Sharon Reformed Presbyterian Church · Sermon study sheet

Our First Love (Revelation 2:1-7)

Bryan Schneider · June 20, 2020

Revelation 2:1-7

sharonrpc.org/sermons/our-first-love-revelation

Summary

The risen Christ commends the Ephesian church's labor, endurance, moral seriousness, and testing of false apostles, yet charges it with having abandoned its first love.
Correct doctrine is necessary but can become an intellectual system used to look down on others if it does not lead to love, worship, and praise of Christ.
Likewise, outwardly good works and mercy do not by themselves prove love for Jesus; Christian service must grow as fruit from communion with him rather than mere habit or social approval.
Christ calls a cold church to remember where it has fallen, repent, and return to its first works through renewed attention to his person, love, Word, prayer, and saving mercy.
Awareness of specific sin and Christ's cleansing blood rekindles love more deeply than routine religious performance or confidence in tradition.
The warning that Christ may remove the lampstand addresses the congregation together: a church can lose its witness if it retains activity and orthodoxy while abandoning love for its Lord.
Those who hear, repent, and overcome in Christ receive the promise of the tree of life and perfect communion with him in God's paradise.

What qualities does Christ commend in the church at Ephesus?
How can doctrinal precision become detached from love for Christ and his people?
Why can acts of mercy or church service become spiritually hollow even when they help others?
What does Christ command a church to remember, repent of, and do again?
How does honest awareness of sin deepen love for Christ's mercy?
What ordinary means does the sermon identify for renewing communion with Christ?
What does the threatened removal of the lampstand mean for a congregation's corporate responsibility?
How does the promise of the tree of life encourage believers to overcome?

First love: The church's living love for Jesus Christ that should animate its doctrine, worship, endurance, and works.
Orthodoxy: Right doctrine, which Christ commends but which must issue in love and praise rather than pride.
Doxology: The worship and praise of God toward which true theology should lead.
Repentance: Remembering the fall from love, grieving sin, turning again to Christ, and returning to faithful works.
Lampstand: Revelation's image for a visible church and its Christ-given place of witness.
Overcome: To persevere in faithful love for Christ by his grace despite forces that would cool or extinguish it.