May we be those who are loving the Lord under the genuine ministry that betroths us to Christ so that we may enjoy Him as grace and become His testimony on earth!
Paul’s blessing at the end of his epistle to the Ephesians foreshadows a problem that would arise later in Ephesus: the love in this church would fade, as indicated by the Lord’s rebuke in Rev. 2:2-5.
Paul spent a number of years in Ephesus, shepherding the saints and the church there. He was well aware of the need in that church.
The church in Ephesus was not a church full of problems; it was a good church.
So when Paul wrote his epistle to them, he wrote concerning the highest revelation concerning the church as the Body of Christ.
There really is no other higher revelation concerning the church than the one in Ephesians.
How privileged were these dear ones to have such a revelation written to them!
However, deep within Paul, he realized there is still a peril; there still is the danger that this church would leave the matter of loving the Lord.
And twenty years or so later, when John wrote his epistle and the Lord gave him a direct word to the church in Ephesus, the first church he addressed was the church in Ephesus.
After praising her for her positive aspects, the Lord rebuked her and said, I have one thing against you: you have left your first love.
The church to whom the apostle Paul wrote the highest revelation concerning the church, emphasizing again and again, “in love”, now lost their first love.
The church that received an epistle saying that the church is the Body of Christ, the one new man, the masterpiece of God, the bride of Christ, and the warrior fighting the battle for God’s interest, this church lost their first love for the Lord and were deficient in loving the Lord.
This should be a warning to us.
We are in the church life in the Lord’s recovery, and the Lord in His mercy has unveiled us to see the high peak of the divine revelation.
In the ministry in the church life today we have the completed word of God, the highest truth, and the purest truth.
But, like the church in Ephesus, there still is a danger: we may leave our first love.
The apostle Paul did not end his epistle to the Ephesians by encouraging them to be more fervent, more diligent, or more faithful; he encouraged them to love the Lord in incorruptibility.
This was both a word of warning and of encouragement and of prophecy, for only two decades later they lost their first love for the Lord and He warned them that, if they don’t repent and do the first works, He will come and remove the lampstand.
May we take this matter before the Lord and never be complacent or content with what we have and where we are; may we come to the Lord again and again in a fresh way to ask Him to rekindle our love for Him.
And may we remain in the ministry of the apostles, the betrothing ministry of the age, so that we may be stirred up in our love for the Lord and love Him in incorruptibility.
Loving the Lord in Incorruptibility to Enjoy Him as Grace and be His Testimony
The concluding word of Ephesians, 6:24, adds a condition to the presence of grace: loving the Lord in incorruptibility.
This seems to imply that, if the Ephesians didn’t love the Lord in such a way, the grace of the Lord will no longer be with them.
This church reached the highest truth, the highest revelation, yet they needed grace to go on; without grace, no knowledge of the truth is enough.
Only through grace and by grace can we be built up with one another. But this grace is ours, the enjoyment of Christ as grace is with us, only when we love the Lord in incorruptibility.
There is a condition: if we lose the first love, we will lose the grace. And if we lose the grace, we will not be able to be built up practically as the Body of Christ.
The epistle to the Ephesians emphasizes the relationship between grace and love (Eph. 1:2, 4; 3:17; 4:2, 15-16; 5:2; 6:23-24).
This indicates that, if we want to receive grace and enjoy the Lord as grace continually, we need to fulfil one condition – love.
Paul opens up his epistle with grace and pace, and he ended it with peace and grace, but he inserted love with faith in between. This is very meaningful.
For us to continue with the Lord and be built up with the saints, we need grace. We started with grace; we began with grace to take on this journey in the church life and to learn to be built up as the Body of Christ.
But we need to realize that, for us to go on from grace to grace, for us to enjoy grace upon grace, we need to be those loving the Lord; love is vitally necessary.
The matter of love is mentioned again and again in the epistle to Ephesus.
Love is not something that we can neglect or belittle; loving the Lord is absolutely critical to our enjoying Him as grace.
Paul crowned his epistle to the Ephesians with the matter of loving the Lord in incorruptibility, because it is only this kind of love that can cause us to continue to enjoy Christ as grace and make us suitable to be built up in the Body.
