At first

This week we begin worship with:

Revelation 2:1-7

“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write…‘I know your works, your toil

and your patient endurance…I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up

for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you,

that you have abandoned the love you had at first.’…He who has an ear, let him

hear."

Much ink has been spilt attempting to identify the object of their first love.  It is not present in the verse and attempts to identify it brush up against the admonition of Revelation 22:18 that prohibits adding to scripture.

So, staying then within the verse, we see they are still toiling, still being patient, still bearing up, and even still not tiring.  What you hear in these words is effort not love (agapē).  This is perfectly described in the "Love Chapter".

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Their efforts had come to "nothing", not driven by the grace-giving love, but rather by stature earning orthodox effort.  At first, when we discover that God loves us, the sinful us, it is easy to love fellow sinners.  As our efforts build God-debt (He owes us?  May it never be.), it gets harder to see why we should love a sinner.  We begin to want them to change, before we love.

The admonition, then, is to regularly return to the moment of our salvation to reconnect to our source of love.