All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

Revival, or spiritual awakening, is a subject that many Christians are very interested in, and may have a desire to experience, but understand very little. As I’ve noted elsewhere, revival isn’t just the mass ingathering of a crowd of people into God’s family in a very short time, but is the restoration and reformation of believers to a close knowledge and walk with the Lord. He usually brings times of revival because it’s His people who need reviving first, so He can then use them to spiritually raise the dead to newness of life.

A few of the greatest illustrations and instructions on the revival of Christ’s people are found in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John the apostle. Near the end of the time of the apostles, the Lord addressed seven representative congregations with specific messages for them. Most of these messages are aimed at the revival of these assemblies, and their restoration to faithful fellowship with Him. Three in particular serve as serious warnings to believers of the condition we can devolve into when we fail to maintain diligent obedience to the Lord’s commands. Many western Christians of our day need to take solemn heed to these messages, both for their own sakes, as well as the sake of the believers they associate with.

How Can You Relate?

To begin to examine the first of these solemn messages, let me ask you a question:

Have you grown weary or tired of engaging in spiritual warfare? Are you continually waging theological, doctrinal, and heresy fights online or in person, and are consumed with a regular suspicion that someone could be promoting false teaching, or false teachers?
How about simply railing against the evil of the people who live around you?

What about your local fellowship as a whole? Is your church constantly engaged in the exposure of false teaching and false teachers, and seems more concerned with fighting against heresy than preaching the gospel?

It may be that you or your assembly have left your first love. The Lord Jesus’s first message is to a church that held fast to biblical beliefs and teaching, worked hard to defend it against opposing doctrines, and exposed hypocritical men claiming to speak for Him, but promoting their own thinking and persona. They even suffered from persecution, mistreatment, and hatred, but held fast to their biblical beliefs. And yet they had lost love in the process. They needed a revival of love, and the Lord spoke to them through John to rouse them from their spiritual coldness, apathy, and selfishness. Let us heed the warnings of Christ to them, for they may very well apply to us or our friends:

“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.” – Rev. 2:1b-7a

Our Lord Jesus begins by describing Himself as the sovereign Ruler and Guardian of His people, as He “holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (v. 1). The seven stars, according to John, are the “angels” or literally, messengers, of the assemblies to whom these messages were first addressed. It’s these messengers that Jesus has control of, and has sent to the assemblies to deliver His words. As for His “walking,” this shows that He’s living among those who profess faith in Him, and knows exactly what they’re doing, and what they aren’t doing. Nothing can be hid from His infinite understanding.

The Lord begins His actual message to this first assembly by commending them for their seemingly good deeds, showing that they’ve learned to obey Him at least partly and even piously. He first notes their strenuous labor and determination in the face of opposition. Then, He praises them for opposing false teachers because they “put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false” (v. 2). What zeal for the truth they’ve shown! They’ve called out fake “apostles” claiming to speak for Him, and driven them away from their gatherings. What’s even more admirable about them is that they “endured for [His] name’s sake, and have not grown weary” (v. 3). What did they endure? Clearly, they endured persecution for representing and promoting His “name,” or His life, work, and teaching. And they were still determined to do so.

In spite of all these good things they were zealously engaging in, they had neglected the main thing of serving the Lord – love. As Jesus warned in the Olivet Discourse, their love had “grown cold”. At some point in their backsliding, they completely left their “first love.”

What was this first love? According to Jesus’s next words, it was mostly demonstrated in “the deeds [they] did at first” (v. 5).

Is this not the common experience of believers? When we’re first saved, the enjoyment of our sins forgiven is a new and exhilarating experience. For the first time, we’ve seen ourselves, the world, and God as they truly are, and we’re filled with wonder, love, and praise. But as we continue on with obeying the Lord, gradually we’re increasingly concerned with the troubles, disciplines, and hard work of following Him, and we lose touch with our benefits from Him in the gospel.

