The Message to the Church at Ephesus.
The first church we will encounter on our journey is the church at Ephesus. Ephesus was a port city in western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The city sat at the mouth of the Cayster River between Smyrna to the north and Miletus to the south. The location of the city made it the most favored seaport in the Roman province of Asia, and it was the most important trade center west of Tarsus.
Ionian Greeks first colonized Ephesus about 1000 years before Christ. In 560 B.C. Croesus of Lydia conquered the city and moved it from the northern slopes of Mt. Pinion to the plain south of the Artemission. Lysimachus, a general and successor of Alexander the Great, moved the city to higher ground in 287 B.C. because of the danger of flooding.
During the time of the Roman Empire it bore the title of “The finest and greatest metropolis of Asia.” The city was distinguished for containing the Temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Ephesians took great pride in this temple, which in Paul’s day was supported by 127 columns 197 feet high. During this time period the city promoted the worship of Diana by minting coins that had the inscription “Diana of Ephesus” inscribed o them. The silversmiths in Ephesus were so influential in fact that they stirred up a riot against Paul in the city because they feared that the spread of the Christianity that he was preaching would undermine their business.
Although Pergamum was the capitol city of the Asian province under Roman rule, the city of Ephesus was the largest in Asia Minor with an estimated population of 300,000 people. It occupied a vast area and became the greatest commercial city of the Roman province of Asia.
Many Jews took up residence in Ephesus and the gospel spread to this region almost immediately after Pentecost. Paul visited Ephesus on his second and third missionary journey’s and when he departed the city he left Timothy there as the pastor of the church. Tradition tells us that after Timothy the Apostle John was the pastor at Ephesus and that he lived here toward the end of the first century. It was probably while pastoring the church in Ephesus that John was arrested for preaching the gospel and sentenced to exile on the island of Patmos where he wrote this letter.
With that as background let’s look now at Jesus’ message to this church:
“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands, says this: ‘I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate 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. ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember 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. Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 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.’
Revelation 2:1-7 (NASB)
The message begins with an instruction to John to write a message to the angel of the church in Ephesus. The word
angel is the Greek word
ággelos, which simply means messenger. It is possible that there is an angel assigned to each church, but the most obvious meaning would be that the message was directed to the pastor of the church since it is the pastor who will be able to influence the congregation to make the changes dictated by Jesus in the message. John MacArthur reminds us that:
Although [ággelos] can mean angel—and does throughout the book—it cannot refer to angels here because angels are never leaders in the church. Most likely, these messengers are the 7 key elders representing each of those churches.1
Jesus begins His message to the church in Ephesus the same way He will begin all seven of these messages, by identifying Himself using part of John’s vision from chapter 1. As we will see here, and in the other six messages as well, Jesus uses the description of Himself that best fits the situation of each individual church. At Ephesus Jesus identifies Himself as “The One who holds the stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands.”
We see in chapter one that the stars represent the angels, or messengers, of the churches, and the lampstands represent the churches themselves. So what is it that Jesus is saying here about Himself that the church in Ephesus needs to know?
In the Bible the right hand always represents power; by Jesus saying that He holds the ministers of the churches in His right hand He is saying that they are under His power. By saying that He is the One who walks among the lampstands He is letting them know that He is intimately aware of everything that is happening in each church. In other words:
As its sovereign ruler, He has the authority to address the church.2
Beginning then in verse two Jesus says “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate 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.” Here we see Jesus telling them that they are doing good things; they are persevering, they don’t tolerate evil men, they test those who claim to be apostles and are not, and they are enduring for Jesus without growing weary.
There are several words in this brief passage that it would be of benefit for us to look at more closely. The first of these is the word
know; Jesus told this church that He
knows.The word
know comes from the Greek word
oída, which means:
to know intuitively or instinctively.3
John MacArthur tells us that this word,"refers to complete and full knowledge." He then goes on to say:
The Lord of the church knows everything there is to know about the church—both good and bad. Such perfect knowledge is evident in each letter as the Lord condemns and commends the churches.4
We see this as we move through this passage; Jesus tells the church in Ephesus that He knows their deeds, their toil, their perseverance, that they cannot endure evil men, and that they put to the test those who claim to be apostles and are not.
