The letters all follow the same pattern:

THE CITY

The ancient city today is the site of a significant archaeological reconstruction. The Library, the Agora, the Theatre, the Entrance to the Arena where the Pan-Ionian Games were held, the Tomb of John, the Curetas, Marble and Harbour streets are all open to the public.

General view of Ephesus excavations. The Caystor Valley runs right/left between the hills. The river mouth has silted up; in New Testament times the harbour extended almost up to the foreground hill, on the far side of which lay the famous theatre where Paul's life was at risk.

Looking down Curetas Street to the Celsus Library situated where the street turns right into Marble Street, on which the theatre is situated.

The Ephesus Theatre, where the crowd shouted for hours: "Great is Diana of the Ephesians."

Diana of the Ephesians, many-breasted to symbolise fruitfulness and nourishment. Her crown bore many symbols of her trade.

When John wrote, it was one of the chief cities of the Roman Province of Asia, a thriving commercial centre. The trade routes in those days tended to follow the river valleys, and Ephesus, situated on the mouth of the River Cayster, commanded the trade of all the back country behind it. It was one of the great sea ports of the ancient world, for in addition to the river, three great roads converged on it too, pouring into its lap all the trade of the country we now know as Turkey. In commerce and wealth there were few cities to compare with it.

Paul recognised its strategic position. He spent longer in Ephesus than in any other city - two and a half years. He it was who founded the church there.

Ephesus was a free city - that is to say, Rome had granted it self-government, so sure was she of its citizens' loyalty. It never suffered the indignity of having garrison troops quartered in it as, say, Jerusalem did. It was an assize town, where major court trials were held, and the centre, too, for the Pan-Ionian Games. Ephesus witnessed often the pageantry, pomp and splendour that was Rome.

Here, too, stood one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Diana. Such a wonder was it accounted that Alexander the Great offered all the spoils of his Eastern campaign if only he might have his name inscribed in it. But such was the secure authority and strength of its priestly rulers that they could refuse him - and did. It was the repository of the most immense wealth; it was in fact the Fort Knox and the Bank of England of the East. In its service were thousands of priestesses - temple prostitutes - and hordes of slaves. And it held the right of asylum; within a bowshot of its walls, any fugitive from justice was safe. Tmagine what a choice collection of criminals from all parts of the empire were housed in its environs! Unfortunately, hardly more than a single column survives.

Ephesus was a great commercial, political and religious centre - the metropolis of Asia. It was filthy rich - and filthy. Indeed it had a reputation throughout the empire as being almost unbelievably immoral.

Ruins of the Ephesus agora, or market area, where the silver smiths plied their trade

Hadrian's Temple in Curetas Street, where the Emperor was worshipped as God

Here Paul laboured to found a church. Here some of the great triumphs of God's grace were won for the Gospel. Aquilla and Priscilla, that remarkable married couple, were won to Christ here, and so was Apollos that Prince of Preachers of the New Testament era. Here Timothy ministered for a time, and here too, John the Elder had the oversight for many years. Within a short time, a network of missionary enterprise had spread from the congregation of Ephesus right out through its hinterland. They were a sounding board for the Gospel.

But the Christian community had to bear its witness in the face of powerful vested business interests, as we know from the furore which the silversmiths created (Acts 19, 20), so that a Christian businessman in Ephesus could be ruined overnight by a snap of his competitors' fingers. I daresay the question whether you could be a Christian and a businessman was hardly ever discussed in Ephesus - it was altogether a foregone conclusion. Here was one place where you could neither buy nor sell unless you had, as it were, the mark of the Beast.

And the congregation here had to bear its witness too in the face of a general atmosphere of such brazen degeneracy (as was the case also at Corinth, the great sea port of Greece), that our modern permissive society might appear in comparison like a Sunday School picnic. The temptations to compromise and immorality were enormous. And yet, this community had resisted the teachings of the Nicolaitans, whose platform was that since as Christians we are free from the Law, then there was no harm in eating food sacrificed to idols so as to keep your membership in the Trade Guild (reversing the decision of the Jerusalem Council), and indulging in fornication so as not to be a 'square' in the swinging city.

Before we complain that it is not easy to be a Christian in a competitive and permissive society, let us remember that there were Christians in Ephesus. In that place of corruption there was a Colony of Heaven, who endured patiently, suffering for the sake of Christ's Name, and did not give in.

