Revelation 2:1-7 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
31 October, 1999
All Rights Reserved
One of the great mysteries of Christianity is why some churches thrive and why others wane. Since everyone wants to know the answer to this question, many people have undertaken its study. There are many books with some paraphrase of the title: "Secrets of a Growing Church." And there is a ready market for such books because of one of the great truths of ministry which I try to share with those in training for ministry, namely, that you will rarely know for certain what is going on in your own ministry. What you can know for certain is what the Lord has commanded you to do, and whether you are working at it.
In fact, church health can be so mysterious that things can look wonderful on the outside and be declining on the inside. This is the fallacy of the so-called "church growth school" which teaches that increased numbers are the sole test of church health. The problem in the church in Revelation 2:1-7 was exactly like that. Things looked good on the outside, for certain. The church was thought of as prominent and strong. Many things were indeed, very good, but there was an invisible process of inward decline which threatened their very future. God inspired John the Apostle to write a letter to the church in Ephesus to give them understanding of their dangerous condition, to light the pathway out of their danger, and to encourage them that if they would respond, victory was certain through Christ. Those are the very things we need to hear today.
John begins writing what he was commanded to do: "To the angel of the church
in Ephesus write..." (Rev. 2:1a). In a previous message I stated that I
thought the angels, which are called "stars" in 1:20 were actually angels. The
word "anggelos" in Greek can mean "angel" or "messenger." The logic of this
verse has led me to revise my view. Revelation 1:1 indeed shows angels being
used by God to communicate the message to John, but John's message would not
then be written back to the angels. It is much more likely that these "messengers"
of each of these seven churches are the pastors, whose anointing it is to seek
the Lord in his word by prayer, and deliver the word of the Lord to the flock
of God with utmost faithfulness. What a high calling! What a dangerous embarkation
for any man! And what a good reason to hold those who labor at preaching and
teaching in high regard.
John then tells us who is giving him this message to deliver: "...Write:
The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among
the seven golden lampstands, says this..." (Rev. 2:1b). Of the leaders of
God's local churches we learn that God holds them in his almighty right hand.
This does not mean that they are perfect, any more than the government leaders
who are said to be in the hand of God. What is meant is that they are a part
of God's plan to mediate the development of his purposes on the earth. We also
learn that that God abandons neither them nor their churches. We see again the
vision of God striding among his churches with authority. This ought to give
us pause when we think that the church is some plastic thing which can be shaped
to our own will. No, the owner and designer of our church is here exercising
oversight every minute of every day. He loves his church more than we ever will,
and woe to the person who damages God's church for personal reasons!
Paul wrote this to the Corinthians in a passage that is often misunderstood
to refer to suicide and damnation: "Do you not know that you are a temple
of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple
of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what
you are" (1 Cor. 3:16-17). The pronouns are all plural, meaning "you all
are the temple of God together." The context is a nasty set of problems dividing
the Corinthian church into factions. Hear the warning of the holy God, defending
his temple, his dwelling place on earth, which is the combined number of genuine
believers: "God will destroy him." Remember the picture of Christ whipping the
animals out of the temple of God and dumping the tables of the moneychangers.
The Ephesian church needed to be reminded of this very authority of God to dispose
of his churches according to his own free will. We need to hear this as well,
every time we are tempted to tinker with the simple directions of God to his
church.
Verses two and three describe what at first seem like a very healthy set of church behaviors: "'I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot endure 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'" (Rev. 2:2-3). The handling of these commendations is complicated. Every one of these things is a genuine fulfillment of God's will for his church. Our faith must be expressed in concrete deeds of holiness and love. Labor and perseverance in the work of God are necessary. John wrote that the Ephesians did not tolerate "evil men," also translated "wicked" (NIV). This word for evil has the idea of "good for nothing," like a leader who doesn't lead, or a follower who doesn't follow. Discernment in doctrine is a vital component of our faithfulness, even to the point of rejecting leaders who are not what they claim to be. All these things are very, very good.
Then comes a dreadful "but": "'But I have this against you, that you have
left your first love'" (Rev. 2:4). The Lord did not say that they did not
love him at all, but that in spite of some evidences of love for him, there
was clear evidence of a moving away from him in their hearts. At first blush,
it might seem hard to figure out what would be so bad about that. It seems like
a small correction would fix everything. In fact, this defect is deadly. The
other good things in their faith could not stand without a return to their heartfelt
love for God. It is a simple Biblical logic from Galatians 5:6: "faith works
through love." Therefore if love is being abandoned, then faith will have
no outworking. Faith without a concrete outworking is dead (James 2:17).
Jonathan Edwards wrote about the essential connection between love and faith in Charity and Its Fruits (p. 13): "...True love is an ingredient in true and living faith, and is most essential and distinguishing in it. ...A truly practical or saving faith, is light and heat together, or rather light and love, while that which is only a speculative faith, is only light without heat; and, in that it wants spiritual heat or divine love, is in vain, and good for nothing [cf. 1 Cor. 13:1-4]. ...Now, the true spiritual consent of the heart cannot be distinguished from the love of the heart. He whose heart consents to Christ as a Saviour, has true love to him as such." And as Edwards points out, the demons are a Scriptural example of beings with a rock solid belief in God, but no love for him.
