When We Leave Our First Love

by: William C. Brownson

The Lord and his servant John saw much to commend in the church at Ephesus. These believers had worked hard for the Lord and shown endurance under stress. They were vigorous in church discipline. For the sake of the Lord’s name, they had carried on and not grown weary.

But the church had a fatal flaw. They had left their first love, had abandoned the single-hearted devotion of earlier days. This called for urgent, immediate action. They needed to remember what they had lost, to repent, and to do again the first works of love. Apparently, nothing could take the place of this. Their future as a church depended on this returning. Jesus warned that if they failed to repent, he would come and “remove their lampstand.” The lampstand, we learn from Revelation 1:20, is the church itself. In other words, without this repentance and restoration of love, the church in Ephesus would cease to exist! Imagine that!

Reflect for a moment. Ephesus is in present-day Turkey. This area, once full of churches, now has almost none. North Africa too was once a thriving center of Christian life, but no longer. And think of Europe’s history of great churches. Many of those have ceased to be. Is something like this beginning to happen in America? What a call to repent, to return, to love again!