Appendix C
– The Seven Churches
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
page 3
Repeat
Seven Times: Overcoming Is Essential!
The gospel of
Jesus declares that sinners cannot
overcome every temptation to sin on
their own. The gospel of Jesus also
declares that Jesus will purify us of
our sins if we confess our sins to
Him. “If we confess
our sins, he is faithful and just and
will forgive us our sins and purify
us from all unrighteousness.”[21] When we
claim this promise, Jesus may not
neutralize the temptation or remove
the power of a particular sin for a
period of time (perhaps a lifetime)
because He wants to see if we love
Him more than the sin that besets us.
In such a case, the sinner might
think that Jesus is not listening
because he remains caught in a
dreadful torment. Like Paul, the
sinner wants the power to overcome,
but his sinful nature demands
satisfaction. What will the sinner
do? Will he endure the torment while
waiting on the Lord to give him
victory or will he throw in the
towel, give in and sin again? Our
choices reveal our desires. If the
sinner loves the Lord more than he
loves the sin, he may stumble around
for a bit, but he will keep pestering
the Lord for purification until the
Lord neutralizes the power of that
sin and delivers Him from it. This is
where the battle of faith occurs and
what it means to “wrestle with
the Lord” as did Jacob.[22]
Many
Christians reject the idea that
sanctification is an inseparable
component of salvation. Such
Christians do not think it necessary
to be saved from their
sins. They want to be saved in their
sins. But Jesus makes it perfectly
clear to the seven churches that
justification and sanctification are
inseparable by stating seven times
that overcoming is a mandatory
attitude for salvation. Paul
adds, “If you are
not disciplined (and everyone
undergoes discipline), then you are
illegitimate children [that
is, you have no father who loves you,
who trains you and prepares you for
the challenges of life] and [if
you have no father you are] not
true sons. Moreover, we have all had
human fathers who disciplined us and
we respected them for it. How much
more should we submit to the Father
of our spirits and live! Our fathers
disciplined us for a little while as
they thought best; but God
disciplines us [while
having this carnal nature] for
our good, that we may share in his
holiness. No
discipline seems pleasant at the
time, but painful.
Later on, however, it produces a
harvest of righteousness and peace
for those who have been trained by
it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble
arms and weak knees. ‘Make level
paths for your feet,’ so that
the lame may not be disabled, but
rather healed. Make every effort to
live in peace with all men and to be
holy; without holiness [sanctification] no
one will see the Lord.” [23]
Bottom line:
A pseudo-Christian is a person
who pretends to be
a Christian. He sings praises and
says all of the right words, but he
prays without receiving power because
he is unwilling to go-be-do. His
heart and affections are elsewhere.[24] The
essential difference between a
pseudo-Christian and a genuine
Christian is not intellectual ascent
to truth, it is the direction of
love. A born again Christian loves in
an outward direction – he loves
God and His Word with all his heart,
mind and soul, and his neighbor as
himself.[25] A
pseudo-Christian loves in an inward
direction – he is self-centered,
he loves personal comfort, religious
traditions, his assets, and the
admiration or approval of others.[26] Keep
these two distinctions in mind as we
examine the seven churches because
Jesus requires His followers to fight
against the selfish demands of the
carnal nature until death or the
sealing occurs and God removes the
carnal nature.
(Note: For
further discussion on the topics of
justification, sanctification and the
seal of God, please see my
book, Jesus: The Alpha and
The Omega, Chapters 4-8. These
chapters may be freely downloaded
over the internet at: http://www.wake-up.org/Alpha/Subjindex.htm.)
Ephesus
“To
the angel of the church in Ephesus
write: These are the words of him who
holds the seven stars in his right
hand and walks among the seven golden
lampstands: I know your deeds, your
hard work and your perseverance. I
know that you cannot tolerate wicked
men, that you have tested those who
claim to be apostles but are not, and
have found them false. You have
persevered and have endured hardships
for my name, and have not grown
weary. Yet I hold this against you:
You have forsaken your first love.
Remember the height from which you
have fallen! Repent and do
the things you did at first.
If you do not repent, I will come to
you and remove your lampstand from
its place. But you have this in your
favor: You hate the practices [behaviors] of
the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
He who has an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the churches. To
him who overcomes, I will give the
right to eat from the tree of life,
which is in the paradise of
God.”[27]
The
salutation to Ephesus begins with
“To the angel of
the church in Ephesus.” The
message to Ephesus is directed to
the angel of the church in
Ephesus because a specific angel was
assigned the task of overseeing the
needs of the church at Ephesus.
