“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12.

In the book of Revelation the Lord Jesus directs the Apostle John to write a book about the things to be revealed to him. He was then to send this book to seven churches in Asia. These churches are addressed in Revelation chapters two and three.

Most conservative commentators agree that there are four things being covered in these letters; first that they are addressed to real historical churches, which existed at that time.

Second these letters brought up concerns that would apply to individuals at any time in any church.

Third, the problems they addressed could occur in any church at any time.

And finally, the seven churches were prophetically representative of seven distinct periods into which the now nearly two thousand year old church age can be divided into since Pentecost.

There are those who dispute this last statement, but the evidence strongly favors it. While there is no attempt to cover all of this here, the most crucial matter to the churches will be examined.

The church at Ephesus is the first one addressed by the Lord and the only one we will be discussing. Bear in mind that this is representative of the very first church, which was started by the apostles of Jesus Christ; many members had actually seen Jesus with their own eyes, so the doctrine was correct. This church’s life span was from about 33 A.D. to 100 A.D., around seventy years.

As you would expect, the Lord commends this church for their hard work, patience and strong stand against evil. Moreover, because of, or in spite of the fact that they did not have the complete Bible as we do today, they tested those who came into the church who claimed to be apostles and rejected them if their doctrine was wrong.

“To the angel of the church of Ephesus write. ‘These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands: I know your works your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary.’” Revelation 2:1-3.

One of the tests that we can use today, and is likely that they used then is this:

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.” 1 John 4:1-3.

This is good advice for all of us today; many churches and individuals would mislead us even now. The world has no lack of false prophets going about trying to pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All but two of the seven letters have commendations similar to the one to Ephesus quoted from Revelation 2:1-3 earlier. The pattern here is that the Lord has something nice to say to the churches before pointing out their error, this is a good habit for all of us to have if we are in a position of authority.

Jesus then points out the Ephesian error:

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” Revelation 2:4.

This fatal error was never corrected and has affected every church period throughout the church age. “Your first love”, many of us can remember what it was like when we were first saved, the love and hunger for Christ, the desire to serve Him, suddenly seeing the world around us anew and with purpose, and an overwhelming peace.

On the other hand, have you forgotten; Christian works, the pressures of life, continual resistance by the enemy of your soul, death, and sickness. These and other things take our attention away from our center, which is Christ, and turn everything into restless works.

Try to remember your first love when you were young or when you were newly wed, the bride makes her husbands favorite breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits and fresh squeezed orange juice.

The eggs may have been overcooked the bacon burnt and the biscuits were missing some ingredient, not to mention the seeds in the orange juice, but it was done in love.

The husband does the unpleasant jobs around the house and works hard to bring in the money it takes to make her a home, he does this because he loves her, as companions, they walk together, talk, and hold each other and bear one another up.

What happens? Do the breakfasts become expected? Though the food is by now excellent, is it unappreciated? Is the work around the house now his job? It is not hard to let things slip away like the sand in an hourglass, and it is human nature to forget.

Meanwhile there is a lot of bitterness that builds up between two people who loved each other so deeply. What do we do now?

The answer is in the Lord’s remedy for the lost love in the Ephesian church. It is actually in three parts, remember, repent, and return. Remember, “Remember therefore from where you have fallen;” revelation 2:5a.

Many things in our past bear forgetting, but love and kindnesses should be remembered. Think on these things, try and remember how lonely you were before you met your spouse, the longer you have been together the more distant that feeling would have become, and of course life now is taken for granted, rather than as the precious time you have together.

Perhaps many things have caused you to drift apart, but you must remember, and repent of the coldness that has taken hold of your heart. It is the same with your love for Christ, do you remember the utter hopeless you felt in the world?

If it has been a long time, it is likely that you do not remember; especially if you have entered into a comfort zone where everything is going so smoothly that you give no thought to your former life.

However, the world is a dead place, in spite of all the activity, nothing fulfills the hearts desires, things are gotten, consumed, and leave us craving more.

The terrors of hell are a remote memory, it has not ceased to exist, but you have forgotten how close you were to falling into that pit (as we all were), hell with continual flames burning away, though never consuming.

People plunge head long into that awful place minute by minute, in spite of the fact that Christ has paid the price to rescue them from it if only they would grab the lifeline He extends to them.

Eternity in hell with their consciences eating away at them for all the evil that they did in a lifetime, but you, have you accepted Christ as your savior?

If so, have you forgotten that He took the horror of hell on Himself for your sake. Remember, and repent of your carelessness in forgetting His sacrifice for you, return to your first love.

How do I retain my first love for Christ? The Lord gives us some very practical ways of doing this, for instance, He tells us this:

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5.

This whole segment in John 15:1-12, on abiding in Christ can be confusing, for we wonder how that is done. Abiding in Christ is the same as the idea of dwelling with Him.

We are told that if we keep His commandments we will abide in His love, now this is a good idea but if we concentrate on keeping His commandments, we may well make this into work. Once you turn something into a job, you turn it into just another task that needs to be done.

The Ephesian church was good at this, but they had still left their first love. This should tell us that there is more to abiding than just keeping the Lord’s commandments. The commandments are not burdensome, there are two really, first that you believe on the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ, and that you love one another.

“And this is His [God’s] commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment. Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” 1 John 3:23-24.

The difficulty is in carrying this out in real life, the first is accomplished in our salvation. The second though is much more difficult, love one another, to do this consistently in our own strength is impossible.