The church in Ephesus, however, failed in the matter of loving the Lord, and such a failure became the main reason for the failure of the church throughout the ages (Matt. 24:12; Mark 12:30-31; cf. Dan. 7:25).
The Lord prophesied that, in the last days, as lawlessness multiplies, the love of many will grow cold.
We live in the last days of this age, and we have a clear sense that the Lord is soon to return.
However, as lawlessness multiplies, the love of many of the Lord’s seekers grows cold.
People today are lovers of the self, lovers of money, and lovers of pleasures instead of being lovers of God and lovers of good.
As believers in Christ who are in the church life in the Lord’s recovery, we are living in this ungodly and godless age, realizing that every day the age is becoming more and more godless.
Lawlessness multiplies. How can we maintain this course on which the Lord put us on?
Satan has his wearing-out tactics; he doesn’t shut down the light all of a sudden – he dims the light little by little, wearing out the saints of the Most High day after day.
We can all testify that the environment, the situations, the world situation, and all things around us seem to work together to wear out our love for the Lord.
We have such a high truth in the church life, and the highest revelation in the holy word has been opened to us.
But the godless world with all the lawlessness and evils is here also, trying to wear us out.
Our job, which we need in order to live and take care of our daily living and family, seeks to get more and more time from us.
Our day exhausts us, and when the time comes for the prayer meeting, we may be worn out. Oh, Lord Jesus!
God has spent one hundred years with us, from 1922 until now; it is not a small thing for the Lord to be with a group of people for such a long time.
Many Christian groups have long dispersed and now do something else, but we are still here.
Why? Because the Lord must still gain His purpose; His economy must be fulfilled, whether through us or through others – so we give ourselves to Him for His purpose today.
God’s speaking today is with us, but we need to realize that, unless we are those loving the Lord in incorruptibility, there’s a danger that our love for the Lord will wear out and we lose the enjoyment of Christ as grace.
May we daily be before the Lord and have many thousands of conversations with Him,
Dear Lord Jesus, we love You. Keep our love burning bright for You. Rekindle our love for You so that we may love You to the uttermost. We want to be those who love You in incorruptibility. Save us, dear Lord, from losing our first love for You. We come to You again and again and we bring our situations, our family, and everything that we are and have to You. Dispense Yourself as love into our being. Remove any degradation from our being. Cause us to love You more and more each day. May we be aware of the enemy’s tactics to wear out our love for the Lord. Oh Lord, may our love for You never grow cold. We give ourselves to just love You, dear Lord Jesus!
The Genuine Ministry of the New Testament Stirs up our Love for the Lord Jesus so that we Enjoy Him as Grace
![For I am jealous over you with a jealousy of God; for I betrothed you to one husband to present [you as] a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your thoughts would be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity toward Christ. 2 Cor. 11:2-3](https://i0.wp.com/www.agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/For-I-am-jealous-over-you-with-a-jealousy-of-God-for-I-betrothed-you-to-one-husband-1-1024x1024.webp?resize=750%2C750&ssl=1 "For I am jealous over you with a jealousy of God; for I betrothed you to one husband to present [you as] a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your thoughts would be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity toward Christ. 2 Cor. 11:2-3")
How can we love the Lord and maintain our love for Him?
At one point the enemy brings in so many distractions and situations that our natural love and zeal for the Lord will be worn out.
How can we continue to love Him and even love Him in incorruptibility?
A secret is seen in 2 Cor. 11:2-3 and 3:3-6: we need to remain in the ministry of the age, the ministry of the New Testament, which betroths us to Christ.
The genuine ministry of the New Testament always stirs us up to love the Lord Jesus with the first love, strengthening us in the simplicity of enjoying Christ as our life supply.
![Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh. And such confidence we have through Christ toward God, Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God, Who has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, [ministers] not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor. 3:3-6](https://i0.wp.com/www.agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Since-you-are-being-manifested-that-you-are-a-letter-of-Christ-ministered-by-us-683x1024.webp?resize=450%2C675&ssl=1 "Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh. And such confidence we have through Christ toward God, Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God, Who has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, [ministers] not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 2 Cor. 3:3-6")
We need to daily be in the Word of God, contacting Him in a simple and living way, and we need to be in the genuine ministry of the New Testament.
In 2 Cor. 11:2 Paul’s word was very touching; instead of him directly confronting the Judaizers and arguing with them, he expressed his heart and tender feelings toward the Corinthian believers.
