First Love
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. — Revelation 2:4
It is a strange letter to receive.
The church in Ephesus is doing much right. They endure. They do not tolerate evil. They have tested those who call themselves apostles and found them to be false. They have perseverance. They have not given up.
And yet Jesus says: You have abandoned what matters most.
Not doctrine. That is intact. Not endurance. That is in place. Not the ability to tell true from false. That still works.
What is missing is the simplest thing. The first thing. The thing that was once so self-evident it needed no explanation.
They no longer loved one another the way they did in the beginning.
In the first decades after the resurrection, something happened that the Romans did not fully understand. In an empire built on power, hierarchy, and honor, small communities began to emerge that operated according to an entirely different logic.
They cared for their own sick — but not only their own. During the epidemics that ravaged the Roman Empire, the Christians stayed with the dying when others fled. They tended neighbors who did not share their faith. It was so unusual that it was noticed.
They took in children who had been left to die — infant girls, the disabled, the unwanted. In a culture where the exposure of infants was accepted practice, these communities bent down and carried them home.
They shared meals across boundaries that were otherwise impossible to cross. Slaves and free. Jews and Gentiles. Poor and wealthy. Around the same table. It was not a political project. It was the consequence of something they believed to be true about what it means to be human.
Emperor Julian, who attempted to restore the old Roman religion, complained in frustration: "These godless Galileans care not only for their own poor, but for ours as well."
He meant it as criticism. But it was, in truth, the highest recognition Christianity could have received.
They were known by how they loved one another.
Something happened along the way.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when, because it was not a dramatic break. It was more like the tide — a slow, almost imperceptible shift.
The communities grew. They gained influence. In time, they gained power. And with power came new questions. No longer simply "how do we live faithfully?" — but "how do we preserve what we have built?"
It is a natural question. Perhaps even a responsible one. But it changes the direction of the gaze. From looking outward — who needs us? — to looking inward — who threatens us?
Slowly, faith began to be less about who we are for others, and more about who we are in contrast to others.
This is where identity begins to take the place of discipleship.
Discipleship is movement. It asks: Where is Jesus going? And it follows — often to uncomfortable places, to people we would not have chosen ourselves, into situations where we lose control.
Identity is position. It asks: Where do we belong? And it draws boundaries — between us and them, between right and wrong, between those who are inside and those who are outside.
Both exist within faith. It is not wrong to know who you are. It is not wrong to hold fast to truth.
But when identity becomes the primary thing, something happens to us. We begin to define ourselves more by what we defend than by whom we follow. We become more concerned with the boundaries than with the direction. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, we begin to need enemies in order to know who we are.
It is a dangerous shift. Not because it is evil, but because it feels right. It feels responsible. It feels faithful.
But it is a different kind of faithfulness than the first.
The first love was not naive. The early Christians lived under pressure, under persecution, under suspicion. They knew what it cost to believe.
But they did not respond with walls. They responded by loving beyond what fear would dictate.
That is what makes the letter to Ephesus so unsettling. For the church has not stopped believing. They have not stopped working. They have not stopped holding fast to the truth.
They have simply stopped loving the way they did in the beginning.
And the letter says that is enough to shake everything.
What was it they lost?
Perhaps the simplest answer is this: They lost the order.
Truth without love became hardness. Endurance without warmth became duty. Right doctrine without right spirit became ideology.
They had everything in place — except what held it all together.
It is not difficult to recognize ourselves.
For the question in Revelation 2 is not addressed only to a church in the first century. It is a question that meets us today, just as quietly, just as directly:
Do we love one another the way we did in the beginning?
Or have we become so preoccupied with being right, with preserving, with defending — that we have lost what was once our clearest mark?
Not doctrine. Not endurance. Not the ability to expose what is false.
But the simplest thing. The first thing.
That we loved one another.
That we loved our enemies.