Orthodusty

A Monday Morning Review on Revelation 2:1–7

Nobody enjoys a performance review. There's something about sitting across from someone who's about to tell you, point by point, exactly how you're doing that puts most of us on edge before a single word is spoken. Yesterday we watched Jesus conduct one — except this review runs in reverse. He's not the one being evaluated. He's the one in the center, and the circle around him is made up of seven congregations in Asia Minor. Those seven are very real and facing very real struggles, but they’re doing more - they’re representing the whole church, in every place, for the whole span of time between Christ’s ascension and his return.

That's worth sitting with for a moment before we get to Ephesus specifically. When these letters are read aloud in worship — when Scripture is opened and read among God's people — we are not listening to a mere historical document. We are, quite literally, hearing the voice of the Spirit speaking to the church even now. The Scriptures are the voice of God speaking to his people in all ages. The question we have to carry out Sunday into Monday is simple: are we actually listening?

A City Worth Knowing

Ephesus wasn't a minor outpost. It shows up across the New Testament — in Acts, in Paul's letter that bears its name, in his instructions to Timothy, in the letters of John. Mary is remembered as having lived there. John made it his home after Timothy was martyred by Roman authorities. This was a church with pedigree, history, and influence. This was the chief city of the region, home to hundreds of thousands, the Temple of Diana - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - and a center of Emperor worship as well. Which makes what Jesus says to them all the more sobering, because the problem he names isn't the one you'd expect from a church under the kind of pressure such a prevailing culture creates.

It isn't just persecution, though a history of violent opposition to the gospel existed in Ephesus. About it, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I wrestled wild beasts in Ephesus” (1 Corinthians 15). It isn't false teachers slipping in through the back door. The elders had taken Paul’s warnings to heart and dealt swiftly with false apostles and heretical influences. Jesus commends them for hating the falsehood he also hates. The problem in Ephesus is something quieter than either of those — and precisely because it's quiet, it's more dangerous. That problem was an indifferent heart. Ephesus had become a church doing the necessary and commendable work, but without the love of God in Christ the Holy Spirit alone supplies. They had abandoned their first love… their orthodoxy had become orthodusty. Their works had become mere duty, their worship lip service, their teaching propositionally precise but bereft of its ultimate goal - love from a pure heart.

He Signs In First

Before Jesus says a word of assessment, he introduces himself, as every ancient letter writer would do at the beginning of the message. Every one of these seven letters opens with Christ "signing in," reaching back into the vision of chapter one and pulling out the specific dimension of his glory that this particular church needs to see. To Ephesus, he presents himself as the one who holds the stars and walks among the lampstands — the Head of the church, the ruler over all things. Chapter one isn't scaffolding we take down once the building's up. It's the foundation the rest of the book stands on, and Jesus keeps building on it letter by letter.

What He Commends

Give the Ephesians their due. Jesus commends their labor, their perseverance, their doctrinal seriousness, their discernment in testing false apostles and rejecting them. This is a church that did its homework. Years earlier, Paul had warned the Ephesian elders that fierce wolves would rise up from within their own number, twisting the truth; Timothy had been charged to silence exactly that kind of teaching. Read verse two on its own, and Paul and Timothy would have called it a success story. This congregation had guarded the truth. Thank God! May we also be faithful in such things.

But…

Jesus doesn't stop there. "You have abandoned the love you had at first." In his Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul told this very church that she was meant to be rooted and grounded in love, growing by speaking the truth in love and building herself up in love. Love was never meant to be the emotional weather surrounding sound doctrine. It was the mechanism doctrine was supposed to work through. So when Christ says they've laid this down, he isn't describing a feeling that cooled while the beliefs stayed intact. He's saying the body has stopped doing the very thing all that careful truth-telling was for. Orthodoxy had gone brittle — right about nearly everything, and somehow wrong for being so right about it. Truth without love, as it turns out, isn't really truth doing its job at all. As Paul also wrote to Timothy, the very goal of his instruction wasn’t mere dogmatic precision (commendable as that may be!), but “love from a pure heart” (1 Timothy 1).

