Original Meaning

BECAUSE THE LETTERS to the seven churches (chs. 2–3) are the most frequent source of preaching and provide so much of direct significance to the life of today’s church, we will focus some special attention on this section. In this chapter, we will provide both general comments on the letters as a whole and specific comments on the letter to Ephesus.

The Letters in General

LIKE ALL LETTERS not carried by imperial couriers, the book of Revelation would have been carried by travelers or (in this case) personal messengers; apart from official business of the empire, no public postal service existed.1 The letters to the seven churches are “prophetic letters,” a sort of writing that appeared earlier in the Bible (2 Chron. 21:12–15; Jer. 29), early Jewish literature (including 2 Bar. 77:17–19, 78–87; Ep. Jer. 1), and in some ancient Near Eastern sources (Mari letters). Given the authority of these letters, they also bear some resemblance to “ancient royal and imperial edicts.”2 But they resemble even more closely the biblical format of oracles concerning various peoples (Isa. 13–23; Jer. 46–51; Ezek. 25–32; Amos 1–2), here applied more specifically to God’s people dispersed in different cities.3

Each letter is a prophetic word from Jesus (e.g., Rev. 2:1) through the Spirit (e.g., 2:7), who is inspiring John (1:10).4 “These are the words” (2:1) is literally, “Thus says,” a standard biblical prophetic messenger formula (e.g., Acts 21:11; hundreds of times in the Old Testament prophets). Each letter follows a similar pattern, balancing praise and reproof:5

• To the angel of the church in a given city, write:

• Jesus (depicted in glory, often in terms from 1:13–18) says:

• I know (in most instances offers some praise)

• But I have this against you (offers some reproof, where applicable)

• The one who has ears must pay attention to what the Spirit says

• Eschatological promise6

That the message is from Jesus, following the same form as oracles in the Old Testament (also T. Abr. 8A), plainly implies Jesus’ deity.7 Indeed, the descriptions of Jesus’ glory formally resemble the sort of epithets with which Greeks often addressed their deities (e.g., Homer, Il. 1.37–38, 451–52).

Letter to Ephesus

THAT EPHESUS IS addressed first makes sense not only from a geographical perspective (if a messenger brought Revelation from Patmos) but from the perspective of its prominence in the province. Despite competition with both, Ephesus had proved more powerful than Pergamum politically and more favored than Smyrna for the imperial cult.

The portrait of an evil world ruler demanding worship (13:12–15) would certainly be relevant to Christians in Ephesus, who found themselves surrounded by symbols of civil religion. Augustus had allowed Ephesus to build two temples in his honor, and Domitian had named Ephesus “guardian” of the imperial cult, making it the foremost center of the imperial cult in Roman Asia. Ephesus, in fact, hosted a new cult of the emperors that had opened only about half a decade before Revelation was written. Ephesus honored Domitian at Olympic games just shortly before this book was written.8 Nor was the emperor cult the only prominent element of paganism there: Ephesus was known for the worship of Artemis (Acts 19:23–40) and the practice of magic (19:13–19). It also had a large Jewish community (19:8–9).9 All these elements would help make various features of the book relevant to them.

The presence of false teachers in Ephesus is hardly surprising (Acts 20:29–30; 1 Tim. 1:3–7); but Revelation 2:2 indicates that the church appears to have improved in discernment since Paul’s day (2 Tim. 1:15), a practice they seem to have continued in the decades that followed (Ignatius, Eph. 6.2; 8.1).10 That these teachers are self-styled apostles (2:2) need not mean that they claimed to be sent from Jerusalem per se (cf. 2 Cor. 11:13, 22), but probably implies that they have arrived from outside Ephesus (Ignatius, Eph. 9.1).11

Yet all that the Ephesian Christians are doing right is not sufficient to excuse what they are doing wrong. The fatal flaw in their behavior is their lack of love. Some interpreters have understood “forsaken your first love” to refer to a diminished love for God (cf. 12:11); more commentators today understand the phrase as love for one another (as likely in 2:19; cf. Eph. 1:15; Col. 1:4; 2 Thess 1:3). Both objects of love are possible (cf. Heb. 6:10), but surely the latter is included, given the ringing contrast between “hatred” of the Nicolaitans’ works (2:6) and the lack of “love” in 2:4.12

Those who once knew what was right should “remember” that they can repent and return (2:5; cf. 3:3; Deut. 9:7; 16:3).13 Some have understood the removal of the Ephesian church from its place (Rev. 2:5) as an allusion to the silt deposits of the Cayster River, which eventually forced the literal relocation of the city.14 More likely Jesus directly threatens the church alone: The removal of its lampstand from before Christ means that it will cease to exist as a church—whatever else, if anything, it may continue to be.

