What Was Their "First Love"?

One of the more damning evaluations of a church in the entire NT is found in Revelation 2 when John accuses the Ephesians of having lost their first love (Rev 2:4). My colleague Lynn Cohick explores what that first love was and what was lost in her essay in the edited volume by Nijay Gupta, Tara Beth Leach, Matt Bates, and Drew Strait, Living the King Jesus Gospel: Discipleship and Ministry Then and Now.

Paul’s mission trips involved planting churches, designating leaders, and catechizing the believers in the way of Christ. Gospel power was a work and in Ephesus that power threatened the economy by subverting the cult of Artemis.

Photo by Timur Can Şentürk on Unsplash

Worth and honor were also threatened by the gospel for it valued equality and flipping the script of honor. Instead of standing up for himself in the Demetrius episode (Acts 19), Paul backs off, and this was contrary to Roman custom.

Acts 20 shows that the gospel of Paul and its powerful impact on life challenged the idolatries of Ephesus. The Lordship of Jesus subverts the status quo in ways that become everyday-life for the Christians in Ephesus.

But what is striking is that Paul refuses to enter the honor trap. Here we find the “first” love of the Ephesians. Here they show their love for God as their first love. I like this anchoring of the first-love idea in what was happening in Ephesus, and this love worked out as love for one another and for others, both the Jew-Gentile tension and the slave-free tension. Here we see the Ephesian faithfulness to the way of Christ.

But Revelation 2:1-7 shows they lost it.

Lynn Cohick: “gospel truth without gospel love is not the gospel church” (57).

How did they lose their first love?

1.    They forgot they were in continual need themselves.

2.    They redefined love as tolerance.

Peace in Rome meant domination. Peace for the Christian recalibrated the importance of old differences. The “other” is valued above the “self” and labels gave way to siblings. Every person bears the image of God, not just those with status and honor and power. Using the work and ministry of Myrto Theocharous, Lynn draws out that the image of God means being one to whom the oppressed can go for justice. (Think about that shift of ordering.) Did the wealthy provide justice for the poor? Were they embodying the image of God? This is the first love.

Ah, next the Nicolaitans, a crux for interpreters. They ate food offered to idols and practiced porneia, sexual immorality, two sins connected to being unfaithful to God. She’s right: this has to do with accommodate and assimilation to the wider culture, and thus taps into our sense of tolerance. They had a both-and religion, one that saw no tension between the way of Jesus and the way of Caesar.

Reminding us of the work of Kavin Rowe, she states that the way of Jesus could be profoundly intolerant of the ways of Rome. Christianity was not one among many ways but a different, alternative way. The Nicolaitans equivocated; John calls them back to their first love.

Do we realize we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies (Eph 2:6)? This seating also inspires Christians to become agents of justice in our world today. Christ is also our Peace (Eph 2:14-15), which inspires us to working for peace in our world.

Lynn’s study of what “first love” meant in Ephesus contributes to our scholarship while it leads us to ask how we are doing in our first love that leads to love for others.