It starts with love
by Maria Rudolph
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I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love (Revelation 2:4).
I once talked with a friend whose connection to the Christian faith was attending the Christmas Eve service every year with her grandmother. She told me that after a few years of listening to the pastor pointing out in her sermon that certain people only ever seem to come to church on Christmas Eve, she was fed up with being told off about coming to church and stopped going altogether. Isn’t that tragic? A great opportunity to share the love of God with his people had been missed. Instead, the seed of rejection had been planted in this person.
Can we sometimes do the same? Admittedly, sometimes it seems that God is rather harsh, like in today’s reading. The gospel writer John is stuck on the island of Patmos and has a vision, which he describes in the Book of Revelation. God gives messages to seven churches, and he takes them to task! What do you think a letter from God to your own church would point out? What about a letter from God to yourself? God tells the people in the church at Ephesus that they have forgotten their first love. They have neglected to put Jesus first before everything and anything else. It sounds like a harsh rebuke, but note that God’s rebuke comes in the context of love. The church at Ephesus has been nurtured with the good news about the cross, God’s grace, their redemption and forgiveness through Christ’s blood (Ephesians 2:8–10). God makes it clear elsewhere in Revelation (3:19,20) that:
those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
You see, it starts with love and has the end goal of a fuller communion with God. God does not rebuke outside of a context of love. And so it shall be with us who follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We cannot use God’s word to rebuke and discipline others if we do not have a context of love, relationship and nurture with them. And you can also see it ends with communion between God and people. The only reason for rebuke and discipline from God and his word is to bring about this full communion as a loved, baptised, redeemed child of God. This is the be-all and end-all of all Christian ministry. Remember your first love: Jesus above all other things. If Jesus is number one, all other things will fall into place, and even rebuke and discipline are framed in the context of love.
How does the rebuke of God’s word affect you?
Loving God, you search me and know me. You know my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Open my eyes to see where I go wrong and to repent. You are my first love, and I need the help of your Holy Spirit daily to put nothing and no-one else in top position. I commit myself into your loving hands, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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