Jan. 05, 2025

Your First Love

Introduction - The Spirit of God spoke a very important truth to the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:2-4

Revelation 2:1-4 “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus. This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands: 2 “I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. 3 You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. 4 “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! 

This mixed commendation and complaint has an important message for us.  It is one that we learn to say to each other frequently in church life, but get busy with other service so that the very most important thing is pushed to the side: Loving God, and its companion idea, loving one another.  For the sake of clarity, a good biblical definition of love is: The sacrificial, unselfish, loyal, benevolent concern for the well-being of another.  

Perfect Love in the Garden of Eden

Love has been an expectation of God since his earliest communications with us.  In the Garden of Eden, after the creation of Adam and Eve, God simply said “it is very good.” There was probably a lot of freight behind what He said there, as His love for his creatures and creation was in full force.  It was not altered in any way. Adam, Eve, and God lived in an amazing bliss of the perfection of life.  Negative thoughts of any kind did not exist.  Adam and Eve’s focus was on God and God’s was on them. Very similarly, men and women who fall “in love” today with each other give and receive similar undivided attention.  

Then came Satan’s distracting words: He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The conversation which followed was all it took to get Adam and Eve to become confused, and to listen to another voice other than God, ultimately betraying the singular love they had for God. They essentially did what the Christians in Ephesus had done; they left their “first love.”

Love after the fall of man

Adam and Eve and all of mankind born after them had lost the clarity of the loving voice of God speaking to them on a daily basis, involving them in the effortless communion and oneness they had experienced.  They now had to work to get meager food, depend on each other to survive, learn how to love each other and cooperate, and bear children with some effort.  Weather and earthly forces worked against them.  Things began to rust and decay.  They had to cover themselves with garments and constructed houses to shelter in.  It was hard to remember what it was like back in the Garden or that love as they’d experienced even existed. Adam and his immediate family lived long lives and eventually died. We don’t know for sure whether Adam and Eve went to heaven or not, but they seemed to accept God’s remedy for their spiritual nakedness when He placed skins upon them.  After them, people became so hardened that God was sorry He made them:

Genesis 6:6 So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. 

He sent a flood to rid the earth of all sinful people and everything connected to them.  Only Noah and his family found favor and survived.  This is how far love had decayed from mankind’s knowledge of it.  

After Noah and his family started repopulating the earth, God began reaching out to man, teaching again that He was there and that love was the way to life.   This was because God so loved the world, as we know from the familiar verse in John 3:16, and sent Jesus to teach us what love really meant.  Here’s an example of God teaching the Israelites in the Old Testament what his idea of love for Him was:

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 

In the New Testament, this standard didn’t change, but was echoed by Jesus:

Mark 12:29-31 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. 30 And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ 31The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”

Jesus’ life on earth began in earnest the fullest revelation of what God’s idea of love was.  Keep in mind that we lost this connection completely after the fall.  It was only because of God’s initiating contact with us that we even know of it today.  Throughout the rest of the New Testament, the apostles expounded more and more on it.  Here’s an example of the teaching of the apostle John concerning love:

1 John 3:16-20 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person? 18 Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. 19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.

Conclusion:  The modern church is good at loving people from afar.  It is easy to find a seat in a huge auditorium, sing songs, give an offering, greet someone at greeting time, and leave to the privacy of your car when all is over.  You can perform energetic worship, prophesy, speak in a tongue, have revelations, and still lack in love by God’s measurement.  As far as God is concerned, He really wants our attention: our interest in what He is doing in the earth, and our presence, involved in what He is doing with the people He is doing it with.  Here’s a simple way to look at it:  God is undoubtedly asking us to interact more lovingly with his people.  For all of us, this means involving ourselves in some form of smaller group than the normal church service.  An old church expression says it well:  “You can’t get hearts together unless you get bodies together.”  Those words about heart-soul-mind-strength…  Something to really think about.