Jesus addresses the Church via the pastor. Paul says: “This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed.”
The King James Version says: “And hast borne, and hast patience, and for My Name’s sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.” The Ephesian Church had not grown weary. “I am so tired,” you hear people sighing in our modern times.
How the Lord praises the church of Ephesus! It was patient in persecutions, devoted to the apostles’ teaching, orthodox in doctrine, faithful to the Bible as the Word of God, tirelessly exposing heresies and false teachers, demonstrating living faith…
Remember from where you have fallen, is a direct rebuke. The bridegroom says: ‘Bride, what happened to your first love? Where is the fire in your heart? The house is perfectly clean. The children are well brought up. You really do your best, and you do it all for me.
The Ephesian Church was praised for their first and pure love between Christ and His bride—and this in a city seething with sex. It was a city that worshipped the mother goddess, Artemis. Her temple also became the place of worship of the goddess Roma and the Roman Emperor.
All the seven epistles to the seven churches end with this verse. The promise of a reward ‘to him who overcomes’ is also part of these messages to these seven churches. This verse about ‘hearing’ is the last sentence of the last three letters, and it is clear from this that all the seven letters were intended for all the seven churches.
In the previous verse we heard of the Nicolaitans. We looked for the meaning of this sect and at what kind of works they were doing. Their works were what Christ (and, fortunately, the Ephesian church) hated.
The name Smyrna contains the notion of bitter. Smyrna means myrrh, which was used in the form of powder when embalming dead bodies.1 Life for the church in Smyrna was bitter, and many people died during the history of this church. One of the most famous was Polycarp.
False accusations and slander can land you in prison, and even lead to death. When Polycarp refused to renounce his Christian faith and to take the oath to the ‘divine’ emperor, a mob of Jews and Gentiles from Smyrna shouted: ‘He is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians!
Jesus Christ is called the faithful witness as He was faithful, and obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place. Whoever shares in His sufferings, will also share in His glory, and the light and momentary troubles (however heavy they can be at the time) will achieve for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
In some translations the little word ‘and’ links all the seven letters to each other, like seven pearls in a chain. Now a letter is going to Pergamum, a university centre in antiquity. The largest library of the ancient world except for the one in Alexandria was located there, with over 250,000 parchment scrolls (the word ‘parchment’ is derived from ‘Pergamum’).
Antipas, the martyr, is referred to by name. His name literally means: ‘against everything’. This is apparently the impression he gave of a Christian who was against everything. Antipas did not play along with the crowd. He did not play to the gallery.
