Revelation Chapter Two, Fallen From Grace

Revelation 2:5 “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come and remove your lampstand from its place–unless you repent.

Jesus is calling on the Ephesian church to recall its former position. We must recall that our Lord is now talking to a body of individuals, each member contributing to the whole of that particular church. He warns them to remember where they stood formerly, or what their previous position was.

The Ephesian church left its first love: Christ. This leaves them spiritually vulnerable and equally spiritually impotent. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall,” 1 Corinthians 10:12. Spiritual fortitude is utterly essential to a church’s livelihood. Without the Holy Spirit’s power and presence providing genuine life and spiritual growth to the members the church becomes a glorified social club. Worse, it becomes a farcical, hypocritical engine of carnal enterprise as God’s superintendence gives way to human philosophy.

The idea that the Lord is reminding the Ephesians where they formerly stood–in Christ–indicates a positional shift to an inferior stance. Jesus once spoke of two foundations: one was the superior foundation of the bedrock that is Scripture, Matthew 7:24, 25. The other heard the word of God but refused to heed, and the ruin of their lives was spectacular, Matthew 7:26, 27. This applies to believers as much as to the unsaved. We may truly hear and believe the gospel, but then the world chokes the word and we become as carnal as the lost. We are not standing on the sure rock of Jesus Christ. We are in the sinking sands of human conjecture, reasoning and philosophy. The strangely beloved saying, “Not all who wander are lost,” is patently absurd. Taking an aimless stroll through the neighborhood without a fixed destination is one thing. Hearing objective truth and judging it unworthy of listening to is another. C.S. Lewis once wrote that if a man missed the only oasis in a desert, what difference does it make what direction he goes afterward? Wandering indicates lostness. The Ephesians wandered from their first love and the whole of their church reverberated with the catastrophic loss.

The Galatian church suffered a similar calamity. The Ephesian church fell from their position in Christ, secure in His love and set free by His grace to serve with spiritual power. The Galatian church, influenced by the leaven of Judaism and legalism, suffered a similar setback. Paul wrote, “You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law; you have fallen from grace,” Galatians 5:4. Both churches fell. But both churches are His. He stands in the midst of the lampstands, representing the churches that are His. Ephesus is still there, despite having fallen. This means that doctrinal truth and moral integrity remain within, compromised as it may be by the departure from their first love. Galatia was the same; legalism removed them positionally from being in a place of blessing and power. Instead of relying solely on God the Holy Spirit to open doors for them and convict the ungodly or sanctify the saints, they relied on themselves. Their foundation was an infinitely inferior pedestal of human merit rather than divine assurance. But that doesn’t mean they were lost. Ephesus–in the same position as the Galatian church–was told to remember from where they had fallen and repent. Doing so would rectify the issue.

What does it mean to repent? It does not mean, as the Roman Catholic church would have us believe, do penance. No; it means to change your mind. You have a particular disposition, God the Holy Spirit convicts you of the error, and you change that disposition. What you formerly thought of something shifts and you have changed your mind about it. This is why Peter, when he spoke to the Jews, told them to, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” Acts 2:38. The Jews formerly had very defined opinions about Jesus. They gave Him up to the Romans to die. Peter, in the first Christian sermon ever preached, called on the Jews to repent, or change their minds about who Jesus was. That saving faith would convert the lost and they would receive as a gift of God’s grace, God the Holy Spirit to indwell them.

Jesus implores them to do what He calls the first works. That is, the Ephesian church is commanded to return to the motivation that once compelled them to serve with joy and power. They bore spiritual fruit and were a thriving, spiritually strong body. It was not the chronologically first works Jesus means, but what compelled the Ephesian church to begin with: namely a close relation to their Lord, and an inspiration motivated by gratitude and love for God, one another, and the lost.

Finally, the Lord cautions that unless they repent (or change their minds) He will remove their lampstand. This seems to indicate the true ending of a church. That body will be dissolved. What this ultimately means is that the Holy Spirit will remove from it true believers and the church will either become defunct or entirely apostate. To be apostate means to renounce one’s former faith and espouse something different. Many pseudo-Christian religions exist today like varieties of ice cream, but they all have one thing in common: they do not give place to the true Christ and the true gospel that sets men free. If they did, they would not be apostate or teaching heterodoxical doctrine. 

At the moment, Ephesus remained a true church, fallen from their original place but called on by their Lord to repent. He wants them to return to their first love and do the works God appointed for them with the zeal of their youth, Ephesians 2:10. If one’s lampstand is removed, we may accept that the organism has mutated into an institution, governed by fallen man and not the Holy Spirit. Truth is no longer taught, the gospel is no longer proclaimed, Christ is no longer given the preeminence. But the solution or cure is simple: repent. We strayed, adopted harmful lies that warped truth and morality, and have fallen. Christ beckons us to reject our error, shed it and build again, not upon the ruin of human conceit and arrogance, but upon the revelation of God and His great love for us. “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” Hebrews 12:1.