An Introduction to The Letter to The Church In Ephesus

What went so wrong with the relationships between people and God that the letter to the church in Ephesus that Jesus warned them they could lose their lampstand? Are things really that bad? Can they be hard working, persevere through trials, and still be told to their first love? What does return to first love even mean?

An Introduction to The Letter to The Church In Ephesus is article #04 in the series: Revelation: A book of hope through relationship. Click button to view titles for entire series

This is only the first of the seven letters to seven churches. As such, we’ll see it doesn’t get them off to a good start at all. Will they all be like this? Did Jesus save the best for last? Or did He make the first of the seven letters to the churches the best one and it’s all downhill from here?

Be patient. We’ll get there. But for now, …

,,, let’s take a look at the passage/Letter to the Church in Ephesus. Then we’ll break it down into significant parts, and examine each one to see what it meant at that time, 2000 years a ago. That’s followed by references to the language, culture, and history of the time period. Only then can we get a better understanding of what those words mean for us today.

There are so many ways to view Revelation. To some people, it’s a horror story they love to watch over and over on the big screen, small screen, read in a book, whatever. After all, it’s just a story. Isn’t it?

Other people view it as a mystery or a puzzle to solve. What or who will cause all these things to happen? No, not God – what kind of natural disaster or which world leader? After all, it’s just life and we all know that all the world’s a stage and we’re just the actors.

Maybe it’s an awesome multi-player video game. If not, it should be.

Even Christian fiction, whether books or movies tends to lead us in one of those directions, especially the movie, book, and something to figure who or what’s going to do it.

But if we get can look beyond those things, there’s much to learn about God and about us. That’s what this series is going to focus on. Relationships. Yes, we’ll talk about the events. They have a purpose. But understanding the gory details of the events isn’t why the letters were sent. No, the letters were sent to get people to turn to God.

To the extent we focus on what caused each event to happen, they become “weeds”. You know, like we can’t see the grass for the weeds in a lawn or a park. When we spend all our energy trying to figure out what causes each event and then get ready for the event, we lose sight of God.

What’s coming up in Revelation: A book of hope through relationship.

The next seven major segments of this series will look at seven individual churches. We never meet or see any of the people in any of these churches. And yet, we do know them. Some of them are us. Some of them are friends of ours. Chances are some of them are also people we don’t really like. So yes, we do “know” them. While we won’t see faces, we will see the things they do. And well see those actions, inactions, indifferences, and all sorts of other behaviors that we should know are behind the words we read.

Yes, we should “see” all these things. That is, if we can get our minds off the weeds, out of the weeds, admiring the weeds or hating them, and onto the One who created us and promises us so much. If we read. If we understand. And if we act on what He said.

In other words, when we read the letters, Jesus speaks, but who listens? If we don’t listen to the real message, we’ll never understand that message or reap the benefits we could have from doing what Jesus said.

Have you read the following? If not, it’s a good idea to check them out, especially the first two if you know little to nothing about the book of Revelation. For more mature Christians, I recommend the third one, to see how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are portrayed in Revelation – plus the importance of each of them for the various statements and promises made to us throughout the Bible and how they come to interact in the final book of the Bible.

Image	Title	# in series	About
	What is the book of Revelation in the Bible?	1	What is the book of Revelation in the Bible? Sounds like a weird question. Everyone knows what it is…
	Revelation – The seven churches – Who or what are they?	2	Revelation is such a dramatic book. An apocalyptic vision. The last days of the earth. But there’s so much to …
	The Trinity in Revelation—Even If the Word Isn’t There	3	Wait a second. Where did that word Trinity come from? It’s not in the beginning of Revelation. Actually, it’s not …

What’s in the letter to the church in Ephesus? Who speaks and who listens?

Let’s begin with the letter. No explanation yet. Just read it. Think about it, of course. But get some first impressions. Or, if you’ve read it before, maybe some new impressions. Why? Because this isn’t likely to be anything close to how you’ve viewed it before.

