindness of [their] youth, the love of [their] espousals’, Jer. 2. 2. Without the re-kindling of that love once of prime importance to them, the Speaker, who had loved them (and us) unto death, would sadly have to repeat, ‘I have against thee’.