DIAGNOSIS

As with all these seven letters, this one opens with a reference back to one of the characteristics of the risen Lord which was included in the opening vision of ch. 1. Ephesus was reminded that her Lord was "He Who walked among the lampstands," as He had done on Palm Sunday in the Jerusalem Temple, where He came "to look round on all things." He keeps His own under constant observation, quick to encourage or rebuke. He knows.

And it is He Who holds them in His hand. There are two Greek words for 'hold.' One means that you hold a thing in such a way that you have only a part of it actually within your grasp - as you might hold a large book. The other means that you hold the whole of it within your palm, as you might hold a wrist watch. The word used here is the second. Christ holds the whole Church (for the seven stars represent the Church Universal) wholly within His grasp. Our security rests, not in our weak hold on Him, but in His mighty grasp of us.

Then - again as in all the letters, for they all follow a similar pattern - there follows the Saviour's praise or blame. And what praise it is. "I know your work," He says, "your labour and your patience."

I. They were praised for their labour
The word for labour here means toil which is exhausting. There were no 'passengers' in the Ephesus congregation. They were no comfortable Club for the Preservation of Sedentary Saints. The coat of arms for the church had a cross on it, not a cushioned pew. It was a church membership where folk worked for Christ, sweated for the church's witness. They were a diligent, active, conscientious people. Membership in a church, like marriage, is something that has to be worked at.

ii. They were praised too for their patience
That word is best translated by 'persistence' and 'fortitude.' It is not the attitude which is described by Hamlet as a willingness merely to "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," bowing your head to them with dull resignation, but the spirit rather that will "take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." Ephesus had this quality. Interviewed by a Television roving reporter and asked whether their suffering did not colour life somewhat, its pastor would have answered, "Yes, it does, but we mean to choose the colour."
They stuck it out.

iii. Ephesus too was an orthodox church
Its doctrine was sound. They had tested the self-styled apostles who preached to them, and been swift to discern and reject error.

Paul had warned her elders that after his departure fierce wolves would come in among them, not sparing the flock. The wolves had come. False teaching had been insinuated into its fellowship.
They listened. (You cannot tell whether a man's teaching be from Satan, man or God until you give it a fair hearing.) But having listened, they sifted and tested what they heard. They were not a lazy or complacent people. They searched the Scriptures, compared this new teaching with the primitive apostolic doctrine, thought, prayed and discussed. And after this honest hearing and careful sifting, they absolutely rejected it. There is a deliberate contrast in the statement that although they could bear trials and tribulations, they could not bear evil men. You cannot love both truth and error.

It is interesting that Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, writing to this same church only a few years later than this letter of John, should say, "You all live according to the truth, and no heresy has a home among you; nay, you do not so much as listen to anyone if he speak aught else save that which concerns Jesus Christ in truth."

And in this the risen Lord commends them. It is right and good that the church of Jesus Christ should keep its doctrine pure. Let us never forget it. The Church, remember, is symbolised in John's book by lamps and stars: she is to shed light - the light of Truth. She is to set forth Him Who said, "I am the Light of the world" and to speak in the name of Him Who said, "I am the Truth."

A fine church Ephesus would appear to have been - a model church, tireless in its service, patient in suffering - full of grit and perseverance - and orthodox in belief, pure in doctrine. What more can be asked of a company of Christ's people than that they be tireless, tough and true?
Much more! For there was missing from Ephesus the one thing without which all this other was so much junk.

iv. She lacked love
"If I speak with the tongue of angels, and have all knowledge, and if I have faith - such faith as moves mountains - if I suffer the loss of all things and give my body to be burned for the cause of truth - and have not love, I am nothing ... nothing." Let love die and all else is waste.

"I have this against you," says the Lord, "that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Zeal you have, but your love is dead. And not all your labour and endurance and orthodoxy can avail you one whit if love be dead. The outward form is still intact, but the inner springs are drying up."

There was death in the heart of Ephesus; a creeping death that threatened to extinguish its life, yes, and even the light of truth in its midst - the death of love.

"Repent, or I, your Lord, will remove its lampstand from its place."

The warning is as solemn and as plain as it can be. For if the truth for which the church contends is not such truth as fosters love, then it is no longer the truth as it is in Jesus. If the Gospel we believe does not make us kindly men and women it is not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not. Read the letter to the Ephesians with a weather eye open to the emphasis Paul puts in it on the need for love. His last word to them was a word of special blessing for those "who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love undying." "Forbear one another in love - and strive (they were good at striving in Ephesus) to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "Be imitators of God by walking in love."

