“Write to the angel of the church in Ephesus: Thus says the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and who walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your works, your labor, and your endurance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and you have found them to be liars. 3 I know that you have persevered and endured hardships for the sake of my name, and you have not grown weary. 4 But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. 6 Yet you do have this: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. 7 “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” -Revelation 2:1-7 (CSB)
How would you define legalism?
A lot of answers can – and have – been offered to that question. A quick online search will uncover an array of definitions that have been offered for various situational, societal, and professional contexts. However, I think the best broad definition of legalism is simply an excessive reliance on law or formula.[1] Theologically, legalism leads us into the error of believing that we can earn or keep salvation and the favor of God on the basis of our own inherent goodness as demonstrated through our actions, accomplishments, and merits rather than by God’s grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).[2] It is a tragic mistake that leads us not only into serious doctrinal error and a corrupted understanding of Christianity, but also a cold, calculating, and joyless experience of “faith.”
Sinclair Ferguson once said, “It’s commonplace to say that one can have a legalistic head and a legalistic heart. But it’s also all too possible to have an evangelical head and a legalistic heart.”[3] I think most Christians would accept this to be true. We can make the right decisions and do the right things (head) for the wrong reasons (heart). The much harder question is what should we do about it if we find ourselves in that state? When one is simply legalistic through and through, the antidote is the Gospel of Christ: salvation by grace through faith as the gift of God. But how do Christians respond to the strange, hybrid condition of an evangelical, Christ-honoring head paired with a legalistic heart? The message of Christ to the church at Ephesus presents us with answers.
This passage begins the messages of the Lord Jesus to the seven churches of Asia minor. These messages are delivered throughout the second and third chapters of the Revelation. Many wonderful, powerful, and meaningful truths will be presented to the seven churches in the letters contained in these two chapters, but a central and immediate truth they all present is the reality that the Lord Jesus is found in the midst of His churches – His people, gathered together. In Christ, we are not alone, we are not forgotten, and we are His people!
Church history tells us that there were other churches throughout Asia Minor beyond the seven named in Revelation 2 and 3. This presents the reader with a question: why these seven? The Apostle John does not tell us why the Lord selected these seven. However, we can assume both from their prominence and the nature and content of the letters delivered to them that they are representative of other churches, not only throughout Asia Minor, but throughout the world then and today.[4]
Accordingly, while the seven letters we will explore in Revelation 2 and 3 are addressed to the specific named churches indicated in the text, their messages – their warnings and encouragements, exhortations and explanations – are given for the edification of all churches and all believers of all ages. Thus, the content of these letters is as relevant to us today as it was so many years ago when John penned these incredible words on the island of Patmos.
The Recipients: The Church at Ephesus (v. 1).
The recipients of this letter are the believers who composed the church at Ephesus. Ephesus, at its height, was the most important and prominent city on the coast of Asia Minor. Asia Minor was blessed with a number of harbors, but the city of Ephesus was considered the queen of the Asian harbors. The city was blessed with a wonderful and accessible natural harbor, as well as rich and fertile land throughout the city’s inland area. Consequently, the city became a great commercial city marked by wealth, power, and prominence. The city boasted a great guild of silversmiths who would notably oppose Paul during his ministry to the city (Acts 19:24).[5]
The city was also a center of religious worship. Ephesus was home to the great temple of Diana, Roman name for the mythological Greek goddess Artemis, daughter of Jupiter and Latona, and the twin sister of Apollo.[6] Economically, the cult of Diana located in the city became of increasing importance as the harbor at Ephesus silted up through the years. Various attempts were made to drag the silt out, but the efforts were unsuccessful and eventually abandoned. As the city enjoyed greater wealth and profit from tourists and worshippers participating in the cult of Diana, the city’s sources of wealth shifted from its trade to its pagan worship.[7]
The church at Ephesus, itself, had an interesting history. When Paul arrived at the city, he only found twelve believers in Ephesus. These saints had been won to the Lord through the preaching of the talented, but immature, Apollos. As a consequence, the members of the church at Ephesus had a weak theology evidenced by their misunderstanding of the presence of the Holy Spirit in their midst (Acts 19:1-7). Paul spent two challenging, but fruitful, years preaching and ministering in their midst to strengthen and advance the church in the Gospel.[8]
The Speaker: Jesus, Bearer of Seven Stars (v. 1).
