Leaving your first love

“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” Revelation 2:4
In Jesus’ letter to the church at Ephesus, He commends them for holding tightly to His Word, testing false apostles and dealing with them appropriately (Rev. 2:2). But He rebukes them for having forsaken their first love.
The Greek word here is ‘protos’. While it can mean first in a timeline, more often it means first in importance or priority. Many people interpret this verse to say something like, ‘Remember how much you loved God when you first got saved? But over time that love has dwindled.’ That is not what the verse is saying. Jesus told us that the greatest commandment of all is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength (Matt. 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27). Love is not a feeling, it’s a choice, and a commitment.
When I first heard the interpretation above preached, I struggled with it. I grew up in a Christian home and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know the Lord; so I haven’t had a ‘conversion experience’ as such. There is no ‘before’ to compare things to. But I can still be found guilty of forsaking my first love: when other things get in the way and take my priority and my focus away from the Lord.
Note also that Jesus didn’t say ‘you have lost your first love.’ He said, ‘you have forsaken’, or in other translations, ‘you have left your first love’. Losing is something that happens through negligence. Leaving is something that is done deliberately.
This is a verse that applies not just to the church at Ephesus, but also to every believer today. We can all fall into this trap – like the seeds that were sown among weeds, which represent the cares of the world that stifle the believer in his or her effectiveness for God (Matt. 13:22). But it’s not to late to repent: to turn around, and make things right – to make God your number one priority in life.