Notice how this unfolds. When this
vision begins, John saw Jesus walking
among seven candlesticks and Jesus
had seven stars in His right hand.[28] Each
candlestick represents a church and
each star represents an angel
assigned to a church.[29] These
seven angels stand before God[30] and
they are delighted to do whatever God
commands. In this particular case,
Jesus had assigned seven angels to
serve the seven churches and each
angel had the responsibility of
seeing that each church received
“the testimony of Jesus.”
This process is not unusual because
God uses angels to accomplish
specific tasks. The apostle Paul
wrote,“Are not all
angels ministering spirits sent to
serve those who will inherit
salvation?”[31]
Jesus
identified Himself to the church at
Ephesus as the One “who holds
the seven stars in His right hand and
walks among the seven golden
lampstands.” Jesus used this
descriptive language to show that He
is the Head of the Church.[32] “Walking
among the lampstands” means that
Jesus is directly involved with His
church family on Earth. He intimately
knows the condition of each member.
Jesus
commended the people at Ephesus for
their perseverance and fidelity to
righteousness in the face of
persecution. Jesus also commended the
church at Ephesus for testing those
who claimed to be apostles but found
that they were infiltrators sent by
the devil. Jesus scolded the church
because they had lost their first
love for Him. The joy and enthusiasm
of their first love had died. The
church at Ephesus had become cold and
indifferent and Jesus threatened to
remove Ephesus (their lampstand) from
His presence if they did not repent
of this apostasy. Did you notice that
losing your first love for Jesus is
an apostasy?
What causes a
Christian to lose his first love for
Jesus and become a pseudo-Christian?
When we love anyone or anything more
than Jesus, our first love for
Jesus evaporates. The
following text explains how we can
tell if we love Jesus foremost. “A
new command I give you: Love one
another. As I have loved you, so you
must love one another. By this all
men will know that you are my
disciples, if you love one another. .
. . You are my friends if you do what
I command. This is my command: Love
each other. . . . If you love me, you
will obey what I command.”[33]
A genuine
Christian loves in an outward
direction whereas a pseudo-Christian
loves in an inward direction. This is
a critical difference and every
Christian needs to be aware that he
faces two deadly forces each day. Our
first enemy is our fallen sinful
nature and our second enemy is the
devil. Our carnal nature is a
self-resurrecting monster that
selfishly demands first place in
everything every day. The devil knows
this and he preys on this natural
inclination.[34] Paul
clearly understood the problem. He
knew that if he allowed his sinful
nature to take over, he too would
become a pseudo-Christian in no time.
This is why he wrote, “I
die every day – I mean that,
brothers – [I have
to crucify my carnal nature every
day] just as surely as I
glory [rejoice] over
you in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[35] The
carnal nature can only be put to
death through a daily charge of Holy
Spirit power. If a Christian does not
pray and drink in God’s Word,
his spiritual battery will die, his
spiritual radio will go silent, and
he will lose communion with God. If a
Christian becomes too busy to pray,
if he doesn’t have some quiet
time with God, he will soon become
weak in resolve and purpose. The
Christian experience cannot be
sustained without reconnecting to
Jesus on a daily basis.[36] This
simple truth can be summed up as
follows: “One week without Bible
study and prayer makes one
weak.”
Jesus was
unhappy with the members at Ephesus
because the loss of first love is
fatal. Left unchecked, the Christian
church at Ephesus would become a
pseudo-Christian church. Think about
this. Jesus told the church that He
would abandon them if they did not
repent. Do you think that Jesus has
abandoned any church groups over the
past 2,000 years? I do. Do you think
it is possible for people to attend a
worship service and Jesus (through
the Holy Spirit) is not present? I
do. The message sent to Ephesus is a
timeless message for all Christians.
If we lose our first love for Jesus,
we lose Jesus. “As
the Father has loved me, so have I
loved you. Now remain in my
love.” [37]
Jesus said to
the church at Ephesus, “But
you have this in your favor: You hate
the practices of the Nicolaitans,
which I also hate.” Nicolas,
of Alexandria, Egypt was a brilliant
philosopher who lived during the
first century A.D. and he distorted
Christ’s teachings by merging
gnostic ideas with them. This caused
a subtle but steady departure from
the truth that Jesus came to reveal
about the Father. In terms of
behavior, Gnosticism contaminated the
importance of sanctification and this
robbed the gospel of its transforming
power.
