We’ll read a few Scriptures.
But I have against thee that thou hast left thy first love.
Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works;
or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.
Also in 1 John 1:8-10.
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we come together and really tremble at Your word. We just come to have fellowship with You right now, to be in Your presence, and to share together on this. We commit the time to You and commit the word to You. We pray that nothing would be between us, that we could truly fellowship with You in this time. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We have been sharing, about three months apart each time, on first love. Our approach has really been in a positive way. So even though, with the verses I am reading, everybody is tensing up, we want to relax because we are looking at first love in the most joyous way.
What is first love? How do we actually maintain first love? Today, we want to look at how to return to first love. First love is a very positive and joyful thing. This has been our approach: more so, the wonder of first love. What is first love about?
As we mentioned before, in a simple statement the Scriptures say that we love because He first loved us. That is the gist of it. First love happens when we first believe on the Lord Jesus and first receive His love. Immediately, there is a reaction. After you receive His love and believe on the Lord Jesus, immediately you respond with love.
The love that you respond with is the love that you have received. We are loving Him back because He first loved us. As we mature as believers, the love that we have—this first love—matures as well. We are always receiving love from above, and we are always responding back with love.
First love is not just first in time. It is not just that, as soon as I believed on the Lord, I had first love for a short bit of time, and now I am supposed to tough it out the rest of the way. First love continues on.
It is an abnormal thing in the Scriptures to lose or leave our first love, to fall from first love. In the Scriptures, this is the way of Christian life: the whole pathway of love, of first love. We are always receiving His love and responding back to His love. We receive more of His love; it matures more and more and goes deeper and deeper.
Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it is not as easy. But it is more, and our response in love is also more.
This first love is not just the thing that happens to us; it is actually a quality of love. It is a type of love. The word first in the Scriptures can also mean chief or at the top. Paul said, “I am the chief of sinners.” He said, “I am the first of sinners.” But we know he was not the first of sinners according to time—that would have to be Adam or Eve.
But Paul said that, as far as he felt, he was the chief of all sinners. He was the first of all sinners. It is the highest. So it is the same with first love. First love is the highest; it is the ultimate love, and it is the very love of God.
We receive the love from God; it comes into us. Then we respond with that love back to Him, and we live in first love as Christians.
Let us use the illustration of a marriage. Catherine and I have been married three years now. The first year, everybody came up and asked, “How long have you been married?” We would say, “Oh, one year,” or this many months, and they would say, “Oh, newlyweds. You are still in first love.”
Actually, the second year they still said that. But this year, when we say it has been three years, they say, “Oh, okay.” No, it should not be that way.
The way of the Lord is that first love in a married couple matures. He actually gives the secret of it in Ephesians 5. It works exactly the same way. He tells a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. He tells a wife to submit to her husband just as the church submits to Christ.
Now you see this process. The husband is loving the wife first; the wife is receiving the love and submitting. It does not even tell the wife to love the husband, but there is a reaction of love. If the wife is receiving the love from the husband, and the husband is really showing that love of Christ, there is a reaction of that same selfless love back to the husband.
In this way, it is a going back and forth: the husband loving the wife in a selfless way as Christ loved the church, giving Himself up for her; and the wife also responding. She is receiving and going that way because it is the way of love. Her response is really a response of love.
This is the way of first love. We are not talking about marriage, but it is an illustration. It is a going back and forth. We are always receiving love, and we are always responding to love.
But it is strange that, as believers, somehow first love seems to leak out. Maybe sometimes we feel it is even often. We do not want to lose first love.
We have looked at how to maintain first love. In maintaining first love, we want to continue in first love, and we want to mature. The main emphasis is that first love must mature. If we just stand still and expect everything to stay the same as when we were first saved, we will just go back.
Remember that in the letter to the church in Ephesus, one thing the Lord says is that they do have works, labor, and endurance. These are good things. But by way of comparison, consider 1 Thessalonians 1:3. There Paul says, “I remember your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope.”
The church in Thessalonica was a brand-new church, full of brand-new believers, full of first love. In first love, when you have works, all your works are works of faith. You are believing on the Lord to do these works. When you labor, it is a labor of love. When you endure trials and hardships, it is endurance of hope.
But in the church in Ephesus, who had left their first love, they still had works, but they did not have faith in their works. They still had labor; outwardly, everything might have looked just the same, but there was not love in their labor. They were enduring, praise the Lord, and in a sense they were faithful, but there was not that hope in their endurance.