To the Church in Ephesus 🔍

Rev 2:1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:

These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

Rev 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. 6 But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

Rev 2:7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

Breaking down the letter to the church in Ephesus into component parts

If you’ve read the previous segments of the series, you know that each letter to the churches follows a pattern. Many things can be learned by breaking the letter down into segments, since each of them has a purpose. While there are many ways to view pretty much everything in Revelation, in this series we’re focusing on relationships. Relationships between people, and of course, relationships between us and God. Som let’s see how this letter breaks down.

📬 To	the angel of the church in Ephesus
✉️ From	him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands
👁️ Divine Knowledge	I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
⚠️ But –	Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.
🔄✅ So –	If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
👂 Hear	He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
🌳To those who overcome	I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

So, what are your impressions after reading the letter to the church in Ephesus? Did you think about people? I hope so. As I said, this is going to be a look at relationships.

Relationships between God and us. Between us and God. There is a difference you know. We already saw how God gave us the book of Revelation with the rest of the Bible, because He loves us and cares about us. Do we return that same love and care?

To be honest, the best of us – which isn’t me – can’t hold a candle (or a lampstand) to His feelings for us. I mean, He even loves us enough to let us walk away, hate Him, and come back to Him, and He’s happy to see us. Too many of us don’t even think about Him.

We’ll see all the stuff above is just a small piece of what’s in the Seven Letters to the Seven Churches. Look for yourself. Look for your family. Your friends. And even strangers who maybe need you to tell them what you learn here.

Well, let’s get going. Take the letter apart. Break it into sections that appear in every single one of them. And see how they apply.

Remember, in the earlier segments, we learned that all seven letters apply to all of us, in one way or another, directly or indirectly, now – soon – later – or eventually.

Some things to think about for this study of the church in Ephesus

This is my 4th time writing about the seven letters. The first was more than 20 years ago. There’ve been major changes over the years. Different focus. Me, in a different stage of my faith. And now, this time, a request from some people to write about the whole book. I can’t imagine how long this is going to take.

Anyway, since I’ve done this part before, I’ll put in links to the most recent versions from the last rewrite. It was more focused on history, culture, sometimes the original languages of Revelation itself and some of the references.

But this time, since it’s about relationships, including with God, I’ll give some info on the other things, link to them for anyone who wants to check them out, and focus on the relationships. It seems like the right thing to do now, as we seem to be perilously close to being in a time when God might decide it is time, it’s those very relationships that will help us survive. Or maybe lead to on the path to personal destruction if we have relationships with too many of the people headed that way.

Many of those who know about this thing called the rapture will say it doesn’t matter because they won’t be here. It’s the prevailing thinking these days – that Christians won’t be here. It’s especially true here in the U.S., and even more so among evangelicals. While I’m in that very country, it’s not the way I look at it. I used to think we, Christians, would be here for half of it, then God would come and get us out of here with the rapture.

After getting into to more research and prayer, I’m more and more leaning towards, I hope you’re sitting, the rapture coming after the End Times events are over, and that it may not even include those still alive after it’s all over. I’m still working on that. You’ll find out when we get there.

But I include that maybe cryptic message here because, if it’s correct and that is a huge if, then barring death we all have a possibility of going through this. After all, Jesus never promised a wonderful life.

More information on Ephesus

Before we get into the relationships, I want to let you know about another series I wrote about these seven churches. It went into detail on the culture, language, history and other related things going on in each of the cities.

While these letters were about a period of time going back nearly 2,000 years, their issues really weren’t all that different from ours. They had various things, and people, competing with their time, priorities, money, etc. For instance, there were even labor unions involved in non-Christian activities that cost them a job if they didn’t participate. The one for the church in Ephesus is at https://godversusreligion.org/letter-to-the-church-in-ephesus/.

As we go through each letter in this new series, I’ll also add a link from each of the major sections of the letter to that church to take you to the corresponding section in the detailed article.