It is therefore not enough to evaluate the spiritual health of any church by what that church is doing in ministry. It is not the outward failure of "doing" which is in view here at all. Many have remarked that the church in Ephesus disappeared, but so did six out of the seven which are listed in these chapters of Revelation. The failure described here is the inward death which nevertheless continues operating outwardly. In today's church, this church would be applauded by nearly everyone. The pastors would be approached to write lucrative books and give seminars. I am aware of a famous pastor of a numerically large church who was asked to write a book for a particular publisher. He replied: "I don't really have anything in mind." Their reply: "Anything you write, we will publish." In other words, functioning is all that matters. The inward matters of the heart do not matter.
Have you ever been part of such a church? You're excited to find a place where
so many things are happening. There are many opportunities to do things. People
keep approaching you to be part of their ministry. You can live a long time
on sheer excitement in such an environment. But then you discover what should
have been obvious at the beginning: you are starving spiritually amid what you
thought were spiritual riches. Nobody really knows you, and the only thing they
want from you is your involvement in their thing. When you want to connect with
others in a deep way, you find that door shut. Paul warned the Galatians of
this trend: "They eagerly seek you, not commendably..." (4:17a). In other
words, they do not want to grow to know you in the spirit of Christian love,
they only want to use you to achieve their own purposes. They really don't care
about you.
No wonder Christ issued this most stern warning to one of the most outwardly
successful churches: "'Remember therefore 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'" (Rev. 2:5).
The lampstand is the symbol of divine establishment for a church. No lampstand,
no divine commission, no divine power, no divine provision, no divine guidance,
no grace, no nothing. Jesus was saying then and is saying now to his churches:
"Functioning without loving is not an option--not in my church!" When the lampstand
is removed, the shell of a church continues, but there is no life within it.
The world is littered with the obscene hulks of churches that once were alive,
but now are dead.
There is an insidious process leading to that end where the love we once had for Christ gets shifted where it does not belong. You don't actually stop loving--you just shift the attention of your heart. Based on the small evidence in these verses, I believe that the most likely object for the misplaced affection of the Ephesians was the ministry itself. This is tricky! Everything starts focused on Christ, but then as the ministry grows it becomes exciting to be a part of that ministry. That experience of excitement begins to beckon our hearts, and can become an addiction of the soul. I have heard Christians make speeches, even pastors, which say this: "I would never be a part of a church unless it had thus and so in its program." By that point, the human desire to enjoy the experience has taken over. Pity the church that does something so "neat" that everyone wants to go to it. To that church Jesus says: "Return to me, or I will abandon you. After all, you are already abandoning me."
There was a dramatic illustration in recent news of the church which continues as a dead shell. Champion professional golfer Paine Stewart, an outspoken believer, entered a private jet with five other people in Florida to go to a tournament in Texas. As the jet climbed rapidly, it seems that cabin pressure was lost. Within minutes, the lack of oxygen took the lives of everyone aboard. The plane, which had been set to climb to cruising altitude on autopilot, rose to it's maximum altitude of forty-five thousand feet. It then proceeded to fly with no living souls aboard for more than four hours, traveling northwest. Finally, as the fuel cell for one of the two engines went dry, the plane began to spiral downward and eventually plowed into the ground in South Dakota.
In the same way, we observe empty shells of churches flying along with no living souls aboard. As Jesus looked at the Ephesian church, he saw them starting down the path that would lead to lovelessness and lifelessness. Love is to spiritual life what air is to physical life. No air, no life. No love, no life. I found it particularly poignant that military fighter pilots were able to fly within fifty feet of the ghost ship and look in the windows. They could see nothing because the extreme cold at that altitude--far below zero--had frosted the windows over completely from the inside. Nothing left. No air, no life. I feel that way as I pass by once vibrant fellowships which have abandoned their historic belief in the true gospel of Christ. Then I think about our church, and I think: "Not my church! Over my dead body!"
Fortunately, the means to avoid this fate is clearly set before us: "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and
with all your strength." This love is the motive principle, the very engine
of faith. It's what makes faith "work." This is the meaning of the comment about
the Nicolaitans in verse six: "'Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds
of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.'" Jesus is saying: "You're not completely
loveless and dead yet. The fact that you hate the immorality practiced by the
Nicolaitans (cf. :14-15) means that you still have some love for me."
And by this love-driven faith, we have the opportunity for assured victory in
Christ: "'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'" (Rev. 2:7). What a wonderful promise, but who is the overcomer?
1 John 5:4 gives the answer: "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world;
and this is the victory that has overcome the world-- our faith." Thank
God that this is not a competitive process where only those with outward spiritual
success receive the blessings of eternal life! Paradise is for all who have
faith in the Christ who died and rose again for us, and who now walks among
his churches, reigning over them with authority.
What things are distracting your heart from devotion to Christ? Is it the ministry
itself? Is it a set of personal goals? Do you love the feelings of worship too
much? Or perhaps some enjoyment of the flesh teases you. Placing our affections
anywhere except Christ guarantees that we will find ourselves spiritually gasping
for air. Love for God is not a nice addition to faith, it is essential to a
true faith. Paul also wrote to the Ephesians about this very thing, and God
meant these same words for us: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved
children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself
up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma" (Eph. 5:1-2).
May we resolve to walk in love toward our Lord Jesus Christ, his children, and
those who do not yet know him.