So what do you do? In maintaining first love, you must maintain these three essential things: faith, love, and hope.
In 1 Timothy, Paul speaks of maintaining faith and a good conscience. Some did not maintain a good conscience, and they shipwrecked their faith. So we want to maintain faith. The way to maintain faith is to keep a good conscience.
We always keep our conscience clean. As soon as something comes upon us, we confess our sins. We are quick to confess our sins, to be cleansed by the precious blood, and to boldly be in the Lord’s presence by faith. We always keep a clean conscience to maintain faith.
Otherwise, we are like a big ship that has a hole in the bottom. The water starts to come in, and the next thing you know, we are shipwrecked. All our faith leaks out. Even though outwardly we might look the same, all the faith has leaked out.
You do not keep a good conscience. You let it become a little numb; you let a little thing slide. All of a sudden, your faith has leaked out. You no longer have boldness in the Lord’s presence. When you come to worship the Lord, you cannot worship with such boldness. When you go to serve the Lord, you just feel it is all dead and dry. “I have leaked out. I have lost my faith.”
The same is true with love. We must maintain love, and the maintaining of love in our labor is always the receiving of love. We should never be working beyond what we are receiving. This is how some of us really get dry.
We are working and working, but we are not receiving from above. Or another problem we might have is that we are always receiving, but we never let it go through us. We never labor with our love. We do not let it flow through us to the brethren, loving the brethren, nor do we let His grace flow through us as we are laboring.
Whatever we are doing should be a labor of love. We always want to behold His love, receive His love, and experience His love in what we are doing. This is the way of maintaining first love and maturing too.
If we are not receiving His love, or if we are not letting it flow through us in loving the brethren or in whatever we do, our love in labor will leak out. It will become dead.
It is like a picture of one time when I was at the Jordan River. At this place, they have somewhere you can be baptized. I do not think it looks the same as when John the Baptist was there, because now they have ropes, you pay tickets, and there are lines.
When I was there, there were many animals all around—very pretty birds—and there were a lot of fish flowing around. The water was clear; you could look down and see. It was very beautiful, actually, with the plants around it.
Another day, I went to the Dead Sea. At the Dead Sea, even the rocks on the beach are covered with white. I asked the brother, “What is this?” He said, “It is salt.” I went up, touched it, and smelled it. It was just salt. The rocks were covered with salt.
When I jumped in, I bounced up. I cannot float normally very well when swimming; I do the dog paddle. But when I jumped in there, I was floating very easily. The Dead Sea is so full of salt that you can hardly tell it is water. It feels very strange. I do not know how to explain the feeling, but it is as if you are not feeling water when you are in there.
The problem with the Dead Sea is that there is no flow. The Dead Sea is always receiving water, even good water, but it stops right there, and it is dead. There are no fish there that you can see. It is a neat experience, but it is dead.
That is what we are like when we are not receiving love and letting it go through us. We leak out that love, and our Christian life becomes dead, just like that.
The same is true with endurance. We have trials and troubles, and we must endure and press on. But what are we pressing on to? There must be that hope in our endurance.
Someone who has hope lines up his whole life unto that hope. “This is my hope: the Lord’s return. This is my hope: He is coming for His bride. This is everything my life is about.” I give my whole being before the Lord to serve Him in this way.
If I am going to endure, this endurance is working something for His kingdom. This endurance is unto a purpose. The way to maintain this hope and keep it before you is to maintain full consecration.
Do not let anything into your life that is halfway, a mixture of the world, something not lined up with His purpose. When we constantly renew it every day, when we come to the Lord and say, “Lord, I hand my whole life before You. I offer up my body as a living sacrifice unto You,” it keeps our eyes focused on Christ and on His return.
Other things might distract us, but because we have given ourselves to the Lord, we can quickly recognize, “This is a distraction. This is not unto His return. I have a hope, and I want to maintain this hope.”
It is as if a family has dropped off their little boy at his cousin’s house for the weekend. I used to do this sometimes. The little boy is at his aunt’s and uncle’s house, and he starts to miss his parents. He has a longing for them. Even though he is with others, it is not the same.
There is not the same love as there is with his parents. He knows, “This is not home.” He sleeps in the bed, but it does not feel the same. Maybe it has a little bar in the middle or something. It is not as comfortable. “This is not my house. This is not where I belong.” Maybe even the cousins pick on him.
He is always looking for his parents to come. He takes out some things and draws pictures of Mommy and Daddy. He just cannot wait. This is the way of a little boy longing for his parents to come.
