What Does the Seven Churches Say to Genuine Believers (Part 2)

To the messenger (representative) of the church of Ephesus write...nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love." (Revelation 2:1,4, NKJV)

Ephesus left her first love. The order of the words in the Greek are important. John placed the object before the verb. It actually reads, "thy first love thou has left." In our vernacular, it would read, "your first love you have left."

John makes this emphasis in order to show the church as a whole that it no longer has the same fervency or depth of love for Christ that they once had. In other words, their love for Christ had cooled. This "cooling" of their love for Christ would become the precursor to apathy.

Christ charges the Ephesians with "letting go" or "leaving alone" their love for Christ. They ignored their love and as a result it cooled. They had disregarded their love for Christ. We have to ask ourselves:

What Causes a Believer to "abandon their first love?"

·         A love for money or material possessions (1 Tim 6:10)

·         A love for the world's ideologies, philosophies, accolades, acceptance, approval, and acquisitions  (1 John 2:15)

·         A love for idols (1 Jn 5:21)

·         A love that is greater for family or family members than Christ Jesus (Matt 10:37; 1 Cor 7:34)

So we conclude with this warning - A love for anything that either hinders a true love for Christ Jesus or is greater than our love for Christ is a dangerous affection and needs to be either rejected or immediately put back in proper priority.

What Corrects a Believer to "adore their first love?"

Jesus gave four (4) actions to take in order to fall back in love with Him:

• Rehearse - remember what you once were.

• Go back to the place of departure
• Remember the love that first had and the reasons for that love

• Repent - change your mind, develop a different attitude to Christ

• Turn from your sin of coolness towards Christ
• Turn to Christ in order to fervent love Him again

• Repeat - do the first works that you did when you loved Christ fervently

• True love for Christ is always revealed by the works it produces
• Being busy and merely active does not necessarily reflect love

• Realize - there is a reward

• There would no need of chastisement
• True believers (overcomers) will be rewarded with eternal life