The Greek word translated
deeds here is the word
érgon, which means,
work. The Greek word for toil is the word
kópos, which means,
wearisome effort, and the word
perseverance here is translated from the Greek word
hupomoné̄, which means
to bear up under or to endure. Dr. Zodhiates says of
hupomoné̄ that it:
refers to that quality of character which does not allow one to surrender to circumstances or succumb under trial.5
So what Jesus is saying here is that He has in intimate knowledge of the work that the Ephesian Christians are doing, He knows that they are giving everything to the cause of the gospel and becoming weary in the process, but that they are enduing and have a quality of character that will not allow them to surrender or give up. He knows what they are doing, and He is commending them for it.
He also tells them that He knows that they do not endure evil men and that they test those who claim to be apostles and are not. In other words, this was a church that practiced church discipline. If there was sin in their midst they were quick to deal with it (see Matthew 18:15-17). They also were on guard for false teachers and they would test those who claimed to be apostles. Paul had warned the Ephesians decades earlier that they were to be on guard for false teachers:
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
Acts 20:28-31(NASB)
And that is exactly what they continued to do. From all appearances they are the perfect church, and Jesus commends them for their effort, for their obedience, for their hard work, and for their perseverance. Then He says, but I do have something against you. In verse four we see the problem with the Ephesians was not what they were doing, it was with why they were doing it. Jesus said in verse four “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” This church was doing the right things, but they were doing them for the wrong reasons, and Jesus let them know that their motives were in the wrong place. Warren Wiersbe tells us:
They displayed ‘works... labor... and patience,’ but these qualities were not motivated by a love for Christ.6
So what does Jesus mean when He says that they had left their first love? First of all the word translated
first here is the Greek word
pró̄tos, which means “Foremost.”
7 Dr Wiersbe says that first love is:
...the devotion to Christ that so often characterizes the new believer: fervent, personal, uninhibited, excited, and openly displayed. It is the ‘honeymoon love’ of the husband and wife.8
Jesus is telling them (and us) that they have lost this passion and that they are working out of a sense of duty, not because of their love for Him; they have left their first love.
In his commentary on Revelation Dr. J Vernon McGee tells this story to illustrate what Jesus is telling us here, he says:
The story is told of two girls who worked in a cotton mill. They were friends, but when one of them quite working there, the lost touch with each other. Finally they met one day on the street. The working girl asked her friend, ‘Are you still working?’
‘No’ she said, ‘I got married!’
When that girl worked in the mill, she watched to clock, and every evening when five o’ clock came, she had here coat on and was on her way out. It was hard work, and she didn’t like it. Now she is married and she says that she has quit working.
Well, if you could look at her life, you wouldn’t think that she has quit working. She gets up earlier than ever before to prepare breakfast for her husband and to pack his lunch. She throws her arms around him as she tells him good-bye. All day long she is busy cleaning the house and washing clothes and caring for two little brats who are two little angels to her because they are hers. Then when five o’clock comes, she doesn’t put on her coat and leave; she starts cooking dinner. About six o’clock here comes her husband. She is right there at the door to throw her arms around him and tell him how much she has missed him that day. When a man comes home in the evening, open the door, and hears a voice from upstairs or from the rear of the house calling, ‘is that you?’ he knows the honeymoon is over. But this girl is in love. Her husband’s workday is over, but hers has only gotten started. She serves dinner to her husband and feed the children. Then she washes the dishes, put the children to bed – and that’s not easy – and works around getting things ready for her husband for the next day. I tell you, she is weary when she finally gets into bed – but she is not working anymore, she says! Why? Because she is in love. That’s the difference.”9
This story, while funny in our day, is the perfect example of what Jesus was talking about here. The girl in the story was working harder than she ever had, but it didn’t seem like work to her because she was working for the one she loved. This is the attitude that Jesus wants us to have as we carry out His work, and this is exactly what he was warning the church at Ephesus about. They were no longer working because of their love for Him; they were working out of a sense of duty. A.T. Robertson tell us that they:
...had remained orthodox, but had become unloving.”10
There is one more thing that I would like to point out here before we look at what Jesus told them to do to correct this problem. Please note that Jesus did not say that they had
lost their first love, but that they had
left their first love. They had moved away from their love for Christ, and their love for Him was not lost - it could be gotten back - and Jesus, in the next verse, is going to tell them how.
In verse 5 Jesus says, “remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first.” Here is a three-step plan for recovering your love for Jesus - for returning to your first love:
- Remember from where you have fallen.
- Repent.
- Do the things that you used to do.