In his commentary, Paige Patterson noted that Jesus introduces Himself to each of the seven churches of Asia Minor in unique and important ways: “In each of the letters to the seven churches, the Lord identifies himself in a particular way. To the church at Ephesus, he presents himself as the One who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks up and down in the midst of the seven golden lampstands.”[9] Rev. 1:20 previously identified the seven stars as the angels of the seven churches. The question then becomes what is the significance of Christ holding those seven stars?
Jesus’s possession of the stars demonstrates His authority over them. While the exact nature of who the seven angels are is debated, what is absolutely clear is that the seven angels are under the authority, control, and direction of the Lord. Patterson noted, “The angels, whoever they may be, are firmly in the control of the Lord.”[10] Morris also noted that the image conveys Christ’s concern for the churches, as well. “The effect of this salutation is to give a picture of Christ as present in the very midst of the churches, a Christ who is intimately concerned with them and cares for them.”[11]
Broad Commendation (vv. 2-3).
In verses 2-3, the Lord commends the church at Ephesus for a series of attributes. The first three commendations come in a series: their works, labor, and endurance. Following this, the Lord praises the church for its inability to tolerate evil people. Next the church is honored for its testing of false apostles. After this, the Ephesian church is commended for its perseverance and endurance for the sake of Christ and its unwillingness to grow weary in the face of the hardships it has endured.
The reference to “labor” (Greek: κόπον)[12] is particularly fascinating in verse 2. This term generally refers to hard labor that produces intense fatigue, discomfort, and even distress.[13] Yet, the Lord applauds the church in the same breath for not having “grown weary” (Greek: οὐ κεκοπίακες)[14] (v. 3). The picture the Lord constructed is of a church that labored in faithful service to the point of exhaustion, yet did not give up or give in under the weight of its burdens and toil. As Patterson noted, “the picture, therefore, is of one who, not wishing to shirk responsibility, bears the burden of it with determined zeal.”[15]
The church’s refusal to tolerate heresy and the teaching of false apostles is of special importance, then and now. It is always tempting, in the spirit of “unity,” and particularly unity under the pressure of opposition, persecution, and hardship, to excuse the inexcusable by overlooking theological errors and corruptions. However, the church rightly recognized that it could not afford to do this and refused to tolerate false teaching in its midst. In sum, the reader can see that the church at Ephesus was “diligent, hardworking church characterized by great patience in the apostolic endeavor, a love for moral purity, and an unquestioned orthodoxy, which made the congregation quite different from her sister churches in Pergamum or Thyatira.”[16]
Arresting Complaint (v. 4).
However, despite all of the commendations of the church’s labor, commitment, and steadfastness in the faith, the Lord had a serious charge against the church expressed in verse 4: the church had abandoned its first love (for Him). Akin summarized it well: “By all outward appearances this church looked healthy. Its doctrine was spot on, and the lifestyles of its members matched their confession. However—and this is an ever present hazard—they were in danger of becoming “a Pharisee church.” They were in danger of a legalism that in time would be their death. They were still doing all the right things, but sometime in the past they had forsaken the right motivation.”[17]
How can a church do all the right things and still be in error? Not only is this predicament a theoretical possibility; it’s a temptation that has come to God’s people all throughout history. In the course and pressures of life, human beings are tempted to move from obeying God in loving, reverent worship to a legalistic, monotonous, “box-checking” spirituality that boils down to some form of simple habit (at best) or a quid pro quo score keeping with God (at worst). Faithful obedience can tragically give way to self-oriented legalism. We begin by doing the right things for the right reasons, then drift to doing the right things for the wrong reasons…and, if that dangerous pattern continues, the spiritual deadness it produces can cause us to eventually drift into failing to do the right things altogether.
