Returning To Your First Love

An Orthodox Inquirer's Idea of Revelations 2:4

Author’s Note: My writings on the Scripture and the Church should only ever be taken as opinions and never teachings. I simply enjoy speaking of the Bible and the Truth, yet I am but a child who needs milk so I may one day hungrily seek after meat. I welcome any discussions, criticisms and corrections but ask that any kind word be given to the Lord.

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love… repent and do the first works.” Revelations 2:4

I have read many a sermon on the opening chapters of Revelation and have heard just as many more. The church of Ephesus has always been a focus of loving Christ and returning to that love for Christ. Yet I often see this captured rather badly. The idea of loving Christ is often transformed into something earthly and strong emphasis is placed on the “personal relationship” one has with Christ or on the feelings one had when they were first saved. Many a church simply recasts this in an evangelical message. To them, the church in Ephesus was bogged down in endless talking, focusing inward on church matters, when they should have followed their first love in going out and evangelizing, sharing the message of salvation with strangers.

This always goes back to the “feeling” one had with their first love. An Evangelical “feels” they have to share the gospel with others upon conversion. A Pentecostal “feels” the Holy Spirit and begins speaking in tongues. Most modern Christians “feel” some sort of emotional high upon conversion – particularly if they have listened to an altar call and ran to the front of a church before a congregation, earnestly pouring their heart out to the Lord in front of much human approval. Such emotions always fade, as feelings tend to do, leaving many Christians to wonder if their status of being a Christian or even of being saved is now suddenly in jeopardy. Much ado is made about returning to that first love, recapturing that emotional high and the subsequent actions that feeling brought about.

This is reflective of secular psychological thought, where marriage counselors will at some point bring up something about how one felt when they first fell in love and how one should recapture that feeling. This carries over to the Christian world in a rapidly growing Christian self-help market where the focus is on recapturing that relationship with Christ, as though Christ is an ex one is trying to spark a reconnection with. More than just a Joyce Meyer book of fluff, this relationship advice for Christ permeates nearly every aspect of modern Christianity in the West. Nearly every church or megachurch focuses, not on the church body, but on the individuals present and their personal relationship with Jesus as individuals.

This is one of the more painful aspects of modern Christianity, as deep feelings of alienation almost always set in after the original luster of the Conversion Experience wears off. Many a new convert is left scratching their head, wondering what they are to do now and how exactly to continue this new personal relationship. I can only imagine many a demon has taken quick advantage of this dissatisfaction and leapt in with glee to promote feelings of mistrust and confusion. I have personally seen and heard a number of good young men question whether they were ever really saved or not.

All this is to say that the first love the Ephesians left has nothing to do with any Conversion Experience or any emotional high one felt upon conversion. The Conversion Experience wouldn’t have been a thing in the days of the Church of Ephesus. Our ideas of conversion and having personal individual relationships with Christ would have definitely been thought quite odd to the Ephesians. Mind you, I am no theologian or priest in any way, but I cannot help but feel that Christ was thinking of that love those people first felt upon first entering into the presence of the Divine through the Church and her liturgy.

To explain. For all of our talk of love, many modern Christians struggle to show love for Christ. How do we show love for Christ? By worshipping him and keeping His commandments. Yet worship today is horrifically diluted, to the point where one’s spiritual senses are about as intrigued by a megachurch service as going for a routine doctor’s visit. On the flipside, these churches use psychological manipulation to elicit frenzied physical responses from their masses in an attempt to make them more passionate or earnest in their love for Christ. Such tools are a debasement of what we have been given in the form of the Divine Liturgy and Eucharist.

A new person who wanders into a church and hears a Divine Liturgy for the first time is taken into another realm entirely. In 987 St. Vladimir the Great sent emissaries throughout the world to study various religions and when they experienced the Divine Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia, “We no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth.” Yet even in the humblest of stave churches or even modest little churches in America today, that same Divine Liturgy elevates a Church body into the realm of the heavenly. A love indeed overtakes oneself. Not a besotted drippy love like a schoolgirl crush on the school football star, but a discovery of the Truth, the King of Kings unto the Ages of Ages. All the mentions in the Bible of peace that passes understanding and a water that will quench all thirst forever is a very real experience that one can participate in physically thanks to the Church and her liturgical services.

This love is not just spiritual or emotional but all encompassing, like a pool of clear spring water that gets more refreshing the deeper one dives into it. When first experiencing the Church, first experiencing that Divine Liturgy, first realizing that one is an Icon of Christ, that first sip from the Cup of Life… that, I think, is the first love that must be kept at all times. That is the first love that the Ephesians left as they began to focus more on other things over partaking in the Church Body. Their worship became words, their works were done without love, their hatred of evil was done for evil’s sake instead of the Lord’s.

They are asked to return to their first works to rekindle their first love. They are asked to remember that first encounter with the Gospel of Christ’s Resurrection, His defeat of Death and His invitation for all to join Him. They are asked to return to that first deposit the Apostles left them, to repent of their distancing themselves from the Church and love it once again so they may continue in God’s glory. That is what we as Christians are told today! How many even experience the Liturgy? How many partake of His cup Christ has commanded us to taste? How many of us go to church instead of residing in Church?

It is time we stop bandying about Love as a term, a simple data point that one can intellectually examine, and really begin to embrace the truth of Love. I cannot describe the liturgical experience as the whole thing is rather new to me as an inquirer into the Church, but I know that it is Love. I can read a book written by a scholar on the history of the Church then read a book written by a priest on worshipping the Theotokos and I can see one is written with Love. I can view a livestream of a “fellowship” worship service sent to thousands and I can attend a Divine Liturgy in a small, insignificant looking building and know where I can find Love. I can read and ponder the Scriptures in confusion like the Ethiopian in his chariot or I can experience the Scriptures in the manner of the Churches that the Apostles established. There is where I will find Love. There is where I believe more and more of us will turn to find Love. As the storm clouds of the devil darken the horizon, as men wax worse and worse, as people are given over to lusts of the flesh and foundations of sand, the Church, the Rock of Christ Jesus, will always call us back to our First Love. Let us embrace her and not abandon her.