It is as if, as a Christian, the parents are coming back on Sunday to take us to the Lord’s Day with the believers. They are coming to pick us up, and we are waiting. As a little boy, you go to the living room and wait for your parents. You are all packed up; you have your backpack, you have everything, and you even have the picture in your hand that you drew.
This is the way we are waiting. We have this hope. “I know they are coming in ten minutes.” Actually, I do not know. Daddy just called and said, “I am on my way.” He did not tell me when.
But then the cousins are at the television playing video games, and all of a sudden the little boy gets distracted. He sees the Kool-Aid and the cookies. He sits down, maybe spills Kool-Aid on the picture, takes his jacket off, and makes himself comfortable.
When Dad and Mom come, they say, “Hey, we are here.” He says, “Hold on, I am almost done.” Some parents, I think, know this.
That is what it is like when you are not lined up with the Lord’s return. You are not lined up with that hope. If we have this hope in us, we must purify ourselves from all these other things, ready to meet the Lord. We will see Him face to face. That is our glory to come.
As believers, strangely, we do not maintain. If we do not maintain in consecration, it starts to leak out. We let a little thing in, and then all of a sudden, the next thing you know, “Where is my first love?” The Lord starts to speak to me. What happened? Something happened. I gave in to some area in my life, and all of a sudden I feel as if I cannot meet the Lord.
If you leak out one, all three are gone. If you let a little thing rest on your conscience, the others will follow. You cannot just lose one; it ends up being everything.
It is different for each believer. How do we fall from first love? I do not know with each person, because there are so many ways to fall from first love. Depending on our maturity, it might be different things, and it might come out differently.
But in any case, if we go on in first love and mature, that is the way to continue maintaining. It is very simple. If we think first love is just when I am pushed into first love right at the beginning, and then all of a sudden I lose the feeling and something is gone, that is not the way. We must keep maturing and maturing and maturing. That is the way of the Lord. It is the normal way. It is the way of love.
As a new believer, sometimes, if we do not fully give ourselves to the Lord, we begin to let something back in. It seems by experience that many new believers let some temptation, sin, flesh, or something come back in. They do not fully give themselves to the Lord when they are in that first love, or something happens like that.
They start to leak out first love, and it goes on from there. Sometimes they start to meet the cross. Either in the church there might be some experience of the cross, or the Lord is leading them to follow Him on into maturity.
They meet this cross thing where they have to start denying themselves, taking up the cross, to really be His disciples. It is no longer as if there is something behind me pushing me through. Now I actually have to deny something of myself.
When we meet the cross, sometimes, as a new believer, that is where we stop. Sometimes we stop. We give up right there. We do not go on in maturity. We want to get comfortable, but the Lord is calling us, “Come on, come on into maturity.”
This is like the Corinthian believers. Paul writes to them in 1 Corinthians 3 and says, “You should be spiritual by now. I should be writing to you as spiritual men, but you are still carnal, as if you are brand-new believers.”
As a brand-new believer, you are tempted sometimes to stay like a brand-new believer. It is so fun, and you just want to be a new baby. You want to keep crying, and you want everything to be for you. Everyone must come and give you attention and help you, and you do not want to mature at all.
Something happened that way with the Corinthian believers. They should have been maturing, but they did not. They let some carnality in, and even some things you would not expect. They gave a little way on the conscience, and the next thing you know, there were drastic sins.
They did not let their conscience become more keen. Instead, they started to give way: “We are so free in Christ, so anything is okay.” This is a temptation for a new believer.
In 1 John 2, there are little children, young men, and fathers. You could say that, as a young man, there are different types of temptations and different things that lead us into falling away. This might be like the Galatian believers.
In the letter to the Galatians, Paul says they had fallen from grace. They were falling into the trap of wanting to keep the law.
These ones are different from the Corinthians because they really want to follow the Lord. They are like young men wanting to overcome and go forward. But when they meet this place of really overcoming, instead of pressing through by resurrection life, by faith, and going forward, they say, “This is too hard. I am meeting this wall.”
“This is not like it was in the beginning. In the beginning it was so easy for me. Now it is as if I cannot do what I want to do, and I am doing what I do not want to do. I am just going in circles.” Then somebody comes and says, “There is another way. I found a trick. Here is the way to be perfect and mature.”
In their case, someone brought the law. In our case, it might be something different. But someone brings another way to mature.
Another thing that might happen is that you do not even want to mature because you just give up. Many believers, I think, give up at that point. There is something we just cannot overcome.