John himself, writing to this same region, wouldn't allow "orthodox but unloving" to stand as a stable category. Anyone who claims to walk in the light while hating a brother, he says, is still in the dark. Anyone who claims to love God while hating a brother is lying to himself. There's no safe middle ground here — only self-deception dressed up as doctrinal faithfulness.

Three Loves Worth Checking

Love for Jesus himself, not admiration for correct ideas about him, but the kind of devotion a bride has for a groom, the kind God once described remembering fondly from Israel's youth, is in view. It's worth asking honestly: if love has cooled here, we're not the ones who moved. To quote the driver of the pickup truck I mentioned yesterday, “I’m not the one who moved.”

Love for one another, not tolerance, not mere doctrinal agreement, but the patient, practical love that builds a body up rather than merely keeping it correct is also an issue. When we harbor unforgiveness and bitterness, our duties may not decrease, but the toxicity in our relationships will as our souls shrivel, and affection diminishes.

And love for the lost - the kind that prays for the world outside the walls, gives toward the spread of the gospel, and gets its hands dirty in the process - missionary love needs to be guarded. Church planting, personal evangelism, service that highlights the gospel, and prayer for those who do not yet know Christ are hallmarks of love.

He Loved First

Here's the part worth carrying into your week more than any other. The one issuing this critique hasn't laid down his own first love — not once, not ever. The only thing he ever laid down was his life, and he did that precisely because of that love. We love at all only because he loved first. Our love, next to his, is a thimbleful set against an ocean. But it's that ocean that fills the thimble in the first place — poured into hearts at the cross, sealed by the Spirit, held in a grip nothing can pry loose. He doesn't discard the half-hearted. He gently breathes on a dimly burning flame until it glows bright in witness again.

Look, this is an easy pathology to be infected by. Jesus said, when lawlessness is increased, the love of many grows cold (Matthew 24). The lawlessness around us can produce a lovelessness within us, and that rots a church from the inside-out. Eventually, the flame of witness is extinguished, and the lampstand is taken away.

There’s only one antibiotic that can heal this dread infection -

Remember, Repent, and Restart

That’s it. That’s the treatment. We have to confess it, grieve it with godly sorrow, and - as the voice from our GPS maps often tells us - “make a U-Turn.” Recall the true destination and get moving in the right direction again.

So if you recognize something of yourself in this — a heart gone cool, quick to judge, slow to care about your neighbor's soul — the path back isn't complicated, even if it isn't easy. Remember what you once had. Repent of what replaced it. Grieve it, confess it, forsake it, and cry out for help. Return. Come as you are — there are more prodigals inside the church than there ever were in any pigpen. And sadly, there are many “older brothers” who won’t party with the penitent because they’ve closed their hearts against them, hearts overflowing with self-righteous indignation and religious pride.

They Actually Did It

So did the Ephesian believers heed Jesus' message?

Here's the encouragement to close on. Ancient tradition holds that when the apostle John was very old, too weak for a full sermon, they carried him into the Ephesian assembly, and he managed only a handful of words: "Little children, love one another." And by every account we have, they listened. They listened to John’s brief message. They listened to Christ’s letter, postmarked in Patmos but sent from heaven and read in worship on the Lord’s Day, and took it to heart. How do we know that?

Writing to this same church roughly twenty years after Revelation was penned, Ignatius of Antioch called them a "deservedly happy church," known everywhere for good deeds, unity, and a love no false teaching could break through, and served by their bishop, Onesimus, a man of immense and unquenchable love. They heard what the Spirit said. They remembered. They repented. They returned.

We are the Bride over whom our Bridegroom’s banner is love, destined for the tree of life, for full communion with him at last. So carry these questions with you into the week:

Do I know his love for me?

Do I love Jesus supremely?

Do I love my brothers and sisters in Christ?

Do I love the people around me who don't yet know him?

No wonder Paul closed his letter to this very church the way he did: “Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love” (Ephesians 6:24).

Let’s go forward towards the true tree of life, hearts ablaze with first love, undying love, unconquerable love, the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.