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OF Jews and Gentiles there has now been created “one new man,” where national distinctions no longer obtain (Ephesians 2:15, 16; Colossians 3:11), so that whilst before the cross all mankind were comprised under two heads (whether believer or unbeliever), namely, as either Jew or Gentile, it is not so since the cross. There is now the introduction of a third class, hitherto non-existent, as in 1 Corinthians 10:32, “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.”
The “church” of God, then, comprises all believers since Pentecost, “baptized into one body,” and who are “the body of Christ, and members in particular.” But in the first three chapters of the Revelation we have the churches before us under the symbol of—not “one,” but— “seven golden lampstands,” in the midst of which is seen one like to the Son of man with eyes as a flame of fire, and from whose mouth went a sharp two-edged sword. Here we see that the “seven churches” are viewed as under Christ's judicial eye and word in regard to their individual and collective responsibility as light-bearers. “Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever.” And “the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?”
Let us hear, then, what the Spirit says to the churches. The Lord, in His faithful love to His own, has His eye upon us in this scene of danger and difficulty, and lets us know what He looks for from those who profess His name. He is not indifferent to our walk and testimony, but would have us to be in the intelligence of His mind and will, and in fidelity of heart to judge whatever is abhorrent to Him.
Hence the call in five of these seven addresses to “repent.” Where is repentance if the state of things under His condemnation is continued? To repent is, in holy judgment of the evil, to depart from it. We are to “cease to do evil,” and to “learn to do well.”
In chapter 2:4, the charge against Ephesus is, “Thou hast left thy first love,” with the call to “remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.” What are works worth without love? The true answer of our hearts to this appeal of His affection will be the walking after His commandments (2 John 6). If we love Him that begat, we love Him also that is begotten of Him, and hereby “we know that we love the children of God when we love God, and do his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous” (1 John 5:1-3).
If then we are thus walking, Christ will be the one object before our eyes; and our ambition will he, not to be pleasers of men, but to be well pleasing to Him. And in this, too, what a blessed example we have in the Lord Jesus Christ, who set the Lord always before His face. “For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, the reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.” If we are reproached for the name of Christ, how happy! And if the going forth to Him without the camp entails this reproach, let us not shrink on that account, but, in dependence upon Him, obey. May our “ministry of song,” the confession of our lips, our activity of service, and the bounty of our hands be in divine harmony, for “with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Hebrews 13:13-16).
“We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that abideth in love abides in God, and God in him.” “We love, because He first loved us.” And this commandment have we from Him, “That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:16, 19, 21).
To the Thessalonian saints the apostle Paul could say, “As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And, indeed, ye do it toward all the brethren which are in Macedonia: but we beseech you, brethren, that ye increase more and more.” This increase of love will not tend to laxity, or indifference, for love is of God, and God is light as well as love. And so we read, also in this same epistle, “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all, even as we toward you, to the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints” (1 Thessalonians 3:12, 13; 4:9, 10). And without practical holiness no one shall see the Lord (Hebrews 10:14).
It is when, losing the sense of Christ's deep love to us— “He loved me, and gave himself for me,” we fall from our first love to Him, that other objects crowd before the eye and enter the heart. It is no longer Christ—He has been displaced. Moses and Elias were honored saints of God. But He is above all. And where it is not “Jesus only” that commands the mind and heart, how He feels this lapse from “first love"! “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.” May we heed indeed this necessary warning!