But that does not ruin your first love. The problem is not that I cannot overcome something. That does not stop the relationship of love. Sometimes we feel that way. We do not even want to confess anymore. We come to the Lord and say, “I have confessed this one so many times.”
What we do is give up. We are in danger of simply giving up. We fall back and leave all of that. We say, “That is too much,” and get into something else. But the Lord is pushing us forward. He is showing us there is a higher way. He is saying, “Come up to the mountains. This is a way of resurrection. There is a further way.”
As we start to mature, if we do not give up, we just keep going—receiving His love, believing in His love, and responding. Then we can go forward.
As for the fathers in 1 John 2, as a more mature believer there is still danger. In 1 John 2, there are exhortations to the young men and the little children; words are given to them. But to the fathers, it is as if there is nothing more shared. It simply says, “You have known Him who is from the beginning,” both times.
What is the difficulty? We might say, “If I am a father, I have arrived. I have got it. I am already mature. This must be the height.” But to be in the place of maturity does not mean you have reached the height of Christ. There is so much further to go.
In Philippians 3, Paul says—and this is really the longing of first love too—“I want to know Him. I want to know the power of His resurrection. I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming conformed to His death. This is what I am after. I am after that out-resurrection from the dead.”
As he is after this, he says, “I am forgetting all the things behind me”—everything, good or bad—“and pressing on to what is in front of me, toward that goal, for that prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
This is the way of first love. It is such a drawing. It is as if the Lord is this big magnet, and we are these little metal pieces. He is bringing us to Himself. He is drawing us, and we are just longing: “I want to know Him more and more.”
Paul, at this point, was a mature believer, but he was saying, “I want to know Him.” We might say, “Well, you already know Him. You even know Him who was from the beginning.” But he wanted to know Him more. It goes deeper and deeper.
Paul said that everyone who is mature should have this mindset, as it says in Philippians 3. All who are mature should think this way. What is the way of thinking? Forgetting the things behind and pressing on to what is ahead: “I want to know Him.” Not thinking, “I am okay. I have arrived.”
In 1 John 1, it says that if someone says, “I have no sin,” if we say, “I have no sin. I am at this point of perfection. I am so mature,” we are deceiving ourselves. It is false.
God is light. You may have received some light that He has shown you, but you have not received it all. We have not been completely conformed to the image of Christ. There is so much more to go.
But we may feel, “I do not really have these outward sins like everyone else now.” Or maybe we do, but anyway we think this: “I have no sin.” We are just deceiving ourselves.
This is a trick, a problem, and a temptation that can happen even with a mature believer. Earlier in life, that person may have eagerly desired to mature in the Lord. He wanted to go on and on and further. He was hungry for Christ, with such hunger and passion to follow the Lord.
But after reaching some level of maturity, perhaps people around him are not as mature. He starts to take a different approach, the approach of the professor instead of the student. But we also have to stay students.
The problem may be—and it may have happened with the Ephesian believers—that pride rises up. “We are really going on. We really have something.” But pride comes right before the fall, and they fall from first love.
Pride comes up, and we start to look at ourselves instead of looking unto Jesus, who has not yet completed our faith. He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, but He is leading us on.
We start to look at ourselves and feel, “Oh, this is good.” Even when the conscience begins to prick a little, we say, “I have not sinned,” and we pass it over. “I have not sinned.” We even make God a liar.
The Ephesian believers may be an example of that. We do not know, but it seems that way because they were mature. They were still doing many good things outwardly. They still had discernment. They knew what was right and wrong. They were not confused or immature in that sense.
But because they knew that, perhaps pride rose up. They thought of themselves, fell from first love, stopped going forward, and began to go backward.
We may fall in different degrees. It may be a little, or it may be a lot. It was so extreme in Revelation 2. Sometimes it may simply be that we are going through a time. We should not always think that, as soon as something is wrong, we have left our first love. We should not walk around like that.
Even some of the maturing of the Lord can feel as if we have lost His presence, but He brings us to share in His sufferings, even sufferings where He had to be away from the Father. In our maturing, we want to ask, “Am I going on with the Lord?” Only the Lord can show us. He has to show us what is going on.
But our question is this: if I have fallen from first love, how do I return? God loves us so much that He gave Himself for us. He is not out against us. He is not asking us to do something beyond what we can bear. But how do you really return to first love?
In Revelation 2, we can shorten it to three words: remember, repent, and do. He says, “Remember therefore whence thou art fallen.” Remember where we were, from where we have fallen.