We can only guess the identity of the Nicolaitans. The second-century identification with the biblical Nicolas (Acts 6:5) in Irenaeus (1.26.3; 3.11.1) is probably no more than a guess, as is the association with antinomian Gnosticism (Epiphanius, Haer. 1.2.25; Hippolytus, Haer. 7.24).15 Nor do these heretics persecute from the outside, like the “Jews” of Revelation 2:9 and 3:9. The most reasonable guess is that they offer views similar to (but not identical with) those of “Balaam”—hence condone immorality and the eating of food offered to idols (2:14–15), apparently common areas of assimilation among early Christians (cf. 1 Cor. 6; 8–10).16

For the church in Ephesus, “overcoming” or “conquering” (2:7) requires more than the vigilance of theological watchmen; it requires the internal unity of love. The reward of such overcoming is eating “from the tree of life,” a familiar image in ancient Judaism.17 Ancient Jewish writers portrayed as a “tree of life” the righteous (Ps. Sol. 14:3–4), God himself (4 Macc. 18:16), edifying speech (Prov. 11:30; 15:4), and most frequently among teachers of the law, God’s law (Sifre Deut. 47.3.2; b. Ab. 6:7). But here as in some Jewish end-time texts (e.g., 4 Ezra 8:52), the tree of life performs its original function in Genesis as a source of eternal life (Gen. 3:22; Rev. 22:2); it is the tree in “paradise,” God’s garden.18 Even apart from Scripture, Ephesian Christians will not find such an image unfamiliar; both traditional royal gardens in Asia and the garden estates of the Ephesian cult of Artemis boasted trees, and in the latter case also tree-shrines, which functioned as a place of asylum for suppliants.19

Bridging Contexts

THE LETTERS IN general. Some commentators have noted that the churches are each invited to read the others’ mail (undoubtedly a matter of some embarrassment to members of the churches addressed most harshly; cf. Col. 4:16). This interpretive principle is implied clearly enough in the text: Each church is called to hear “what the Spirit says to the churches” (note the plural). To what degree are the messages to the particular churches distinctive, and to what degree should they be read as samples of what is addressed to all the churches?

There is surely a sense in which each church receives the letter appropriate to it. In the early twentieth century William Ramsay (and more recently Colin Hemer) emphasized how the message to each church resembles what we know of the cities in which the churches existed. Some of Ramsay’s parallels carry little weight by themselves, since some parts of the message would have fit a number of ancient cities; but some of his other parallels are stronger, and the cumulative weight of these is sufficient to support a connection in many cases.

Yet each church also receives the entire book of Revelation. Like all John’s audience (1:3; 13:9; 22:17), each church must “hear,” common enough language in both Jewish and Greek ethical exhortations;20 the particular expression likely echoes Jesus’ original teachings (Mark 4:9). Each church is also summoned to “overcome,” which implies endurance in the coming trial depicted in much of the book (Rev. 21:7); the invitation probably also suggests the term’s nuance of “conquer,” especially if believers appear as God’s end-time army (cf. comment on 14:3–4).21 Each church shares the hope promised to the other churches; when the churches have heard this through to the end, they will recognize that the promises to all the churches are fulfilled in the book’s closing vision of the coming world (chs. 21–22).22

The basic principle for applying these letters to ourselves and others today thus seems to be: If the shoe fits, wear it. To whatever degree our lives or churches reflect symptoms analogous to any of the churches the risen Lord addresses in these letters, we must take heed to “what the Spirit says to the churches.”

The letter to Ephesus. A serious danger in hearing Jesus’ message to the Ephesian church’s weakness in love is that we will simply dismiss it from any relevance to ourselves. Yet dismissing the church in Ephesus is somewhat like reading the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9–14) and concluding, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee!” We need to hear the warning this church presents to us.

Another danger is for us to assume from the condemnation of false apostles that true apostles (except for John) had ceased. But do the false Jews of 2:9 and 3:9 imply that genuine Jews had ceased to exist? Like the false Jews, this counterfeit was potentially believable probably because genuine apostles also continued to exist (cf. 18:20; Eph. 4:11–13).23

Some matters are hard to apply or recontextualize because we do not know what they originally meant. Who were the Nicolaitans? Even though Scripture is God’s Word, some understanding is missing to us today because we do not understand the immediate background known to the first audience (e.g., 2 Thess. 2:5).24 But even if we do not know the specific nature of the error, the warning against the Nicolaitans retains for us its basic lesson that we should guard against false teachers—a lesson with a wide range of potential applicability.

Contemporary Significance

THE LETTERS IN GENERAL. That the letters to the seven churches often betray characteristics of the cities in which these churches flourished reminds us how easily churches can reflect the values of their culture if we do not remain vigilant against those values. (This is especially true of the less persecuted churches.) Such parallels are noted at relevant points in the commentary, but one of Ramsay’s other observations should be summarized here: The two cities that are now completely uninhabited belong to two of the churches most severely rebuked (Sardis and Laodicea); the two cities that held out longest before the Turkish conquest are the only two churches fully praised (Smyrna and Philadelphia); and the city of Ephesus was later literally moved to a site about three kilometers from where it was in John’s day, just as the church was threatened with removal from its place (2:5).25

Such parallels may be coincidence, but they might also illustrate a pattern in history: The church, no matter how powerless in a given society, is a guardian of its culture. Just as the presence of the righteous in Sodom was the only factor that could have restrained judgment (Gen. 18:20–32), the fate of a culture may depend ultimately on the behavior of the believers in that culture. Given the high degree of assimilation of North American Christians to our culture’s values—more time spent on entertainment than on witness, more money spent on our comfort than on human need—the prognosis for the society as a whole is not good. (On dangers of some forms of modern entertainment, see comment on 13:14.)