What happened with the Ephesian assembly was that they had become consumed, distracted, and weighed down with the toils of defending and contending for the true gospel, so that they had more and more neglected to meditate on, share in, and imitate the love Jesus had given them through His death, resurrection, and salvation. They became more concerned with the outward warfare against false teaching than with the inward warfare of fighting pride and selfishness with the recognition and praise of God’s love for them and the world.

The warning given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 became mostly true of them:

“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”

But how exactly did the Ephesians stop acting lovingly? Because the Lord implies that they had stopped acting the way they did when they were first saved, we can only conclude that most of these actions had been the most prominent acts of Christian love. And these fall under the category of “the love of the brethren”. John is emphatic in 1 John that the degree to which we love our brothers and sisters in Christ is also the degree to which we love our heavenly Father. Thus, since this laboring congregation had left their first love, they had neglected the love of one another in Christ, God’s children. They had allowed the fight for the gospel to become more important than their affection for each other, and their love for sinners.

What comes next is the Lord’s prescription for their revival to love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim. 1:5). He has three commands for them – to remember, to repent, and to return.

The Actions of Their Revival

First, they must remember “where” they were when they fell from their initial love. They must remember the day when they were first approved and embraced into God’s family by being baptized and sharing the Lord’s Supper. And they must remember the adoration, awe, and joy that filled their souls in response to their understanding of God’s forgiveness, favor, and delight in them. Further, they should remember how their conversion immediately impelled them to seek ways in which they could help, bless, encourage, and serve their newfound family members Christ.

Having remembered this first love, they would be shown how far they had come from their first devotion, and the coldness, bitterness, and hardness they were now feeling and showing. Only then could they change their minds (or repent) about their lovelessness, and ask the Lord for forgiveness, cleansing, and help.

Finally, they needed to make the intentional decisions needed to return to their loving activities for the brethren and unbelievers. They needed to “fervently love one another,” “devote [themselves] to one another in brotherly love,” and “regard one another as more important” (1 Pet. 1:22; Rom. 12:10; Phil. 2:3). In sum, they needed to “lay down [their] lives for one another” (1 Jn. 3:16). And having restored their concern and fellowship with each other, they needed to “do good to all people,” especially by sharing the gospel (Gal. 6:10).

In order to show just how bad they’d gotten, and to motivate them to obey His instructions, Jesus next gives them a dire warning, which ought to warn all believers who fellowship with congregations like them.

The Punishment from Refusing Revival

Our Lord Jesus concludes His call to this loveless laboring church with a very simple ultimatum:

“. . . or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place – unless you repent.” (v. 5)

What does He mean by removing their lampstand from its place? Since He’s already told John that the lampstands represent the Christian assemblies themselves (1:20), He’s threatening to stop them from meeting as an assembly where they are. Somehow, He would prevent them from assembling as a Christian body as they had. And the instrument that could bring this about might be any terrifying course of events. Having ceased to represent His love to the world around them, they had come close to forfeiting their privilege to represent Him at all – unless they repented. The same warning goes to all of our assemblies who don’t exercise reasonable love for God by fervently loving our brethren and neighbors.

Contend with Contrite Compassion

There are several lessons to be learned from this warning to a loveless assembly, which I want to just survey at the end. First, opposing hypocritical preachers of the faith through careful testing, and working hard to defend the gospel against contradictions and opponents are good and right. We must contend for the faith – but not at the expense of love.

Second, we must avoid at all costs losing sight of the Lord’s love for us in His death, intercession, forgiveness, and redemption of our souls. This is the greatest fuel for our personal, fearful, love of Him, as well as our humble, compassionate, sacrificial love for others. Love clearly isn’t automatic, but must be cultivated, acted out, and expressed to its objects.

Finally, if you, or any Christian you know, has left your first love from God, then the invitation is now here for you – remember how the Lord once ruled you, repent of your coldness, self-centeredness, or unrestrained animosity, and just return to walking in love, as a beloved child of God.

If we want revival among our fellowships and communities, then Christlike, sacrificial, and others-centered love is one essential fuel that the Spirit delights to set fire to, to make a roaring flame of salvation. Pray for love.