In first love, it is as if you are at a height, far above. You are in His love; you are with Christ. Just like the Galatian believers, Paul says they had fallen from grace.
Grace is God above, helping us, giving to us. But law is us from the earth trying to give to God, trying to do it from below. So there is a falling down. You fall from receiving grace from above, and now you are back down on the ground.
Falling from first love is the same way. We fall down into works that are just dead works. Whatever we are doing, we are down on the earth. It is as if we are not in His presence now. But He says, “Remember from where you have fallen.”
Where is it that we have fallen from if we fall from first love? When we are in first love, there may be many things we are doing at a certain point, depending on our maturity and whatever is going on. But what is it that we are really falling from? What is it that we have left?
To remember where we have fallen, we must remember the Lord Jesus.
Where have we fallen? Who is our love? It is Christ. If we want to return to first love, the first thing is that we must remember from where we have fallen. We must remember the Lord.
We may say, “I am drowning around in darkness. I cannot remember Him. If God would just bring me to some place where I would be overwhelmed emotionally, I could just come back into first love. That would be so easy.”
But it is not always the Lord’s way. Sometimes it seems He makes us come back. Other times, He is drawing us and calling us. He says, “Remember, and repent, and do the first works.”
It is not up to some atmosphere. It is not that the preacher is more fiery or the songs are more emotional, and then that day I will come back. “This guy is preaching first love in a positive way. I do not think I can do it. I need to really repent. I need to really feel it.”
But the Lord simply tells us. He is not harshly saying, “You have left your first love. Do not come back. I am through with you.” If we have left our first love, He is drawing us back. He says, “Remember where you have fallen from. Remember Me. Come back. Remember, repent, and do the first works.”
Of course, we cannot look by ourselves. The Psalms say, “Search me, O God.” Show me. Expose everything. God knows everything. He is the One who can search, try, test, and show whether there is any wicked way in me.
Is there some way in which I have leaked out my first love? Is there something through which I did not maintain first love or did not go on? What is the Lord speaking to me specifically? We have to ask Him. He has to expose it and show us. He puts it in our hearts. If we listen, it is so quiet, but sometimes He simply exposes it.
Another Psalm says, “With Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light.” God is the One who can shine the light. If I look down at myself, I just see darkness. I cannot find it. I begin to think, “Maybe it is this. Maybe it is that. Maybe if I start to do this, it will change.” It does not work.
If you try to find out what is wrong with you by yourself, you cannot do it. But if we look to Him, we look in His light. There might be a hundred things, and we cannot handle seeing all one hundred, but the Lord will show you one thing, or a few things, or whatever you need to see, just to bring you back.
When you come back, maybe you will deal with more things. But what does the Lord show me to remember? In this remembering, I remember the Lord, and I remember what it was like in first love.
Sometimes, if we just remember the Lord and see the Lord, that is it. Everything is done. It is so quick to repent in that. I respond right there.
Sometimes we cannot find the Lord, and the Lord says, “Go fellowship with some believer. Go talk with them.” As you talk with a believer, sometimes immediately you find where the Lord is.
Sometimes it is not that way. Sometimes you go talk to the believers, and the believers beat you up. You know? What?
One time, an unbeliever was asking me, “What is the gospel?” At that point, I was really not walking with the Lord. What do you do? They asked, “What is this about Christ dying on the cross? I do not get it.”
In sharing, I started to share about Christ and how He loved them so much. I was so dry and dead. I thought, “Oh, I cannot do this. Bring them to someone else.” But I just began to share and share.
I remembered the cross. I remembered my Lord and how lovely He is, how He loved them even though we were enemies of God. “Remember how much He loves you.” I was explaining it to someone else.
Somehow, that was it. That did it. Sometimes, when you have to help another person, you do not have anything to help with. But they draw it out of you, it seems. You start to talk about your Lord. You start to remember your Lord.
The next thing you know, you know where He is. You know He is away in the garden. “I know where He is at. I am in His presence now. This is my Lord. He is so lovely.”
When we remember things we used to do, though, we do not want to fall into trying to work up what we did as a brand-new believer. Even in down times, the Lord is still teaching us lessons. There may be things we have learned outwardly, and we may not have the same exact works or do everything exactly the same.
But what we are remembering is how His love was drawing us. When we remember the Lord, can you think of a time? Can you think of a time when you were at your height, in a sense?
When was it? “Oh, this was the time when I really was drawn by the Lord. At this point, I was doing this and this and this. My Bible study used to be like this. I used to be so hungry after the Word. I used to want to do this and this. I wanted to be with the believers all the time.”
