Revelation 2:4 - How Is Your First Love?

Rev.2:4; How Is Your First Love?

Rev 2:4 (TEV) But this is what I have against you: you do not 
love me now as you did at first. Think how far you have fallen! Turn 
from your sins and do what you did at first.  If you don't turn from 
your sins, I will come to you and take your lampstand from its place. 
 

They had abandoned that eagerness to please and devotion that 
characterizes first love. [Ryrie SB] 

They had lost their zeal for God. They were a busy church--the 
members did much to benefit themselves and the community--but they were 
acting out of the wrong motives. Work for God must be motivated by love 
for God or it will not last. [Life Application SB] 

The warmth of their first love is frozen up, and unless they are 
watered over by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, their candlestick will 
be removed out of its place, except they repent and do their first 
works. The first works of the church were seen when the believers 
sought out friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and with hearts 
overflowing with love told the story of what Jesus was to them and what they 
were to Jesus...... 
Selfishness mars all that unconsecrated workers do. They have 
need to pray always, but they do not. They need to watch unto prayer. 
They have need to feel the sacredness of the work, but they do not 
feel this. They handle sacred things as they do common things. 
Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and until they can drink of 
the water of life, and Christ be in them as a well of water 
springing up unto everlasting life, they will refresh no one, bless no 
one; and except they repent, their candlestick will be removed out of 
its place. There is need of enduring patience, of invincible 
charity, of omnipotent faith in the work of saving souls. Self must not 
be prominent. Wisdom from Christ must be exercised in dealing with 
human minds. Every worker who deals with souls successfully must come 
to the work divested of self...... 
Those who do not learn every day in the school of Christ, who do 
not spend much time in earnest prayer, are not fit to handle the 
work of God in any of its branches; for if they do, human depravity 
will surely overcome them and they will lift up their souls unto 
vanity. TM167-73 

Just as when a man and woman fall in love, so also new believers 
rejoice at their newfound forgiveness. But when we lose sight of the 
seriousness of sin, we begin to lose the thrill of our forgiveness. In the 
first steps of your Christian life, you may have had enthusiasm 
without knowledge. Do you now have knowledge without enthusiasm? Both 
are necessary if we are to keep love for God intense and 
untarnished. Do you love God with the same fervor as when you were a new 
Christian? [Life Application SB]