The Letter to the Church in Ephesus (Part 3: Resolution)

This is the third of a series of several posts considering the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2-3. 

The second post considered the condemnation offered by Christ to the Ephesian church. They had lost their first love. Therefore, their status as a lampstand—a church—was being threatened to be removed from them.

Let us now take a look at Jesus’s proposed solution for the Ephesian saints: Remember, repent, and do the deeds you did at first. 

Remember

Jesus called the church at Ephesus to remember from where they have fallen. This church knew the gospel and loved God before they lost their first love. Jesus’s solution is to remember this gospel and love. Are you cool in your love of God? Look back and remember how you loved him at the moment of your salvation. Look back with fondness on when he brought you from death into life. Remembering God’s saving work in our lives empowers and enlivens our hearts to good deeds. 

Repent

Jesus also calls the Ephesians to repentance. They were not in a place to call the losing of their first love simply a “time of wandering” or a “turn in the journey.” No. Losing their first love was sinful. They were acting against the Sovereign God of the universe and were thus acting in sin. This grievous sin demands repentance. To repent is to turn from sin. However, turning from something requires the turner to turn toward something. The Ephesians were commanded to repent of losing their first love. They needed to turn from their cold love of God and turn back to a white-hot passion for God’s glory revealed in Christ. 

Do

Full repentance goes further than simply confessing sin; that sin must be replaced with something that glorifies God. For the Ephesians, they were to repent and do the deeds they did at first. They were to confess the sinfulness of growing cold and losing their love of God, but they were not to stop there. Instead, they continue down the road of repentance until that sin is replaced by something that glorifies God. This is really how sanctification works. The Holy Spirit reveals sin in our lives. We confess that sin to God in prayer, with sorrow and bitterness. We pray for God’s help in killing that sin. We pray that God makes the sin more and more bitter in our lives. Then we look for ways to glorify God in place of the sin we’re trying to kill. The Ephesians needed to get back to what they were doing before they grew cold in their love of God.

They were to return to loving God, and by extension, they would love their neighbors. At root, we are often guilty of growing cold in our love of God. When we do this, as the church, we really cease to be a church. We lose our status as a lampstand. The church must then identify ways we’re sinning, remember what we were doing before, repent of that sin, and do what God has called us to do in being the church.

The letter to the church in Ephesus closes with another commendation (they hate the works of the Nicolaitans, a heretical sect) and a conclusion statement. Verse seven calls to attention the distinctly Christian audience of the letters: “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” The Spirit quickens, or brings to life, the ears and eyes of a person. Once a person has been given the Holy Spirit—which happens only after salvation—they can see and hear the words of God. In short, the Holy Spirit allows people to understand what Scripture is all about. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can apply the actual words of Scripture and live in light of them. So we can understand what it means to remember, repent, and do. 

Finally, the letter to the church at Ephesus points forward. The saints of this beleaguered local church are to look ahead to the day when “the one who conquers will be granted to eat at the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (v. 7). While the world around them is full of false teaching, persecution, and fear, the Ephesians are to hope in a world yet to come. In Christ, we are made more than conquerors (Rom 8:37). Because Christ conquered death and the power of sin, we are also victorious over death and the power of sin. Though the church is beat down, persecuted, and even killed, we can look forward to a day when we eat of the tree of life, which has leaves that are for the healing of the nations (Rev 22:1-3). Looking ahead to the gloriously bright future helps the church to endure increasingly dark days.