Our loving, gracious, and holy God shows us again and again that He isn’t interested in creating for Himself an army of loveless, doctrinally correct robots – a church composed of theologically sophisticated humanoid artificial intelligence. Yes, He absolutely wants doctrinal correctness (called “orthodoxy” by theologians) and faithfulness to the truth – and He commended the Ephesian church for it. But the Lord desires a people marked by and exhibiting this orthodoxy in love, and this is where the Ephesian Christians had failed. And, in the pressures and challenges of life, it is where we, too, can easily fail.
It is at this point we need to remember an important practical consideration that will apply throughout chapters 2-3 of the Revelation. If we want to read the letters to the seven churches as the Savior commanded, then we should read them by evaluating our own spiritual condition and habits through the lens of the Lord’s judgments of and instructions to them. In studying this letter rightly, we shouldn’t hypocritically pile our own condemnations onto the Ephesian Christians of the first century for their error. The Lord rendered His own infallible judgment of them and doesn’t need our help, addendum, or concurring verdict. Instead, we should learn from their error through the Lord’s loving and gracious instruction to the church through this letter.
Gracious Counsel (v. 5).
True to the Lord’s actions throughout Scripture, He does not leave His church without guidance after rebuking their loss of love. The Lord provides counsel to the church in verse 5, advising them to “remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (CSB). The admonition is three-fold: “remember,” “repent,” and “do.”
First, the church is called to remember their former condition (their love for Christ that produced their obedience). The call to remembrance comes first as repentance is conditioned on remembrance. To turn from that which is wrong, we must remember and turn to that which is right. As Patterson wisely observed, “Here repentance is conditioned upon remembering. One finds difficulty in repenting of something for which he feels no guilt.”[18] Naturally, that brings the church to the second element of the exhortation: to repent. Repentance is “the act whereby one turns from his or her sin, idolatry, and creaturely rebellion and turns to God in faith.”[19] In the case of the Ephesian church, they were commanded to turn from their loveless state to their former love for the Savior.
Repentance would then produce the third element of the command, to “do the works you did at first” (v. 5). Paradoxically, these were the same works the church was doing at the present time and commended for doing: laboring diligently, persevering in faith and service, living pure lives, and rejecting heresy. The difference is that the doing the church was called to in verse 5 is motivated and empowered by a deep-seeded love for Christ. It wasn’t their surface actions but their inward motives that needed to change.
They needed to worship Christ. They needed to personally think of Christ, His love for them, and their love for Him in the midst of their daily actions and responsibilities. When they encountered difficulty and opposition, they needed to turn to Christ. When they faced fear and doubt, they needed to lean upon Christ. When they experienced fatigue and weariness, they needed to rest in Christ. In all of the wonderful and faithful actions they took as a church body, they needed to keep their minds fixed upon Christ and not upon work and service for work and service’s sake.
A Stark Warning (v. 6).
While the Lord is gracious in providing constructive counsel to the church in correcting its error, the counsel is also paired with a loving, yet stark, warning. If they do not repent of their error, the Lord warns that He will “come to you and remove your lampstand from its place” (2:6 CSB). The threat is clear: removal of the church’s lampstand from its place. However, what does removal of the lampstand mean? Given the symbolism of the lampstand, what are the implications of this threat?
