What does Jesus make of us evangelicals today?
Reading the letter to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2 might perhaps strike some people as an apt description of parts of our movement. On the plus side, the Christians there are praised for their ‘deeds … hard work and … perseverance’. They also do not tolerate wickedness and are shrewd in testing out false teaching. They demonstrate perseverance and endurance in the face of hardship, and have not grown weary: they keep on keeping on. So there are lots of positives.
Adoring Him
But Jesus has some serious criticism of them also: ‘I hold this against you: you have forsaken your first love.’ Commenting on this, Paul Mallard has helpfully said: ‘Sometimes we are so busy about the Lord’s service that we do not have time for the Lord we serve… We are to come, as individuals or as the body of Christ, and spend time gazing on the beauty of the Lord, declaring His worth, delighting in His character, loving Him, adoring Him, praising His name, surrendering our will to Him.’ In other words – doctrine is vital, but without devotion, it is arid.
Perhaps this is also why some of us seem to find others in ever-so-slightly different evangelical sub-groupings so difficult, a tendency all too evident in online dismissiveness or cutting gifs disguised as ‘banter’ (as Jonathan Worsley pointed out in August’s en, p32).
The connection is this, as Paul Mallard goes on to point out: ‘When we fall out of love with the Lord, we find God’s people very hard to love… We cannot love the church unless we love Christ.’
A.W. Tozer was shrewd when he wrote in The Next Chapter after the Last: ‘The whole of true religion can be summed up in the spiritual love of Jesus.’