Had Paul, all those years before, sensed the insipient weakness in this fellowship? Had the controversies which false doctrine had aroused had created a spirit of censoriousness among them? Were they so busy hunting heresies that they had lost their love for heretics?

To hate error is not in itself the same thing as to love truth. To hate falsehood is not the same thing as to love the Lord Jesus. It is good to contend for the truth, but it is bad to lose the spirit of love while you do.

Ephesus was faultless, but her faultlessness was somehow seriously at fault. "She was icily regular and splendidly null." Her love had grown cold.

Jesus Christ confronts this fellowship - a fellowship with so much to commend it - and says, "Nevertheless there is so much I miss. There is missing the flavour of your first love. No more is the costly jar of ointment broken and spilled in an immoderate rush of love; the songs of midnight have died from your lips."

Like a bulb whose incandescent element is broken, so a church which no longer glows with the warm light of its Saviour's love is fit only to be cast aside. Every other part of the bulb may be in perfect working order, but if the element is broken it is all useless.

What then is the remedy for a church which has lost its love?

COUNSEL

Three things: Remember, Repent, Repeat. That was the Saviour's counsel.

1. Remember

Do we remember how it was when the wonder of Christ's love dawned on us, when His love came in like a flood, sweeping the accumulated guilt of years away? Do we remember what it felt like to know ourself forgiven and free? Do we remember how love was shed abroad in our heart?

In his poem "The Everlasting Mercy" John Masefield tells the story of a degraded man, Saul Kane, who experienced the marvellous forgiving grace of God. He stumbled out into the dawn, and said,

O glory of the lighted mind!
How dead I'd been, how dumb, how blind.
The station brook, to my new eyes,
Was babbling out of Paradise;
The waters, rushing from the rain,
Were singing Christ has risen again.
I thought all earthly creatures knelt
From rapture of the joy I felt.
The narrow station wall's brick ledge,
The wild hop withering in the hedge,
The lights in huntsman's upper storey
Were parts of an eternal glory -
Were God's eternal garden flowers.
I stood in bliss at this for hours.

But do not miss the two further lines:

I knew that Christ had given me birth
To brother all the souls on earth.

That is the authentic note that sounds through the joy of forgiveness. A man forgiven cannot hug it to himself.

One of the old Puritans used to say that when Sunday was approaching, and he felt his heart was dry and stringy, he would "take a turn up and down his former sins," and always then he came to the pulpit with a broken heart, ready to preach - as it was preached in the beginning - the forgiveness of sins.

"Remember from what you have fallen ..."

2. Repent

Let there be a change of heart in you - for that is what repentance means.

We are never done with repentance in this life. Repentance is not something that happens once at the beginning of our Christian experience, and never comes again. It is a word that describes the change of heart which Christ by His love and truth will kindle in us ever and again.

Old habits die hard; not just habits of behaviour, but habits of the mind, habits of feeling. We slip back all too easily and all too imperceptibly, into the "mind of the flesh," losing our grip on the "mind of Christ." We are fascinated away from a preoccupation with Christ to a fascination with worldly things. To repent is to cease from "minding" the things of the flesh and "minding" the things of the Spirit.

We need often to repent. Repentance is not an emotional bath in which to luxuriate; it is an antiseptic that stings as it cleanses. The things of the Spirit are truth and love - both.

3. Repeat

So Ephesus is bidden to remember and repent and repeat the things she did at the first, when she turned from idols to serve the living God. "Do again the works you did at first, those works which were the fruit of repentance." We need always to be doing them.

THE PROMISE

To the overcomer there is promised the tree of life. The tree of life is the symbol of immortality.
It stood in the Garden of Eden. The first man to sin was forbidden access to it, lest he be fixed for ever in his lostness. The tree was guarded then, for man's own good. "The creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will but by the will of Him Who subjected it in hope." (Rom. 8:20) In Christ that hope is fulfilled. Through Him life and immortality have been brought to light, and "comes a statelier Eden back to man." As the Christian enters now into the Paradise of God in the company of his risen Lord, the angel with the flaming sword withdraws. Now the ancient word is spoken again, "Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat."

For the man in Christ is at the secret source of every precious thing; his life is hid with Christ in God, and what is nourished in him now is not the life of fallen man, but the gifted life eternal.

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