HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FIRST LOVE?

HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FIRST LOVE?

This week I have been camping on Revelation 2: 4-5, and have been challenged and deeply moved. It is directed at a group of Christians in the city of Ephesus, and applies equally to you and me. It reads:

4 “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 REMEMBER therefore from where you have fallen; REPENT and REPEAT the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you REPENT.”

1. REMEMBER

In 2 Peter 1:12 we read “I write these things to put you in remembrance.” Go back and REMEMBER what you felt at the beginning when you were overwhelmed with joy.

You couldn’t get enough Bible teaching.

You couldn’t get enough time alone with the Lord, couldn’t get enough Christian fellowship.

You couldn’t talk about Jesus to the people around you enough.

You couldn’t get enough of him.

REMEMBER the flashes of first love, because if you don’t, you follow the path of a diminishing love. You follow it right into compromise, and then into corruption.

Look at your life.

Is there anything you love more than Christ?

Is there anything you want more than Christ?

Is there anyone that you want to serve more than Christ?

Anyone you might want to honor more than Christ?

Anyone you might want to proclaim more than Christ?

If there is, you left your first love. Go back and remember how it was, or find out how it is for people transformed from a Pagan environment.

2. REPENT. Secondly he says, “not only REMEMBER from where you have fallen,” and by the way, where you have fallen indicates this is sin.

Leaving your first love is sin. That’s why you have fallen. It is a fall. And when you have fallen into sin, you need then to REPENT.

He says repent there in verse 5, and he repeats it again at the end of the verse, “unless you REPENT the judgment will come.” The second thing is to REPENT. That means you need to:

Confess the sin of losing your first love, or leaving your first love.

Confess the sin of your coldness.

Confess the sin of the sort of routine approach to worship and everything else in your Christian life.

Confess the sin of serving the Lord without exuberance, without joy.

Confess the sin of only doing your duty.

Confess the sin of doing what you do because you think somebody wants to see you do it, and therefore somehow will think well of you.

If you love your theology more than Christ, you’ve left your first love. There was a time when you didn’t know enough theology to love it, and you just loved him. Paul says that, “I may know him.” He loved him so much he could never get enough of him. And so, REPENT.

3. REPEAT – And thirdly, he says, “REPEAT”. Do what you did at first.

Go back. When you were swept up in:

PRAYER
WORSHIP
BIBLE STUDY
FELLOWSHIP
WITNESSING

and it was all so exhilarating. Basic Christianity! REMEMBER how it was, how it is, for people transformed. And if you have fallen, REPENT because it’s a sin not to love him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. I don’t know if you often ask for forgiveness for that sin, but you should, and so should I. And then begin to REPEAT the things you did at first when you were swept up in the joy of salvation.

It is a disaster, but it’s a silent killer when a group of believers leaves their first love. And they don’t necessarily see it. If you stop loving Christ and making him the focus of everything, and you will descend in the COMPROMISE with the world, and the whole idea of loving Christ will disappear from your vocabulary, and then you’ll go from COMPROMISE to CORRUPTION.

In other words, you’ll go from Ephesus to become a church like the one in Pergamus, to become a church like the one in Thyatira, to become a church like Laodecia which was dead. And it all starts with losing your first love for your SAVIOR and LORD.