– First Part: Listening Posture
Most of us don’t think of ourselves as drifting. Drift is what happens to other people — people who stopped caring, stopped believing, stopped trying. Drift feels dramatic from the outside. From the inside, it feels responsible. It feels like showing up, doing what needs to be done, carrying weight without complaint. Drift rarely announces itself as failure. It often disguises itself as faithfulness.
That’s why the opening of Revelation doesn’t begin with warnings to rebels or corrections for the careless. It begins with letters to churches that are still standing. Churches that are functioning. Churches that would have described themselves as committed, orthodox, and steady. And before anything is explained, defended, or applied, a voice speaks.
These are not lectures. They are not theological arguments. They are letters — spoken, personal, addressed. Each one begins the same way, not with information, but with recognition. And each one ends the same way, not with instruction, but with an invitation: “He who has an ear, let him hear.”
That sentence changes how we listen. It tells us that the most important thing in these messages is not what we already know, but whether we are willing to hear what is being said to us. In Scripture, hearing is never passive. Hearing means receiving. It means allowing ourselves to be addressed rather than remaining observers. These letters were never meant to be handled safely at a distance.
Which is why the first thing Jesus does in every letter is speak in the first person. He does not begin with doctrine or diagnosis. He begins with presence. I know. Before anything is affirmed or confronted, Jesus establishes this: nothing about the life of this church is hidden from Him. Not the effort. Not the endurance. Not the strain of staying faithful over time.
And that matters for how we listen. Because it removes the instinct to defend ourselves before we’ve even heard the letter. It reminds us that these words are not spoken by someone guessing, speculating, or generalizing. They are spoken by One who sees clearly and completely. One who knows not only what is visible, but what it costs.
If we rush past this, we miss something essential. Jesus does not speak first as a corrector. He speaks as One who has been present long enough to recognize the shape of a life. These letters assume familiarity. They assume history. They assume relationship. And that tells us something important about how they are meant to be received.
We are not being invited to evaluate churches, classify types, or locate ourselves on a chart. We are being invited to listen as people who are already known. To let the letter speak before we decide what it means. To resist the urge to manage the message instead of hearing it.
So before we move any further — before we explain, interpret, or apply — the only honest posture is this: to listen as if the letter might be addressed to us. Not to our opinions. Not to our theology. But to the lived shape of our faith. Because these letters do not ask first whether we are right or wrong. They ask whether we are willing to hear.
– Second Part: Jesus Speaks / Ephesus Recognized
Jesus begins the letter the same way He will begin every letter that follows: “I know your works.” Before He affirms anything, before He confronts anything, He establishes this one reality — nothing about their life together has escaped His attention. He does not speak as an inspector arriving late to the scene. He speaks as One who has been present all along.
He knows their labor. Not occasional effort, but sustained work. The kind of faithfulness that shows up again and again without recognition. He knows their endurance — the ability to remain when leaving would have been easier, quieter, and less costly. He knows that they have tested what is false and refused to be impressed by it. This church has not been naïve. It has been careful. It has been alert. It has paid attention.
That matters, because Ephesus was not an easy place to follow Christ. This was not a sheltered congregation protected from cultural pressure. It lived in one of the most influential cities of the Roman world — a center of commerce, politics, and public religion. Ephesus did not hide its gods. The worship of Diana shaped the city’s identity, economy, and imagination. Her temple dominated the landscape. Her festivals structured public life. To belong to Christ in Ephesus meant standing visibly apart from what everyone else took for granted.
This church did not retreat from that environment. It endured within it. It learned discernment because it had to. False teaching was not theoretical here — it was constant. Ideas competed. Loyalties were tested. The pressure to blend, soften, or accommodate was real. And yet Jesus says they did not tolerate what was false. They did not surrender clarity for comfort. They stayed alert.
This church also carried history. It was not young. It was not newly formed. It had been shaped over decades by faithful leadership and costly obedience. Paul had taught there. Timothy had shepherded there. And for many years, John lived among them as their pastor. He did not pass through briefly. He stayed. He taught. He watched the church age. According to early Christian memory, John also cared for Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Ephesus — honoring the charge he received at the cross. This was not a church built quickly or casually. It was formed slowly, with care, across generations.
Which makes this letter all the more striking.
