Ephesus: Christ as Priest-Judge

Revelation chapters two and three comprise the second major section in this book. Revelation 2:1, “To the angel of the church of Ephesus write…” There is a format here. We get into the section and third chapters there are seven letters written to the seven churches in Asia. These churches are not on the same road, they are not linked in any particular way, but they are chosen for a purpose which we see in our study.

There are seven components of these seven letters.

1) They don’t all have every component but mostly they do. First there is commission and address: to the church of Ephesus, Smyrna, Thyatira, etc.

2) Second, there is a character reference. It is a citation that refers to an attribute of Christ as revealed in the first chapter. There is one church that has elements that are not part of the picture division of Revelation chapter one, but the others all refer to one or two of the attributes of Christ or the appearance of Christ in the vision. That is so important because it shows that chapters 2 & 3 flow out of the vision of chapter one: that the reason He appears as He does to John in the first chapter is foundational to understanding why these letters are the way they are and what is going on in the background.

3) There is a statement of commendation. By way of application, when the Lord is going to critically evaluate He always begins with something good. He starts on the positive, and says something that they are doing right. There are two churches that are so bad that there is nothing good that can be said. But He always tries to praise something positive before He points out the flaws and failures in the local congregation.

4) The note of condemnation. There is a warning about the spiritual flaw or failure in the congregation.

5) There is a correction, a prescription to advance spiritually. There is specific direction given as to some course of action that they should take. In five of the seven letters they ate told to repent, which means to change direction, change thinking.

6) There is a call to hear. “Let him who has an ear hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Note that in each one of these it says “churches,” plural. Not to the church that has been addressed but to recognize that even though some of the flaws and failures of Thyatira may not be present in Ephesus the potential is still there.

7) There is a challenge. There is a personal challenge to the overcomer, to the person who perseveres, who hangs in until the very end. It is not just a matter of beginning well, it is a matter of ending well, a matter of consistency throughout one’s spiritual life. 2:3, “You have persevered, and have endured, because of my name, and have not become weary.” So this is a major attribute of the Ephesian church. They are endurers, people who hang in there. But they have a flaw, and this easily happens in churches that are concerned with what we believe.

If we look at the Ephesian church, Jesus commends them because of their works (production in their spiritual life), their labor (dedication), and they cannot bear those who are evil. They are not going to put up with licentious believers, like the Corinthians, with carnal Christians who are operating on religion and human good, and they can’t stand religiosity. Furthermore they test or examine those who claim to be apostles, but are not. So they are doctrinally oriented. These people are primarily concerned with right theology and right doctrine, and justly so. But what has happened and has happened as a trend throughout history is that as churches go along being concerned about right doctrine, all of a sudden they slip into neutral or slip into automatic and they lose focus on what it is all about. Doctrine isn’t the end result; the end result is to grow and mature as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ so that you glorify Him. It involves personal love for God and all mankind, and occupation with Christ. The problem with the Ephesians was that the one negative in verse four—“Nevertheless I have against you, that you have left your first love.” The first love is the Lord Jesus Christ. They are going through the motions, they have the right doctrine, they are focused on the truth, and that is good. It is not either, or. One trap we fall into is that we say we have to be more loving, more focused on Jesus, and doctrine goes out the window. The emphasis is maintaining sound doctrine but the end we are focused on isn’t just having right beliefs. Those right beliefs end with a right attitude and a right relationship and a right focus in life. So they are falling apart. This seems to be the first area that goes, though they are maintaining orthodox theology they are falling apart in terms of their ongoing day-to-day rapport and relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the problem in Ephesus. So there is a challenge to endure, to overcome, to stay with it to the end.

