Our First Love

Rev 2:1-7  To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary.  

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent. 

Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.

My church & pastor have embarked on a study of our Lord’s letters to the seven churches. These letters have always witnessed truth to my soul; I have often pondered them, gleaming much truth from Jesus’ accolades & admonitions to these church bodies. Therefore, I desire to pen a few specific thoughts on each of these letters. 

With regards to this first letter to the Ephesus church, it’s clear the apostles’ work there has paid real dividends in terms of doctrine & duty. They received & revered the apostles’ teaching & for some thirty years they have held to most of it firmly. 

But somehow in that period they let the most basic truth of the Shema slip away…

Deu 6:4-6  Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.  

These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.

Jesus Himself affirmed this as the “great & foremost commandment” (Matt. 22:38).

Therefore, I desire to cut to the quick in this post and discuss some of my thoughts on the solution to this fundamental problem. Jesus summarizes thusly: 

“remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first”

Firstly, how do we “remember from where (we) have fallen”?  I believe, as with all spiritual failings, attention to Scripture is required here.  As my pastor stated, “Think about where you came from”. 

In other words, from whence did that “first love” originate? 

The answer comes from the same scribe, John, as the climax of his foremost letter:

1 John 4:7-10  Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Here we see that God’s love for us is purely proactive, while our love for God is always & only reactive.

Many Christians, my past self included, have attempted to stir up within themselves a love for God upon considering the warnings of this letter to Ephesus, only to fail unto utter frustration. The problem is such carnal stirrings are an attempt to be proactive in our love for our Lord, when he has clearly shown that He, & He alone is source of our love for Him. We must see our love for Him as only a reactive response to His primary propitiatory love for us.

In such times, we must incline our eyes, ears, thoughts, & words to God’s primary ministerial means of grace: prayer & the study of His Word in order to revert our renewed heart to its first love. Then, & only then, will actual repentance & the works we did at first indeed follow…

2 Corinthians 5:14-15  For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

See, it is only in the process of sourcing Christ’s proactive & propitiatory love toward us that will cause a reactive love in us for Him and His church.

This rightly puts God back on the throne in our hearts, for He is first in everything that is good.

This is so important for to know & remember that John repeats it very succinctly a few verses later in his epistle:

1 John 4:19  We love, because He first loved us.

Fruitful Labor for Me

 Philippians 1:21-26  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.  But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose.  But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.  Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my coming to you again.

As a Christian, have you ever asked yourself "Why am I still here?" Have you felt depression or crushed by life's problems and pressures, desiring to simply depart the flesh and this world and be with Christ? Our faith indeed informs us to agree with Paul that such will be "very much better".  So why does God  compel us to so often carry such burdens when He could lighten our load or even remove it entirely by taking us up to Him sooner? Is not Death swallowed up by the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ?  

In regards to this passage consider a parable: Paul is as a husband who works late for a time in order to buy his wife a particular piece of jewelry that her heart is set upon. As he toils away for a time, he wishes he could just go home and find sure rest and contentment in her arms. He is assured of her love and knows she would receive him gladly. That would surely be better than all this excessive toil burning the midnite oil. But then he considers the joy of seeing her joy when all this extra burden has produced its fruit: that piece of exquisite jewelry he knows she deeply desires. Not only at first, but for many years to come he can envision her face looking at the beauty of gold and stone, then smiling and engaging him year after year. It is this vision which compels him to press on with this temporal labor, for such labor will produce a much deeper and longer lasting reward.   

Revelation 4:10-11  The twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,  “Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul teaches us that God will one day judge your works. Your works that were from Him, through Him, and to Him, those works that He worked in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure, are the works that will come out of the fire as gold, silver, and precious stones.  But what of the works of wood, hay, and stubble? What of the seemingly good works you did from the flesh, through the flesh, to the flesh? They are burned up and you will "suffer loss". Suffer loss? What does that mean?

It means you will lose any glory of that much of your life's work, for such is only the flesh's vain attempt to glorify itself. Once again we must remember the contrast to these lost works; the works of gold, silver, and precious stones; these are not a testimony to us as much as they are a testimony to God and the great salvation He has wrought by the glorious works of His Son and His Spirit. For eternity, we will all be reflecting the glory of God back towards Him with our crowns of gold, silver, and precious stones, for, in the fullest sense, they are His works.  Truly, He "created all things", by His will "they existed and were created." 

Indeed, this is why you are called to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." Verses 12 and 13 of Phillipians 2 should never be studied apart from each other, for they for only together do they fit into a right systematic theology.

To fear and tremble is to fear pushing away the work of Almighty God at His nearest proximity to you; the work He is striving to accomplish within you. To instead pursue works of wood, hay, and stubble is to first and foremost deny God His Glory. In this we find what means to "suffer loss". In eternity, our fully sanctified soul will desire one thing more than any other- to give glory to God. 

To find out we have lost some of what we thought to be the works of God, to reach for a crown that is not there in our holy desire to offer Him righteous worship is to suffer loss indeed...

1 Peter 1:6-7  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The Crucible

Luke 22:31-34 “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.”

