Revelations 2:3, 4.  ^“You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.  Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.”

John has just seen Jesus in glory and it seems certain that his faith was renewed.  Now, having seen Jesus, John knew full well that the fellowships over which he was an overseer did not have that comprehensive vision that so enlivened him.

Now the Spirit of the Lord is asking him to write to the churches. That is what we are reading here. The first of the churches was the large one at Ephesus. We should expect that the context of John’s correspondence with the churches is his own life-changing updated vision of Jesus Christ. He knew full well that they did not have that experience with Jesus, nevertheless he owes it to them to share what the Holy Spirit is speaking to them.

The church at Ephesus, that huge and important city on the western coast of Turkey, the place where Paul and his team spent many months ministering to both Jews and Gentiles on his final recorded missionary journey.  It was probably the largest of the seven churches and probably the oldest. Certainly the most “mature.”

That church was a suffering church, situated as it was in a largely pagan city.  It was also a discerning church, detecting false prophets and exposing them.  And it was truly milt-ethnic, containing Jewish and Gentile believers.

Here was a problem that the Spirit pointed out to them. While concentrating on defending the fellowship against false teachers they must have become a bit hard and judgmental and probably smug in their ability to smell out heresy.  They, without knowing it, had forsaken “the love they had at first.”  We read that they hated the heretical theology of the Nicolaitans, not a bad thing.  Except they slowly found themselves hating the Nicolaitans, not just their doctrine. Hate can and often does dampen one’s love for Jesus Christ because it can lead to hating those who espouse false doctrine. In this area we must be very careful. We can and should hate bad doctrine but we must continue to love those who espouse and teach those things.

So the Spirit speaks, “Remember the height from which you are fallen!  Repent and do the things you did at first.”  To find out what they “did at first” we read Luke’s description of the remarkable development of that faithful church in Acts 19.

Maybe you, like me, have seen persons marvelously set free, sins forgiven, loving all, exuding an aroma of heavenly grace among them then, in time, slowly become judgmental and hard. Instead of seeing themselves primarily as saved sinners they see themselves as chivalrous defenders of the doctrines of the church.

May we love as Jesus loves, as we learned when Jesus first took control of our lives as we gave our lives to him. The is our first genuine love.