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The Love You Had At First
Revelation 2:1-7
R. Todd Bouldin


New Year’s – This year should be first evaluated more by what you desire than what you do. Most religions wish to change what you do. Christ indwells you by the Holy Spirit to change what you love. Today, at the beginning of a new year, to see Him again, and to want Him above all else.

Prayer

Religion has stifled human desire because we don’t trust it. Religions, churches and believers have tried to regulate and repress the desire and passions out of life to focus people on their duties to God and to each other, their moral responsibilities, and their acts of service. My friend who is a therapist and not a believer often says that religion has a way of teaching people how to live from the neck up only, but rarely to be comfortable with desire that comes from a deeper place than the head. According to John’s Revelation, the performance of one’s duties to God without a passionate love for Christ isn’t what Christ wants, and He won’t stop until we are His passionate lovers.  (Revelation 2:4-5)

The book of Revelation begins with a vision of the risen Christ. For some churches in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey, struggling to hold on to their faith in difficult times of persecution and even death, John offers a beautiful and glorious image of the risen and ascended Christ. It is as if John believes that struggling believers first must rediscover again the power and love of Christ if they are to hold on to their faith. Then this Jesus, the One that John calls the Light of the world, addresses seven churches, or the ones who hold this light, or lampstands. Jesus speaks directly, and He begins by pointing out their strengths. “I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance.” Christ knows these people who came to church are hard working, committed to the cause, and faithful. They do their duties well. This church gets an A for being Type A. But Jesus isn’t done with His assessment. He then says, “But I have this against you.” We can imagine as these words are read to the gathered church in Ephesus. I imagine they straightened up in their seats to hear The Lord of the Universe say that He has something against them. “This I have against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”

Remember when you first fell in love with someone? It may have been so long that you have forgotten, but there was a time when you were smitten, head over heels, couldn’t do anything but think about them, in love. All you could do was think about this incredibly spectacular person who held the universe together. You were in love and you wanted to tell everyone about it. Then one day you awoke and realized that the passion was no longer there. Maybe it was a failure or breach of trust, or some great crisis that tore you apart. More likely, it was just a thousand small decisions and some mundane routines that turned your heart cold and your passion practical. You begin to focus on keeping your duty but you have lost your desire. Rather than asking, “What can I do?” you only think in terms of what you must do. “What are my duties and responsibilities?” Then it’s just a matter of time until duty turns to bitterness as you ask yourself, “What am I getting out of this relationship for all that I’m doing for it?” The answer often is not very much. Then you know the love you had at first is not the love you have now.

You’ve had that feeling about your faith too. It’s 7:00 am on Sunday … now all you can focus on is your obligation to God but the passion is long since gone. Obedience and dutiful service is commendable – “I know your works” – but love is better.

The Jesus of the New Testament was such a compelling figure that He inspired passion in people – obedience, yes – but passionate commitment. A woman let herself be trampled by a crowd for a chance to touch the hem of His garment. Fisherman dropped their nets to follow Him. Peter, James, Stephen and Paul couldn’t stop talking about Jesus – all the way to their deaths in His Name. But in the years following, the church’s wild desire for Christ had become domesticated, tamed, and organized. Duties had to be assigned, titles were given, arguments and conflicts had to be negotiated, and ministries had to be programmed. The mission was being accomplished, but now some could not remember why they were doing all of this in the first place. Perhaps some were second or third generation Christians by this point, and they couldn’t imagine life without their religious obligations, but they couldn’t remember the last time they felt a passionate love for God.

So like an old lover who shows up back on the doorstep again to get the spark back in the relationship, Jesus speaks to this church, “Hey, remember Me? Remember your first love? Remember the desire and passion you had for Me once?” Jesus wants them to know that a church that keeps its duties but loses its desire is not doing the work of Christ. You may be doing good, and you may be a religious person, but performance without passion is mere religion and not a true relationship that befits this One who died, was raised, and who reigns with God in majesty and beauty.

Passion and desire may frighten you or concern you. Perhaps they seem so subjective, so vulnerable. Maybe you prefer a quieter form of love for God that is focused on work, doing your duty, or carrying out good service. “But passion? Desire? Well that’s for the charismatic's, but not for me.” Certainly Scripture speaks to the importance of controlling the desire for things which cannot satisfy us, but it never restrains our passion for God. God created desire and passion. They are part of our basic humanity. We are born with a hunger for food, for drink, for being held. We spend our lives longing for more than we have. We know that nothing great is ever accomplished without desire. I know of no injustice ever righted, any great business ever built, any beautiful painting ever created, no sonata ever composed, or any church ever transformed, apart from desire.

The problem with desire is that it is a hard thing to satisfy. In his book The Awakened Heart, Gerald May wrote, “There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call the heart. We are born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it but it is always awake.” Even when we sleep our desire turns into dreams. Throughout the day, it is our desire that distracts us, not our duties. Gerald May claims that we can run from the desire for years or even decades, but it is never domesticated by our ordinary and busy routines through life. It will always come back to find us.

Perhaps one reason that we are so uncomfortable with desire is that if we attend to it we will realize that we are always living with some measure of discontent. But wisdom is in knowing that unsatisfied desire isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Chesterton calls this our divine discontent, which reminds us that with every achievement and with every acquisition that we have not yet found the right star. He writes “That is what makes life so splendid and strange. The true happiness is that we do not fit. Because we come from someplace else.” At the bottom of all desire is the longing for your true home, and for true Love, and that comes from someplace else. So don’t be surprised with the discontent that accompanies desire. The discontent will just remind you to turn your attention to The God whose passionate desire is for you, and who made you to desire Him above all else too.

So that is why we come to worship: to discover again a vision of Jesus Christ that can keep our desires focused on Him. You are reminded that the real reason for living is not to keep your duties, but to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

But here is the real honest truth. You will never even satisfy your desire for God because you are not home yet. Even the thirst for God is insatiable. In his book The Journey of Desire, John Eldredge claims that life presents us with only three choices. Either we can be fully alive and thirsty, or we can be addicted, or we can be dead. There are no other choices. Most of our society has chosen addiction as a way of coping with discontent and unsatisfied longings. Most of the church has chosen repression and death. And that’s why the risen Jesus was hard on the church at Ephesus, and I wonder what He would say to us.

The Christian life isn’t one of just keeping your obligations and doing some good. It is to live life with a longing for God, just like the longings of new beloved's who can’t get enough of their beloved. When you discover again that kind of longing and love for Christ, you won’t settle for just a few obligations and some good works. You instead dive into the yearning and let the longing lead you again and again to Jesus Christ.

So Chesterton says, “Poets do not go mad, but chess players often do.” You can rationally talk your way out of passion. It is easy to do because passion doesn’t make a lot of sense. It will lead you to places you never dreamed you would go, it will overhaul your life, and it is very risky. But without passion life is dreadfully dull. Without desire, your faith will bring you only some religion but not a whole lot of Life.

You might as well be dead.


January 8, 2006
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