First Love

First Love

“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 …”
Revelation 2:1


The church at Ephesus had been started by Paul. It was a strong church and the gospel radiated from Ephesus throughout the entire province. At the time Revelation was written, thirty years later, the church was still strong. The believers worked hard for the gospel and persevered despite severe persecution.

However, there was a fatal flaw in the church. Jesus challenges them with words that must have made their blood run cold: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love” (2:4).

The church was full of people who worked hard for God, but they had left their first love. They were workers, but not worshipers. They had religious duty; they did not have a love affair with Jesus.

Jesus is looking for people who will love him back. Jesus is looking for worshipers. Jesus is looking for people who have an incurable disease – the disease of being smitten with Jesus.

Are you smitten with Jesus? Do you have a love affair with Jesus? Did you start out with a white-hot passion for Jesus and yet now the fire has grown cold?

Above all else, God wants to be loved. He wants to be wanted.

How is your heart these days? How is your heart for Jesus? Have you left your first love?


First Love, Part 2

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
Revelation 2:4


Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea.”

I believe his insight applies to the Kingdom of God. If you want to build a church that pleases God, don’t recruit people to tasks and projects and ministries, but rather teach them to long for Jesus.

Above all else, a church must be a place where the people long for Jesus, where the people are pursuing Jesus, where the people are falling in love with Jesus.

There was a great church in Ephesus, founded by the Apostle Paul. They were tremendous lovers of God. But thirty years later, Jesus sends them the sobering message: “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love” (2:4).

Fortunately, Jesus tells them what to do to recapture that first love. “Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first” (2:5a,b). Three things: Remember. Repent. Repeat.

First, remember. “Remember the height from which you have fallen.” If you can, deliberately think back about your feelings and thoughts and actions during your first weeks and months as a follower of Jesus Christ. Remember!

Second, repent. “Repent ...” Jesus gives the Ephesian church a simple one-word command: Repent. Come to God in brokenness and repentance. Come to God in confession and surrender. Ask God to change you.

Third, repeat. That is, repeat the things you did in your early Christian life. “Repent and do the things you did at first.” Did you pray fervently? Sing from your heart? Gather with Christian friends? Eagerly read the Bible as a love letter? Give generously? Share your faith freely?

Keep your first love for Jesus. Nothing is more important.

Thomas Dubay, in his book The Evidential Power of Beauty, tells a story about a teenage girl in the atheistic Soviet Union who knew nothing of the Bible, nothing of the doctrines of the church, nothing of the differences between denominations. She also knew nothing of Jesus. Until one day she chanced upon a copy of Luke’s Gospel. When she finished reading it, her immediate reaction was, “I fell in love with him.”1

May that response mark our lives – at the beginning and at the end of our journey with Jesus. “I fell in love with him.”



1Gire, “The Divine Embrace,” 52.