Now something is off. The Lord might bring these things to us and remind us of them. He brings us to remembrance. If we do not see it from Him, what are we going to repent unto? He says, “Remember and repent.”
When you repent, you are seeing what is behind, but you are seeing what is before. Repentance is not merely a feeling. Sometimes we think of repentance as a feeling: “I feel so bad, and I repent. Every time I repent, it must be accompanied by many tears, and it must take me a whole day.”
But repentance is really a change in direction. I am going this way; now I am going that way. I change course. I change my mind. I was thinking this way, and now I think this way.
But what are you changing unto? We repent from something. If the Lord exposes to us that these are dead things, we repent from the dead things. “These are things not in first love. I repent from that. I turn from that.”
But what are we turning unto? That is why the Lord first shows us, “Remember this.” When we remember Him, then when we repent, we turn unto Him.
Then He says, “Do the first works.” Repentance has a doing to it. There is always a definite action with repentance.
If we are merely admitting our sins—“I admit, yes, I am doing poorly. Lord, please forgive me”—even we ourselves do not believe we have repented. So how should God take it?
To merely admit our sins, to simply say it before the Lord, is not some trick where you say it out loud and all of a sudden you are back. It is not merely acknowledging, because when the Lord shows it, He shows the other way too. He always shows the other way.
If I am convicted about some things going on, He shows me, “This is the way that I would do it in you.” So He says, “Do the first works.”
What are the first works? There are works of first love. They are what you did at the first when you had first love. But what are the first works?
In Revelation 2, when He says, “I know thy works,” remember that these works should have been works of faith. So the first works really are works of faith. These are works that you cannot do by yourself. You have to believe on God. You have to trust Him to do them through you, whatever work it might be.
To do the first works does not mean, “I used to do these twenty things, and now I will go back and do those twenty things.” The first works means that the quality of those works is now works of faith. You have been doing dead works, works without faith. Repent and do the first works, whatever you are doing.
Sometimes it is overwhelming when the Lord shows us. He exposes us and shows us many things, and we say, “I cannot even do that. I do not even want to repent because I feel like I will repent, and then I will not be able to do it.”
I do not know if this is ever your feeling. We come and say, “I do not want to try to repent again and tell the Lord, ‘Now I am going to follow You. Now I am going to do it. I am really going to try.’” We cannot just come and say, “I am really going to try now. I will do better.”
We cannot say, “For the rest of my life, I will never do another thing wrong.” It is not our feeling. We realize that if anyone can do wrong, I can do wrong. If anyone can slip, it is me. If anyone is prone to wander, that is me.
We remember these things, but we say, “I am overwhelmed to even think of that. At that point, His love overwhelmed me, and I was able to do it. But now, to try to muster that up, I cannot do that. It is too much.”
But the first works are works of faith. We do not repent unto something that we are going to try to do. We repent unto something that Christ will do in us.
When we were first saved, we had this experience: repentance from dead works and faith in God. This is like Hebrews 6, one of the elementary teachings, one of the beginnings of the word of Christ. The very basic first thing is that we repent from dead works and believe in God.
When we were first saved, we repented from all the ways of Adam and all the things of the past. We turned from that. We realized we could not work our way to salvation. We cannot work up to salvation.
Most of us are clear on this. We know that without Him, we cannot be saved. He had to die on the cross for me. When He died on the cross for me, I just believed; I only received. I believed in the Lord Jesus, and I was saved.
I cannot do it with my own works. I tried religion. I tried philosophy. I tried to figure out how Christianity works. I cannot figure it out, but I see Christ died for me on the cross. I see that God loved me so much and gave me this gift of salvation. So I just believe and receive. I cannot do it.
Then the whole Christian life is the same way. The works that we do, we cannot do. God’s standard is so high. When He gives us His standard, it is always beyond what we can do, but not beyond what He can do in us.
So we have to believe on Him to do these kinds of works. As a new believer, you think, “I can do anything,” because Christ can do anything. Maybe you really try. But as a believer, we really can say, “In Christ, I have strength for all things.” It is true.
Maybe we learn the lesson, “Without Him, I cannot do anything.” That is a real thing we need to know. But with Him, we have strength. We can do it.
When we are doing the first works, when we are repenting unto them, we are not looking at trying to please God by doing something different. We are looking at this: “I will no longer try on my own. I will no longer go my own way. I repent. I turn unto these works by faith. I believe in the Lord Jesus.”