The question we must address before we get into a detailed study of the letters to the seven churches is, why these seven churches? These churches are not in a normal traffic pattern. For example, if John were going to Ephesus he would not necessarily go through each of these towns. They are on different roads, different highways, they are not necessarily connected on any basis. They are therefore chosen for a specific reason by the Holy Spirit. There are many other churches in this area. For example, there is a church at Collossae. Numerous churches had been established throughout that province. So why did the Holy Spirit choose these churches? There are three views:

1) The prophetic view. This is really associated with hyper-dispensationalism. Hyper means that they go beyond traditional dispensationalist teaching. In dispensational teaching the church is distinct from Israel. The church begins on the day of Pentecost because the baptism of the Holy Spirit is the key issue in the church and in the church there is no more Jew, no more Greek, no more slave or free, for we are all one in Christ; we are all baptized into the body of Christ. So hyper-dispensationalists come along and say, no the church really didn’t begin in Acts, there is too much of a Jewish flavor there. The church has to be distinct, it has to be Gentile. So there are different views. There are some who place the beginning of the church at the end of Acts. Others place it at the time Paul was on his first missionary trip through Greece, others at the time that he was first called as an apostle in Acts 9. The one thing they have in common is that they make such a radical distinction between Israel and the church that they get rid of any Jewish flavor to the church initially. Their claim is that angels are never mentioned with reference to the church. Therefore when we come to Revelation 2 & 3 if there is an angel associated with these churches they must be Jewish assemblies. Well first of all, that is a misconception. In 1 Corinthians 11:10 when Paul was dealing with the head covering with the women he said that they needed to demonstrate their subordination to their husband’s authority for the sake of the angels, because the angels are watching. 1 Peter 1:12 talks about the gospel and the local life of the congregation because these are things that the angels long to look into. The other mistake that they make is that they don’t think 1:19 outlines the book, they think the future begins with chapter two. Their interpretation is that these seven letters only have to do with seven congregations in the future during the Tribulation.

2) The second view is called the historical-prophetic view. In this view, which is a view that many people are familiar with and have been exposed to, the idea is that each one of these churches is not only a literal historical congregation but that it is chosen because it represents a different stage in church history. So that the Ephesian church represents the early apostolic church, then Smyrna represents the persecuted church in the post-apostolic period. Then Thyatira represents the early medieval church, Pergamum the late medieval church, Sardis the church needing reform, Philadelphia the Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant churches, and then Laodicea the modern church. The problem is that this is a forced interpretation. It just doesn’t match. In fact there are hardly two scholars who agree as to which church fits which period in history. In fact it mitigates against the doctrine of the imminency of the Rapture.

3) Te third view is the historical trend view. This is what seems to be emphasized here. First of all, it is historical in that each of these churches must be treated as a literal congregation that had these strengths and these failures. But they are chosen because they represent the basic types to be found in any era and any time in church history. Every congregation will fit one of these seven patterns.

Each of these letters is addressed to a group, a congregation. They are addressed to the angel of the church. There is a reason that an angel is addressed and that is because of his role as a courtroom witness to the operation of the justice of God in local churches. The second view is that they are just addressed to a human messenger but not the pastor, and the third view is that this refers to the pastor-teacher. If this relates to the pastor-teacher when it says “to the angel,” that would be to the pastor of church of Ephesus. When this was written there has already been a body of believers in Ephesus for almost fifty years. In that length of time there would be at least several hundred believers and there would not be one congregation. So there would not be one pastor, there would be numerous pastors because there would be numerous congregations in Ephesus.

What is going on here has to do with this heavenly posting of this critique sheet, but the critique sheet also goes to the local congregation and they are being evaluated. The congregation is being evaluated, not just the individual believer. For sure, the individual believer is a part of the congregation but how each member of the congregation functions in their spiritual life comprises how this congregation functions. How each as individuals operates is evident to everybody who comes in and becomes a part of the group. Every group of people has certain characteristics. There is a corporate evaluation. In the angelic conflict there are two corporate testimonies. One of the reasons for emphasizing this is because as part of American individualism, “American cosmic thinking,” we have this emphasis on rugged individualism. It comes out of our frontier heritage; it puts all the emphasis on the individual, it doesn’t matter what the group does just as long as I as an individual is pressing on in my spiritual life. But there is an emphasis in the Scripture on the body of Christ, that we are members of one another. We are not just to operate like a bunch of solitary soldiers running our own combat team. We are part of a team and we have to operate as part of a team. There is an emphasis on that corporate involvement. It is not just in the body of Christ, it is also in marriage. There is an accountability and emphasis on the corporate witness of marriage, and we get this from Ephesians chapter five. We are going to be evaluated not only in terms of our own spiritual life but also in terms of the corporate witness of our marriage in the angelic conflict. Beyond that there is the corporate witness of the congregation, so there are two corporate operations going on in the church age: marriage and the local church. Jesus Christ ordained and establish the local church as the corporate body within which each individual believer operates and has a ministry. This is fundamental.