Because when Jesus says “I know your works,” He is not flattering them. He is recognizing something real. He names their labor, their endurance, their refusal to grow careless. These are not small things. They are not assumed. They are costly virtues, especially over time. Many churches begin with passion. Fewer sustain faithfulness without applause. Ephesus had done that.
But there is another layer to this moment that sharpens the letter even more.
By the time these words are spoken, John is no longer with them. The pastor who once lived among them has been removed by force. Tradition tells us that John was brutalized for his faith — boiled in oil — and then exiled to a desolate island, cut off from public ministry and from the church he loved. Rome believed it had silenced him. From a human perspective, his ministry appeared finished.
But God does not measure ministry by freedom or strength. From exile, John is given the Revelation of Jesus Christ. The letters to the churches do not come instead of his ministry. They come through it — transformed, but not diminished. John is removed, but revelation is not. And Christ speaks with the same clarity from exile as He did from Ephesus.
That matters for how this letter sounds.
Jesus is not addressing a church that has been careless or indulgent. He is speaking to people who have endured pressure, lost their shepherd, and kept going. He is speaking to a congregation that has learned to be vigilant, to guard what matters, to stay faithful when circumstances were not gentle. And He names all of that before He says anything else.
Which means the affirmation is not decorative. It is essential. Jesus wants them to know that their effort has not been invisible. Their staying has not been overlooked. Their endurance has not been dismissed as mere obligation. He knows what it has cost them to remain who they are.
This is where many of us stop listening carefully.
Because once we hear that a church was faithful, discerning, and enduring, we assume the conversation is finished. We assume affirmation means approval, and approval means safety. But Jesus’ knowing does not function that way. His knowledge is not selective. It is complete. He does not know only what is admirable. He knows what is thinning. He knows what has shifted quietly, without rebellion or collapse.
And the fact that He speaks next does not cancel what He has already said. It deepens it.
The danger of a church like Ephesus is not obvious failure. It is gradual substitution. Over time, vigilance can replace affection. Discernment can overshadow delight. Responsibility can crowd out love. Faithfulness can become something you manage rather than something that moves you. None of this happens suddenly. None of it announces itself as loss. It simply accumulates.
Which is why this letter is unsettling. It is not written to people who walked away. It is written to people who stayed. It is not aimed at obvious compromise. It addresses something far quieter — something that can only be noticed by One who has been present long enough to remember what love sounded like when it was first alive.
Jesus knows their works. He knows their endurance. And because He knows them so well, He is about to say what only love would dare to say.
– Third Part: The Gentle Turn
After acknowledging their faithfulness, Jesus says the one sentence that changes everything: “But I have this against you.” He does not raise His voice. He does not list offenses. He does not accuse them of betrayal. He names something far more difficult to recognize — something that cannot be measured by activity or orthodoxy. “You have left your first love.”
Not lost. Not destroyed. Left.
That word matters, because it tells us how this happened. What Jesus names here is not rebellion. It is erosion. Not a dramatic departure, but a gradual shift. Something once central has moved quietly to the edge. Love has not disappeared. It has been displaced.
This is what makes the letter to Ephesus so penetrating. Jesus does not say they stopped believing. He does not say they stopped serving. He does not say they stopped caring about truth. In fact, everything He affirms suggests the opposite. They are active, careful, committed. But love is no longer leading. It has become assumed — something remembered rather than lived.
And that kind of loss is hard to see from the inside.
First love does not usually leave in a moment of crisis. It fades in seasons of responsibility. It thins under the weight of vigilance. It is crowded out by the need to be right, the need to protect, the need to endure. Over time, affection is replaced by duty. Delight is replaced by discipline. Relationship is replaced by management.
None of this feels like failure. It feels like maturity.
Which is why Jesus names it. Not to shame them, but to rescue them from mistaking endurance for intimacy. He remembers what their love sounded like when it was first alive — when obedience flowed from joy rather than obligation, when faith was animated by wonder rather than caution. And because He remembers, He notices the absence they have learned to live with.
This is not an accusation spoken from a distance. It is the grief of Someone who has been present long enough to notice change. Only love speaks this way. Only love risks naming what is missing when everything else looks successful.
Jesus does not say this to disqualify them. He says it because He wants them back. He wants their love, not their output. Their affection, not just their accuracy. He does not ask them to abandon their discernment or their endurance. He asks them to reorder what leads.
And before He offers any invitation, He allows the weight of this recognition to settle.