His ministry was a betrothing ministry, and those who were under his ministry had their love for the Lord stirred up.
So he encouraged them to remain in the Word and in the ministry.
We can all testify that, the more we read the word of God, the footnotes in the Recovery Version, and the life studies, the more we are stirred up in our love for the Lord.
The churches in Asia, including the church in Ephesus, turned away from the apostle Paul’s betrothing ministry (2 Tim. 1:15; 2 Cor. 11:2-3).
Approximately twenty-six years after Paul wrote to the Ephesians, when the apostle John wrote the epistle to the church in Ephesus, they had left their first love and lost the genuine enjoyment of Christ, which resulted in the loss of the testimony of the Lord (Rev. 2:4-5, 7).
Loving the Lord is critical for us to go on with Him, enjoy Him as grace, and be built up together to have the Lord’s testimony.
The Lord’s testimony is at stake: what we are bearing today is the Lord’s testimony.
We may have noticed that some of the older brothers among us have passed on and went to be with the Lord, and now the younger generation of brothers are needed to rise up and maintain the Lord’s testimony.
We cannot rely merely on the elders or the speaking brothers to get into the word and the ministry and speak in the meetings.
We all need to rise up, contact the Lord, rekindle our love for Him, and be in the ministry day by day so that we may experience being betrothed to the Lord, enjoy Him as grace, and maintain His testimony.
We need to be those loving the Lord in incorruptibility; we can be maintained in this love by being under the genuine ministry of the New Testament, which always stirs us up to love the Lord.
There may be the wearing out tactics of the enemy in our environment, and there may be some who are opposing us.
Let the enemy do what he is doing; we are not here to argue but to be in the Word and in the ministry to love the Lord and be built up as the Body of Christ.
May the serpent, who deceived Eve by his craftiness, would not corrupt our thoughts from the simplicity and purity toward Christ.
We need to be uncomplicated, released from any kind of analysis or suspicion, and delivered from trying to be in our own righteousness; we simply need to love the Lord and His word, and we need to remain in the ministry that betroths us to the Lord to love Him more.
The ministry of the age doesn’t bring us to love a person like Witness Lee or Watchman Nee but to love the Lord Jesus and be one with Him for His purpose.
The Lord’s recovery is here to bear the unique testimony God has on this earth; brother Lee and brother Nee are no longer here, but the Lord’s recovery is still going on.
We need to remain faithful to the Lord’s ministry, be in the genuine ministry of the New Testament, and be produced as the bride of Christ to bring Him back.
May the Lord have mercy on us and deliver us from any corruption, any corrupting ability that we may be involved in as we serve the Lord, and may we remain in the incorruptible things of Christ and the church revealed in the word of God.
Lord Jesus, thank You for bringing us into the church life in the Lord’s recovery under the ministry of the New Testament which betroths us to Christ. We love You, Lord, and we want to remain in Your word and in the ministry to be stirred up in our love for You to love You with the first love. Dear Lord Jesus, how we appreciate You and love You! You are so wonderful. We want to be Your testimony on this earth. You are our unique Husband. We love You in simplicity and in purity. Deliver us from any kind of complications or analysis in our mind and bring us into our spirit to be those loving the Lord in simplicity! Amen, Lord, we give ourselves to You to love You in incorruptibility so that we may enjoy You as grace and be Your testimony on earth today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother James Lee in the message, and portions from, Life-study of 2 Corinthians, msgs. 52-53, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Loving the Lord and loving one another for the organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ (2022 fall ITERO), week 3, entitled, Loving the Lord Jesus in Incorruptibility.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Lord Jesus, I love Thee, I know Thou art mine; / For Thee all the pleasures of sin I resign; / My gracious Redeemer, my Savior art Thou, / If ever I loved Thee, Lord Jesus, ’tis now. / I love Thee, because Thou hast first loved me, / And purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree; / I love Thee for wearing the thorns on Thy brow; / If ever I loved Thee, Lord Jesus, ’tis now. (Hymns #544 stanzas 1-2)
