Revelation 2: 4-5a – “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works...” (NKJV)
This is part of the rather stark warnings that Jesus gives to the chruches in Asia in the Revelations of John. And during a Bible study on the chapter last night, we had some discussions around just what it meant to "repent and do the first works." One way to understand what is said here is "turn back to the way you loved at first", or "work / love as you did when you first came to love me". (Other translations actually make that distinction... NRSV, NIV, etc.) But how do we practically understand the need to do that in our modern contexts of being the Church waiting for Christ's return?
New romantic relationships are exciting and fun. There’s an almost electric spark the first time two people who are falling in love hold hands. We find ourselves shifting schedules and finding reasons to be near this person who just a short time ago we may not have even known. We want to do anything we can to please and make them happy. Phone conversations when you aren’t together can be about absolutely nothing, and you don’t mind talking as long as you can just to hear about even the most mundane things in the other person’s life. We tend to put our very best foot forward as well. We don’t let all the crazy out at once! (After all, we don’t want to scare them away.) We want to impress the person we are trying to get to fall for us like we have fallen for them. It’s as if we suspend the rest of living to grasp these magical moments of first love as tightly as we can.
Often the same is true of our relationships with God through Christ Jesus. People long for, are excited by, and can’t wait push other things out of the way just to be near him in the beginning. Those who come into this relationship have a first love type of feeling about this Lord who is wooing and pursuing them. We want to cling to that feeling as tightly as we can for as long as we can. It’s thrilling and electrifying!
A difficulty we have with these "first" loves is that, with one, we often spend the first part of the relationship being someone we aren’t, and the rest of the relationship trying to deal with the reality of who we, and they, turn out to be when the new wears off. With the other... well, with Jesus it’s a little different, because he already knows who WE are. But we still struggle with understanding that “acting” right and doing all the “churchy” things aren’t really what he’s interested in. We don’t understand who Jesus is or what he's seeking from us.
You see, we may start to come to worship as a way to learn how get everything together to be better and better Christians in an effort to impress God enough to let us into Heaven. But God isn’t impressed by us. God can create everything from nothing... I can't imaging there being much we could do that would make Him say, "I wish I could do that!" Instead, God loves. God loved before you took your first breath. Jesus loved before you took your first step. The Holy Spirit loved you read your first word. The Messiah loved before you confessed with your tongue and believed in your heart that He is the Lord your God. The only thing God seeks from us is an honest, loving, and committed relationship.
No, you can’t impress the Creator of all... but you CAN love him; and that PLEASES him. And that’s what worshiping (loving) God is meant to be. It's wanting to do anything we can to be with and to please God. To make God happy. It’s an expression of the love that we have for God who loves us in spite of our brokenness and our imperfection. Heck! Even when we do finally let all the crazy out, we’re loved and then healed! And in our remembering that, we can rekindle those first love moments again and again and again…
And that bubbles over into our love for one another. It empowers our care for those with whom God has allowed us to have relationships. We return to the "first works" then. Not because we're trying to impress anyone; but because we finally understand that true and lasting love is not a commodity, but a gift if is to have any real value.
Love with all of your heart today, because you are loved with all of God’s!
Chris
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