Have You Lost Your First Love in Christ?
When the church I pastor takes the Lord's Supper, we begin by reading the summary of the Law. The reason we do that is to be
reminded of our wretchedness. We will never be able to always love God with every
fiber of our being AND perfectly love our neighbor. We truly have fallen short
of the glory of God, yet by the grace of God we (who are believers) have been justified by faith
(Romans 3:23-24)! So let us not be like the Liars: may we “confess our sins, [because]
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Be comforted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But also be challenged in your walk…
We see a
relevant challenge for us in Revelation 2:1-7, a letter from Jesus Himself to the
church of Ephesus, and they cared about so much that is godly. They were prime
examples of studying “to show [themselves] approved unto God…rightly
dividing the word of truth.” They called out false teachers and false
apostles, and they stayed true to sound doctrine even in the face of great
adversity. They did not grow weary in this; however, they did fail in “not grow[ing] weary in the work of love.” It’s not just a hymn lyric, but
straight from the Bible: “Let us not grow weary of doing good” (Galatians 6:9). They did do “good,” they “preached the Word, and were instant in
season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2), and they valiantly spoke the truth;
and as we brought up earlier, this good work was prepared by God from the
foundation of the world. But did they walk in the whole of this good work
prepared by God? They spoke the truth, but did they “[speak] the truth in
love” as the Apostle Paul exhorted them to do in his letter to them (Ephesians 4:15)?
No, they didn’t,
and to take it further, they “ha[d] abandoned the love [they]
had at first” (2:4). The love they had when the Holy Spirit came into their
lives and regenerated them, when they were saved by the blood of the Lamb. à They were doing well, but they lost
their first love, and now Jesus urges them to “remember…from where you have
fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (2:5). Not only an urge,
but an urgent warning; if they didn’t do that, He would remove their lampstand.
à They’d still be believing right, but
they wouldn’t be practicing right; and it would be of no consequence to them.
Their light would stop shining, and they would cease to be impactful to the
sinful world around them.
We can first see that we’re losing our first love in ourselves individually, losing the joy we should have in Christ; the Christian life becomes humdrum and routine. Second, we lose our ability to love others; which is a loss of the wonder of Jesus’s love for us. The only reason we can love others is because Christ first loved us (1 John 4:19). Third, we lose a healthy perspective of ourselves. We begin to care less about what the Lord wants of us and more about what we want of us.
Brothers and
sisters, we may sing the right hymns, preach the right messages, adhere to the
right doctrines, pray the right prayers, even regularly help some people in our
little town and beyond; but have we lost our first love? If we have, we are
just as sinful and wretched as King David when he committed adultery with a
married woman and had her husband killed in battle. Our welldoing is in our
power alone, and our church loses its influence and effectiveness.
Psalm
51:10-12 – “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right
spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take
not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and
uphold me with a willing spirit.”
Ideas from Nov. 1989 Ray Stedman sermon on Rev. 2:1-7. https://www.raystedman.org/new-testament/revelation/the-church-that-lost-its-love
Comments
Post a Comment