Overall, people are much happier trying to keep commandments, it is much easier to write a few rules or mottos down and tape them to your refrigerator and try to act them out over the day than to actually feel the love of Christ for the people around you.

This latter idea of showing the love of Christ for those around us is somewhat mysterious, in fact, it is supernatural, certain super Christians have done it, but supposedly it is not for the common man or woman.

Actually this is not true, the commandments and the first love for Christ along with the abiding are all within the reach of the simplest of Christians. Jesus Himself tells us how.

In John chapter six, Jesus fed over five thousand people with bread and fish. Because of this the people where intending to make Him king, by force. Now He was and is a king, but this was not the way the Father wanted Him installed in office.

Therefore, it was with great difficulty that He sent the crowd away; He then crossed the Sea of Galilee to the town of Capernaum (the account of walking on water occurs here too).

After Jesus arrived the same crowd found Him again, and wanting free food for life, they engage Him in a dialogue; expecting Him to give them food as Moses had given them manna in the wilderness.

At this point Jesus begins to present Himself to them as the true manna (bread) for them to feed on. The people are very worldly though and see only the physical side of life, because of this they think that He is offering Himself as some sort of food to them; such a thought was offensive to them, as it would be to us.

The Lord later clarified the things He said in the following manner.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.” John 6:63.

Had they been listening they would have realized that He was using figurative language and not literal. When you read this, you will see that the Lord is telling them that Moses did not give the people manna in the wilderness, but it was His Father who fed the people manna and that Jesus is the true bread (manna), which came down from heaven to give life to the world; tremendous emotions are stirred up here.

This is the background of chapter six for the lesson on showing the love of Christ for others and maintaining our first love for Him. John 6:51, 53-54, 56-57, which follow bring us to the subject at hand.

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.” verse 51.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.” verse 53.

“Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” verse 54.

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” verses 56-57.

According to a footnote in J.N. Darby’s “Synopsis of the books of the Bible”, vol. 3, verses 51 and 53 are in the aorist tense and could be read somewhat like this, “whoever has done so”.

While verses 54, 56, and 57, are present tense, which pictures “a present continuous action”.

Let us look at these verses again with some amplification:

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread [whoever has done so], he will live forever….” verse 51.

Now look at the next verse:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood [unless you have done so], you have no life in you.” verse 53.

Taken this way these are salvation verses, now look at the remaining verses.

“Whoever eats My flesh and drinks my blood [a continuous action] has eternal life….” verse 54.

This is a picture of the Christian continually feeding on who Jesus is.

“He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood [a continuous action] abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds [a continuous action] on Me will live because of Me.”, verses 56-57.

With the understanding that abiding, here means that we are to feed continually on the word of God. Please keep in mind that this is not just the act of reading your Bible, rather the need is for diligent study and meditation (internalizing) on the things you have read.

In chapters, two and three of the book of Revelation the seven letters addressed to the seven different churches, end with this phrase, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

There is a difference between hearing and receiving what we have heard. This applies to Bible study we need to hear what the Spirit says and then it must affect us.

The idea is not so much to study the Bible as though you were studying for a college entrance exam, but rather one of giving your time with the Lord all of your attention.

A friend of mine would say, “Lord what do you want to tell me today.” this is the spirit of it, a conversation between you and God. The exciting part is that God not only reveals answers to questions about you, He also reveals Himself.

There is no limit to what you can learn while reading the Scriptures if you rely on the Holy Spirit to open them up to you.

“For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2: 11-16.

It is truly possible to feed on Christ in the form of the word of God.

If we take what we have learned here and go back to the passage quoted in John chapter fifteen, things will start to make sense.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5.

Notice that this quote from Jesus says, “and I in him”, this indicates that the one being addressed is already saved, for Christ does not indwell an unsaved person.

From this and other Scriptures we can know that Christ will always abide in the believer; He does not leave us; we leave Him. Now look at, “He who abides in me”, again the question arises, what does abiding mean?

Abiding does not mean the putting forth of some sort of human effort, nor does it mean waiting around for some kind of stirring from God to do something.

The former would likely become works done in the flesh, this is not abiding. The latter is a far too passive mode that Christians fall into and wind up doing nothing at all.

John chapter 15 describes a vine, “I am the vine, you are the branches”, notice that this is an entire vine. Picture what a vine does, it supports the branches, that is to say that the sustenance comes up from the roots through the vine to the branches. If you cut the branches off from the vine the branch dies, this is obvious.

When the branches are properly attached to the vine, they somehow produce fruit, but it is not something they can do without the nourishment from the main plant. All this is redundant of course, but think, what part does the branch have in bearing fruit?

Nothing really, there is no thought process involved in the production of fruit, the nourishment is simply received by the branch and it acts out its purpose by putting forth fruit. So the Christian is nourished through feeding on Christ and the result is the bearing of fruit in the form of service unto God out love not duty, guilt, or compulsion.

In this manner, it is possible for the Christian to return to their first love, or maintain that position throughout their lives. It is this that Christ wants us to return to.

It should be added that the church, the body of Christ, was created by Jesus Christ, the head of the church, for comfort and fellowship with other Christians, and that they might help each other grow in the knowledge of Christ and in turn these might help new Christians who are struggling in their lives.

“And He Himself [Christ] gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying [building up] of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting…” Ephesians 4:11-14.

First Love taken from godisrevealed.com posted on 12-17-09, updated on 6-8-15.

Scripture taken from the New King James version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Use by permission. All rights reserved.