– To Ephesus, the word is clear: / “To your first love you’re not so near; / You’ve left to work so far away; / Repent, return to Him today.” / Thus, we must all turn back to Him, / Leave other loves, for these are sin. / Oh, let us hearken to His call— / If we miss this, we’ve missed it all! (Hymns #1274 stanzas 3-4)
– This age of lawlessness / Cools down our love for Christ, / Treads down our heart of love / For other things. / But our spirit is aflame. / So truthfully proclaim: / “I love You, Jesus Lord!” / And burn again. / (So let’s all…) / Rekindle, yes fan into flame, / The gift of God, which is in you. / My spirit, as I call on His name, / Will burn today. / Lord Jesus! (Song on, Rekindle)
About aGodMan
Because Paul was wise, he did not argue with the Judaizers concerning doctrine. Instead, he told the Corinthians that he was jealous over them with a jealousy of God. He went on to say that he had betrothed them to one husband in order to present a pure virgin to Christ. What a wonderful way of speaking! Paul’s word in 2 Corinthians 11:2 is very touching. It touches our heart in a deep way and stirs up our love for the Lord Jesus. Very often the Life-study messages touch our hearts in the same way. After reading a few pages of a message, the tender feeling within you for the Lord Jesus is stirred up, and you realize afresh how dear and precious He is. However, sometimes your theological and doctrinal mind may be troubled and raise questions about the Trinity or about Christ being the Spirit. You may wonder about modalism. You may question whether the ministry in the Lord’s recovery is trustworthy. But after reading a portion of a Life-study message, you once again begin to feel that as the Bridegroom the Lord Jesus is lovely and precious. Spontaneously you say, “O Lord Jesus, dear Bridegroom, I love You. Lord, thank You for Your word, for Your ministry, and for Your recovery.” Life-study of 2 Corinthians, pp. 462-463, by Witness Lee
What a warning we see with the church in Ephesus, who was encouraged by Paul to love the Lord in incorruptibility but lost their first love for the Lord! Oh Lord Jesus!
We need to remain in the word and in the ministry to be betrothed to the Lord and love Him in simplicity, in incorruptibility, so that we may enjoy Him as grace and bear His testimony.
We need to Love the Lord with the First Love and the best Love.
The Scripture seemingly applies that the only way to experience Grace is by Loving the Lord.
Paul is an example of one who Loved the Lord in His thoughts in incorruptibility, in simplicity and purity hence the Lord could say to him in his difficult times My Grace is sufficient for you.
Yes brother. The enjoyment of the Lord as grace is with those who love Him. As the bride of Christ, the Lord desires our love.
The true New Testament ministry stirs up our love for Jesus, our lovely & precious bridegroom.
On the other hand, today’s Judaizers attempt to shake us away from simply loving the Lord.
Our attention must be on Jesus. He is our unique Husband; the dear & pleasant One to whom we are betrothed and who desires our love.
The GENUINE ministry stirs up our love for the Lord Jesus as our Bridegroom!
Yes, in Him life is there! His life is also the light of man.
This light is His grace (Jesus Himself). If the lampstand or light is taken from us (from the church) darkness will take the place.
Therefore, we need to be very careful in our walk in the church not to lack the lampstand.
To keep the light on all the time, our first love needs to be there. His grace is the source of love and with His love no light at all.
Amen brother!
Rev. 2:4-5 …I have one thing against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore where you have fallen from and repent and do the first works; but if not, I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.
brother, the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians concludes with the matter of loving the Lord in incorruptibility with the enjoyment of grace the issue of such a condition because he foresaw the future loss of the first love of the Lord within the church in Ephesus.
As believers in today’s local churches we must focus not on doctrines or theology but on loving and enjoying the Lord Jesus, as our dear bridegroom, reading the genuine ministry which will continue to stir up our love for Him and will save us from any doctinal debates or doubts concerning the Lord’s recovery.
Thank you Lord for the apostle Paul teaching warning us not to lose our first love for the Lord.
Thank you that we are in the new testament age and can follow the apostle teaching.
Oh Lord keep us loving you in incorruptibility, so that we may enjoy you as grace and bear your testimony.
Keep our hearts burning for you save us from lukewarmness.
Oh Lord amen! Preserve under the teachings of the apostles, that we may love you more and more!
Amen Lord! Do keep us in Your word and the ministry of the New Testament enjoying You with a burning love!
AMEN LORD JESUS We love you AMEN !!!