One time, I was with a brother who was coming back to the Lord, and we really had a difficult time. He was struggling with repentance. He could not do it. He said, “I just cannot do it. I cannot repent.”
We were sitting at a café talking. I said, “That is right, you cannot do it.” He said, “I just do not want to do it.” I said, “You do not need to want to do it.” He said, “Well, you are no help.”
But I turned to the Scripture and said, “It is God who works in you both the willing and the doing.” You cannot do it. You do not want to come back. Do not try to muster up that you want to come back. Just believe on Him that He will work in you even to want to come back.
You should have seen his face. It just changed. He had been talking to some people before, and they were telling him certain things. But then his face brightened up. He said, “I do not even have to want to come back. I can do it.”
He went and told another sister who had been trying to exhort him, “You need to come back to the Lord.” He said, “Do you know what? I do not want to come back, but God works in me to want to do it.” It is just a different way.
This is really the way. We cannot do it. God works in us to will and to obey. It is all His glory, even to return to first love. It is not our doing.
We should cry out to the Lord for it. We should believe and receive. In another way, it is God who is working in us. We do not wait, though. We do not wait for the feeling to muster up. We do not wait and say, “Okay, now I feel like He is working it in me, and now I will do it.”
We just believe His Scripture. We believe His word. He says He will work in us to will and to obey. So we can, in a sense, cold-turkey repent.
You do not need to have overwhelming emotion. I do not know. We are looking at this as a how-to, so I hope it is not too dead and technical. But sometimes we must return to first love, and we simply do not feel like it. No one around us is making us feel like it either.
But we know it from the Lord, and the Lord shows us, “This is the way.” He will help us. We come to Him, we remember, we repent, and we do the first works.
Another brother needed some help too, but in a different way. He said, “I have so many sins. They are all coming at me, and I just do not know what to do. I do not even know what I am going to do if I repent. All I ever do is go back and go back and go back. Now how do I repent?”
In this case, I did not know what to do, but we had some paper and a pen there. He was thinking, “I am going to come and do these things better now, but I know I will not be able to.” So he took a piece of paper and made two columns.
On one side, he wrote everything the Lord was convicting him of, point by point. I did not look at it. The Lord saw it. I did not want to see it, but he wrote all these things.
On the other side, he wrote what Christ would do in him. Point by point, he put the difference: “I am doing this now, but Christ will do this. I am doing this now, but Christ will do this.” He made these columns.
That night he had such peace. His repentance was not striving. His repentance was, “Christ is going to go this way. Christ is this way. These are the first works. I repent. This is the way.”
As believers, really all we need to do is see His love, be drawn by His love, and go forward in His love. But what if we do fall from first love? What happens when this happens to us?
The Lord has provided a way. This should not be something that takes us years to come back from. If we are believers, God says, “Just come back.” He says, “Remember from where you have fallen. Repent. Do the first works.”
It can all be summed up with that one word: repent. Later He says, “But if not, I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent.” So in one sense, you could say the key is repentance—real repentance.
Repentance is from the way I am going and turning to the way of the Lord.
In the Song of Songs, even from the beginning, the Shulamite starts off in such love. But she begins to feel, “By myself, I cannot follow on.” She cries out, “Draw me; we will run after Thee.”
It is “Draw me” as an individual, but when anyone is drawn back into first love, others come too. If you see a person with first love, you will see others also. As they go on, others will be drawn to the Lord too.
If we call out to Him to draw us after Him, He will hear our prayer. If we come to Him and He exposes everything, whatever it might be, we simply confess.
It is simple in the Scripture: if you confess your sins, He is faithful and righteous. He will forgive every one of them. He will cleanse you from every one of them.
When we come back, it is as if I have never sinned. It is as if there is a clean slate. Each morning we can have this experience: a clean slate before the Lord.
Each morning, when we come to the Lord, we commit ourselves to Him anew and say, “Lord, draw me after You.” If He draws us, then we can run after Him. If He does not draw us, we do not have it in ourselves to run this way of first love.
We simply do not have it, but He will always hear our prayer: “Draw me; we will run after You.”
In the Song of Songs, there are different things that happen. One time, the Shulamite has so many burdens put on her:
My mother’s sons were angry with me;
They made me keeper of the vineyards;
But mine own vineyard have I not kept.
Do you ever feel that way? It is as if you are serving and serving, but you have not been keeping your own vineyard. “I am so dry. I do not get to receive, but I go to the Bible study and I have to pour out. I do not have anything.”