These were the three things Jesus told the church in Ephesus to do to regain their first love, but they are just as applicable to us today as they were to them at the end of the first century. Let’s look at these one at a time:
Remember from where you have fallenThe word
remember here is the Greek word
mnēmoneú, which means:
To remember, call to mind, bear in mind. To exercise memory, be mindful of.11
This word is Present Imperative Active verb in the Greek, which means that we are to remember and keep on remembering. Here we are told that we are to remember from where we have fallen. In other words, we are:
To remember what we have lost and cultivate a desire to regain that close communion once again.”12
RepentNext we are told that we need to repent. The word
repent means to change direction; it means that if you are traveling in one direction you turn around and travel in the opposite direction. What we are being told here is that we need to turn around and go back to loving Jesus. We need to confess our sin to God, and not loving Jesus
is a sin (see Deuteronomy 6:5), and we are to go back to doing the things we did when we were first born again - when we were first in love with Jesus.
Do the deeds you did at firstThis is telling us that we need to repeat what we used to do when we were in a close loving relationship with Jesus. Remember when, as a new believer, and you couldn’t get enough fellowship with Jesus. You would spend hours in prayer and reading the Bible just wanting to spend time with Him and learn from Him. You were excited to be a Christian and to share your faith, not out of a sense of duty, but out of love for Jesus. This is what we are being told to repeat here. If you do again the things that you did when you were in love with Jesus the love will return.
This is good advice, and it doesn’t just apply to our love relationship with Jesus. These same three principles apply to our marriages as well; if you feel like you have fallen out of love with your spouse or that you have been taking them for granted just follow these three steps and you can regain your first love there as well.
Next, after telling them what they needed to do to correct the problem, Jesus says, “or else I am coming to you, and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.” Remember that we saw back in chapter one that the lampstand represents the church, so what Jesus is telling them is that if they don’t repent and do the things that He has just outlined here He will remove the church from Ephesus. History shows us that this is exactly what happened here; they did not repent and the influence of this church disappeared. Warren Wiersbe says:
In spite of the privileges it had enjoyed, the church of Ephesus was in danger of losing its light! The church that loses its love will soon lose its light, no matter how doctrinally sound it may be… The glorious city of Ephesus is today but a heap of stones and no light is shining there.” 13
Please note here as well that when Jesus said that He would come to them He was not referring to His second coming, but to His coming to this church in judgment. This was a personal warning to the church in Ephesus, and as we will see shortly, it is a warning to us as well.
Then in verse six Jesus tells them something else that they were doing that pleased Him; He said; “Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” I am going to pass over this verse at this point because I want to deal with the Nicolaitans in depth when we get to the message to Pergamum. What you need to see right now though is that Jesus is praising the Ephesians because they hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, just like He does.
The message to the church in Ephesus ends with these words, “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.”
When Jesus says, “He who has an ear, let him hear” it is the equivalent in our day of saying “if the shoe fits” and it is as if Jesus is telling us to listen to what He has just said and if it applies to us we need to heed His warning and do what He said to do. In this case, if you examine yourself and see that you have left your first love you are to remember from where you have fallen, repent, and do again the things that you did at the first.
This was the message to the church at Ephesus, and it is the message to us as well as we can see by the inclusion of the word
churches. Jesus directed this message to the church at Ephesus, but in His conclusion of the message Jesus is clear that this warning is for all Christians and is not limited to the Ephesian church alone. As we move through these seven messages you will see that Jesus ends each message in this manner.
Jesus also makes a promise in each of these messages to the one who overcomes. There are three schools of thought as to what it means to be an overcomer:
- The first of these says that every believer is an overcomer, and that all genuine believers will overcome. That if a person fails in these any of these areas and doesn’t repent it is proof that they were never a genuine believer and that they never experienced genuine salvation.
- The second says that if a believer is not faithful and obedient not only will they not experience the promised blessing, but will actually forfeit their salvation.
- Third is the view that this does not have anything to do with salvation at all but that it is actually talking about rewards, and that the believer who does not overcome will remain in their salvation but will suffer the loss of rewards.
