Revelation 2:5; The Treatment

5 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.

 The treatment that Christ would prescribe to the church in Ephesus consists of three commands in given verse 5 – Remember, Repent, Do – Repent, Return to the first works. The first command “remember” has the sense of the continuous tense means “to keep remembering”. To think back in time at what point in their lives that the service of God became mechanical, to recall how God had saved them from spiritual darkness and how by God’s almighty power that bondage was broken and how jubilant we were.

The word “repent” means “a change of mind”. It will involve recognizing that our past actions were sinful and sorrowfully turning away from such a path. Failure to love Christ is not some insignificant thing to God.  It is a sin not to love Christ with all of your heart.  Confession of this sin is required (1 John 1:9) as this is not a minor failure, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22). They were to recognize their sin, confess it, and then have a change of mind about loving and serving Christ.

Ask God to rekindle that proper spiritual relationship you have neglected. And return to those things that draw you close to the Lord. Sometimes we forget basic things such as prayer, time in God’s Word and being a faithful witness in word and deed. [1]

Repent, and do the first works. Amen.

[1] Morris McDonald, The Ephesian Church, Far Eastern Bible College Press, 1999, 99.