“I go to talk with someone; they need help, but I cannot help them. Everybody has put all these works on me, but my own vineyard I have not kept. I do not spend time with the Lord. I do not spend time receiving from His love.”
But in her heart, she calls out to the Lord. She says, “Tell me, O Thou whom my soul loveth.” I do not love all these other things. In my soul, I only love Him. “Tell me, where Thou feedest Thy flock.” I am somebody who is without You; I am not in Your presence.
He leads her away. In this case, He says, “Go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock.” Immediately, she finds it.
Sometimes we really are helped by the believers. Sometimes we see the way of the path of Christians, and we get help.
Another time, she became so comfortable. She was in her bed, comfortable, and she said:
Behold, He cometh, leaping upon the mountains,
Skipping upon the hills.
Christ, in resurrection, is calling her out: “Come up, come up. The winter is past. This is resurrection. Come.” He calls us further in maturity, not just to stay where we are, even though we have experienced something.
Even though we experience the cross, we may say, “This is it,” but we do not experience the resurrection. He calls us out, but she just stays there.
Then she realizes, “Where is the Lord?” She awoke, and He was gone. “Where is the Lord?” If we do not go on with the Lord, this is what happens to us. He calls us further and further, but we stop.
Then we ask, “Where is my Beloved?” She goes out in the streets and says, “I just cannot find Him anywhere.” Then she meets the watchmen. As soon as she meets these believers, even these leaders, she knows where He is. She finds Him. Immediately, she is with the Lord.
You see the longing of love. Each one of us who is born again has this longing. In our soul, deep in our spirit, deep within, we have this drawing of love, whatever degree we may have been shrinking from His love.
Another time, she sees the Lord come at night, and she says:
Behold, my Beloved is knocking.
And He says:
Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled:
For my head is filled with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night.
He is calling her to open to Him. It is as in Revelation 3: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.”
The Lord stands outside in tears. His head is filled with dew, His locks with the drops of the night. He is in such suffering, calling her to come out with Him, calling her to open to Him.
She eventually goes out because she is drawn by His love. He puts His hand through the opening of the door. When you see His hand pierced by the nail, you are drawn by His love. “I must come back to Him.”
Whatever it takes—even if He is out in the dark, even if it is going to hurt, even if I must give up some things, even if my whole life will change—when you see His pierced hand, you must come back to the Lord.
When you see Him who died on the cross for your sins, you say, “I got up. I go to the door. I open.” But then she cannot find the Lord. She goes out, and the saints hurt her. The believers hurt her and beat her.
But that does not stop her. She wants to find her Beloved. “Tell me, if you see my Beloved, tell Him I am sick with love. I am lovesick. I want Him back. I want to come back to the Lord.”
“I see how He has loved me so much. I see His pierced hand. I see Him on the cross, dying for me. Tell Him I am sick with love.”
The daughters of Jerusalem ask her, “What is thy Beloved more than another beloved?” Who is this Beloved? We will seek Him too. Who is this Beloved who is beyond all other beloved?
All she does is start to describe Him. We simply start to remember Him. When we really remember the Lord, our reaction is repentance. We are brought right to see Him.
She remembers Him and says, “My Beloved is chief among ten thousand. He is altogether lovely.” Everything about Him. She describes Him point by point, considering the Lord and meditating on the Lord.
They ask, “Where is He?” She says, “I know where He is. He is in the garden. I am with Him.”
Romans 10 says, “The word is nigh thee.” It is not far away. It is in your mouth and in your heart. It is right next to you.
The way to return is right next to you: if we confess with our mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we will be saved. Even in returning, it is that simple. It is right there. I simply confess. I simply come back to the Lord right there.
Whether we are in first love, moving forward, or whether we may have fallen in some sense from first love, I do not know. But this way of first love is so beautiful. We should look to the Lord that our whole life would be in first love.
Though we may fall, the righteous fall seven times, but they always get back up. It is not that somebody has left first love and is finished. Someone has left first love, and they come right back. This is the call of God.
Let us commit ourselves to His love and to His grace. Let us pray.
Lord, we really want to remember You and see how much You have loved us. Lord, our prayer is, “Draw me; we will run after You.”
Our prayer is that You would draw us, Lord, and that we would move forward in love. We would be drawn by Your love. We could see Your love, receive Your love, and respond in first love.
Lord, we cannot do it by ourselves, but we believe on You. We do not depend on our own strength, but we believe that You are able, even though You are calling us beyond our ability.
Lord, we trust in You. We pray that You would draw us after You. In Jesus’ name, amen.