According to Dr’s Radmacher, Allen, and House in Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary :
None of these is without difficulties, but the correct interpretation would be the one that most consistently handles the details of all seven “overcomer” passages. This means the last view is most likely. Some promises to the overcomer are clearly conditional and cannot be predicated of all believers.14
They go on to say:
If every believer is an ‘overcomer’ the reader would expect the phrase ‘he who believes’ rather than ‘he who overcomes,’ which suggests some distinction between believing and overcoming. The singular, ‘he who overcomes’ implies that the victory is made on an individual basis, that not all Christians attain it. ‘A command that everyone keeps is superfluous and a reward that everyone receives for a virtue that everyone has is nonsense.’ (Fuller). There is no point in warning Christians about something they will all do. There is no motivation to obey the warnings if every believer receives the ‘reward.’ There would be no true reward. 15
The Greek word that is translated here as
overcomes is the word
nikáō, which means:
To be victorious, prevail… to be pure… to overcome, conquer, subdue.” 16 In the Greek this word is a Present Active Participle, which means that the overcomer is one who experiences “continuous victory.”17
Lastly then we see the promise; Jesus says that the one who overcomes He will “grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.” The tree of life appears to be a reference to a tree that was in the Garden of Eden. We can see this in Genesis chapter two:
Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Genesis 2:9 (NASB)
We have every reason to believe that this is the same tree of life referred to in this verse. Adam was given the right to eat of this tree, but he lost that right in the Fall. We know that this tree will reappear in the New Jerusalem, and Jesus is promising here, to the one who overcomes, that they will be able to once again eat from the tree that mankind lost the right to eat from because of sin.
E.F. Palmer points out that the reference to the tree of life could have a more personal implication to the church at Ephesus as well. He writes:
It is also an interesting sign to the Ephesians in another way. Ephesian coins of this period contain engravings of a sacred tree used in the nature worship of first-century Ephesus. The Christians at Ephesus are assured of a source of life that originates from a deeper reality than that which the cultic nature goddess images of their city coins are able to confer. This letter has found the Ephesians where they are, and has called them to return to the source of their life, to the good beginning where they started.”18
So what is the message for us today? J. Ramsey Michaels, in his commentary on the book of Revelation puts it this way:
The lesson for all who value a work ethic is that such an ethic must be motivated by generosity, love and compassion, or it is worthless. The message to Ephesus is a message to Christians today as well. It is doubtful that the threat of the risen Jesus to come to you and remove your lampstand from its place was directed only to the Ephesian angel. More likely it is implicit in all seven messages, if those who “have ears” in all the churches fail to listen to what is said (Revelation 2:7). Quite simply, if they—if we—do not pay attention, we will lose our identity and cease to exist.19
In other words, if we don’t return to our first love we can be assured that we will loose our influence for Christ in this world, just like the Ephesian church ultimately lost theirs.
1 MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed.) (Re 1:20). Nashville: Word Pub.
2 MacArthur, J. (1999). Revelation 1-11 (56). Chicago: Moody Press.
3 Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.) (G3608). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.
4 MacArthur, J. (1999). Revelation 1-11 (59). Chicago: Moody Press.
5 Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.) (G5281). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.
6 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. "An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire 'BE' series"--Jkt. (Re 2:1). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
7 Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.) (G4413). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.
8 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. "An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire 'BE' series"--Jkt. (Re 2:1). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
9 McGee J. Vernon (c 1983). Thru the Bible with J. Vernon McGee Vol.5 1Corinthians –Revelation Pg.902. Nashville TN.: Thomas Nelson.
10 Robertson, A.T. (c1932, c1960). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Volume VI Pg 299. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
11 Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament (electronic ed.) (G3421). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.
12 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. "An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire 'BE' series"--Jkt. (Re 2:1). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
13 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996, c1989). The Bible exposition commentary. "An exposition of the New Testament comprising the entire 'BE' series"--Jkt. (Re 2:1). Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books.
14 Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Re 2:7). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
15 Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1999). Nelson's new illustrated Bible commentary (Re 2:7). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.
16 Zodhiates, S. (2000, c1992, c1993). The complete word study dictionary : New Testament (electronic ed.) (G3528). Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.
17 Robertson, A.T. (c1932, c1960). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Volume VI Pg 300. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.
18 Palmer, E. F., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Vol. 35: The Preacher's Commentary Series, Volume 35: 1, 2 & 3 John / Revelation. Formerly The Communicator's Commentary. The Preacher's Commentary series (126). Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc.
19 Michaels, J. R. (1997). Vol. 20: Revelation. The IVP New Testament commentary series (Re 2:8). Downers Grove, Ill., USA: InterVarsity Press.
Next week I will post the second letter - the message to the church at Smyrna.