When pagans charged that Rome fell because of its conversion to Christianity, Augustine responded that it fell rather because its sins were piled as high as heaven and because the commitment of most of its Christian population remained too shallow to restrain God’s wrath. Naturally we recognize that not all suffering reflects judgment; but some does, especially on the societal level. Is Western Christianity genuinely different enough from our cultures to delay God’s judgment on our societies?

The letter to Ephesus. Positive models provided by the Ephesian church include testing of prophets; as relativism increases in our culture, discernment and backbone to stand against error become both increasingly unpopular and increasingly vital (see comment on 2:20).26 The current postmodern culture of the universities encourages the sharing of diverse beliefs (welcoming Christians in some new ways and providing opportunities previously unavailable to us). But it also forbids us to try to convert anyone as if we have absolute truth; “yet this is precisely what Christians aim to do.”27 We want people to understand the gospel, but we also seek for them to embrace it. Even many Christians, however, are growing uncomfortable with the idea of absolute truth.

If there were in John’s day self-styled “apostles” (2:2) and prophets (2:20), preaching falsely called “deep secrets” (2:24), their number does not seem to have declined in our own, and the need for vigilance against infiltration by false teachers has not decreased. Thus, for example, a few charismatics have closed ranks against noncharismatic critics of excesses in Word-of-Faith circles, rather than carefully examining the challenges to see which are cogent.28 Yet some of the Word-of-Faith teachings originally began with E. W. Kenyon, a non-Pentecostal whose thinking was heavily influenced by the New Thought movement, which also produced Christian Science; writers have shown that the Modern Faith movement’s founder copied, at some points nearly word for word, from Kenyon.29

As a prophet and an apostle, John surely was not against prophets or apostles in general; but he demanded discernment in his day and would demand it no less in ours. If the Nicolaitans (2:6) supported the popular cultural values of sexual and/or religious compromise, they also serve as a warning to us to beware of modern purveyors of what people simply want to hear. Indeed, in talking with some members of churches that preach biblical holiness I have been struck by the number of people who embrace what their pastor says on matters that comfort them but prefer other, more worldly sources for instruction on morality.

Yet part of discernment involves knowing what we must discern, and the tragedy of the Ephesian church’s failure on this count is a tragedy of human nature that recurs through history and in our own time. The same church that rightly “hated” the works of the Nicolaitans (2:6) wrongly abandoned their earlier commitment to “love” (2:4); like many Christians today, they may have neglected the adage that we should “hate the sin but love the sinner.”30 Today, in fact, our hatred of what we disapprove has sometimes carried beyond sin and those who commit it. Not all doctrines are at the heart of the gospel, not all errors are properly labeled heresy, and not all disagreements are worth fighting about.31

Yet despite important, notable exceptions, many of the churches most firmly committed to the truth of the gospel are also those churches that have drawn boundaries too tightly on secondary issues. Countless times we have witnessed committed Christians marginalized for their views on gender roles, their different cultural or political perspectives, or for other reasons.32 In many of these cases those we have marginalized have naturally found circles where they were more accepted—even though many of those circles proved lax on matters that were close to their hearts (circles with the sin of Thyatira—see below).

In some of those cases I have also watched these wounded Christians react against the rejection they experienced in their more traditional background in ways that discarded the proverbial baby with the bath water. For example, a professor marginalized by her evangelical campus ministry years ago because she held different views on gender roles now reportedly multiplies her hostility toward the Bible among her students.

Often we have marginalized people by careless thinking—for example, in our biblically correct opposition to divorce we have sometimes condemned faithful spouses abandoned and divorced against their will (about as sensible as condemning a rape victim because we oppose rape).33 When they then leave our church, we sometimes feel confirmed in our suspicion that they must have been unspiritual to begin with!

Even when we are dealing with clear cases of sin and error, does not Scripture call us to offer correction with love and grace (Luke 15:1–2; 2 Tim. 2:24–26)? Meanwhile, as J. I. Packer rightly notes, many of us Western evangelicals “can smell unsound doctrine a mile away,” and yet the fruit of personal experience of God often proves rare among us.34

A church where love ceases can no longer function properly as a local expression of Christ’s many-membered body. This is one of the offenses for which a lampstand can be moved from its place (2:5), through which a church can ultimately cease to exist as a church. Some churches die from lack of outreach, lack of planning for the rising generation, or lack of courtesy to visitors; some churches, like the church in Ephesus, may risk simply killing themselves off by how they treat others.