The Sure Road Home
Revelation 2:1–7
Repent, and do the works you did at first. Revelation 2:5

Jesus prescribes two things for this church’s spiritual cure.

1. Remember. Any true church or any true believer has experienced the grace of God in the past, or it or he would not exist today. Therefore, the first step in a genuine spiritual recovery consists in remembering what was once known and experienced. This is especially true if what we have lost is our “first love.” The Prodigal Son had known the father’s love and at one time had probably loved him back. But he had forgotten this love when he took his share of the inheritance and fled to the far country. His spiritual recovery began when he remembered his father’s house. If we have forgotten the Father and Jesus Christ, we need to remember the joy of our conversion and our spiritual heritage and recover our first love.

2. Repent. We also need to repent, for our spiritual declension is not merely a falling away; it is a sin against God whose love we have forsaken. We tend to think of repentance as something we did in the past when we first believed on Jesus but which we do not need to repeat and have now forgotten to practice. But we never cease to be sinners, even when we are justified by God’s grace. Therefore, we must be always repenting and never more so than when we have forsaken our first love for the love of the world, for the world’s way of doing things, and for worldly success.

Jesus’s last word to the church is a blessing for those who heed his commands and overcome. The blessing is to “eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (v. 7), an obvious reference to the Garden of Eden and the loss Adam and Eve sustained when they turned their backs on God. The tree appears again in Revelation 22:2 as part of the glorious consummation of Christ’s return.

Ever since Adam and Eve lost Paradise because of their sin, sinners have tried to build their paradise on earth. Cain tried it first by constructing the city of Enoch in the land of Nod. Some tried to do it at Babel by building a tower that they hoped would reach to heaven. The Greeks tried to make Athens a paradise. The Romans tried to do it in Rome. We do it too, supposing that we can have our paradise here, even in our churches. But the cities of men are doomed to destruction. They will all fall away. The only true paradise is in heaven, where it has been prepared only for those who love God. For they alone are able to overcome “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” (12:11).

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.