In Revelation 2:4, Christ admonishes the Church at Ephesus, “but I have this against you, that you have left your first love.  Just what is meant by the expression, your first love?  The word first indicates that the love which has been left is a love which existed previously.  First here means first in time or earliest.

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What was the love that the Ephesians had left behind?  Was it love for God or love for each other?  What are the deeds of love that the church of Ephesus was known for when they were first planted?  The love for which Paul commended the Ephesians was a love for one another. 

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Like the other New Testament churches, the church of Ephesus was a multiethnic church.  In Ephesians 1:15 Paul says, “for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you.”  I believe Paul mentions their love for “all the saints” because the multiethnic unity they had at the beginning was noteworthy.  It was apparently later that this multiethnic unity eroded and became a point of friction.  Keep in mind that every one of Paul’s letters addressed how the gospel forms Jewish-Gentile multiethnic churches that function as a sign and forestate of Jesus’ rule and reign and to understand these letters one must read the letter through the same multiethnic lens that those receiving these letters would have understood them.

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Is there evidence anywhere else that multiethnic tension developed as the early church matured?  Yes.  Acts 15 details the first church dispute that arises out of how fast multiethnic churches were growing outside of Jerusalem. 

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Pastor Derwin Gray summarizes the disagreement this way in his book The High-Definition Leader:

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Specifically, converted Pharisees responded to the news about the growing churches from Paul and Barnabus by saying, “it is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses” (Acts 15:5).  They leaned on their ethnicity as the means for their salvation and coupled it with belief in their Jewish Messiah.  Their thinking was that the Jews were God’s chosen people.  It was Jews who had the Law, the Sabbath, and circumcision.  Therefore, Gentiles had to become Jews in order to become saved and to become members of God’s people.  This is called ethnocentrism.

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Sure, the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 was about circumcision and food, but it was also about ethnicity.

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So how do we apply Revelation 2:1-7 to our own context?  We must remember that zeal for God isn’t enough.  If we are evangelizing, discipling, and doing great works for God while not loving each other within the body of Christ, God will come and remove our lampstand.  And an important aspect of loving each other is dismantling ethnic hierarchies where the minority culture is expected to assimilate to the “normative culture”.  In Modules 3 & 6 of Embracing Unity Academy we will look at how churches in America mirror the ethnocentrism seen in Acts 15.