Given both the symbolism of the lampstand in giving light (the truth of the Gospel) and clear teachings elsewhere in Scripture, the threat of the lampstand’s removal should not be construed as the loss of individual church members’ salvation. Rather, it is an image of the departing glory, power, and message of Christ in the midst of the church. If the church did not return to its love for Christ, then their lampstand would be removed in judgment and the advance of the Kingdom of Christ in their midst would cease as a consequence. That is, the particular church would effectively cease to exist. Such a judgment would in no way endanger the Kingdom of God, but it would certainly have tragic implications for the Ephesian church, its community in Ephesus, and its place in the broader work of the Kingdom.[20] As Easley summarized, “Although Christ has promised to build his church worldwide (Matt. 16:18), he guarantees permanence to no individual congregation. A loveless church is no longer truly a church, and Christ has the right to extinguish such a congregation.”[21]
Patterson noted that this threat hung “over the church at Ephesus like the proverbial sword of Damocles.”[22] Such imagery is certainly a fitting description of the threat, but another comparison also comes to mind: the word “Ichabod” (1 Samuel 4:21). If the church at Ephesus failed to remember, repent, and do, as the Lord commanded, the warning issued by the risen Christ foreshadowed a departure of His glory from that industrious, pure, and persevering church.
Exhortation and Promise (v. 7).
This remarkable letter to the church at Ephesus then concludes with a clarion call and a remarkable promise. The Lord exhorts, “Let anyone who has ears to hear listen to what the Spirit says to the churches” (7:1 CSB). Does this exhortation apply only to the recipients of the Revelation of John in his day (the first century)? Certainly not. The text is clearly broad and all encompassing: “Let anyone…” Anyone doesn’t leave many out. As a matter of fact, it leaves no one – and no generation following this letter – out.
The promise is made to the “one who conquers” (7:1). Who is this, and what does it mean to “conquer” in this context? At the end of each of the seven letters of the churches of Asia Minor, Christ always makes a commitment marked by three things: “the one who overcomes is praised; he who has an ear is addressed; and the message is commended as one that the Spirit says to the churches.”[23] Easley noted that, “to overcome is more literally ‘to conquer,’” and further observed that the terminology of conquering in Christ is a reminder to recipients of the letter – then and now – that we are engaged in spiritual warfare.[24]
How, then, do we fight this spiritual battle? Not by cold, dead, legalism rooted in the love of self, but by vibrant, worshipping, courageous faith rooted in the love of Christ. By listening to the truth revealed by the Spirit and conquering sin, Satan, and the forces of darkness through faithfulness to Christ, the church inherits the “right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (v. 7).
That is the destiny of the Christ-honoring head and the Christ-loving heart.
[1] Oxford Languages, “Legalism,” Oxford Languages, https://languages.oup.com/research/oxford-english-dictionary/
[2] Erik Raymond, “What is Legalism and Why is it so Bad?,” The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/what-is-legalism-and-why-is-it-so-bad/
[3] Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 94.
[4] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 77.
[5] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 80–81.
[6] Walter A. Elwell and Barry J. Beitzel, “Diana,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 622.
[7] David Seal, “Ephesus,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).
[8] Leadership Ministries Worldwide, Revelation, The Preacher’s Outline & Sermon Bible (Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide, 1996), 27.
[9] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 83.
[10] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 83.
[11] Leon Morris, Revelation: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 20, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 64.
[12] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Re 2:2.
[13] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 558.
[14] Kurt Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th Edition. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), Re 2:3.
[15] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 84.
[16] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 85.
[17] Daniel L. Akin, Exalting Jesus in Revelation, ed. Daniel L. Akin, David Platt, and Tony Merida, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2016), 36–37.
[18] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 86.
[19] Justin Stratis, “Repentance,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).
[20] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 87.
[21] Kendell H. Easley, Revelation, vol. 12, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 35.
[22] Paige Patterson, Revelation, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, vol. 39, The New American Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H, 2012), 86.
[23] Kendell H. Easley, Revelation, vol. 12, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 35–36.
[24] Kendell H. Easley, Revelation, vol. 12, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 36.
Preacher Talk 
This blog beautifully highlights the importance of returning to our first love for Christ, as the church at Ephesus was reminded. It offers a powerful reflection on restoring passion and devotion in our faith journey. Thank you for this thoughtful and encouraging message to reignite our love for Him.
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