Revelation 2:5

5 So remember where you were before you fell. Change your hearts and do what you did at first. If you do not change, I will come to you and will take away your lampstand from its place.

Revelation 2:5 Meaning and Commentary

Revelation 2:5

Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen
Believers cannot totally and finally fall away from the grace which they have received; but they may fall into sin, and from a degree of grace, and the exercise of it, as these first and pure churches did, from some degree of their love to God, and Christ, and one another; and therefore are called upon to remember, mind, and observe from what degree of it they were fallen; in order to bring them under a conviction and acknowledgment of their evil, and a sense of their present state, and to quicken their desires after a restoration to their former one:

and repent;
of their coldness and lukewarmness, of the remissness of their love, and of those evils which brought it upon them:

and do the first works;
of faith and love, with the like zeal and fervour, which will show the repentance to be sincere and genuine; so the Arabic version reads, "and exercise the former works, to wit, charity" or "love". The Jews have a saying ^F2,

``if a man repents, do not say to him, "remember" (Mynwvarx Kyvem) , "thy first works";''

which they seem to understand of evil works; but former good works are to be remembered and done, to show the truth of repentance for evil ones.

Or else I will come unto thee quickly;
not in a spiritual way, to pay a love visit, nor in a judicial way, to take vengeance or inflict punishment, but in a providential way, to rebuke and chastise:

and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou
repent;
or thee out of the candlestick, the pastor from the church, either by persecution or by death; or else the church, and church state itself, signified by a candlestick; (See Gill on Revelation 1:12); and may design a shaking and an unsettling of it, which is sometimes done by violent persecutions, and by false teachers and their doctrines, and by the divisions and contentions of saints among themselves; and by the former particularly was there a change made in the state of this apostolic church, when it passed into the Smyrnean one, which was a period of great persecution and distress; for this cannot be understood of the total removing of the church state itself quickly, no, not of Ephesus itself; for though there is not now indeed, nor has there been for many hundred years, a church of Christ in that place, yet there was one till the times of Constantine, when there was none in any of the other seven cities, and a long time after; (See Gill on Acts 20:17); which shows, that this was not a commination or threatening of divine vengence to that church literally, but to the state of the church, which that represented; nor does it intend the utter abolition of that church, for the apostolic church still continued, though it ceased to be in the circumstances it was before.

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 Misn. Bava Metzia, c. 4. sect. 10.

Revelation 2:5 In-Context

3 You have patience and have suffered troubles for my name and have not given up.

4 "But I have this against you: You have left the love you had in the beginning.

5 So remember where you were before you fell. Change your hearts and do what you did at first. If you do not change, I will come to you and will take away your lampstand from its place.

6 But there is something you do that is right: You hate what the Nicolaitansn do, as much as I.

7 "Every person who has ears should listen to what the Spirit says to the churches. To those who win the victory I will give the right to eat the fruit from the tree of life, which is in the garden of God.