This is not the moment for fixing. Not the moment for promises. Not the moment for explaining how this happened or how to prevent it from happening again. Those instincts come later. First comes the harder work of recognition — the willingness to admit that something essential has shifted, even while everything else looks faithful.
This is the moment when defenses usually rise. We explain our circumstances. We point to our pressures. We list what we have endured. And none of those things are denied here. Jesus knows them all. He has already said so. But knowing our reasons does not mean excusing the loss. Love can be crowded out by very real responsibilities — and still be worth returning to.
So Jesus pauses here. He lets the truth stand without resolution. He allows the discomfort to remain unresolved, because rushing past it would only repeat the pattern He is naming. The loss of first love cannot be repaired by increased effort. It must first be acknowledged.
This is the quiet mercy of the letter. Jesus does not demand immediate change. He does not threaten withdrawal. He simply names what has thinned and waits — not to see if they will perform, but to see if they will hear.
– Fourth Part: The Letter to Me
As I sit with this letter, it becomes clear that Jesus is not describing a church I can safely observe from the outside. He is naming a pattern I recognize from the inside. I know what it is to stay faithful. To keep showing up. To do what needs to be done even when it no longer feels new or light or joyful. I know the steady weight of responsibility, the quiet pride in endurance, the relief of knowing I’ve held the line.
And I also know how easily love can slip without my noticing.
Nothing in this letter accuses me of abandoning faith. Nothing suggests I walked away. The question is gentler — and more unsettling. When did love stop being the reason and start being the result? When did devotion become something I offered after everything else was handled, instead of the thing that animated everything else?
I recognize myself here because the loss Jesus names does not come through neglect. It comes through care. It comes through vigilance. It comes through the slow accumulation of good reasons. Love thins not because I stop believing, but because I become practiced at functioning without needing it in the same way. I learn how to manage faith instead of living from it.
And the hardest part is that nothing immediately breaks when this happens. The work continues. The structures hold. People are served. Truth is defended. From the outside, everything looks intact. From the inside, something essential has grown quiet. Not gone — just no longer leading.
What arrests me in this letter is not the correction, but the recognition. Jesus notices. He remembers. He remembers what my love sounded like before it learned restraint. Before it learned efficiency. Before it learned how to survive without wonder. And He does not speak as someone tallying failure. He speaks as someone who wants what we once shared.
I hear this letter not as rejection, but as mercy. Because only someone who still desires love would name its absence. Only someone who has not withdrawn would invite return. The fact that Jesus speaks at all tells me something has not been forfeited. The door is still open. The relationship is still assumed.
So I stop trying to explain myself. I stop listing reasons. I stop defending how hard things have been. None of that is denied — it is simply not the point. The letter does not ask whether I was justified. It asks whether I am willing to listen.
And in that listening, something shifts. Not resolve. Not strategy. Just recognition. I am being addressed. This is not a general warning about churches long ago. Somewhere between “I know your works” and “you have left your first love,” the letter crosses the distance and arrives where I am. The envelope has been turned over.
And my name is on it.
– Conclusion: The Promise to the Overcomer
Jesus does not leave this letter hanging in loss. He does not diagnose love’s erosion and then walk away. After naming what has thinned, He speaks a promise — not as pressure, but as hope. He invites return without panic, renewal without spectacle. Remember, He says. Not to shame, but to reconnect. Remember what love was like before it learned how to survive without being alive. Remember not as nostalgia, but as orientation.
And then He promises something simple and profound: “To the one who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life.” Not reward for performance. Not compensation for endurance. Life. Restored life. Shared life. The promise reaches back further than Ephesus, further than failure, further even than first love — all the way back to the beginning. What was lost in Eden is not reclaimed through effort, but received through relationship.
The invitation is not to do more, but to return. Not to rebuild faith from scratch, but to re-center it. Nothing here suggests urgency or threat. Jesus does not say, “Fix this quickly.” He says, “Come back.” He assumes access. He assumes desire. He assumes the relationship still matters.
And then the letter ends the way every letter ends: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Not explanation. Not enforcement. Just listening. The outcome is not forced. The response is not scripted. The work of hearing is left with the one who has been addressed.
That is where this first letter rests. Not in fear. Not in effort. But in the quiet assurance that love can be returned to its place — and that the One who names what is missing has not gone anywhere.
