Love’s Complaining (S1926)

Here is another probing sermon, profitable even when painful. Here is the Christ walking among the Ephesian church in Revelation 2, first of all perceiving their hearts and lives and concluding that while he knows their works he still has something against them. The Lord therefore issues a prescription, to remember from where they have fallen, and to repent. This leads to our Lord’s persuasion, in which he issues both a threatening warning and a sweet promise. You can see that the intention is not at all to crush, but there is still a challenge to our souls in the first heading, as we are forced to face the possibility of declining love for Christ in our hearts. The prescription comes to us clearly and helpfully, in three yoked commands: remember, repent, and return. Again, this is not difficult to understand, but it is not necessarily easy to obey. Finally, Spurgeon presses in some motives with our Lord’s persuasives, his warning and his promising, both designed to put us back in the way of love. To decline in love to Christ is the Christian’s wasting disease; to grow in love for Christ is the Christian’s foretaste of glory. So we are obliged to look into our own hearts, not in hopeless despair, but in order that we might, at Christ’s direction and invitation, address any drifting away from him whom our souls love.

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