Long before
Jesus came to Earth, Gnosticism began
as a school of thought in the
hedonistic philosophies of the Greeks
and Romans and it included the creeds
of Plato and Philo. As time passed,
Gnosticism also included concepts
taken from mystical religions in
India and Persia. The Gnostics at
Ephesus treated the Word of God as
though it was an allegory (a parable
having many different shades of
meaning). Even though various schools
of thought existed within Gnosticism,
gnostic philosophy might be summed up
as a collection of clever ideas that
speak about right and wrong, good and
evil, life and death, but the result
is always the same. Self becomes
self’s savior. Today, Gnosticism
has morphed into modern concepts that
include “higher learning,”
“moral relevancy,” and
“humanism.” Gnosticism
belittles man’s need for Jesus
and it overrides God’s
commandments with human traditions.
The church at Ephesus hated the
Nicolaitan practices so
Jesus commended the Ephesus church on
this point.
Jesus closed
His remarks to the church at Ephesus
saying, “He who has an
ear, let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches. To him who
overcomes, I will give the right to
eat from the Tree of Life, which is
in the paradise of God.” The
phrase “He who has an ear.”
means there is a hidden message which
pseudo-Christians cannot appreciate.
The hidden message is this: Those who
walk in the Spirit each day and
overrule the carnal nature through
the indwelling power of the Holy
Spirit can enjoy the Tree of
Life right now. In a
spiritual sense, those who abide in
Christ have life already![38] They do
not have to wait to reach the
paradise of God to receive the
fullness of life. We can spiritually
eat from the Tree of Life (the Word
of God) and the joy and peace that
comes from communion with God goes
beyond human understanding.
God did not
allow Adam and Eve to eat from the
Tree of Life after they sinned
because access to the fruit of this
tree sustains life indefinitely.[39] In a
spiritual way, all who have the first
love experience will joyfully obey
the teachings of Jesus and they will
live forever.[40] Even
more, Jesus would not ask us to be an
overcomer if overcoming was
impossible. All things are possible
through God and overcoming is only
possible through God! The gospel of
Jesus includes the power to be
transformed (sanctified). Through the
indwelling power of the Holy Spirit,
the carnal nature can be temporarily
neutralized so the spiritual nature
might flourish. (Remember, Peter
temporarily walked on water so that
he might come close to Jesus.) I
cannot think of anything better than
being victorious over my carnal
nature and living with Jesus forever.
Smyrna
“To
the angel of the church in Smyrna
write: These are the words of him who
is the First and the Last [Alpha
and Omega], who died [for
you] and came to life
again. I know your afflictions and
your poverty – yet you are
rich [in the two things
that really count, love and faith]!
I know the slander [lies
and distortions] of
those who say they are Jews [the
chosen people] and are
not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do
not be afraid of what you are about
to suffer [for I am
with you]. I tell you, the
devil will put some of you in prison
to test you, and you will
suffer [deadly] persecution
for ten days. Be faithful, even to
the point of death, and I will give
you the crown of [eternal] life.
He who has an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the churches. He
who overcomes [who does
not capitulate] will not
be hurt at all by the second
death.”[41]
Three points
in this message invite further
analysis.
- Early
Christians (remember, this
message was given to the
church at Smyrna in A.D. 95)
saw themselves as the Israel
of God, a remnant which had
been called out of apostate
Israel.[42] The
trouble in Smyrna was that
some Jewish converts were
determined that Jewish
traditions be imposed on all
church members. (The apostle
Paul constantly faced this
issue in his day. Jewish
converts to Christianity
wanted to bring their Jewish
bondage and baggage into the
church.) Jesus bluntly
addressed this apostasy. He
called the advocates of
Judaism members of
“the synagogue of
Satan.
Theologically
speaking, there is a world of
difference between a synagogue and a
church. A church consists of
followers of Christ. They believe
that salvation comes through faith in
Him. He is the Savior of all who
repent of their sins and follow His
teachings. A synagogue on the other
hand, consists of people who believe
that salvation comes through the
observance of the law. Jesus
understood the conflict between
Christianity and Judaism for He had
lived among the Jews. In fact, He had
been condemned to death by Jewish
authorities for blasphemy.[43] Jesus
told the church, “I
know the slander of those who say
they are Jews and are not, but are a
synagogue of Satan.”
There was
intense conflict in Smyrna between
Jewish converts and Gentile converts.
The conflict centered around the fact
that Christianity declared Judaism to
be obsolete. The obsolescence of
Judaism was a very hard thing for
Jewish converts to accept. Can you
imagine being told that Jesus
terminated your religious views and
culture? The differences between
Jews and Christians are
insurmountable. Christians do not
have a high priest on Earth, they do
not need animal sacrifices, they do
not need to attend feasts or
participate in temple services, and
they do not need circumcision. In
fact, they do not need anythingthat
Judaism has to offer. Redemption:
Plan B stands on its own two feet
because it has an entirely different
covenant.
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
page 3