There is much to provoke thoughts of of Jesus’ omniscience, sovereignty, & love in this passage...

His omniscience in His understanding of both Peter’s denial & his return.

His sovereignty in His ability to pray to assuredly facilitate his return.

His love in that He never fails to exercise His sovereignty over our situations.

But I believe His omniscience extends far beyond a simple understanding of the future. I believe despite Peter’s many past & present expressions of a deep, passionate faith in Him, Christ knew there was a major, fleshly flaw in his beloved’s belief.

We can trust Him... because of His complete knowledge of us. He “searches mind and heart”, He knows us better than we know ourselves.  “He… needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.”

One fascinating thing to ponder in this passage is that Jesus prayed that Peter’s faith would not fail, yet only three verses later He emphatically tells Peter that his faith would fail! The “Bart Ehrmans” of the world, in their utter faithlessness, critique the paradoxes of Scripture in the most simplistic fashion & try to tell us to not trust the Bible because of such as these.

But the beloved are nevertheless drawn to God’s Word as true by the new creation within, being instead encouraged & motivated by its depth. 

The Bible reveals the glory of God, & His glory is great. So, it follows that the elucidation of such glory would also be great. We see & believe in God’s resplendent transcendence in part because it is seen in His Word. Like God Himself, there seems to be no end to the depth of the glory of Scripture; this thrills our soul, for it evidences it was neither composed by, nor about, an ordinary, simplistic God.

In regards to this passage, what’s also interesting is that the only thing comparable to Jesus’ emphatic declaration of Peter’s coming faithlessness is the Peter’s forceful denial of the possibility of his denial!  The disciple unquestionably refused the reliability of Jesus’ clear words concerning himself.

Now if his faith was truly & fully in Christ, he would never deny anything his Master says, yet here we have him steadfastly refuting Jesus’ distinct words. This action subtly reveals the carnal nature of Peter’s faith.

Today in the church, we have a movement known as “Word-Faith”. It teaches a didactic that has an individual's faith as the foremost cause of the direction & difficulty of his journey, instead of God’s constant omniscience, sovereignty, & love. They falsely declare “God doesn't give you more than you can handle, & if it seems like He is, then that is just a failure of your faith to speak your life into order.” The emphasis is continually on us to “speak” & “seed” great degrees of health & wealth into our lives.

This is so subtle, & the biblically naïve never catch it at first, but it is a false faith grounded on our words, our deeds, our strength, our righteousness. It is a Romish sort of faith, often even worse so, that relies on an imparted righteousness, wherein God supposedly delivers us the power to save ourselves by a faith & righteousness that is our own, in complete contradiction of Paul’s instruction in Romans 4 & 9. This sort of “faith”, being largely divorced from the life-giving glory of Christ & His substitutionary righteousness, is actually a dead, lifeless faith that results in a dead, lifeless righteousness, the filthy rags of Isaiah 64:6. Peter, to some degree, had this manner of faith...

He believed in his faith in Christ more than he believed in the words of Christ.

Our Lord omnisciently knew this, & out of love for Peter He sovereignly wielded Satan as a tool to destroy this weak, fleshly faith.

He gave Peter more than his flesh could handle. 

Yet, the text also says, “but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

What of this prayer of sovereign God that seems to witness the steadfast perseverance of the disciple's faith?

Even the most cursory reading the first ten chapters of Acts, as well as his two epistles, reveals the incredibly deep, passionate faith of this apostle…

Acts 4:11-13 This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

The same guy that refused to confess any knowledge of Jesus to even a lowly servant girl was now boldly declaring Christ’s full glory to the very seat of all Jewish authority. This is now a true & deep seeded faith that he possessed, & it was not forged in the cold fire of man’s ability, but in the hot fire of God’s glory! Our God is a consuming fire, & He will, sooner or later, jealously consume all anthropomorphous religion, even (& especially) within His beloved. (Deuteronomy 4:24)

Though certainly Peter’s faith failed in one sense, a better, stronger, faster six-million-dollar sort of faith (sorry, I was raised in the 1970s!) roared back less than two months later at Pentecost.

1 Peter 1:6-7 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I recently spoke with a dear saint who had recently suffered some trials. She said that when the Lord takes her out of this world, she hopes it would be brief experience; she didn’t think she could handle an extended illness that would result in a slow death. I told her of how Christ carried Peter through seemingly impossible trials & brought him out so much stronger on the other side, & He continues to do the same for us today. God & God alone knows our capacity for trials, & He alone is sovereign over these events, only giving us the “various trials” that are “necessary” & in accordance with His love for us, His beloved.

The Lord will never take us on a journey that will utterly destroy our faith in Him. His omniscient, sovereign love for us will never allow that, & in that sense He never gives us more than we, meaning our faithful new creation, can handle.

But also, out of that very same omniscient, sovereign love He will seek to destroy our faith in ourselves & our abilities, in the creation that is old & passing away, as that faith is false & futilely fleshly. In this way, He always gives us more than we can handle, to take the “we” part off the center stage & place our faith fully in Him & His rightful place on that stage.

Hebrews 12:5-8 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.