Declension from First Love

Spurgeon opens by acknowledging that the church at Ephesus received remarkable praise from Christ for its works, labor, patience, and discernment — but then turns the spotlight on the one damning charge: they had left their first love — and he confesses with unusual honesty that he is preaching this sermon against himself as much as anyone. He paints a vivid picture of what that first love looked like: the eagerness to pray at any hour, the willingness to give everything, the joy in every sermon and every gathering, the fearless obedience to every command — and then traces how it gets lost through growing wealth, worldly friendships, forgetting how much we owe Christ, and substituting busy activity for actual personal communion with him. He closes with a serious threefold warning: that lost love brings God's chastening rod, that it brings shame upon the gospel before a watching world, and most solemnly — that those who have drifted far enough should honestly ask whether they were ever truly converted at all — before urging everyone to return to the cross, reclaim their first love, and attend the next morning's prayer meeting with that single purpose.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on September 26, 1858.