“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: ‘The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.
“‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
Amazingly, the liberal, or in today's vernacular, the emerg* or postmodern, pride themselves on "not judging" or "loving/accepting" all. Of course, to do so they have redefined love (and even God) away from the love/God of the Bible. Interestingly, Jesus clearly states that He hates the works of these. Jesus even commends the church of Ephesus for testing what teachers bring them for consistency with the truth they have been taught and for not bearing with those who are evil. Yet two thousand years later many who claim to be part of the church brag about their openness and accepting of those who embrace a life of sin.
On the other hand, a word to us, we cannot get so caught in the fight against those who rail against truth that in doing so we lose sight of our first love, Christ Jesus Himself. Kevin DeYoung recently quoted J.I. Packer's warning from the New Dictionary of Theology warning of what inerrancy can mistakenly entail.
Some evangelicals who affirm that Scripture is infallible, never misinforming or misleading us, will not call it inerrant because they think that word tainted by association. They see it as committing its users to: 1. rationalistic apologetics that seek to base trust in the Bible on proof of its truth rather than on divine testimony to it; 2. a docetic view of Scripture that obscures its humanity; 3. unscholarly exegesis that lacks semantic soundness and historical precision; 4. unplausible harmonizing, and unscientific guesswork about textual corruption where inconsistencies seem to appear; 5. a theology preoccupied with peripheral details and thus distracted from Christ, who is the Bible’s focal centre. (338)
Let's take care. Scripture is inerrant and infallible. We can us it as a standard by which to live and to judge (2 tim 3.16-17) and while we can love it as God-breathed, it is really not the object of our love. Jesus the Christ is the one who should occupy our affections. Let us set our hearts on Him and use His Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to live rightly and thereby not be guilty of the failing of the church of Ephesus nor the sin of the Nicolaitans of today.
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