The word translated “church” here is the standard word for church, EKKLESA [e)kklhsia]—the prefix EK means out from or out of, KLESIA is from the verb KALEO [kalew] which means to call, to call out from something. But it is used to refer to an assembly of people. Any time you have a group of people that are called out from a larger group of people and are assembled together, that is the idea of EKKLESIA. The word was used several different ways in the New Testament. It was used to describe the assembling of the congregation of Israel, i.e. in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It wasn’t calling them a church, it was calling them an assembly or a congregation. It did not have a technical meaning, that was just a generic meaning in the ancient world. In Acts it is used one time to refer to the assembly of the synagogue, so it is a non-technical use of the word. But it is also used in the New Testament to designate the entire body of Christ, e.g. Colossians 1:18-24; Matthew 16:18 where EKKLESIA describes the entire body of Christ, the church composed of every believer from the day of Pentecost until the Rapture of the church. It is also used to designate a specific assembly of believers in a local context, as in Romans 16:1; 1 Corinthians 1:2. Another way in which it is used is to refer to the collection of congregations in a local town, city, or region. For example, there were numerous congregations in Ephesus but they are referred to as the singular church in Ephesus. So we have to distinguish the different ways this word is used.

The first of these letters was written to the church at Ephesus. Ephesus was the most prominent city in Asia Minor, a city of pagan religions. The Ephesian church was never chastised for compromise with human viewpoint. They seem to have taken the Word and applied it consistently in their life. They stood form for the Word of God and had a tremendous impact. In fact, the church remained strong into the fifth and sixth centuries. In AD 431 a famous church council was held there which condemned the Christological heresy of Nestorianism. But it wasn’t long after that before the city failed and fell apart. There was a series of earthquakes from 5^th, 6^th and 7^th centuries that so devastated the city that everybody left and moved elsewhere. In fact the ruins were covered and were not rediscovered until the late 19^th century.

So Jesus Christ commissions John to write to the angel of the church at Ephesus. “Write” is an aorist active imperative which addresses immediate action. The Greek word GRAPHO [grafw] means simply to wrote something down. Notice that there is a difference between these epistles and other sin the New Testament. The most glaring difference is that Christ dictates these seven epistles, whereas the other New Testament epistles are all written by the individual apostles as they had been motivated by the Holy Spirit. They are also a more distant or removed kind of communication. They are addressed to the angel and not specifically to the congregation itself, although indirectly so. And they involve a critique. There is something different about these epistles.

“These things said he who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands…” He is referring back to a specific attribute of Himself in each one of these epistles. Here he refers to Himself as the one who holds the seven stars in His right hand. The verb is ECHO [e)xw] which means to have or to hold. This goes back to the imagery that we saw in chapter one, v. 16. There is a distinction between the seven stars and the seven churches, and that is important for understanding that they are not viewed together as a pastor would be viewed as part of a congregation that He is speaking to. The seven starts are viewed as distinct. But when we come to chapter two, verse one, the same verb is not used. It is not ECHO, it is KRATEO [kratew] which has the idea of holding something firmly, to have close contact with, and in some passages it has the idea of control or authority that is associated with it. So this is related to the fact that He is saying that He has authority over these seven stars that are the seven angels of the seven churches. What is the idea here? It fits the picture. Jesus is presented as the Priest-Judge of the church. He is viewed here as the one who is in authority over the local church and the one who has the authority to evaluate and to judge the local church. And He walks in the midst of the golden lampstands. In other words, He is not some distant Lord who is simply seated at the right hand of the Father, but He is involved in a present tense ministry or operation in terms of the local church. He is infinitely involved with each congregation. This, then, provides the basis for His evaluation.